Argosy, Vol. 122, No. 1 — page 57: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MAD PLANET. advanced upon Burl, shrilling angrily. He struck it with the leg and crushed it. Two of the other minims appeared, attracted by the noise the first had made. Discovering the crushed body of their fellow, they un- ceremoniously dismembered it and bore it away in triumph. Burl went on, swinging the toothed limb in his hand. It made a fair club, and Burl was accustomed to use stones to crush the juicy legs of such giant crickets as his tribe sometimes came upon. He formed a half-defined idea of a club. The sharp teeth of the thing in his hand made him realize that a sidewise blow was better than a spear-like thrust. The sound behind him had become a dis- tant whispering, high-pitched, and growing nearer. The army ants swept over a mush- room forest, and the yellow, umbrella-like growths swarmed with black creatures de- vouring the substance on which they found a foot-hold. A great blue-bottle fly, shining with a metallic luster, reposed in an ecstacy of feasting, sipping through its long proboscis the dark-colored liquid that dripped slowly from a mushroom. Maggots filled the mushroom, and exuded a solvent’ pepsin that liquified the white firm “ meat.” They fed upon this soup, this gruel, and a surplus dripped to the ground below, where the blue-bottle drank eagerly. Burl drew near, and struck. The fly collapsed into a writhing heap. Burl stood over it for an instant, pondering. The army ants came nearer, down into a tiny valley, swarming into and through a little brook over which Burl had leaped. Ants can remain under water for a long time without drowning, so the small stream was but a minor obstacle, though the cur- rent of water swept many of them off their feet until they choked the brook-bed and their comrades passed over their struggling bodies dry-shod. They were no more than temporarily annoyed however, and crawled out to resume their march. About a quarter of a mile to the left of Burl’s line of march, and perhaps a mile behind the spot where he stood over the dead blue-bottle fly, there was a stretch of an acre or more where the giant, rank cab- Al bages had so far resisted the encroachments of the ever-present mushrooms. The pale, cross-shaped flowers of the cabbages formed food for many bees, and the leaves fed ‘numberless grubs and worms, and loud- voiced crickets which croached about on the ground, munching busily at the succu- lent 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 rocket-like flight, in a dark cloud of wildly-beating- wings. They shot aim- lessly in any direction, with the result that half, or more than half, fell in the midst of the black tide of devouring insects and were seized as they fell. They uttered ter- rible 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—he lived in the very atmosphere of tragedy—but the chorus of creatures in torment made him look up. This was no minor horror. Whole-. sale slaughter was going on. He peered anxiously in the direction of the sound. A wild stretch of sickly yellow fungus, here and there interspersed with a squat toadstool or a splash of vivid celor where one of the many “ rusts ” had found a foot- hold. To the left a group of awkward, mis- shapen fungoids clustered in silent mockery of a forest of trees. There a mass of faded green, where the giant cabbages stood. With the true sun never shining upon them save through a blanket of thick haze or heavy clouds, they were pallid things, but they were the only green things Burl had seen. Their nodding white flowers with four petals in the form of a cross glowed against the yellowish-green leaves. But. as Burl gazed toward them, the green became slowly black. From where he ie Burl could see two or three great grubs in lazy contentment, eating ceaselessly on the cabbages on which they rested. Suddenly first one and then the other began to jerk spasmodically. Burl saw that about each of them a tiny rim of black had clustered. Tiny black notes milled over the green surfaces of the cabbages. The grubs became black, the cComiclbooks.com