The First Jumper (first draft version)

The First Jumper 08: Contact

It was much larger than the mouse, but much smaller than the mastodons.  This creature was also different in two, no, three other ways.

For one, all the creatures she had seen on this world either walked on four legs, as she did, or six.  This creature, however, stood balanced precariously on two legs, and it was possibly the ugliest thing she had ever seen.

For another, this creature was neither attacking her nor running away.  It was merely watching her, and perhaps had been doing so for some time.

The third difference was that this thing appeared to be holding a weapon of some kind--a stick with a sharp rock attached to the end of it, from what she could see.  That meant it was possible, despite the incredible ugliness of it, that this thing could be somewhat intelligent.

The stick was pointed in her direction, but it looked like a solid thing, not something that could fire a beam  or project a field, like her suppressor.  Being careful not to move much, Gerleesh looked down to see that she would have to take a full step to reach the suppressor.  Best not to frighten the new animal.

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Little Bear was frozen in place, his breath coming in gasps.  This was against all reason.  The gods had thrown something down, and he had seen it flame silently across the sky, chased by something that roared invisibly.

Now, here it was, down on the ground, just as if it was one of those ridiculous birds with the huge tails.  Little Bear came quite close to it, in the jungle.  It smelled of hot rocks from a fire, and he could feel heat radiating from it.

Stranger still, some kind of monster had come forth from it.  Huge and hideous, it seemed to tower over Little Bear.  Then he blinked at it, and realized that it was about the same size as he, but with very long legs, than went up twice as high as Little Bear's head, before coming back down to the ground.

Something startled it, and it rose to it's full height, more than three times Little Bear's height.  After looking up the valley for a moment, it returned its body to the ground.  It was looking at something on the ground in front of it.

Its head was long and ungainly, reminding Little Bear of the creature they had seen in another valley, that ripped the mud towers apart that held insects.  When his people had been starving, they had followed one of those creatures.  When it had ripped open a mud tower, the men had chased it off, and the women had been able to gather insects from the tower.  They weren't appetizing, but they were food.

Little Bear had asked his father if the anteater was good food, too, but his father said no.  He said it tasted bad, and it was surprisingly hard to kill.

This strange creature with legs like a giant spider and a head like an anteater had a body somewhat like Little Bear's own.  It was roughly an hourglass shape, tapering in from four very square shoulders from which the four legs arose, to a fairly narrow waist, below which arms depended from a second set of shoulders above a spherical body.

It was the most hideous thing Little Bear had ever seen, but as it moved, there was something almost magical and beautiful about it, as there had been with the caterpillar on a leaf.

He had sometimes watched the motions of a spider, making its web or spinning threads about a victim, and this monster's movements had the same type of deadly grace.  He was terrified, but his curiosity drew him in, even in his fear.

Little Bear was no more than ten feet away from its foot, when it picked up the mouse.  Instead of hands, it had flaps shaped like sassafras leaves, at the ends of jointed arms not terribly unlike his own.  The mouse sat on one of the hand-flaps, and the creature moved it close to the gash under its snout.