The stick Dor had used to poke the knob lay at his feet. He picked it up awkwardly with his left hand, keeping his sword ready with his right. 'You were the one who betrayed trust!' he cried, poking at the spider.
It was a tactical mistake. Jumper threw a line around the end of the pole and jerked it to him. Dor was almost hauled into the depression before he let go. He staggered back.
The spider seized his opening. He jumped across the depression, landing beside Dor. He threw another loop, catching Dor's sword arm, drawing him off balance. But Dor reacted with the fighting reflexes of his powerful body. He jerked the arm back. Such was the strength and weight of his body that it was the gross arachnid who was now hauled off balance. No single leg of the spider's could match Dor's arm; the muscle tissue simply wasn't there. Jumper came forward, not falling because it was just about impossible for a thing with eight legs to fall, but lurching toward Dor. Dor reversed his motion and slashed viciously with his sword.
The spider shot straight up, barely avoiding the cut. There was no overhanging branch here, so what went up had to come down. Dor stood below with his point straight up, waiting for the spider to skewer himself on it.
But he had reckoned without the creature's monstrous agility. Jumper landed on the sword-feet first, all eight of them closing about the tip of the blade, supporting him. His weight carried blade and arm down, and Dor collapsed under it. Immediately the spider's sickening strands of web were all about him, entangling him.
Dor closed his left fist and rammed it into the spider's soft abdomen. The flesh gave way disgustingly, and strands of silk stretched and snapped. Then Dor put both hands on the sword and hauled it up, half-carrying the spider with it. He kicked with one foot to dislodge his antagonist-but this was another error. The spider looped that leg, drew his line in tight, and Dor had two hands and the leg tied together. Those spindly spider legs were savagely swift!
Dor fell on his back, fighting to free his limbs. But now the spider was all over him, throwing strand after strand around him, drawing them in tight. Dor heaved mightily, snapping more strands, but his strength was giving out. Soon he was hopelessly bound.
The monster brought his head close to Dor's head. The horrible hairy green chelicerae parted, ready to crush Dor's helpless face into a pulp. The sharp fangs were extended. The two largest green front eyes glared.
Dor screamed and kicked his bound feet and flung his head about as uselessly as Millie ever had. How had he come to this? Yet even in this moment of annihilation he retained some human perspective. 'Why did you ever pretend to be my friend?' he demanded.
Jumper folded his jaws closed. 'That is an excellent question,' he chittered. Then he backed off, adjusted his lines, and dragged Dor over the ground toward a large tree. The antenna at the tree's top rotated to cover him, but could do nothing. The spider jumped to a stout branch, fastened a line, then hauled Dor laboriously into the air to dangle helplessly. Then he descended his own dragline to land beside Dor.
'The answer is, I did not pretend to be your friend,' Jumper chittered. 'I made a truce with you and treated you fairly, believing that you would honor that truce in the same fashion I did. Then, suddenly, without warning, you attacked me with your sword, and I had to defend myself. You were the one who pretended.'
'I did not!' Dor cried, struggling vainly against his bonds. 'You sneaked up on me!'
'I suppose it could be interpreted that way. But you attacked me, not I you.'
'You jumped right at me, snagging my sword. That was an attack!'
'That was after you took your blade to me, and prodded me with the stick. Then I recognized your hostile nature, and took appropriate action.' But the spider paused, considering. 'I felt no hostility to you until that moment. Why should a stick provoke me when a sword did not?'
'Don't you understand your own alien nature?' Dor demanded.
'Something incomplete here. When did you become antagonistic toward me?'
'When you tried to sneak up on me and kill me, of course!'
'And when did that happen?'
'What fool game are you trying to play?' Dor demanded. 'You know I was looking at the wooden knob.'
'The wooden knob,' the spider repeated thoughtfully. 'My own realization of antipathy came when I landed on that knob. Can that be coincidence?'
'Who cares!' Dor cried. 'You sneaked up on me first!'
'Consider: you poked that knob; you touched it, indirectly, and became hostile to me. Then I touched it and became hostile to you. That knob must have something to do with it.'
The logic began to penetrate Dor's emotion. He had poked the knob, just before?what happened. He knew the spider was his enemy, yet-
'Magic can do many things,' Jumper continued. 'Can it change friendship to enmity?'
'It can make strangers love each other,' Dor said unwillingly. 'I suppose it could do the opposite.'
'The antenna-plants were tracking our approach. Had we been hostile to this forest, how would it have defended itself?'
'It would have thrown some spell, of course, since the trees aren't active the way tanglers are. Make us fall asleep, or get itchy, or something.'
'Or get angry with each other?'
'Yes, that too. Anything is possible-' Dor paused. 'Our fight-a spell?'
'The antennae observed us. Had we passed through without stopping, perhaps nothing would have happened. But we remained too long, poking into things-so the forest struck back. Setting us against each other.
