They were small compared to other insects. The flesh-flies laid their eggs by the hundreds in decaying carcasses. The others chose mushrooms to lay their eggs in. To feed the maggots that would hatch, a relatively great quantity of food was needed; therefore, the flies must remain comparatively small, or the body of a single grasshopper would furnish food for only a few maggots instead of the hundreds it must support. There must also be a limit to the size of worms if hundreds were to feast upon a single fungus.
But there was no limitation to the greediness of the adult creatures. There were bluebottles and green-bottles and all the flies of metallic lustre, gathered at a Lucullan feast of corruption. The buzzing of those swarming above the golden pool was a tremendous sound. The flying bodies flashed and glittered as they flew back and forth, seeking a place to alight and join in the orgy.
The glittering bodies clustered in already-found places were motionless as if carved from metal. Burl watched them. And then he saw motion overhead.
A slender, brilliant shape appeared, darting swiftly through the air, enlarging into a needle-like body with transparent, shining wings and two huge eyes. It circled and enlarged again, becoming a shimmering dragonfly, twenty feet and more in length. It poised itself abruptly above the pool, and then darted down, its jaws snapping viciously. They snapped again and again. Burl could not follow their slashings. And with each snap the glittering body of a fly vanished.
A second dragonfly appeared and a third. They swooped above the golden pool, snapping in mid-air, making their abrupt and angular turns, creatures of incredible ferocity and beauty. In that mass of buzzing creatures, even the most voracious appetite must soon have been sated, but the slender creatures still darted about in frenzied destruction.
And all this while the loud, contented, deep-bass humming went on as before. Their comrades were slaughtered by the hundreds not forty feet above their heads, but still the glittering rows of red-eyed flies gorged themselves upon the fluid of the pond. The dragonflies feasted until they were unable to devour even a single one more of their chosen prey. But even then they continued to sweep madly above the pool, striking down the buzzing flies though their bodies must perforce remain uneaten.