Argosy, Vol. 122, No. 1 — page 54: what you’re looking at

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44 far from his tribe, so he would go to them. Puerile reasoning, of course, but valuable because it was consciously reasoning, con- sciously appealing to his mind for guidance in difficulty, deliberate progress from a mental desire to a mental resolution. Even in the high civilization of ages be- fore, few men had really used their brains. The great majority of people had depended upon machines and their leaders to think _ for them. Burl’s tribe-folk depended on their stomachs. Burl, however, was gradu- ally developing the habit of thinking which makes for leadership and which would be invaluable to his little tribe. He stood up again and faced up-stream, moving slowly and cautiously, his eyes searching the ground before him keenly and his ears alert for the slightest sound of danger. Gigantic butterflies, riotous in coloring, fluttered overhead through the misty haze. Sometimes a_ grasshopper hurtled through the air like a projectile, its transparent wings beating the air franti- cally. Now and then a wasp sped by, in- tent upon its hunting, or a bee droned heavily along, anxious and worried, striving in a nearly flowerless world to gather the pollen that would feed the hive. Here and there Burl saw flies of various sorts, some no larger than his thumb, but others the size of his whole hand. They fed upon the juices that dripped from the maggot-infested mushrooms, when filth more to their liking was not at hand. Very far away a shrill roaring sounded faintly. It was like a multitude of click- ings blended into a single sound, but was so far away that it did not impress itself upon Burl’s attention. He had all the strictly localized vision of a child. What was near was important, and what was dis- tant could be ignored. Only the imminent required attention, and Burl was preoccu- pied. Had he listened, he would have realized that army ants were aboard in countless millions, spreading themselves out in a broad array and eating all they came upon far more destructively than so many lo- custs. Locusts in past ages had eaten all green things. There were only giant cabbages THE ARGOSY. and a few such tenacious rank growths in the world that Burl knew. The locusts had vanished with civilization and knowl- edge and the greater part of mankind, but the army ants remained as an invincible _ enemy to men and insects, and the most of the fungus growths that covered the earth. Burl did not notice the sound, however. He moved forward, briskly though cau- tiously, searching with his eyes for gar- ments, food, and weapons. He confidently expected to find all of them within a short distance. Surely enough, he found a thicket—if one might call it so—of edible fungi no more than half a mile beyond the spot where he had improvised his sandals to protect the soles-of his feet. - Without especial elation, Burl tugged at the largest until he had broken off a food supply for several days. He went on, eat- ing as he did so, past a broad plain a mile and more across, being broken: into odd little hillocks by gradually ripening and suddenly developing mushrooms with which he was unfamiliar. | The earth seemed to be in process of being pushed aside by rounded protuber- ances of which only the tips showed. Blood-red hemispheres seemed to be forc- ing aside the earth so they might reach the outer air. Burl looked at them curiously, and passed among them without touching them. They were strange, and to Burl most strange things médnt danger. In any event, Burl was full of a new purpose now. He wished garments and weapons. Above the plain a wasp hovered, a heavy object dangling beneath its black belly, or- namented by a single red band. It was a -wasp—the hairy sand-wasp—and it was bringing a paralyzed gray caterpillar to its burrow. Burl watched it drop down with the speed and sureness of an arrow, pull aside a heavy, flat stone, and descend into the ground. It had a vertical shaft dug down for forty feet or more. It descended, evidently inspected the in- terior, reappeared, and vanished into the hole again, dragging the gray worm after it. cComiclbooks.com