There was seeming silence, save for the steady drip-drip of the rain. And Burl came out of his half-mad fear: he suddenly realized that he had slain a victim even more magnificent than a spider, because this creature was meat.
He found himself astonishedly running toward the spot where the beetle had last fallen.
But he heard it struggle aloft once more. It was wounded to death. Burl felt certain of it this time. It floundered in mid-air and crashed again.
He was within yards of it before he checked himself. Now he was weaponless, and the gigantic insect flung itself about madly on the ground, striking out with colossal wings and limbs, fighting it knew not what. It struggled to fly, crashed, and fought its way off the ground—ever more weakly—then smashed again into mushrooms. There it floundered horribly in the darkness.
Burl drew near and waited. It was still, but pain again drove it to a senseless spasm of activity.
Then it struck against something. There was a ripping noise and instantly the close, peppery, burning smell of the red dust was in the air. The beetle had floundered into one of the close-packed red puffballs, tightly filled with the deadly red spores. The red dust would not normally have been released at night. With the nightly rain, it would not travel so far or spread so widely.
Burl fled, panting.
Behind him he heard his victim rise one last time, spurred to impossible, final struggle by the anguish caused by the breathed-in red dust. It rose clumsily into the darkness in its death-throes and crashed to the ground again for the last time.
In time to come, Burl and his followers might learn to use the red-dust puffballs as weapons—but not how to spread them beyond their normal range. But now, Burl was frightened. He moved hastily sidewise. The dust would travel down-wind. He got out of its possible path.
There could be no exultation where the red dust was. Burl suddenly realized what had happened to him. He had been carried aloft an unknown though not-great distance, in an unknown direction. He was separated from his tribe, with no faintest idea how to find them in the darkness. And it was night.