A hundred and fifty million years ago, there occurred below this flat, unchanging surface an explosion that tore an immense crater, and hurled into space enough material to constitute all the planets of the earth’s solar system. This explosion was caused by the gravitational pull of a stellar fragment ejected from an exploding galaxy. Some of the material caught in the “tail” of this comet-like fragment was dragged on through space for many thousands of years. During this time, the life trapped in the tail — in the form of microscopic cells — remained inert, traumatised by the shock of its ejection and frozen by the icy cold of space. When it again came to consciousness, it found itself trapped in the tail of another comet — not this time a star fragment, but a ball of gas with a diameter of fifty thousand miles — and was on its way to our own solar system.
When the explosion had first hurled these living cells into space, our earth had been dominated by the great dinosaurs of the Jurassic era. When the tail of the comet Opik brushed the earth, and deposited some of these spores in the earth’s atmosphere, most of the human race had already been evacuated from the planet in giant space transports, and was beginning its long journey to the Centauri star system, and the planet labelled New Earth.
Most of the spores fell into the ocean and perished; others landed in deserts or polar regions, and were forced to retire into defensive hibernation. Only five succeeded in germinating: two in central Africa, one in southern China, one on an island off the coast of Borneo, and one in the Great Delta.
Even for these survivors, life was appallingly difficult. They had become accustomed to developing slowly, over thousands of years, but such development was dependent on a powerful gravitational field. In the earth’s low gravity, all their molecular processes were accelerated, so they expanded like balloons until they were in danger of exploding. In similar circumstances, any earth organism would have perished. But the giant plants had achieved a degree of control over their bodies that men would have regarded as miraculous; they adapted to earth conditions — although growing ten times larger than on their own planet — fed on its energies and its atmosphere, and achieved within a few years a development that would have taken centuries on AL3.
And so these five globular plants found themselves trapped on a tiny green planet, ninety-three million miles away from an unremarkable star called the sun. The struggle to survive had developed in them a far higher level of consciousness than in those left behind on their own planet. They were aware that, compared to other living forms on earth, they were at an immense disadvantage. On earth, only plant life is unable to move about freely; in our low gravitational field, locomotion comes easily. When these five alien plants began to develop, their flesh was tender and delicious, and many species of bird and insect would have found it palatable. There was only one way for the plants to defend themselves: by using their telepathic powers to establish direct control over the minds of these predators. And so the tiny spore that landed on the soft mud of the Delta developed into the empress of the Delta, the absolute controller of all its life forms.
So far, Niall had been able to follow the story without difficulty; it had been presented in a series of images that were as simple as a child’s picture book. But now he wanted to know why the giant plants had found it necessary to broadcast waves of pure vitality to other life forms — the vitality that had enabled the spiders to become masters of the earth — and he found this altogether more difficult to grasp. For the answer seemed to be that these aliens found the earth boring because of its lack of variety. In view of the monotony of their own planet, this seemed absurd. Then he began to understand. On their own planet, each plant was confined to a single place; yet their minds could travel anywhere, merely by identifying with the mind of another member of the species. Evolution itself was a tremendous community effort, in which every individual played its part. This is why their evolution had come to a standstill on earth. There were simply not enough of them to build up the necessary thought-pressure.
Even without being told, Niall could see that there was only one solution. If they were to evolve, the plants needed the companionship of other superbeings like themselves. If such beings did not exist, then they would have to be created. Animals, birds, even trees and plants, would somehow have to be imbued with more life.
It seemed an impossible task. But the plants possessed endless patience. Since their telepathic powers enabled them to communicate with the minds of other living creatures, it was merely a question of raising their powers by transmitting pure vitality — the life force of the earth itself. The “empress plant” and its fellows became, in effect, immense broadcasting stations.
All creatures that could receive these vibrations began to evolve at an accelerated pace. Unfortunately, these did not include man, whose intelligence had already developed too far to benefit from this crude vitality. But many other creatures were filled with a sense of power and reckless energy — in many cases so great that they were not afraid of death itself. (Niall remembered how the frog-like creatures had continued to attack even when they saw their fellows destroyed by the Reapers.) Many kinds of insect developed into giants — insects seemed particularly receptive to these waves of vitality. Even the simple tree fungus, a relative of the toadstool, developed into the mobile squid fungus. Many ordinary plants became carnivorous, like the viper weed and the strangler tree. The garden pest limax, the common slug, developed into the ground squid, which conceals itself in the earth as the octopus conceals itself on the bed of the ocean.
But the most spectacular success story had been that of the spiders. These had always been an adaptable species, ranging from the tiny crab spider to the enormous bird-eating spider of the tropical jungles. Spiders were highly receptive to the vibrations of the empress plant; their cellular structure — identical to that of the squid fungus — was a particularly good conductor of the life force. They possessed many of the same qualities as the plants — patience, caution, determination; and as they grew in size they also developed formidable intelligence and will-power.
During these early days, the greatest enemy of the spiders was man himself. When the radioactive tail of the comet Opik brushed the earth, ninety percent of the remaining human beings had been destroyed. Many of those who were left suffered from radiation sickness and from unfavourable mutations — one group in central Asia even developed claws on their hands and feet. Traumatised by the catastrophe, man reverted to barbarism. He moved from the cities back to the countryside, and as his atomic blasters and Reapers and laser pistols wore out, he discarded them and returned to the spear and the bow and arrow. Yet even so, he remained a formidable enemy. One great leader, Ivar the Strong, conquered most of his human neighbours, and used slave labour to build the walled city of Korsh, which became as powerful as ancient Thebes or Babylon; he drove all the spiders out of the land of the two rivers, and became the ruler of a thriving farming community. His grandson, Skapta the Cunning, ambushed the spider general in the ravine called Mursat and killed eight thousand spiders with an avalanche: after this, he attacked their capital city on the shores of the great river, and burned it to the ground. But Skapta was cruel as well as cunning, and murdered so many of his own subjects that he was finally assassinated by his own minister Groddig of Kos, whose son Trifig became the ruler. After Trifig came the greatest of all the warrior kings, Vaken the Wise, the son of a poor peasant who lived on the edge of the desert. A man of tremendous physical strength, he was seen by the king’s daughter Masya when she was out hunting; she fell in love with him and married him. In the reign of Vaken, which lasted for sixty-eight years, man almost conquered the spiders; they were driven back beyond the borders of Vakenland, and were even hunted by men for their poison, which could preserve animals in a state of paralysis through the long winters, when food was scarce.
The turning point came after the death of Vaken, in the reign of the Spider Lord Cheb. The legend tells how Cheb learned the secrets of the human soul from the renegade Hallat, who betrayed his own kind for the love of Princess Turool. But the truth was less dramatic. The spiders had learned from their defeats under Vaken the Wise that their real enemy was not human boldness and aggressiveness, but human intelligence. Among the advisers of the Death Lord was an ancient counsellor named Qisib, also known among his own kind as “the wise”. (It came as a surprise to Niall to learn that the spiders also had their thinkers and “wise men.”) Qisib was fascinated by the secrets of human behaviour, and began to devote his days to studying a group of human prisoners. His great discovery came about by accident, when he took into his household the newborn son of a woman who had died in childbirth. The baby — whose name was Jurak — was tended by one of Qisib’s daughters, who treated him as a pet. To Qisib’s astonishment, the child became deeply attached to this daughter and to Qisib himself, and seemed to regard himself as a spider rather than a human being. It was through Jurak that Qisib began to understand the human heart and the human soul, and to recognise how easily men could be dominated through their affections and their craving for security.