"Murray Leinster - Planets of Adventure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

hopeless coils of gummy cord, before the spider began its feast.
Burl knew these dangers. They were part of his life. It was this knowledge that made
life possible. He knew the ways to evade these dangers. But if he yielded to carelessness
for one moment, or if he relaxed his caution for one instant, he would be one with his
ancestors. They were the long-forgotten meals of inhuman monsters.
Now, to be sure, Burl moved upon an errand that probably no other of his tribe would
have imagined. The day before, he had crouched behind a shapeless mound of inter-
tangled growths and watched a duel between two huge horned beetles. Their bodies were
feet long. Their carapaces were waist-high to Burl when they crawled. Their mandibles,
gaping laterally, clicked and clashed upon each other's impenetrable armor. Their legs
crashed like so many cymbals as they struck against each other. They fought over some
particularly attractive bit of carrion.
Burl had watched with wide eyes until a gaping hole appeared in the armor of the
smaller one. It uttered a grating outcry—or seemed to. The noise was actually the tearing
of its shell between the mandibles of the victor.
The wounded creature struggled more and more feebly. When it ceased to offer
battle, the conqueror placidly began to dine before its prey had ceased to live. But this
was the custom of creatures on this planet.
Burl watched, timorous but hopeful. When the meal was finished, he darted in
quickly as the diner lumbered away. He was almost too late, even then. An ant—the
forerunner of many—already inspected the fragments with excitedly vibrating antennae.
Burl needed to move quickly and he did. Ants were stupid and short-sighted insects;
few of them were hunters. Save when offered battle, most of them were scavengers only.
They hunted the scenes of nightmare for the dead and dying only, but fought viciously if
their prey were questioned. And always there were others on the way.
Some were arriving now. Hearing the tiny clickings of their approach, Burl was hasty.
Over-hasty. He seized a loosened fragment and fled. It was merely the horn, the snout of
the dead and eaten creature. But it was loose and easily carried. He ran.
Later he inspected his find with disappointment. There was little meat clinging to it. It
was merely the horn of a Minotaur beetle, shaped like the horn of a rhinoceros. Plucking
out the shreds left by its murderer, he pricked his hand. Pettishly, he flung it aside. The
time of darkness was near, so he crept to the hiding place of his tribe to huddle with them
until light came again.
There were only twenty of them; four or five men and six or seven women. The rest
were girls or children. Burl had been wondering at the strange feelings that came over
him when he looked at one of the girls. She was younger than Burl—perhaps eighteen—
and fleeter of foot. They talked together sometimes and, once or twice, Burl shared an
especially succulent find of foodstuffs with her.
He could share nothing with her now. She stared at him in the deepening night when
he crept to the labyrinthine hiding place the tribe now used in a mushroom forest. He
considered that she looked hungry and hoped that he would have food to share. And he
was bitterly ashamed that he could offer nothing. He held himself a little apart from the
rest, because of his shame. Since he too was hungry, it was some time before he slept.
Then he dreamed.
Next morning he found the horn where he had thrown it disgustedly the day before. It
was sticking in the flabby trunk of a toadstool. He pulled it out. In his dream he had used
it.
Presently he tried to use it. Sometimes—not often—the men of the tribe used the saw-
toothed edge of a cricket-leg, or the leg of a grasshopper, to sever tough portions of an
edible mushroom. The horn had no cutting edge, but Burl had used it in his dream. He