Spiders were the ogres of the human tribes on the forgotten planet. Knowledge of them was hard to come by, because to study them was death. But all men knew that web-spiders never left their traps. Never! And Burl had imagined himself making an impossibly splendid, incredibly daring use of that fact. Denying to himself that he intended any action so suicidal, he nevertheless drew back from the front of the snare and made his way to the back, where the spider's tunnel was no more than ten feet away. Then he found himself waiting. Presently, through the interstices of the silk, he saw the gray bulk of the spider. It had left the drained and shrunken carcass of the cricket to return to its resting-place, settling itself carefully upon the soft walls of the fabric tunnel. From the yielding, globular nest at the tunnel's end it fixed maniacal eyes once more upon the threads of its snare, seen down the length of the passage-way. Burl's hair stood on end from sheer fright, but he was the slave of an idea. The tunnel and the nest at its end did not rest on the ground, but were suspended in air by cables like those that spread the gin itself. The gray labyrinth-spider bulged the fabric. It lay in luxurious comfort, waiting for victims to approach. There was sweat on Burl's face as he raised his spear. The bare idea of attacking a spider was horrifying. But actually he was in no danger whatever before the instant of the spear-thrust, because web-spiders never, never, leave their webs to hunt. So Burl sweated, and grasped his spear with agonized firmness--and thrust it into the bulge that was the spider's body in its nest. He thrust with hysterical fury. And then he ran as if the devil were after him. It was a long time before he dared come back, his heart in his throat. All was still. He had missed the horrid convulsions of the wounded spider; he had not heard the frightful gnashings of its fangs at the piercing weapon, nor seen the silken threads of the tunnel ripped and torn in the spider's death-struggle. Burl came back to quietness. There was a great rent in the silken tunnel, and a puddle of ill-smelling stuff lay upon the ground. From time to time another droplet fell from the spear to join it. And the great spider had fallen half through its own enlargement of the rent made by the spear in the wall of the nest. Burl stared. Even when he saw it, the thing was not easy to believe. The dead eyes of the spider looked at him with mad, frozen malignity. The fangs were still raised to kill. The hairy legs were still braced as if to enlarge further the gaping hole through which it had partly fallen.