The Mad Planet Page 7

and more in length.

  A single such creature would be formidable to an unarmed and naked manlike Burl, whose wisest move would be flight, but in their thousands andmillions they presented a menace from which no escape seemed possible.They were advancing steadily and rapidly, shrill stridulations and amultitude of clickings marking their movements.

  The great helpless caterpillars upon the giant cabbages heard the soundof their coming, but were too stupid to flee. The black multitudescovered the rank vegetables, and tiny but voracious jaws began to tearat the flaccid masses of flesh.

  Each creature had some futile means of struggling. The caterpillarsstrove to throw off their innumerable assailants by writhings andcontortions, wholly ineffective. The bees fought their entrance to thegigantic hives with stings and wingbeats. The moths took to the air inhelpless blindness when discovered by the relentless throngs of smallblack insects which reeked of formic acid and left the ground behindthem denuded in every living thing.

  Before the oncoming horde was a world of teeming life, where mushroomsand fungi fought with thinning numbers of giant cabbages for foothold.Behind the black multitude was--nothing. Mushrooms, cabbages, bees,wasps, crickets. Every creeping and crawling thing that did not getaloft before the black tide reached it was lost, torn to bits by tinymandibles. Even the hunting spiders and tarantulas fell before the hostof insects, having killed many in their final struggles, but overwhelmedby sheer numbers. And the wounded and dying army ants made food fortheir sound comrades.

  There is no mercy among insects. Only the web-spiders sat unmoved andimmovable in their colossal snares, secure in the knowledge that theirgummy webs would discourage attempts at invasion along the slendersupporting cables.

  Surging onward, flowing like a monstrous, murky tide over the yellow,steaming earth, the army ants advanced. Their vanguard reached theriver, and recoiled. Burl was perhaps five miles distant when theychanged their course, communicating the altered line of march to thosebehind them in some mysterious fashion of transmitting intelligence.

  Thirty thousand years before, scientists had debated gravely over themeans of communication among ants. They had observed that a single antfinding a bit of booty too large for him to handle alone would return tothe ant-city and return with others. From that one instance they deduceda language of gestures made with the antennae.

  Burl had no wise theories. He merely knew facts, but he knew that theants had some form of speech or transmission of ideas. Now, however, hewas moving cautiously along toward the stamping grounds of his tribe, incomplete ignorance of the black blanket of living creatures creepingover the ground toward him.

  A million tragedies marked the progress of the insect army. There was atiny colony of mining bees--Zebra bees--a single mother, some four feetlong, had dug a huge gallery with some ten cells, in which she laid hereggs and fed her grubs with hard-gathered pollen. The grubs had waxedfat and large, became bees, and laid eggs in their turn, within thegallery their mother had dug out for them.

  Ten such bulky insects now foraged busily for grubs within the ancestralhome, while the founder of the colony had grown draggled and winglesswith the passing of time. Unable to forage herself, the old bee becamethe guardian of the nest or hive, as is the custom among the miningbees. She closed the opening of the hive with her head, making a livingbarrier within the entrance, and withdrawing to give entrance and exitonly to duly authenticated members of the extensive colony.

  The ancient and draggled concierge of the underground dwelling was ather post when the wave of army ants swept over her. Tiny, evil-smellingfeet trampled upon her. She emerged to fight with mandible and sting forthe sanctity of the hive. In a moment she was a shaggy mass of bitingants, rending and tearing at her chitinous armour. The old bee foughtmadly, viciously, sounding a buzzing alarm to the colonists yet withinthe hive. They emerged, fighting as they came, for the gallery leadingdown was a dark flood of small insects.

  * * * * *

  For a few moments a battle such as would make an epic was in progress.Ten huge bees, each four to five feet long, fighting with legs and jaw,wing and mandible, with all the ferocity of as many tigers. The tiny,vicious ants covered them, snapping at their multiple eyes, biting atthe tender joints in their armour--sometimes releasing the larger preyto leap upon an injured comrade wounded by the huge creature theybattled in common.

  The fight, however, could have but one ending. Struggle as the beesmight, herculean as their efforts might be, they were powerless againstthe incredible numbers of their assailants, who tore them into tinyfragments and devoured them. Before the last shred of the hive'sdefenders had vanished, the hive itself was gutted alike of the grubs ithad contained and the food brought to the grubs by such weary effort ofthe mature bees.

  The army ants went on. Only an empty gallery remained, that and a fewfragments of tough armour, unappetizing even to the omniverous ants.

  Burl was meditatively inspecting the scene of a recent tragedy, whererent and scraped fragments of a great beetle's shiny casing lay upon theground. A greater beetle had come upon the first and slain him. Burl waslooking upon 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-ant lay hidden a half-mile away. These were the first hatchlings,who would feed the larger ants on whom would fall the great work of theant-city. Burl ignored them, searching with his eyes for a spear orweapon.

  Behind him the clicking roar, the high-pitched stridulations of thehorde of army ants, rose in volume. Burl turned disgustedly away. Thebest he could find in the way of a weapon was a fiercely toothed hindleg. He picked it up, and an angry whine rose from the ground.

  One of the black minims was working busily to detach a fragment of fleshfrom the joint of the leg, and Burl had snatched the morsel from him.The little creature was hardly half a foot in length, but it advancedupon Burl, shrilling angrily. He struck it with the leg and crushed it.Two of the other minims appeared, attracted by the noise the first hadmade. Discovering the crushed body of their fellow, they unceremoniouslydismembered it and bore it away in triumph.

  Burl went on, swinging the toothed limb in his hand. It made a fairclub, and Burl was accustomed to use stones to crush the juicy legs ofsuch giant crickets as his tribe sometimes came upon. He formed ahalf-defined idea of a club. The sharp teeth of the thing in his handmade him realize that a sidewise blow was better than a spearlikethrust.

  The sound behind him had become a distant whispering, high-pitched, andgrowing nearer. The army ants swept over a mushroom forest, and theyellow, umbrella-like growths swarmed with black creatures devouring thesubstance on which they found a foothold.

  A great bluebottle fly, shining with a metallic luster, reposed in anecstasy of feasting, sipping through its long proboscis the dark-coloredliquid that dripped slowly from a mushroom. Maggots filled the mushroom,and exuded a solvent pepsin that liquefied the white firm "meat."

  They fed upon this soup, this gruel, and a surplus dripped to the groundbelow, where the bluebottle drank eagerly. Burl drew near, and struck.The fly collapsed into a writhing heap. Burl stood over it for aninstant, pondering.

  The army ants came nearer, down into a tiny valley, swarming into andthrough a little brook over which Burl had leaped. Ants can remain underwater for a long time without drowning, so the small stream was but aminor obstacle, though the current of water swept many of them off theirfeet until they choked the brook-bed, and their comrades passed overtheir struggling bodies dry-shod. They were no more than temporarilyannoyed, however, and presently crawled out to resume their march.

  About a quarter of a mile to the left of Burl's line of march, andperhaps a mile behind the spot where he stood over the dead bluebottlefly, there was a stretch of an acre or more where the giant, rankcabbages had so far resisted the encroachments of the ever presentmushrooms. The pale, cross-shaped flowers of the cabbages formed foodfor many bees,
and the leaves fed numberless grubs and worms, andloud-voiced crickets which crouched about on the ground, munching busilyat the succulent green stuff. The army ants swept into the green area,ceaselessly devouring all they came upon.

  A terrific din arose. The crickets hurtled away in a rocketlike flight,in a dark cloud of wildly beating wings. They shot aimlessly in anydirection, with the result that half, or more than half, fell in themidst of the black tide of devouring insects and were seized as theyfell. They uttered terrible cries as they were being torn to bits.Horrible inhuman screams reached Burl's ears.

  A single such cry of agony would not have attracted Burl's attention--helived in the very atmosphere of tragedy--but the chorus of creatures intorment made him look up. This was no minor horror. Wholesale slaughterwas going on. He peered anxiously in the direction of the sound.

  A wild stretch of sickly yellow fungus, here and there interspersed witha squat toadstool or a splash of vivid color where one of the many"rusts" had found a