He gave her no time to reply. Tightening his grip on her hand he pulled her forward, his voice urgent, rising a little as the distance beneath them dwindled and they could see the shining expanse of metal at the base of the stairway.
"I didn't tell you that to frighten you. But we've got to build up our mental defenses fast. You've got to try not to think of it as a bloodhound. Our instinctive fear of insects isn't as great as our fear of savage, wolflike animals. Bloodhounds aren't wolflike, but to a pursued man there are no beasts more sinister. We must keep thinking of it as an insect."
"Are you sure that will help, David? An insect so large—"
"On Earth all insects are small. It's natural for us to think of them as small. Remember, man's fear of insects is real enough. But it can be overcome, thrown off. All small, crawling things make us recoil in revulsion. But the bloodhound image strikes a deadlier chord of fear. We've got to shut our minds to it."
"Then why didn't you keep silent about it? If you hadn't told me, if I hadn't known at all—"
"You had to know. You can't fight the Unknown, can't use the right mental weapons unless you know exactly what it is you've got to overcome. Full knowledge first, and then a choice of weapons. We're choosing a weapon that will clamp a mental block on that knowledge where it has sharp points of deadliness. We'll keep it limited, but we won't forget the danger. The weapon we're choosing is—a controlled self-hypnosis."
Janice flushed and flashed a quick glance at him. She was still trembling, breathless with hurrying, but the strain in her eyes had diminished a little. "Darling, I—I'm sorry. I pleaded with you to tell me. I guess I was being stupidly unthinking and irrational."
"I only told you because I thought it would cut down the danger. You've got to do your best to substitute another, less destructive fear. You're in a garden and a spider is moving slowly toward you across a gleaming web. But even if it's a black widow spider you don't succumb to panic. You know that you have time to leap up and run swiftly out of the garden."
"But I could also reach out and crush the spider between my thumb and forefinger. Or stamp on it. Shake it from the web, and mash it into a pulp. But we're not in a garden on Earth, David. We're trapped on an alien world, with not even a garden wall to protect us. How can we hope to outdistance an insect larger than we are? You said yourself that insects can move with lightning speed."