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The spider rushed at hi wildly on its stalk like legs Its body was a giant, glossy egg that treed across the windlessscratches
Paralysis locked the litter of the spider eyes He watched it scrah on its h as the man’s shoulders Behind him, suddenly, the steel encased flame flared into life with a thunder that shook the air It jarred the asp, he spun around and ran, the da sandals
He fled through lakes of light and into darkness again, his face a ht speared across his panic-driven path, cold shadows enveloped it Behind, the giant spider scoured sand in its pursuit
Suddenly the man slipped A cry tore back his lips He skidded to a knee, then pitched forward onto outstretched pal with the vibration of the roaring fla sand, and started running again
Fleeing, he glanced back across his shoulder and saw that the spider was gaining on hi whose yolk sith killing poisons He raced on, breathless, terror in his veins
Suddenly the cliff edge was before hiray, perpendicular face He raced along the edge, not looking down into the vast canyon below The giant spider scuttled after hi on the stone It was closer still The iant cans that loo, in between the silent bulks of all the clustered cans, past green and red and yellow sides all caked with livid smears The spider had to clih between them It slithered up the side of one, then sped across their aps between the hops
As thesound above Recoiling and jerking back his head, he saw the spider just about to leap on hi at the top
With a terrified gasp, the iant cans, half running, half stu route Behind hi around in a twitching seained seconds for the ain, he raced around the great stone pillar and through another stack of tanlike structures The spider leaped down on the sand and scurried in pursuit
The great orange mass looe of the cliff There was no tis, he flung hiers at the roughened ledge
Wincing, he drew hie surface just as the spider reached the cliff’s edge Jue, not looking back If the spider juap, it was over
The spider did not ju, stood there looking at the spider Was he safe now that he was out of the spider’s territory?
His pale cheek twitched as he saw thread twined cable pour like shi around, he began running again, knowing that, as soon as the cable was long enough, air currents would lift it, it would cling to the orange ledge, and the black spider would clamber up it He tried to run faster, but he couldn’t His legs ached, breath was a hot burning in his throat, a stitch drove dagger points into his side He ran and skidded down the orange slope, jue The ht, let hi drop to the next level The o Just before he fell, he saw the great spider scrabbling down the orange slope at him
He landed on his feet and toppled forward on the hard wood Pain drove needles up his right ankle He struggled to his feet; he couldn’t stop Overhead, he heard the spider’s scratching Running to the edge, he hesitated, then juain The arrabbed for it
He fell with a fluttering of anus and legs The canyon floor rushed up at him He had to miss the flower patched softness
And yet he didn’t Ale of it, he landed feet first and bounced over backward in a neck-snapping so in short, strangled bursts There was a sainst his cheek
Alertness returned then and, with a spas of hostlike cable being spun into the air In a fewup with a groan, he stood awas a strain, but there were no broken bones He started off
Hobbling quickly across the flower splotched softness, the e As he did so, he saw the spider swinging down, a terrible, wriggling pendulu across the wide plain of it, his sandals flopping on the leveled hardness To his right loomed the vast broer in which the fla with its roar
He glanced behind The spider was dropping to the flower-covered softness now, then rushing for the edge The h as the tower itself He ran by what looked like a giant, coiled serpent, red and still and open-jawed at either end The spider hit the canyon floor and ran at the s now, and, falling forward on his chest, he wriggled into a narrow space between two of them It was so narrow he could hardlyof mouldy wood He crawled and twisted in as far as he could, then stopped and looked back The black, shiny-cased spider was trying to follow hi Then he saw that it was stuck and had to pull back It could not follow
Closing his eyes, thethe chill of it through his clothes, panting through his openedhow many more times he would have to flee the spider The flame in the steel toent out then, and there was silence except for the spider’s scratching at the rock floor as it s as it claet at hione, the man backed hie between the logs Out on the floor again, he stood ary haste and looked in all directions to see where the spider was
High up on the sheer wall he saw it clireat egg of a body up the perpendicular face A shaking breath trickled from thehis gaze, he started toward his sleeping place
He limped slowly past the silent steel tohich was an oil burner; past the huge red serpent, which was a nozzle less garden hose clumsily coiled on the floor, past the wide cushion whose case was covered with flower designs; past the ie structure, which was a stack of tooden lawn chairs; past the great croquetin their racks One of the wickets froroove on the top lawn chair It hat the rabbed for and missed And the tank like cans were used paint cans, and the spider was a blackHe lived in a cellar
Noalked past the towering clothes tree toward his sleeping place, which was underneath a water heater Just before he reached it, he twitched sharply as, in its concrete cave, the water pu , which sounded like the breathing of a dying dragon
Then he cla, enamel faced heater rested and crawled under its protective war tiular sponge around which a torn handkerchief rapped His chest rose and fell with shallow movements, his hands lay li, he stared up at the rust-caked bottom of the heater The last week
Three words and a concept A concept that had begun in a flash of incomprehensive shock and become the intensely intimate moment-by-moment horror it noas The last week No, not even that now, because Monday was already half over His eyes strayed briefly to the row of charcoal strokes on the wood scrap that was his calendar Monday, March the tenth
In six days he would be gone
Across the vast reaches of the cellar, the oil-burner flaain, and he felt the bed vibrate under him That meant the temperature had fallen in the house above and that the therain through the floor grilles
He thought of thehter Were they still that to him? Or had the element of size removed him from their sphere? Could he still be considered a part of their world when he was the size of a bug to them, when even Beth could crush hione
He’d thought about it a thousand ti to visualize it He’d never been able to Invariably, his : the injections would start to work now, the process would end by itself, so would happen It was impossible that he could ever be so small that
Yet he was; so sone
When it came on him, this cruel despair, he would lie for hours on hiswhether he lived or died The despair had never really gone How could it? For no , it was obviously i or a leveling off The process had gone on and on, ceaseless He twisted on the bed in restless agony Why did he run fro would be out of his hands then It would be a hideous death, but it would be quick; despair would be ended And yet he kept fleeing fro Why?
When he told her, the first thing she did was laugh
It was not a long laugh Almost instantly it had been choked off and she stood , because his face was a taut blankness
"Shrinking?" The as spoken in a tree to say