There were
even some plants with thorns and spines upon them. But they encountered
no danger.
By and large, wild animals everywhere are ferocious only when desperate.
No natural setting can permanently be so deadly that human being will be
attacked immediately they appear. An area in which peril is continuous
is one in which there is so much killing that there is no food-supply
left to maintain its predators. On the whole, there is simply a limit to
how dangerous any place can be. Dangerous beasts have to be relatively
rare, or they will not have enough to eat, when they will thin out until
they are relatively rare and do have enough to eat.
So the three explorers moved safely, though their boldness was that of
ignorance, below gigantic trees nearly as tall as the space-ship
standing on end. They saw a small furry biped, some twelve inches tall,
which waddled insanely in the exact line of their progress and with no
apparent hope of outdistancing them. They saw a gauzy creature with
incredibly spindly legs. It flew from one tree-trunk to another,
clinging to rough bark on each in turn. Once they came upon a small
animal which looked at them with enormous, panic-stricken blue eyes and
then fled with a sinuous gait on legs so short that they seemed mere
flippers.
Pages:
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179