They climbed higher. As other edible mushrooms came into view Burl's followers cheered visibly. This was a new tribal ground anyhow and it had not been fully explored. But Burl was leading them to quantities of food they had never suspected before.
Quaintly, it was Burl himself who began to feel an uncomfortable dryness in his throat. He knew what he was about. His followers did not suspect because to them what he intended was simply inconceivable. They couldn't suspect it because they couldn't imagine anybody doing such a thing. It simply couldn't be thought of at all.
It is rather likely that Burl began to regret that he had thought of it. It had come to him first as an angry notion in the night. Then the idea had developed as a suitable punishment for his abandonment. By dawn it was an ambition so terrifying that it fascinated him. Now he was committed to it in his own mind, and the only way to keep his knees from knocking together was to keep moving. If his followers had protested now, he would have allowed himself to be persuaded. But he heard more pleased murmurs. There was more edible stuff, in quantity. But there were no ant–trails here, no sounds of foraging beetles. This was an area which Burl's tribesmen could clearly see was almost devoid of dangerous life. They seemed to brighten a little. This, they seemed to think, would be a good place to move to.
But Burl knew better. There were few ground–insects here because the area was hunted out. And Burl knew what had done the hunting.
He expected the others to realize where they were when they dodged around a clump of the new red puffballs and saw bald rock before them and a falling–away to emptiness beyond. Even then they could have retreated, but it did not enter their heads that Burl could do anything like this.
They didn't know where they were until Burl held up his hand for silence almost at the edge of the rock–knob which rose a hundred feet sheer, curving out a little near its top. They looked out uncomprehendingly at the mist–filled air and the nightmare landscape fading into its grayness. A tiny spider, the very youngest of hatchlings and barely four inches across, stealthily stalked another vastly smaller mite. The other was the many–legged larva of the oil–beetle. The larva itself had been called—on other planets by other men—the bee–louse. It could easily hide in the thick furl of a giant bumble–bee. But this one small creature never practiced that ability. The hatchling spider sprang and the small midge died. When the spider had grown and, being grown, spun a web, it would slay great crickets with the same insane ferocity.
Burl's followers saw first this and then certain three–quarter–inch strands of dirty silk that came up over the edge of the precipice. As one man after another realized where he was, he trembled violently. Dor turned gray. Jon and Jak were paralyzed with horror. They couldn't run.
Seeing the others even more frightened than himself filled Burl with a wholly unwarranted courage. When he opened his mouth, they cringed. If he shouted then at least one, more likely several, of them would die.
And this was because some forty or fifty feet down the mould–speckled precipice hung a drab–white object nearly hemispherical, some six feet in its half–diameter. A number of little semi–circular doors were fixed about its sides like arches. Though each one seemed to be a doorway, only one would open.
The thing had been oddly beautiful at first glance. It was held fast to the inward–sloping stone by cables, one or two of which stretched down toward the ground. Others reached up over the precipice–edge to hold it fast. It was a most unusual engineering feat, yet something more than that: this was also an ogre's castle. Ghastly trophies were fastened to the outer walls and hung by silken cords below it. Here was the hind–leg of one of the smaller beetles, there the wing–case of a flying creature. Here a snail–shell—the snails of Earth would hardly have recognized their descendant—and there a boulder weighing forty pounds or more. The shrunken head–armor of a beetle, the fierce jaws of a cricket, the pitiful shreds of dozens of creatures—all had once provided meals for the monster in the castle. And dangling by the longest cord of all was the shrunken, shriveled body of a long–dead man.
Burl glared at his tribesmen, clamping his jaws tight lest they chatter. He knew, as did the others, that any noise would bring the clotho spider swinging up its anchor–cables to the cliff–top. The men didn't dare move. But every one of them—and Burl was among the foremost—knew that inside the half–dome of gruesome relics the monster reposed in luxury and ease. It had eight furry, attenuated legs and a face that was a mask of horror. The eyes glittered malevolently above needle–sharp mandibles. It was a hunting–spider. At any moment it might leave the charnel–house in which it lived to stalk and pursue prey.
Burl motioned the others forward. He led one of them to the end of a cable where it curled up over the edge for an anchorage. He ripped the end free—and his flesh crawled as he did so. He found a boulder and knotted the end of the cable about it. In a whisper that imitated a spider's ferocity, Burl gave the man orders. He plucked a second quaking tribesman by the arm. With the jerky, uncontrolled movements of a robot, Dor allowed himself to be led to a second cable.
Burl commanded in a frenzy. He worked with stiff fingers and a dry throat, not knowing how he could do this thing. He had formed a plan in anger which he somehow was carrying out in a panic. Although his followers were as responsive as dead men, they obeyed him because they felt like dead men, unable to resist. After all, it was simple enough. There were boulders at the top of the precipice and silken cables hung taut over the edge. As Burl fastened a heavy boulder to each cable he could find, he loosened the silken strand until it hung tight only at the very edge of the more–than–vertical fall.
He took his post—and his followers gazed at him with the despairing eyes of zombies—and made a violent, urgent gesture. One man dumped his boulder over the precipice's edge. Burl cried out shrilly to the others, half–mad with his own terror. There was a ripping sound. The other men dumped their boulders over, fleeing with the movement—the paralysis of horror relieved by that one bit of exertion.
Burl could not flee. He panted and gasped, but he had to see. He stared down the dizzy wall. Boulders ripped and tore their way down the cliff–wall, pulling the cables loose from the face of the precipice. They shot out into space and jerked violently at the half–globular nest, ripping it loose from its anchorage.
Burl cried out exultantly. And as he cried out the shout became a bubbling sound; for although the ogre's silken castle did swing clear, it did not drop the sixty feet to the hard ground below. There was one cable Burl had missed, hidden by rock–tripe and mould in a depressed part of the cliff–top. The spider's house was dangling crazily by that one strand, bobbing erratically to and fro in mid–air.
And there was a convulsive struggle inside it. One of the arch–doors opened and the spider emerged. It was doubtless confused, but spiders simply do not know terror. Their one response to the unusual is ferocity. There was still one cable leading up the cliff–face—the thing's normal climbing–rope to its hunting–ground above. The spider leaped for this single cable. Its legs grasped the cord. It swarmed upward, poison fangs unsheathed, mandibles clashing in rage. The shaggy hair of its body seemed to bristle with insane ferocity. The skinny articulated legs fairly twinkled as it rose. It made slavering noises, unspeakably horrifying.
Burl's followers were already in panic–stricken flight. He could hear them crashing through obstacles as they ran glassy–eyed from the horror they only imagined, but which Burl could not but encounter. Burl shivered, his body poised for equally frenzied but quite hopeless flight. But his first step was blocked. There was a boulder behind him, standing on end, reaching up to his knee. He could not take the first step without dodging it.