Argosy, Vol. 122, No. 1 — page 64: what you’re looking at

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54 over his shoulders, gleaming with all the colors of the rainbow. A gorgeous mass of soft, blue moth fur was about his mid- dle, and he had bound upon his forehead two yard-long, golden fragments of the moth’s magnificent antenne. He strode on, slowly, clad as no man had been clad in all the ages. After a little he secured a spear and took up his journey to Saya, looking like a prince of Ind upon a bridal journey—though no mere prince ever wore such raiment in days of greatest glory. CHAPTER V. THE CONQUEROR. FoR many long miles Burl threaded his way through a single forest of thin- stalked toadstools. They towered three man-heights high, and all about their bases were streaks and splashes of the rusts and molds that preyed upon them. Twice Burl came to open glades wherein open, bub- bling pools of green slime festered in cor- ruption, and once he hid himself fearfully as a monster scarabeus beetle lumbered within three yards of him, moving heavily onward with a clanking of limbs as of some mighty machine. Burl saw the mighty armor and the inward-curving jaws of the creature, and envied him his weapons. The time was not yet come, however, when Burl would smile at the great insect and hunt him for the juicy flesh contained in those armored limbs. Burl was still a savage, still ignorant, still timid. His principal advance had been that whereas he had fled without reasoning, he now paused to see if he need flee. In his hands he bore a long, sharp-pointed, chitinous spear. It had been the weapon of a huge, unnamed flying insect scorched to death in the burning of the purple hills, which had floundered out of the flames to die. Burl had worked for an hour be- fore being able to detach the weapon he coveted. It was as long and longer than Burl himself. He was a strange sight, moving slowly and cautiously through the shadowed lanes THE ARGOSY. of the mushroom forest. A cloak of deli- cate velvet in which all the colors of the rainbow played in iridescent beauty hung from his shoulders. A mass of soft and beautiful moth fur was about his middle, and in the strip of sinew about his waist the fiercely toothed limb of a fighting beetle was thrust carelessly. He had bound to his forehead twin stalks of a great moth’s feathery golden antennz. Against the play of color that came from his borrowed plumage his pink skin showed in odd contrast. He looked like some proud knight walking slowly through the gardens of a goblin’s castle. But he was still a fearful creature, no more than the mon- strous creatures about him save in the pos- session of latent intelligence. He was weak —and therein lay his greatest promise. A hundred thousand years before him his an- cestors had been forced by lack of claws and fangs to develop brains. Burl was sunk as low as they had been, but he had to combat more horrifying ene- mies, more inexorable threatenings, and many times more crafty assailants. His ancestors had invented knives and spears and flying missiles. The creatures about Burl had knives and spears a thousand times more deadly than the weapons that had made his ancestors masters of the woods and forests. Burl was in comparison vastly more weak than his forebears had been, and it was that weakness that in times to come would lead him and those who followed him to heights his ancestors had never known. But now— He heard a discordant, deep bass bellow, coming from a spot not twenty yards away. In a flash of panic he darted behind a clump of the mushrooms and hid himself, panting in sheer terror. He waited for an instant in frozen fear, motionless and tense. His wide, blue eyes were glassy. The bellow came again, but this time with a querulous note. Burl heard a crash- ing and plunging as of 'some creature caught in a snare. A mushroom fell with a brittle snapping, and the spongy thud as it fell to the ground was followed by a tremen- dous commotion. Something was fighting desperately against something else, but cComiclbooks.com