Back Aa

Nightmare Planet

Burl was first awake of all the tribesmen and he looked out into a cold and pallid grayness. He saw trees. One side of the cluster was brightly lighted, the other side was dark. He heard tiny singing noises of the creatures of this place. Presently he crawled out of the cave to scout for danger. The air was biting in its chill. It was an excellent reason why giant insects could not survive here, but it was particularly invigorating as he breathed it in. Then he summoned courage to move to where he could peer at the source of this strange light. He saw the top of the sun as it peered above the eastern cloud-bank. The sky grew lighter. He blinked at the sun and saw it rise more fully into view. He thought to look upward, and the stars that had bewildered him were nearly gone. He ran to call Saya. The rest of the tribe waked as he roused her. One by one they followed, to watch their first sunrise. The men and women gaped at the sun as it filled the east with colorings and rose above the seemingly steaming layer of clouds and then appeared to spring free of the horizon and swim on upward. The children blinked and shivered and crept to their mothers for warmth. The women enclosed them in their cloaks, and they thawed and peered out once more at the glory of sunshine and the day. Soon, though, they realized that warmth came from the glaring body in the sky. The children presently discovered a game. It was the first game they had ever played, and it consisted simply of running into a shaded place until they shivered, and then of running out into the sunshine again where they were warm. Until this dawning they had never been free enough from fear to play at all. But this discovery of the nightly chill and of the utility of cloaks for warmth up here as well as it had been against the nightly rain of the lowlands, was a specific suggestion of the value of clothing. Which was to have another significance, a short time later. In this first dawn of their experience, the tribesmen ate of the edible mushroom they had brought up the mountain-flank. But there was not an indefinite amount of food left. Burl shared the meal Saya brought him. She touched him fondly. But he regarded his happy fellows with something like a scowl. They were quite contented, and they had for the moment no need of his guidance. They did not look to him for orders. And Burl wanted attention. He spoke abruptly. "We do not want to go back to the place we came from," he said sternly. "We must look for food here, so we can stay for always. Today we look for food." It was a seizure of the initiative. It was the linking of what the folk most craved with obedience to Burl. It was the instinct of a leader. The eating men murmured agreement. There was a certain definite idea of goodness—not moral virtue, but of the desirable—becoming associated with what Burl did and what Burl commanded. His tribe was becoming a group of which he was the leader, rather than only a loose association held together only by the fear of solitude. He led them exploring as soon as they had eaten. All of them, of course. None had yet become confident enough to be left behind. They straggled irregularly behind Burl and Saya. They came to a brook and regarded it with amazement. There were no leeches. No fungus. No swiftly drifting islands of scum. It was clear. Greatly daring, Burl tasted it and it was water, but such as he had never tasted before. It was clean, fresh, sparkling water, not fouled by drainage through mould or rust. The rest of the tribe tasted. A child slipped on a muddy place and sat down hard on white stuff that yielded and almost splashed. The child howled. Saya picked it up. Then she looked where it had been for spines or small stinging things. She stared blankly. She went to Burl with a tiny white thing in her hand. It was a mushroom. But it was a tiny, clean, appetizing object. Saya had no words for it. She was amazed. Burl smelled it carefully. He tasted it. And it was actually no more and no less than a normal mushroom, growing in a shaded place upon enormously rich soil. It had been protected from sunlight, but it had not the means nor the stimulus to become a monster. Burl ate it. He carefully composed his features. Then he announced the find to his followers. There was food here, he told them. But in this splendid world to which he had led them, food was small. There would be no great enemies here, but the food would have to be sought in small objects rather than great ones. They must look at this place and seek others like it, where food would be found.... The tribesmen were doubtful. But they plucked mushrooms—whole ones!—instead of merely breaking off parts of their tops. In deep astonishment they recognized miniatures of what they had known only in gigantic forms. They tasted. The tiny mushrooms had the same savor, but they were not coarse or stringy or tough like the giants. They melted in the mouth! Life in this place to which Burl had led them was delectable! Truly the doings of Burl were astonishing! When a child found a beetle on a leaf, and they recognized it, they were entranced, for instead of being bigger than a man and a thing to flee from, it was less than an inch in size and helpless against them. From that moment on, they would follow Burl anywhere and obey him in any matter, in the happy conviction that he could do nothing that was not desirable in all respects. The belief, of course, was not quite accurate. Tender tiny mushrooms as a staple, instead of the tough and chewy provender they were used to, in time would cause them to have toothaches. But they could not anticipate it, and it was actually very far away in time. They struggled after Burl through vast patches of bushes with thorns on them. They were not used to thorns, and they deeply distrusted the bushes and even the glistening fruit on them, which eventually they would know were blackberries. Near midday they heard noises in the distance. The sounds were made up of cries of varying pitch, some of which were sharp and abrupt, and others longer and less loud. The people did not understand them in the least. They could have been the cries of human beings, but they were assuredly not cries of pain. Also they were not language. They seemed to convey an impression of enormous, zestful excitement. They had no overtone of horror. And Burl and his folk had known of no excitement among insects except the frenzy of ferocity. They were unable to imagine even the nature of the tumult. To Burl the cries seemed to have somewhat the timbre of the yelping sounds he had heard the night before. And he had felt instinctively drawn to that sound. He liked it. He led the way boldly in the direction of the noise. And presently he came out of breast-high weeds with Saya close behind him and the others trailing. He emerged upon a space of bare stone, a little upraised. He looked down into a small and grassy amphitheater. The tumult came from its center. A pack of dogs were joyously attacking something that Burl could not see clearly. They were dogs. They barked zestfully, and they yelped and snarled and yapped in a dozen different voices, and they darted at the unseen something and darted away, and they were having a thoroughly enjoyable time, though it might not be so good for the thing they attacked. One of them saw the humans and stopped stock-still and barked. The others whirled and saw the humans as they came out into view. The tumult ceased entirely. There was silence. The men for the first time saw creatures with only four legs. They had never before seen any moving thing with fewer than six—except men. Spiders had eight. The dogs did not have mandibles. They did not act like insects. And the dogs saw men, whom they had never seen before. Much more important, they smelled men. And the difference between man-smell and that of insects was vast. Through many generations the dogs had not smelled anything with warm blood save their own kind. The difference in smell between insect and man was so great that the dogs did not react with suspicion, but with curiosity. This was an unparalleled smell. It was even a good smell. The dogs regarded the men with their heads on one side, sniffing them in the deepest possible amazement—amazement so intense that they could not feel hostility. One of them whined a little because he did not understand. <hr style="width: 45%;" /> Peculiarly enough, it was a matter of topography. The plateau which reached above the clouds rose with a steep slope from the valley in which Burl and the others had lived. To westward, however, the highland was subject to an indentation which almost severed it. No more than twenty miles from where Burl's group had climbed to sunshine, there was a much more gradual slope downward. There, mushroom-forests grew almost to the cloud-layer. From there, giant insects strayed up and onto the plateau itself. They could not live on the plateau, of course. There was no food for their insatiable hunger. Especially at night, there was no warmth to keep them active. But they did stray from their normal environment, and some of them reached the sunshine, and perhaps some of them blundered back down to their mushroom-forests again. But those that did not find their way back were chilled to torpor during their first night on the highland. They were only partly active on the second day if, indeed, they were active at all. And few or none recovered from the second night of cold. Certainly none kept their full ferocity and deadliness. And this was how the dogs survived. Unquestionably the dogs were descended from dogs on the wrecked ship—name now unknown—which had landed on this planet some forty-odd human generations since. The humans had no memories of that ship, and the dogs had surely no traditions. But perhaps because those early dogs had less of intellect, they had possessed more useful instincts. Perhaps dogs were bred by the first desperate generations of humans, to warn them against dangers. But no human civilization could survive the environment of the lowlands. The humans inevitably reverted to the primitive. The environment was not one in which dogs could survive, so somehow they took to the heights. Perhaps dogs survived their masters. Perhaps some were abandoned or driven away. But dogs had reached the heights. And they did survive because of the simple fact that giant insects blundered up after them—and could not survive the proper environment for dogs and men. There was even a reason why they had not multiplied excessively. The food-supply was limited. When there were too many dogs, their attacks on stumbling insects were more desperate, and made earlier before ferocity of the insects was lessened. And more dogs died. So there was a specific adjustment of the dog population to the food-supply. There was also a selection of those intelligent enough not to attack foolishly, but not of those whose cowardice left them out of conflict altogether. These dogs who regarded men with their heads cocked on one side were excellent dogs. Intelligent dogs. They did not attack anything imprudently, and they knew it was not necessary to be more than wary of insects in general. Even spiders, unless they were very newly arrived from the lowlands. So the attitude of men and dogs was that of astonished curiosity rather than that of instant fear or rage. Burl knew that the shaggy, bright-eyed creatures were unlike insects. Actually, they behaved strikingly like men. They were estimating these strange beings, men. Insects never estimated. Those that were not carnivorous had no interest in anything but food, and those that were carnivorous lumbered insanely into battle the instant any prey came to their notice. The dogs did neither. They sniffed. They considered. They were amazed. Burl said harshly to his group: "Stay here!" He walked slowly down into the amphitheater. Saya, disregarding his order, followed him instantly. The dogs moved warily aside. But they raised their noses and sniffed—long, luxurious sniffs. The smell of humankind was a good smell. Dogs had gone hundreds of generations without having it in their nostrils. But before that there were thousands of generations of dogs to whom that smell was a fulfillment. Burl reached the object the dogs had been attacking. It lay on the grass, throbbing painfully. It had come up from the world below. It was the larva of an azure-blue moth which spread ten-foot wings at nightfall. The time for its metamorphosis was near, and it had gone blindly in search of a place where it could spin its cocoon safely and change to its winged form. It had come to another world—the world above the clouds. It could find no proper place. Its stores of fat had protected it a little from the chill. But the dogs had found it. Burl considered. It was the custom of wasps to sting creatures like this within a certain special spot—marked for them apparently by a tuft of dark fur. Burl thrust his lance into that particular spot. The creature died quickly and without agony. The thought to kill was an inspiration, which was the result of continued adventuring. Burl cut off meat for his tribesmen. The dogs offered no objection. They were well-fed enough. Burl and Saya, together, carried the meat back to the blinking tribesfolk. On the way they passed within two yards of a dog which regarded them with extreme intent and almost a wistful expression. Their smell did not mean game. It meant—something the dog struggled dumbly to remember. "I have killed the thing," said Burl, in the tone of one speaking to an equal. "You can go and eat it now. I took only part of it." The dog wagged its tail—and then backed away as if in confusion. After all, matters had not yet progressed to cordiality. The humans consumed what Burl had brought them. Most of the dogs went to the feast Burl had left. Presently they were back. They had no reason to be hostile. They were fed. The humans offered them no injury. The humans smelled good. The dogs were fascinated by their smell. Presently they were close about the humans. They were not insects. They were interested. The humans were extremely interested in anything which was interested in them. It was a wholly novel experience. It was the feeling Burl had felt in becoming the tribal leader. Now every human felt a little of it, in the intent regard of the dogs. And everything else was so strange that it was possible to accept anything without question. Even the possible friendliness of unparalleled creatures which assuredly were not of a kind with past enemies. A similar state of "mind" existed among the dogs. Saya had more meat than she desired. She looked about among the humans. All were well supplied. She tossed it to a dog. He jerked away alertly, and then sniffed at the meat where it had dropped. A dog can always eat. He ate it. "I wish you would talk to us," said Saya hopefully. The dog wagged his tail. "You do not look like us," said Saya interestedly, "but you act as we do. Not as the—monsters!" The dog looked at meat in Burl's hand. Burl tossed it. The dog caught it with a quick snap, swallowed it, wagged his tail briefly and came closer. It was a completely incredible action, but dogs and men were blood-kin on this planet. Besides, there was subconscious racial-memory instinct in friendship between man and dog. It was not overlaid by any past experience of either. They were the only warm-blooded creatures on this world. It was kinship felt by both. Burl stood up and spoke politely to the dog. He addressed him with the same respect he would have given to another man. In all his life he had never felt equal to an insect, but he felt no arrogance toward this dog. He felt superior only to other men. "We are going back to our cave," he said politely. "Maybe we will meet again." He led his tribe back to the cave in which they had spent the previous night. The dogs followed, ranging on either side. They were well-fed, with no memory of hostility to any creature which smelled like men. They had instinct and intelligence. The latter part of the return to the cave—if anybody had been qualified to notice—was remarkably like a group of dogs taking a walk with a group of people. It was companionable. It felt remarkably right. That night Burl left the cave, as before, to look at the stars. This time Saya went with him, gladly. But as they emerged from the cave-entrance there was a stirring. A dog rose and stretched itself elaborately, yawning the while. When Burl and Saya walked aside from the cave, the dog trotted amiably with them. They talked to it, embarrassed. And the dog seemed pleased. It wagged its tail. When morning came the dogs were still waiting hopefully for the humans to come out. They appeared to expect the humans to take another nice long walk, on which they would accompany them. It was a brand-new satisfaction they did not wish to miss. After all, from a dog's standpoint, humans were made to take long walks with, among other things. The dogs greeted the humans with tail-waggings and cordiality. <hr style="width: 45%;" /> The friendship of the dogs assured the humans' new status in life. They had ceased to be fugitive game for any insect murderer. They had hoped to be unpursued foragers. But, joined to the dogs, they were raised to the estate of hunters. The men did not domesticate the dogs. They made friends with them. The dogs did not subjugate themselves to the men. They joined them, at first tentatively and then with worshipful enthusiasm. And the partnership was so inherently right that within a month it was as if it had been always. And indeed, except for a few centuries, for them, it had. The humans had made a permanent encampment by then. There were a few caves at an appropriate distance from the slope up which most wanderers from the lowlands came. The humans moved into the caves. A child found the chrysalis of a giant butterfly, whose caterpillar form had so offensive an odor that the dogs had not attacked it. But when it emerged from the chrysalis, humans and dogs together assailed it before it could take flight. They ended with warm approval of each other. The humans had great wings with which to make cloaks. And men wore cloaks now—shorter than the women's—but cloaks. They were very useful against the evening chill. When one dawning a vast outcry of dogs awoke the humans, Burl led the rush to the spot, and his great lance did execution which the dogs appeared to admire. Burl wore a moth's feathery antennae, now, bound to his forehead like a knight's plumes. They were very splendid. In a single month their entire way of life went through a revolution. The ground was often thorny. A man pierced his foot, and bandaged it with a strip of wing-fabric so he could walk. The injured foot was more comfortable to walk with than the well one. Within a week women were busily contriving divers forms of footgear, to achieve the greatest comfort. One day Saya admired glistening red berries and tried to pluck them, and they stained her fingers. She licked the fingers—and berries were added to the tribe's menu. A veritable orgy of experimentation began. And this was a state of affairs which is very, very rare among human beings. A tribe with an established culture and tradition cannot change without disaster. But men who have abandoned their old ways and are seeking new ones can go far. Already the dogs were established as sentries and watchmen and friends to every one of the humans. By now mothers did not feel alarmed if a child wandered out of sight. There would be dogs along. No danger could approach a child without vociferous warning from the dogs. Men went hunting, now, with zestful tail-wagging dogs as companions in the chase. By the time a stray monster from the lowlands reached this area, it was dazed and half-numbed by at least one night of bitter cold. Even spiders could not find energy to leap. They fought like fiends, but sluggishly. Men could kill them while dogs kept their attention. Burl killed one the third week on the plateau. He was nerved to the deed by a peculiar feeling that he must be worthy of the courage of the dogs with him at the time. And presently, while their way of life was still fluid, the permanent pattern of civilization on the nightmare planet was settled. Burl and Saya went out early one morning with the dogs, to hunt for meat for the village. Hunting was easiest in the morning while creatures strayed up the night before were still numbed. Often, hunting was merely butchery of an enfeebled monster to whom any sort of movement was enormous effort. This morning the humans moved briskly. The dogs roamed exuberantly through the brush before them. They were five miles from the village when the dogs bayed game some distance ahead. And Burl and Saya ran to the spot hand in hand—which was something of a change from their former actions at the thought of a giant creature of the insect kind—and found the dogs dancing and barking around one of the most ferocious and most ghastly of the carnivorous beetles. It was not too large, to be sure. Its body might have been four feet long, but its horrid mandibles added three feet more. Those scythe-like objects gaped wide—opening sidewise as a beetle's jaws do—and snapped hideously, swinging about as the dogs dashed at them. The legs were spurred and spiked and armed with dagger-like spines. Burl plunged into the fight. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus9.jpg" alt=""/></div> <h3>"Those scythe-like objects gaped wide ... as the dogs dashed at them."</h3> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> The great gaping mandibles clicked and clashed. They were capable of disemboweling a man or snapping a dog's body in half without effort. There were whistling noises as the beetle breathed through its abdominal spiracles. It fought furiously, making frantic plunges at the dogs who dashed in and out to torment and bewilder it while they created the most zestfully excited of uproars. There was something beside this conflict that Burl and Saya should have noticed, but they were instantly intent. The other thing was quite unparalleled. There had been nothing else like it on this planet in many hundreds of years. It moved slowly above the plateau as if examining it. It was half a dozen miles away and perhaps a mile higher when Burl and Saya prepared to intervene professionally on behalf of the dogs. Then it swerved and moved directly toward them. It moved swiftly. But it was silent, and they did not know at all. Burl leaped in with a lance-thrust at the tough integument where an armored leg joined the body. He missed, and the monster whirled. Then Saya flashed her cloak before the beetle, so that it seemed a larger and nearer antagonist. As the creature whirled again, Burl thrust once more and a hind-leg crumpled. Instantly the thing limped crazily. A beetle does not use its legs like four-legged creatures. It moves the two end legs on one side with the center leg on the other, so that always it is braced on an adjustable tripod. But it cannot adjust readily to crippling. A dog snatched at a spiny lower leg and crunched and darted away. The expressionless, machine-like horror uttered a formless, deep-bass cry and was spurred to all possible ferocity. The fight became a thing of furious movement and uproar, with Burl striking once at a multiple eye so the pain would deflect it from a charge on Saya, and Saya again deflecting it with her cloak and once breathlessly trying to strike it with her shorter spear. Then the beetle sank to the ground, all three legs on one side crippled. The remaining three thrust and thrust and struggled terribly and suddenly it was on its back, still striking its gigantic jaws frantically in the hope of murder. But Burl stabbed home between two armor-plates where a ganglion was almost exposed. A thrust killed it instantly. Burl and Saya smiled at each other. There was a monstrous sound of splintering trees. They whirled. The dogs pricked up their ears. One of them barked defiantly. <hr style="width: 45%;" /> Something huge—truly huge!—settled to the ground a bare hundred yards away. It was metal, and there were ports, and it was utterly beyond experience, because, of course, there had been no spaceship landings on this planet in forty-odd human generations. But as Burl and Saya stared blankly at it, a port opened, and men came out, and they waved hopefully to the two barbarically attired figures who had been seen fighting a monster with the help of dogs. Which meant some sort of civilization. The dogs confirmed it. They sniffed. These, also, were men. And Burl and his tribe had this smell, and were friends. So the dogs trotted forward with the self-confident cordiality of dogs on excellent terms with men—and there was no question of friendship. None at all. The men came forward joyously to talk to Burl and Saya. There were difficulties, of course. But Burl and Saya had the calm composure of savages, and the alertness of people who are changing the pattern of their lives of their own volition—and finding it very pleasant—and things went swimmingly. There was, on the spaceship, an "educator." They invited Burl to put it on his head. He obliged. And very shortly he understood a new language, and was equipped with a very considerable fund of general information. Among the items of information was the fact that presently he would have a splitting headache—he did—and that the making of records for an educator was so different that it required generations to get all the facts and knowledge for a single type of education down in permanent form. All of which fitted admirably into the arrangements that the men on the spaceship were anxious to make, and Burl was enthusiastically willing to accede to. He and his folk knew the creatures of the lowlands as nobody else could possibly know them. No electronic educator could possibly make a record making available that knowledge in less than two generations—maybe three. Therefore— <hr style="width: 45%;" /> The nightmare world swims in space about its nearby sun. It has a name now, but it does not matter. It has a city on it, which probably matters less. It is a curious city, though. The people in it wear gorgeous colored fur, and cloaks of butterfly wings. The least of the people in that city wear garments which would fetch fortunes on other inhabited worlds. In fact, such garments do. But it is most practical for Burl, and Saya, and their followers to wear such garments. There is no day but that a small, winged flying craft rises from the city to go silently over the plateau until it reaches the space above the cloud-bank, and then dives down into it. It is wise for the occupants and the operators of such small craft to wear garments like the other humans on this planet. They are recognized, that way, when garments such as most planets find suitable would make them seem strange. They want to be recognized, in the jungles and the noisesome valleys of the lowlands. There are other humans down there. The people of the city, of course, bring their fellows out as fast as they can find them. There is a session with an educator—and a splitting headache afterward—and very soon the folk who have hidden from monsters all their lives are zestfully hunting them with dogs. Presently they are hunting them with flying machines. It is a nice arrangement. The search for more people in the lowlands is a prosperous business even when it is unsuccessful. The wings of white morph butterflies bring the highest price, but even a common swallow-tail is riches enough. And the fur of caterpillars—duly processed—goes into the holds of the regular spaceliners with the same care given elsewhere to jewels and platinum. But the nightmare planet has not become a merely sordid place of business. What comforts and what luxuries spaceships can bring are available enough, to be sure. But the city on the plateau, and the homes of the barbarically clad inhabitants are not places to which invitations are coveted for the luxury of them. The planet is a sportman's paradise. Not long since, the Planet President of Surmor III was a guest in Burl's dwelling. Burl is all hard muscle, despite his graying hair, and he and Saya have fitted very beautifully into the sort of civilization that turned out to be congenial to them. They have grown children now, and their home is quite fit to entertain a World President in its richness. But it is small—the size they want it to be. The atmosphere is oddly informal. There are self-respecting and amiable dogs nearly everywhere. The World President of Surmor III was inclined to be stand-offish at first. But he is a sportsman, like Burl. And since the last hunting trip, he is very respectful. After all, there are few planet leaders who will, as they do, for pure sporting joy of the hunt, fight the mastodon-sized tarantula of the lowlands with nothing but a spear—and win. But Burl does. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.