5.2: The bulb spiders arrive

Masongill passes a more than usually restless night listening to the quiet creep of groups of eight legs. It is a bit like those stories of ghost Roman legions. The next morning, he can tell via his various ‘moley’ senses that a party of bulb spiders passed his hole in the night but then stopped less than a mile to the north. 

On hearing Masongill’s report, Alcock addresses the Potting Shed and asks no one to venture out alone, the smaller creatures to stay inside for a day or so and everyone to keep a look out. A hungry bulb spider would swallow one of the ‘tinies’ as soon as look at them. He asks Hannah the wombat, who often watches the door, to count colleagues in and out. It will be a tense day or so until the spiders move on.  

(Some eagle eyed viewers may think they have seen these very images before. If so they should ask themselves how many times they watched the very same footage of interceptors taking off from their Moon base on the hit TV series UFO and were grateful!)