Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

Jorn could see, as any of the rest of them, but primarily at herself, for

her failure to have asked any of the natives, over the more than a month

when the state of communications between them could have

126 lames Blish

made it possible, if they could shed any light upon this random sniping.

“Certainly,” the leader said, obviously as content as usual to find that he

could be of service-quite as content, in fact, as he seemed to be over the

four deaths in his party which Ailiss had been unable to prevent -but

filled with wonderment at the simplicity of the question. ‘Those are the

insects.”

No one believed it at first. Yet it speedily became evident that there was

something decidedly peculiar about the insects, all the same. Attempts to

capture some of them were defeated in a variety of ways: first by cut nets

and punctured airscoops; then by several skin creases, and eventually a

serious and all too familiar band wound. They would not be caught, and

after a while it began to appear that they could not be caught.

After nearly two weeks, a small cloud of gnat-like motes was captured by

the elaborate expedient of gassing it. They came drifting down through the

poisonous cloud in strangely slow, erratic spirals, as though they weighed

nothing-and they tinkled bouncing into the collection bottles like

bird-shot.

The returns from the field laboratory showed that the natives had been

telling the truth, though they were even more incredible. Under the

microscope the tiny creatures proved to resemble beetles more closely than