The Forgotten Planet Page 4

  _3. THE PURPLE HILLS_

  The army ants flowed over the ground like a surging, monstrous, inkytide. Their vanguard reached the river and recoiled. Burl was perhapsfive miles away when they changed their course. The change was madewithout confusion, the leaders somehow communicating the altered line ofmarch to those behind them.

  Back on Earth, scientists had gravely debated the question of how antsconveyed ideas to each other. Honeybees, it was said, performedelaborate ritual dances to exchange information. Ants, it had beenobserved, had something less eccentric. A single ant, finding a bit ofbooty too big for it to manage alone, would return to its city to securethe help of others. From that fact men had deduced that a language ofgestures made with crossed antennae must exist.

  Burl had no theories. He merely knew facts, but he did know that antscould and did pass information to one another. Now, however, he movedcautiously along toward the sleeping-place of his tribe in completeignorance of the black blanket of living creatures spreading over theground behind him.

  A million tragedies marked the progress of the insect army. There was atiny colony of mining bees, their habits unchanged despite their greatersize, here on the forgotten planet. A single mother, four feet long, haddug a huge gallery with some ten offshooting cells, in which she hadlaid her eggs and fed her grubs with hard-gathered pollen. The grubs hadwaxed fat and large, become bees, and laid eggs in their turn within thesame gallery their mother had dug out for them.

  Ten bulky insects now foraged busily to feed their grubs within theancestral home, while the founder of the colony had grown draggled andwingless with the passing of time. Unable to bring in food, herself, theold bee became the guardian of the hive. She closed the opening with herhead, making a living barrier within the entrance. She withdrew only togrant admission or exit to the duly authorized members,--her daughters.

  The ancient concierge of the underground dwelling was at her post whenthe wave of army ants swept over. Tiny, evil-smelling feet trampled uponher and she emerged to fight with mandible and sting for the sanctity ofher brood. Within moments she was a shaggy mass of biting ants. Theyrent and tore at her chitinous armor. But she fought on madly, soundinga buzzing alarm to the colonists yet within.

  They came out, fighting as they came: ten huge bees, each four to fivefeet long and fighting with legs and jaws, with wing and mandible, andwith all the ferocity of so many tigers. But the small ants coveredthem, snapping at their multiple eyes, biting at the tender joints intheir armour,--and sometimes releasing the larger prey to leap upon aninjured comrade, wounded by the monster they battled together.

  Such a fight, however, could have but one end. Struggle as the beesmight, they were powerless against their un-numbered assailants. Theywere being devoured even as they fought. And before the last of the tenwas down the underground gallery had been gutted both of the stored foodbrought by the adult defenders and the last morsels of what had beenyoung grubs, too unformed to do more than twitch helplessly,inoffensively, as they were torn to shreds.

  When the army ants went on there were merely an empty tunnel and a fewfragments of tough armor, unappetizing even to the ants.

  Burl heard them as he meditatively inspected the scene of a tragedy ofnot long before. The rent and scraped fragments of a great beetle'sshiny casing lay upon the ground. A greater beetle had come upon thefirst and slain him. Burl regarded the remains of the meal.

  Three or four minims, little ants barely six inches long, foragedindustriously among the bits. A new ant-city was to be formed and thequeen lay hidden half a mile away. These were the first hatchlings. Theywould feed their younger kindred until they grew large enough to takeover the great work of the ant-city. Burl ignored the minims. Hesearched for a weapon of some sort. Behind him the clicking,high-pitched roar of the horde of army ants increased in volume.

  He turned away disgustedly. The best thing he could find in the way ofa weapon was a fiercely-toothed hind-leg. When he picked it up an angrywhine rose from the ground. One of the minims had been struggling todetach a morsel of flesh from the leg-joint. Burl had snatched thetidbit from him.

  The little creature was surely no more than half a foot long, but itadvanced angrily upon Burl, shrilling a challenge. He struck with thebeetle's leg and crushed the ant. Two of the other minims appeared,attracted by the noise the first had made. They discovered the crushedbody of their fellow, unceremoniously dismembered it, and bore it awayin triumph.

  Burl went on, swinging the toothed limb in his hand. The sound behindhim became a distant whispering, high-pitched and growing steadilynearer. The army ants swept into a mushroom forest and the yellow,umbrella-like growths soon swarmed with the black creatures.

  A great bluebottle fly, shining with a metallic lustre, stood beneath amushroom on the ground. The mushroom was infected with maggots whichexuded a solvent pepsin that liquefied the firm white meat. They swamecstatically in the liquid gruel, some of which dripped and dripped tothe ground. The bluebottle was sipping the dark-colored liquid throughits long proboscis, quivering with delight as it fed on the noisomeness.

  Burl drew near and struck. The fly collapsed in a quivering heap. Burlstood over it for an instant and pondered.

  The army ants were nearer, now. They swarmed down into a tiny valley,rushing into and through a little brook over which Burl had leaped.Since ants can remain underwater for a long time without drowning, thesmall stream was not even dangerous. Its current did sweep some of themaway. A great many of them, however, clung together until they chockedits flow by the mass of their bodies, the main force marching across thebridge they constituted.

  The ants reached a place about a quarter of a mile to the left of Burl'sline of march, perhaps a mile from the spot where he stood over the deadbluebottle. There was an expanse of some acres in which the giant, rankcabbages had so far succeeded in their competition with the world offungi. The pale, cross-shaped flowers of the cabbages formed food formany bees. The leaves fed numberless grubs and worms. Under thefallen-away dead foliage--single leaves were twenty feet across at theirlargest--crickets hid and fed.

  The ant-army flowed into this space, devouring every living thing itencountered. A terrible din arose. The crickets hurtled away in erraticleapings. They shot aimlessly in any direction. More than half of themlanded blindly in the carpeting of clicking black bodies which were theants from whose vanguard they had fled. Their blind flight had no effectsave to give different individuals the opportunity to seize them as theyfell and instantly begin to devour them. As they were torn to fragments,horrible screamings reached Burl's ears.

  A single such cry of agony would not have attracted Burl's attention. Helived in a world of nightmare horror. But a chorus of creatures intorment made him look up. This was no minor horror. Something wholesalewas in progress. He jerked his head about to see what it was.

  A wild stretch of sickly yellow fungus was interspersed here and therewith a squat toadstool, or a splash of vivid color where one of the manyrusts had found a foothold. To the left a group of branched fungoidsclustered in silent mockery of a true forest. Burl saw the faded greenof the cabbages.

  With the sun never shining on the huge leaves save through thecloud-bank overhead, the cabbages were not vivid. There were even somemouldy yeasts of a brighter green and slime much more luridly tinted.Even so, the cabbages were the largest form of true vegetation Burl hadever seen. The nodding white cruciform flowers stood out plainlyagainst the yellowish, pallid green of the leaves. But as Burl gazed atthem, the green slowly became black.

  Three great grubs, in lazy contentment, were eating ceaselessly of thecabbages on which they rested. Suddenly first one and then another beganto jerk spasmodically. Burl saw that around each of them a rim of blackhad formed. Then black motes milled all over them.

  The grubs became black--covered with biting, devouring ants. Thecabbages became black. The frenzied contortions of the grubs told of theagonies they underwent as they were literally devoured alive. And thenBurl saw
a black wave appear at the nearer edge of the stretch of yellowfungus. A glistening, living flood flowed forward over the ground with aroar of clickings and a persistent overtone of shrill stridulations.

  Burl's scalp crawled. He knew what this meant. And he did not pause tothink. With a gasp of pure panic he turned and fled, all intellectualpreoccupations forgotten.

  The black tide came on after him.

  He flung away the edible mushroom he had carried under his arm. Somehow,though, he clung to the sharp-toothed club as he darted between tangledmasses of fungus, ignoring now the dangers that ordinarily called forvast caution.

  Huge flies appeared. They buzzed about him loudly. Once he was struck onthe shoulder by one of them--at least as large as his hand--and his skintorn by its swiftly vibrating wings.

  He brushed it away and sped on. But the oil with which he was partlycovered had turned rancid, now, and the fetid odor attracted them. Therewere half a dozen--then a dozen creatures the size of pheasants, droningand booming as they kept pace with his wild flight.

  A weight pressed onto his head. It doubled. Two of the disgustingcreatures had settled upon his oily hair to sip the stuff through theirhairy feeding-tubes. Burl shook them off with his hand and raced madlyon, his ears attuned to the sounds of the ants behind him.

  That clicking roar continued, but in Burl's ears it was almost drownedout by the noise made by the halo of flies accompanying him. Theirbuzzing had deepened in pitch with the increase in size of all theirrace. It was now the note close to the deepest bass tone of an organ.Yet flies--though greatly enlarged on the forgotten planet--had notbecome magnified as much as some of the other creatures. There were nogreat heaps of putrid matter for them to lay their eggs in. The antswere busy scavengers, carting away the debris of tragedies in the insectworld long before it could acquire the gamey flavor beloved offly-maggots. Only in isolated spots were the flies really numerous. Insuch places they clustered in clouds.

  Such a cloud began to form about Burl as he fled. It seemed as though aminiature whirlwind kept pace with him--a whirlwind composed of furry,revolting bodies and multi-faceted eyes. Fleeing, Burl had to swing hisclub before him to clear the way. Almost every stroke was interrupted byan impact against some thinly-armored body which collapsed with thespurting of reddish liquid.

  Then an anguish as of red-hot iron struck upon Burl's back. One of thestinging flies had thrust its sharp-tipped proboscis into his flesh tosuck the blood. Burl uttered a cry and ran full-tilt into the stalk of ablackened, draggled toadstool.

  There was a curious crackling as of wet punk. The toadstool collapsedupon itself with a strange splashing sound. A great many creatures hadlaid their eggs in it, until now it was a seething mass of corruptionand ill-smelling liquid.

  When the toadstool crashed to the ground, it crumbled into a dozenpieces, spattering the earth for yards all about with stinking stuff inwhich tiny, headless maggots writhed convulsively.

  The deep-toned buzzing of the flies took on a note of solemnsatisfaction. They settled down upon this feast. Burl staggered to hisfeet and darted off again. Now he was nothing but a minor attraction tothe flies, only three or four bothering to come after him. The otherssettled by the edges of the splashing fluid, quickly absorbed in anecstasy of feasting. The few still hovering about his head, Burlkilled,--but he did not have to smash them all. The remaining fewdescended to feast on their fallen comrades twitching feebly at hisfeet.

  He ran on and passed beneath the wide-spreading leaves of an isolatedgiant cabbage. A great grasshopper crouched on the ground, itstremendous radially-opening jaws crunching the rank vegetation. Half adozen great worms ate steadily of the leaves that supported them. Onehad swung itself beneath an overhanging leaf--which would have thatchedhouses for men--and was placidly anchoring itself for the spinning of acocoon in which to sleep the sleep of metamorphosis.

  A mile away, the great black tide of army ants advanced relentlessly.The great cabbage, the huge grasshopper, and all the stupid caterpillarson the leaves would presently be covered with small, black demons. Thecocoon would never be spun. The caterpillars would be torn intothousands of furry fragments and devoured. The grasshopper would strikeout with his terrific, unguided strength, crushing its assailants withblows of its great hind-legs and powerful jaws. But it would die, makingterrible sounds of torments as the ants consumed it piecemeal.

  The sound of the ants' advance overwhelmed all other noises now. Burlran madly, his breath coming in great gasps, his eyes wide with panic.Alone of the world about him, he knew the danger that followed him. Theinsects he passed went about their business with that terrifying,abstracted efficiency found only in the insect world.

  Burl's heart pounded madly from his running. The breath whistled in hisnostrils--and behind him the flood of army ants kept pace. They cameupon the feasting flies. Some took to the air and escaped. Others weretoo absorbed in their delicious meal. The twitching maggots, stranded bythe scattering of their soupy broth, were torn to shreds and eaten. Theflies who were seized vanished into tiny maws. And the serried ranks ofants moved on.

  Burl could hear nothing else, now, but the clickings of their limbs andthe stridulating challenges and cross-challenges they uttered. Now andthen another sound pierced the noises made by the ants themselves: acricket, perhaps, seized and dying, uttering deep-bass cries of agony.

  Before the horde there was a busy world which teemed with life.Butterflies floated overhead on lazy wings; grubs waxed fat and huge;crickets feasted; great spiders sat quietly in their lairs, waiting withimplacable patience for prey to fall into the trap-doors and snares;great beetles lumbered through the mushroom forests, seeking food andmaking love in monstrous, tragic fashion.

  Behind the wide front of the army ants was--chaos. Emptiness.Desolation. All life save that of the army ants was exterminated, thoughsome bewildered flying creatures still fluttered helplessly over thesilent landscape. Yet even behind the army ants little bands ofstragglers from the horde marched busily here and there, seeking sometrace of life that had been overlooked by the main body.

  Burl put forth his last ounce of strength. His limbs trembled. Hisbreathing was agony. Sweat stood out upon his forehead. He ran for hislife with the desperation of one who knows that death is at his heels.He ran as if his continued existence among the million tragedies of thesingle day were the purpose for which the universe had been created.

  There was redness in the west and in the cloud-bank overhead. To theeast gray sky became a deeper gray--much deeper. It was not yet time forthe creatures of the day to seek their hiding-places, nor for thenight-insects to come forth. But in many secret spots there were vagueand sleepy stirrings.

  Heedless of the approaching darkness Burl sped over an open space ahundred yards across. A thicket of beautifully golden mushrooms barredhis way. Danger lay there. He dogged aside and saw in the gray dusk aglistening sheet of white, barely a yard above the ground. It was theweb of the morning-spider which, on Earth, was noted only in hedges andsuch places when the dew of earliest dawn exposed it as a patternlessplate of diamond-dust. There were anchor-cables, of course, but nogeometry. Tidy housewives--also on Earth--used to mop it out of cornersas a filmy fabric of irritating gossamer. On the forgotten planet it wasa net with strength and bird-lime qualities that increased day by day,as its spinner moved restlessly over the surface, always trailing stickycord behind itself.

  Burl had no choice but to avoid it, even though he lost ground to theant-horde roaring behind him. And night was definitely on the way. Itwas inconceivable that a human should travel in the lowlands after dark.It literally could not be done over the normal nightmare terrain. Burlhad not only to escape the army ants, but find a hiding-place quickly ifhe was to see tomorrow's light. But he could not think so far ahead,just now.

  He blundered through a screen of puffballs that shot dusty powder towardthe sky. Ahead, a range of strangely colored hills came intoview--purple, green, black and gold--melting into each other andbranching off
, inextricably mingled. They rose to a height of perhapssixty or seventy feet. A curious grayish haze had gathered above them.It seemed to be a layer of thin vapor, not like mist or fog, clinging tocertain parts of the hills, rising slowly to coil and gather into anindefinitely thicker mass above the ridges.

  The hills themselves were not geological features, but masses of fungusthat had grown and cannibalized, piling up upon themselves to thethickness of carboniferous vegetation. Over the face of the hills grewevery imaginable variety of yeast and mould and rust. They grew withinand upon themselves, forming freakish conglomerations that piled up intoa range of hills, stretching across the lunatic landscape for miles.

  Burl blundered up the nearest slope. Sometimes the surface was a hardrind that held him up. Sometimes his feet sank--perhaps inches, perhapsto mid-leg. He scrambled frantically. Panting, gasping, staggering fromthe exhaustion of moving across the fungus quicksand, he made his way tothe top of the first hill, plunged down into a little valley on thefarther side, and up another slope. He left a clear trail behind him ofdisturbed and scurrying creatures that had inevitably found a home inthe mass of living stuff. Small sinuous centipedes scuttled here andthere, roused by his passage. At the bottom of his footprints writhedfat white worms. Beetles popped into view and vanished again....

  A half mile across the range and Burl could go no farther. He stumbledand fell and lay there, gasping hoarsely. Overhead the gray sky hadbecome a deep-red which was rapidly melting into that redness too deepto be seen except as black. But there was still some light from thewest.

  Burl sobbed for breath in a little hollow, his sharp-toothed club stillclasped in his hands. Something huge, with wings like sails, soared insilhouette against the sunset. Burl lay motionless, breathing in greatgasps, his limbs refusing to lift him.

  The sound of the army ants continued. At last, above the crest of thelast hillock he had surmounted, two tiny glistening antennae appeared,then the small, deadly shape of an army ant. The forerunner of itshorde, it moved deliberately forward, waving its antennae ceaselessly.It made its way toward Burl, tiny clickings coming from its limbs.

  A little wisp of vapor swirled toward the ant. It was the vapor that hadgathered over the whole range of hills as a thin, low cloud. Itenveloped the ant which seemed to be thrown into a strange convulsion,throwing itself about, legs moving aimlessly. If it had been an animalinstead of an insect, it would have choked and gasped. But ants breathethrough air-holes in their abdomens. It writhed helplessly on the spongystuff across which it had been moving.

  Burl was conscious of a strange sensation. His body felt remarkablywarm. It felt hot. It was an unparalleled sensation, because Burl had noexperience of fire or the heat of the sun. The only warmth he had everknown was when huddling together with his tribesmen in some hiding-placeto avoid the damp chill of the night.

  Then, the heat of their breath and flesh helped to combat discomfort.But this was a fiercer heat. It was intolerable. Burl moved his bodywith a tremendous effort and for a moment the fungus soil was coolbeneath him. Then the sensation of hotness began again and increaseduntil Burl's skin was reddened and inflamed.

  The tenuous vapor, too, seemed to swirl his way. It made his lungs smartand his eyes water. He still breathed in painful gasps, but even thatshort period of rest had done him some good. But it was the heat thatdrove him to his feet again. He crawled painfully to the crest of thenext hill. He looked back.

  This was the highest hill he had come upon and he could see most of thepurple range in the deep, deep dusk. Now he was more than halfwaythrough the hills. He had barely a quarter-mile to go, northward. Buteast and west the range of purple hills was a ceaseless, undulating massof lifts and hollows, of ridges and spurs of all imaginable colorings.

  And at the tips of most of them were wisps of curling gray.

  From his position he could see a long stretch of the hills not hidden bythe surrounding darkness. Back along the way he had come, the army antsnow swept up into the range of hills. Scouts and advance-guard partiesscurried here and there. They stopped to devour the creatures inhabitingthe surface layers. But the main body moved on inexorably.

  The hills, though, were alive, not upheavals of the ground but festeringheaps of insanely growing fungus, hollowed out in many places bytunnels, hiding-places, and lurking-places. These the ants invaded. Theyswept on, devouring everything....

  Burl leaned heavily upon his club and watched dully. He could run nomore. The army ants were spreading everywhere. They would reach himsoon.

  Far to the right, the vapor thickened. A thin column of smoke arose inthe dim half-light. Burl did not know smoke, of course. He could notconceivably guess that deep down in the interior of the insanely growinghills, pressure had killed and oxidation had carbonized the once-livingmaterial. By oxidation the temperature down below had been raised. Inthe damp darkness of the bowels of the hills spontaneous combustion hadbegun.

  The great mounds of tinderlike mushroom had begun to burn very slowly,quite unseen. There had been no flames because the hills' surfaceremained intact and there was no air to feed the burning. But when thearmy ants dug ferociously for fugitive small things, air was admitted totunnels abandoned because of heat.

  Then slow combustion speeded up. Smoulderings became flames. Sparksbecame coals. A dozen columns of fume-laden smoke rose into the heavensand gathered into a dense pall above the range of purple hills. And Burlapathetically watched the serried ranks of army ants march on toward thewidening furnaces that awaited them.

  They had recoiled from the river instinctively. But their ancestors hadnever known fire. In the Amazon basin, on Earth, there had never beenforest fires. On the forgotten planet there had never been fires at all,unless the first forgotten colonists tried to make them. In any case thearmy ants had no instinctive terror of flame. They marched into theblazing openings that appeared in the hills. They snapped with theirmandibles at the leaping flames, and sprang to grapple with the burningcoals.

  The blazing areas widened as the purple surface was consumed. Burlwatched without comprehension--even without thankfulness. He stoodbreathing more and more easily until the glow from approaching flamesreddened his skin and the acrid smoke made tears flow from his eyes.Then he retreated slowly, leaning on his club and often looking back.

  Night had fallen, but yet it was light to the army ants. They marchedon, shrilling their defiance. They poured devotedly--andferociously--into the inferno of flame. At last there were only smallgroups of stragglers from the great ant-army scurrying here and thereover the ground their comrades had stripped of all life. The bodies ofthe main army made a vast malodor, burning in the furnace of the hills.

  There had been pain in that burning, agony such as no one would willingdwell upon. But it came of the insane courage of the ants, attacking theburning stuff with their horny jaws, rolling over and over with flaminglumps of charcoal clutched in their mandibles. Burl heard them shrillingtheir war-cry even as they died. Blinded, antennae singed off, legsshriveling, they yet went forward to attack their impossible enemy.

  Burl made his way slowly over the hills. Twice he saw small bodies ofthe vanished army. They had passed between the widening furnaces andfuriously devoured all that moved as they forged ahead. Once Burl wasspied, and a shrill cry sounded, but he moved on and only a single antrushed after him. Burl brought down his club and a writhing bodyremained to be eaten by its comrades when they came upon it.

  And now the last faint traces of light had vanished in the west. Therewas no real brightness anywhere except the flames of the burning hills.The slow, slow nightly rain that dripped down all through the dark hoursbegan. It made a pattering noise upon the unburnt part of the hills.

  Burl found firm ground beneath his feet. He listened keenly for soundsof danger. Something rustled heavily in a thicket of toadstools ahundred feet away. There were sounds of preening, and of feet delicatelyplaced here and there upon the ground. Then a great body took to the airwith the throbbing beat of mighty wi
ngs.

  A fierce down-current of air smote Burl, and he looked upward in time toglimpse the outline of a huge moth passing overhead. He turned to watchthe line of its flight, and saw the fierce glow filling all the horizon.The hills burned brighter as the flames widened.

  He crouched beneath a squat toadstool and waited for the dawn. Theslow-dripping rain kept on, falling with irregular, drum-like beats uponthe tough top of the toadstool.

  He did not sleep. He was not properly hidden, and there was alwaysdanger in the dark. But this was not the darkness Burl was used to. Thegreat fires grew and spread in the masses of ready-carbonized mushroom.The glare on the horizon grew brighter through the hours. It also camenearer.

  Burl shivered a little, as he watched. He had never even dreamed of firebefore, and even the overhanging clouds were lighted by these flames.Over a stretch at least a dozen miles in length and from half a mile tothree miles across, the seething furnaces and columns of flame-lit smokesent illumination over the world. It was like the glow the lights of acity can throw upon the sky. And like the flitting of aircraft above acity was the assembly of fascinated creatures of the night.

  Great moths and flying beetles, gigantic gnats and midges grown hugeupon this planet, fluttered and danced above the flames. As the firecame nearer, Burl could see them: colossal, delicately-formed creaturessweeping above the white-hot expanse. There were moths withriotously-colored wings of thirty-foot spread, beating the air withmighty strokes, their huge eyes glowing like garnets as they staredintoxicatedly at the incandescence below them.

  Burl saw a great peacock-moth soaring above the hills with wings all offorty feet across. They fluttered like sails of unbelievablemagnificence. And this was when all the separate flames had united toform a single sheet of white-hot burning stuff spread across the landfor miles.

  Feathery antennae of the finest lace spread out before the head of thepeacock-moth; its body was of softest velvet. A ring of snow-white furmarked where its head began. The glare from below smote the maroon ofits body with a strange effect. For one instant it was outlined clearly.Its eyes shone more redly than any ruby's fire. The great, delicatewings were poised in flight. Burl caught the flash of flame upon the twogreat irridescent spots on the wings. Shining purple and bright red, allthe glory of chalcedony and of chrysoprase was reflected in the glare ofburning fungi.

  And then Burl saw it plunge downward, straight into the thickest andfiercest of the leaping flames. It flung itself into the furnace as awilling, drunken victim of their beauty.

  Flying beetles flew clumsily above the pyre also, their horny wing-casesstiffly outstretched. In the light from below they shone like burnishedmetal. Their clumsy bodies, with spurred and fierce-toothed limbs,darted through the flame-lit smoke like so many grotesque meteors.

  Burl saw strange collisions and still stranger meetings. Male and femaleflying creatures circled and spun in the glare, dancing their dance oflove and death. They mounted higher than Burl could see, drunk with theecstasy of living, and then descended to plunge headlong in the roaringflames below.

  From every side the creatures came. Moths of brightest yellow, withfurry bodies palpitant with life, flew madly to destruction. Other mothsof a deepest black, with gruesome symbols on their wings, swiftly cameto dance above the glow like motes in sunlight.

  And Burl crouched beneath a toadstool, watching while the perpetual,slow raindrops fell and fell, and a continuous hissing noise came fromwhere the rain splashed amid the flames.