Fear that man

tomorrow.”
        Nightfall stole in, a black fog.
        There were stars in the sky, but the greatest light show of all lay at our feet. For two and one quarter miles ahead, the nuclear glass shimmered with vibrant colors as it gave off the heat of the day. Blues chased reds across its surface while ambers danced with ebonies, locked arms with streaks of green.
        I was sitting on the crater wall, dangling my legs, a hundred yards from the main camp. Crazy was back there still eating supper. His suppers lasted two hours, with no time wasted in those hundred and twenty minutes either. Lotus drifted down next to me, folded her tiny legs under her, and put her head on my shoulder. Her hair was cool and sweet-smelling. Also nice: it was black as the night and blew around my ears and chin and made me feel good.
        “Beautiful, isn’t it,” I said. There was a burst of orange rimmed with silver.
        “Very,” she said as she tried to crawl even closer. She was our consolation. She held the team together. Crazy and I could not last a month without her. Briefly, I wondered how, when she consoled Crazy, they managed, what with his being so big and clumsy and her being so tiny, so fragile. But she never came back chipped or cracked, so maybe the lummox was gentler than he seemed.
        “You scared?” I asked. She was trembling, and it was not cold.
        “You know me.”
        “We’ll win.”
        “You sound so sure.”
        “We have to. We’re the good guys.”
        I felt something wet on my neck, and I knew it was a tear. I shifted a little and cuddled her and said now-now and other things. Mainly, I just sat there being uncomfortable and damned happy all at once. Lotus almost never cries. When she does, she is worried about one of us- really worried. Then you can’t stop her until she’s dried out. You can only sit and hold her. And when she’s finished, she never mentions the fact that she was crying; you better never mention it either, if you know what’s good for you.
        So, she was crying. And I was cuddling.
        And Crazy was suddenly screaming-

----

    V
        
        A very long time ago, as I had sat at the upstairs window before my mother made me leave our house, there had come two giant red eyes out of the night mists. They had been as large as saucers, casting scarlet light ahead of them, focusing on the house. It was a jeep covered with sheets and red cellophane and painted to look like a dragon by the Knights of the Dragon to Preserve Humanity. I thought it very funny that grown people should play at such ridiculous games.
        Below me now, in the pit that had suddenly opened and gulped down Crazy, a spider, spindly legs bracing it a hundred feet down, was looking up with crimson headlamp eyes. Only there was something worse than a jeep behind these lamps. Much worse.
        “Crazy!” I shouted.
        “Here. To the left!”
        I took the lantern Lotus brought from the camp, lowered it into the steeply sloping tunnel. The spider backed off another fifty feet but no more. Probably a female. Females are more fearless than their mates. Branching off from the main fall were several side tunnels, all filled with sticky eggs and webbing.
        “It must have burrowed close to the surface,” Crazy shouted. “I just stepped on the ground. It wiggled, gave, and fell through.”
        He had rolled into one of the side tunnels, was caught up in the stickiness and eggs. The web was probably a different variety than the one the other spider had used to entrap us earlier. This one was for protecting eggs and would be even more thick and gummy. The mother spider fidgeted below, wanting to come charging up to protect her eggs, frightened only for a moment. “Lotus!” I shouted. “Climbing cleats and your knife. Hurry!”
        She lifted away, was back almost instantly. I slipped the cleat attachments onto my boots, took her knife to cut steps into the tunnel wall. “I’m coming down, Crazy.”
        “What about the bitch below?”
        “She looks scared.”
        “She’ll get over that. Stay out.”
        “Crazy, you’re crazy.” I crawled into the sloping cave, hating to turn my back on the spider but unable to negotiate the steep passage headfirst. Every moment I felt as if she were rushing up the tunnel, mouth silently open and ready to kill. Painstakingly, I moved down.
        Looking over my shoulder for brief moments, I