When Burl turned angry eyes upon them--he was beginning to do such things deliberately, now--they all regarded him humbly. Now they remembered that they had been hungry and he had gotten food for them, and they had been paralyzed by terror, and he dared to move. They definitely had a feeling of dependence upon him, for the present moment only. Later, their feeling of humbleness would diminish. In proportion as he met their needs for leadership, they would tend to try to become independent of him. His leadership would be successful in proportion as he taught them to lead themselves. But Burl perceived this only dimly. At the moment it was pleasing to have all his tribe regard him so worshipfully, even if not in quite the same fashion as Saya. He was suddenly aware that now--at any rate while they were so frightened--they would obey him. So he invented an order for them to obey.
"I carry sharp things," he said sternly. "Some of you have gotten sharp things. Now everybody must carry sharp things, to fight with."
Humbly, they scattered to obey. Saya would have gone with them, but Burl held her back. He did not quite know why. It could have been that the absolute equality of the sexes in cravenness was due to end, and for his own vanity Burl would undertake the defense of Saya. He did not analyze so far. He did not want her to leave him, so he prevented it.
The tribesfolk scattered. Dor went with his wife, to help her arm herself. Jak uneasily followed his. Jon went timorously where the picked-over remnant of the cricket's carcass might still yield an instrument of defense. Cori laid her youngest child at Burl's feet while she went fearfully to find some toothed instrument meeting Burl's specification of sharpness.
There was a stifled scream. A ten-year-old boy--he was Dik's younger brother--stood paralyzed. He stared in an agony of horror at something that had stepped from behind a misshapen fungoid object fifty yards from Burl, but less than ten yards from him.
It was a pallidly greenish creature with a small head and enormous eyes. It stood upright, like a man,--and it was a few inches taller than a man. Its abdomen swelled gracefully into a leaflike form. The boy faced it, paralyzed by horror, and it stood stock-still. Its great, hideously spined arms were spread out in a pose of hypocritical benediction.