Mad Planet | Page 9

daily to spin anew.
The bloated, evil creature moved meditatively about the shining sheet
of silk it had cast over Burl and the giant tarantula. Now only the
tarantula moved feebly. Its body, outlined by a bulge in the concealing
shroud, throbbed faintly as it struggled with the spear in its vitals. The
rounded protuberance offered an obvious target. The web spider moved
quickly forward, and stung.

Galvanized into fresh torment by this new agony, the tarantula writhed
in a very hell of pain. Its legs struck out purposelessly, in horrible
gestures of delirious suffering. Burl screamed as one touched him, and
struggled himself.
His arms and head were free beneath the silken sheet because of the
grease and oil coating them. Striving to escape his deadly neighbor,
Burl clutched at the threads about him. They did not break, but parted,
and a tiny opening appeared. One of the tarantula's attenuated limbs
touched him again. With the strength of utter panic he hauled himself
away. The opening enlarged, Burl's head emerged into open air, and he
stared down 20 feet on an open space carpeted with chitinous remains
of his captor's former victims.
Burl's head, breast, and arms were free. But his lower body was held
firm by a gummy snare far more tenacious than any birdlime ever
manufactured by man.
He hung a moment in his tiny window, despairing. He saw, at a little
distance, the monster spider, waiting patiently for its poison to take
effect and the struggling of its prey to cease. And the tarantula was
weakening, only shuddering now.
Burl withdrew his head and thrust desperately at the sticky stuff about
his loins and legs. The oil on his hands kept it from clinging to them,
and it gave a little. In a flash of inspiration, Burl understood. He
reached over his shoulder and grasped the greasy fish; tore it in a dozen
places and smeared himself with the now rancid exudation, pushing the
sticky threads from his limbs and oiling the surface from which he had
thrust it.
He felt the web tremble. To the spider, its poison seemed to have failed.
Another sting seemed necessary. It would again inject its deadly venom
where the disturbance was manifest--into Burl!
He gasped, and drew himself toward his window. It felt as if he was
pulling his legs from his body. His head emerged, his shoulders--half
his body was outside the hole.

The colossal spider surveyed him, and made ready to cast another
silken sheet over him. The spinnerets became active, and the sticky
stuff about Burl's feet gave way! He shot through the opening and fell
sprawling to the earth below, crashing onto the shrunken shell of a
flying beetle which had fallen into the snare and had not escaped.
Burl rolled over and over, then sat up. An angry, foot-long ant stood
before him, mandibles extended threateningly, antennae waving wildly.
A shrill stridulation filled the air.
In ages past, when ants were tiny creatures fractions of an inch long,
scientists knew they possessed a cry. Grooves on the body of the
insects, like those on the great legs of crickets, enabled them to
generate sounds.
Burl knew the stridulation emanated from the insect before him, though
he had never wondered how it was produced. The cry was used to
summon others of its city, to help it in difficulty or good fortune.
Clickings sounded nearby. Reinforcements were coming. Normally
harmless--except the army ant, that is--the whole ant tribe was
formidable when provoked. Utterly fearless, they could pull down a
man and slay him as so many infuriated fox terriers might have done
30,000 years before.
Burl fled, without debate, and heard the shrill sound suddenly subside.
The ant, shortsighted like all ants, no longer felt threatened and went
peacefully about the business Burl had interrupted, that of finding
among the gruesome relics beneath the spider's web some edible
carrion to feed the inhabitants of its city.
Burl ran a few hundred yards, and stopped. It behooved him to move
carefully. Even the most familiar territory was full of unexpected
dangers; unknown lands such as these were doubly perilous.
Burl too found difficulty in moving. The glutinous stuff from the
spider's snare still stuck to his feet, picking up small objects as he went.
Old ant-gnawed fragments of insect armor pricked him even through

his toughened soles.
He removed them, took a dozen steps and had to stop again. Burl's
brain had been uncommonly stimulated lately. It had gotten him into at
least one predicament--due to his invention of a spear--but extricated
him from another. Reason had led him to oil his body to escape the
spider's snare.
Cautiously, Burl looked about. He seemed safe. Then, deliberately, he
sat down to think. Never in his life had he done