Earthly insects and flowers, ants and fungi, fiddler-crabs and sea anemones. In fact, Lumen seems to me to be as dedicated a celebrant of complex inter-relationships between creatures of many different kinds as his adversary Aristocles. All the life on an individual world, Aristocles claims, is not merely a single family in its own right, but an inseparable part of a much vaster family. God’s image, to him, is a kind of unity, represented by all life collectively rather than any particular form. Lumen seems to think along similar lines, although I’m not sure where he and his fellow ethereals fit into the pattern, from the viewpoint of the True Civilization or their own.”
“But we are not included in this unity of crabs, ticks and clams,” Raleigh said, peeved by the omission in spite of this being a club of which he had no wish to be a member. “Simply because of our horrid habit of wearing our hard structures on the inside rather than the outside, we’re not deemed fit company for creatures who wear their hard bits on the outside.” He looked up as he finished speaking, because Field had come into the unpartitioned room, carrying a pile of neatly-folded clothes. Although the clergyman was making every effort to avert his eyes from the bodies of his fellow men, his ears seemed to be fully alert.
“I am sorry,” the Puritan said. “The monsters would only bring your garments to the threshold—because Raleigh is right, I think, though he speaks half in jest. They can bear to look at us while we are clad, because they can consider our clothing a substitute for what you call an exoskeleton, but not while we are naked. They do not consider us part of their....untrue civilization. They are intent on our extermination, Thomas, for we do not fit into their demonic way of thinking. You must see that.”
Thomas climbed out of the bath, not caring that Field was almost as embarrassed by his naked presence as any exoskeletal bigot might have been. He took up a towel that was resting on an artificial stalagmite. Raleigh lingered, having finally committed himself more fully to the use of the alien soap.
“If that really is their intention, John,” Thomas said, calmly, “We cannot prevent them from liberating Earth on behalf of its frustrated lower orders. If we are being taken to the center of the sidereal system to stand trial on behalf of our species and its odd design, we had best make sure that we can mount a convincing defense.” Then he looked up again, abruptly, as he saw the movement in the dark covert for a second time.
“What’s that?” he asked Lumen.
“I don’t know,” the guest replied. “I only have your eyes with which to see.”
There was another movement—this time, there was no doubt. Alas, Thomas had no time to call out a warning to Raleigh, who was blinking suds from his momentarily-blinded eyes. Something black dropped on to Raleigh from above—or, more accurately, leapt upon him from above, faster than objects normally fell within the body of the moon.
It’s a spider! Thomas thought, as the thing landed. For an instant, he felt free to be grateful that it was smaller by far than the giant ants and beetles thronging the corridors, being no bigger than the head on to which it had jumped—but then Raleigh screamed, and Thomas realized that his friend was in deadly danger.
Thomas had no weapon, and there was none in Raleigh’s clothes. Whether Field had one or not was irrelevant, as his first impulse had been to throw himself backwards, away from the danger. Thomas, by contrast, leapt back into the pool and grabbed the thing that had attacked Raleigh with both hands.
It was extremely hairy, and it immediately resisted capture with all eight of its limbs and its jaws as well. Had Thomas’ grip been weak it would surely have twisted in his hands and sunk its fangs into his flesh, but he held it very firmly indeed as he turned sideways and smashed it against the wall with all his might, not caring that the uneven surface bruised and gashed his own knuckles as he hammered the monster against it three times more.
When he dropped the creature, it was dead—but so, it seemed, was Raleigh, who had fallen backwards into the water, his face streaming with blood and his temple already turning blue-black where his attacker had flooded his flesh with poison.
Thomas had no idea what to do—but there were others present now who had. Aristocles and two others of his own kind had come bursting into the room; while Aristocles seized Thomas and drew him to one side, the others pulled Raleigh out of the water, set him on his back, and descended upon him as if they intended to scour the flesh from his bones.
They did not. Exactly what they did instead was obscured from Thomas’ view, but when they withdrew again Raleigh’s face was no longer blood-stained, save for a few clotted drops clinging to his neat beard, and the blue-black stain had likewise been obliterated. His wound was still visible, but it was covered by a glossy transparent gel that was already hardening.
Aristocles was still holding hard to Thomas, and had inspected his hands very carefully while Thomas had been in no condition to take notice. The grazes there had similarly been covered over; there was no pain.
Thomas shuddered. Aristocles released him immediately, as if the monster were fearful that it was his touch that had caused the response—but it was not. It was the narrowness with which Raleigh had escaped death that had affrighted Thomas.
Aristocles touched Thomas’ face, very lightly.
“An arachnid,” Lumen translated, dutifully contriving to manufacture an apologetic tone. “An accident, perhaps....”
Obviously, it was possible for lepidopteran philosophers to say more than they intended, and more than would usually be reckoned wise. Aristocles stopped immediately, but too late.
“Perhaps!” Thomas echoed, speaking aloud although his meaning reached the moth-like creature via his fingertips. “You mean that someone might be trying to murder us?”
CHAPTER SIX
Aristocles was very reluctant to discuss murder, and seemed equally reticent on the subject of arachnids. Lumen seemed to side with his erstwhile adversary in the former instance, telling Thomas that he had taken the wrong inference from the word he had translated as “perhaps”. It was, however, difficult for Thomas to set aside entirely the possibility that Field was right, and there might be some Selenite members of the True Civilization that were anxious not to give the human race the opportunity defend itself before the Great Fleshcores against the opinion that it was fit only for extermination. It was also tempting to hazard a guess that his own kind was not the only family of creatures abominated by fervent symbiotists.
Thomas was given no opportunity to pursue the question of arachnids while he and his crew ate dinner, for he was bombarded with urgent questions from every side, but he took the liberty of pressing Lumen on the issue when his comrades eventually fell uneasily silent as they gathered at the foot of the mighty cannon-cum-telescope that would transmit them to the heart of the sidereal system.
“I know little enough about them myself, never having shared the consciousness of one,” Lumen told him, “but I know what the Selenites think of them. I suspect that Aristocles and others as fervently dedicated as he is to the cause of symbiosis might soften the opinion considerably, but they’d agree with it in broad terms. He’d doubtless contend that every kind of life has its part to play in the rich tapestry of interspecific relationships, and that predators and parasites are no less essential to the welfare of the Whole than healers and constructive laborers—but even so, he’d have to concede that predators and parasites are sometimes pestiferous, and that their branches of the real Tree of Life rarely produce true intelligence. In the occasional instances when arachnids do show traces of true intelligence—arachnids rather different from the one that attacked Walter, of course—it tends to take a perverted form.”
Thomas was unable to pursue the matter further because Lumen’s impression of Aristocles was interrupted by the monster himself, who was already ushering the party of five humans to stand within the focal point of the etheric communicator, in order to transmit them to their destination.
As he was hastened towards his departure for the distant stars, though, Thomas’ mind was working furiously. Humans, he knew, were often predators as well as bony—and they were certainly intelligent. Might Aristocles think, in consequence, that human