Mad Planet | Page 5

bend where it entered the
water, and missed its mark by inches. He tried again and again.

He grew angry with the fish. Repeated strokes had left it untouched,
and it was insultingly unwary, not even trying to flee.
Finally, the big fish stopped directly beneath his eyes. Burl thrust
straight down with all his strenth. This time the spear, entering
vertically, did not seem to bend. Its point penetrated the scales of the
swimmer below, transfixing that lazy fish completely.
An uproar began. The fish, struggling to escape, and Burl, trying to
draw it up to his perch, made a huge commotion. Excited, he failed to
notice an ominous, approaching ripple on the water.
The unequal combat continued. Burl clung desperately to the end of his
spear. Then there was a tremor in Burl's support; it gave way, falling
into the stream with a mighty splash. Burl submerged, eyes wide open,
facing death.
As he sank, he saw waving before him the gaping claws of the huge
crayfish, large enough to sever a limb with one stroke of their jagged
jaws. Burl was sure he would die, for he could not swim. The only
question was whether he would drown or be devoured first.
But the section of the shelf fungus that had collapsed beneath him was
lighter than water. It rapidly surfaced, with Burl still on top. The
crayfish, deprived of its prey, wandered off.
Burl's situation seemed scarely improved, however. He was floating
downstream, perched--weaponless, alone, and frightened--on a soggy,
degenerate fungus. In the water lurked death unseen, on the banks
stalked peril, and above, danger fluttered on golden wings.
He finally recovered his self-possession, and looked for his spear. It
was floating in the water, still transfixing the fish whose capture had
endangered Burl's life. The fish now floated lifelessly, belly upward.
Burl forgot his predicament upon seeing his prey just out of reach. He
gazed at it, mouth watering, while his cranky craft went downstream,
spinning slowly in the current. He hastened to the edge of the raft.

It tilted and nearly flung him overboard. Experimenting, Burl soon
found that it remained stable if he lay flat across it. He wriggled into
position, and waited until the slow revolution of his vessel brought the
spear shaft near. He stretched his fingers and arm, and grasped it.
A moment later he was tearing strips of flesh from the fish and
cramming the oily mess into his mouth with gusto. He had lost his
edible mushroom, yet Burl ate contentedly of what he possessed. He
happily visualized the delight with which Saya would receive a gift of
part of the fish he had caught.
Burl suddenly realized he was being carried farther and farther from
Saya. Stricken with dumb sorrow, he lifted his head and looked
longingly at the riverbanks.
A monotonous row of strangely colored fungus growths. No healthy
green, but pallid, cream-colored toadstools, some bright orange,
lavender, and purple molds, vivid carmine "rusts" and mildews,
spreading up the banks from the turgid slime.
In the faintly pinkish light filtering down through the ever-present
clouds, myriad flying objects were visible. Now and then a giant
cricket or grasshopper made its bulletlike flight from one spot to
another. Huge butterflies fluttered gaily. Bees lumbered anxiously
about, seeking the cross-shaped flowers of monster cabbages.
Occasionally, a slender-waisted, man-sized wasp flew alertly past. And
far above soared dragonflies, their spindlelike bodies thrice the length
of his own.
Burl ignored them all. He sat, an incongruous creature of pink skin and
soft brown hair on an orange fungus floating in midstream, despondent
because the current carried him forever farther from the slender-limbed
maiden whose glance caused an odd commotion in his breast.
The day wore on. Once, just beyond the riverbank, Burl saw a band of
large, red Amazon ants, marching in orderly array, to raid a city of
black ants, and steal their eggs. The eggs would be hatched, and the
small black creatures enslaved by the brigands. Amazon ants live solely

by the labor of their slaves; perforce they are mighty warriors in their
world.
Later, etched against the pervasive steaming mist, Burl saw strangely
shaped, swollen branches rearing from the ground. They were a
hard-rinded fungus that grew on itself in mockery of the vegetation that
had vanished from the earth.
He spied pear-shaped objects above some of which floated little clouds
of smoke. They, too, were fungi, puffballs, which when touched emit
what seems a puff of vapor. These would have towered above Burl's
head had he stood beside them.
As the day drew to an end, he saw in the distance what seemed a range
of purple hills. Some 70 feet high, they were the agglomeration of a
formless growth, multiplying its organisms upon itself until the whole