The RED DUST
By Murray Leinster
A Sequel to "The Mad Planet."
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from January 1927 AmazingStories. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Burl raised his spear, and plunged down on the back ofthe moving thing, thrusting his spear with all the force he couldcommand. He had fallen upon the shining back of one of the huge,meat-eating beetles, and his spear had slid across the horny armor andthen stuck fast, having pierced only the leathery tissue between theinsect's head and thorax.
CHAPTER I
Prey
The sky grew gray and then almost white. The overhanging banks of cloudsseemed to withdraw a little from the steaming earth. Haze that hungalways among the mushroom forests and above the fungus hills grew moretenuous, and the slow and misty rain that dripped the whole night longceased reluctantly.
As far as the eye could see a mad world stretched out, a world ofinsensate cruelties and strange, fierce maternal solicitudes. Theinsects of the night—the great moths whose wings spread far and wide inthe dimness, and the huge fireflies, four feet in length, whose beaconsmade the earth glow in their pale, weird light—the insects of the nighthad sought their hiding-places.
Now the creatures of the day ventured forth. A great ant-hill towered ahundred feet in the air. Upon its gravel and boulder-strewn side acommotion became visible.
The earth crumbled, and fell into an invisible opening, then a darkchasm appeared, and two slender, threadlike antennæ peered out.
A warrior ant emerged, and stood for an instant in the daylight, lookingall about for signs of danger to the ant-city. He was all of ten incheslong, this ant, and his mandibles were fierce and strong. A second andthird warrior came from the inside of the ant-hill, and ran with tinyclickings about the hillock, waving their antennæ restlessly, searching,ever searching for a menace to their city.
They returned to the gateway from which they had made their appearance,evidently bearing reassuring messages, because shortly after they hadreëntered the gateway of the ant-city, a flood of black, ill-smellingworkers poured out of the opening and dispersed upon their business. Theclickings of their limbs and an occasional whining stridulation made anincessant sound as they scattered over the earth, foraging among themushrooms and giant cabbages, among the rubbish-heaps of the giganticbee-hives and wasp colonies, and among the remains of the tragedies ofthe night for food for their city.
The city of the ants had begun its daily toil, toil in which every oneshared without supervision or coercion. Deep in the recesses of thepyramid galleries were hollowed out and winding passages that led down afathomless dis