They did not move when day brightened. They remained about the bee-tunnels, speaking in hushed tones, huddled together, searching all the horizon for enemies. Saya would not eat, but sat still, staring before her in numbed grief. Burl was dead.
Atop the low cliff a red puffball glistened in the morning light. Its tough skin was taut and bulging, resisting the pressure of the spores within. Slowly, as the morning wore on, some of the moisture that kept the skin stretchable dried. The parchment-like stuff contracted. The tautness of the spore-packed envelope grew greater. It became insupportable.
With a ripping sound, the tough skin split across and a rush of the compressed spores shot skyward.
The tribesmen saw and cried out and fled. The red stuff drifted down past the cliff-edge. It drifted toward the humans. They ran from it. Jon and Tama ran fastest. Jak and Cori and the other were not far behind. Saya trailed, in her despair.
Had Burl been there, matters would have been different. He had already such an ascendancy over the minds of the others that even in panic they would have looked to see what he did. And he would have dodged the slowly drifting death-cloud by day, as he had during the night. But his followers ran blindly.
As Saya fled after the others she heard shrieks of fright to the left and ran faster. She passed by a thick mass of distorted fungi in which there was a sudden stirring and panic lent wings to her feet. She fled blindly, panting. Ahead was a great mass of stuff--red puffballs--showing here and there among great fanlike growths, some twelve feet high, that looked like sponges.
She fled past them and swerved to hide herself from anything that might be pursuing by sight. Her foot slipped on the slimy body of a shell-less snail and she fell heavily, her head striking a stone. She lay still.
Almost as if at a signal a red puffball burst among the fanlike growths. A thick, dirty-red cloud of dust shot upward, spread and billowed and began to settle slowly toward the ground again. It moved as it settled flowing over the inequalities of die ground as a monstrous snail or leach might have done, sucking from all breathing creatures the life they had within them. It was a hundred yards away, then fifty, then thirty....