The Red Dust

by Murray Leinster

  CHAPTER II

  The Journey

  Darkness. The soft, blanketing night of the age of fungoids had fallenover all the earth, and there was blackness everywhere that was not goodto have. Here and there, however, dim, bluish lights glowed near theground. There an intermittent glow showed that a firefly had wanderedfar from the rivers and swamps above which most of his kind nowcongregated. Now a faintly luminous ball of fire drifted above thesteaming, moisture-sodden earth. It was a will-o'-the-wisp, grown to ayard in diameter.

  From the low-hanging banks of clouds that hung perpetually overhead,large, warm raindrops fell ceaselessly. A drop, a pause, and thenanother drop, added to the already dank moisture of the ground below.

  The world of fungus growths flourished on just such dampness andhumidity. It seemed as if the toadstools and mushrooms could be heard,swelling and growing large in the darkness. Rustlings and stealthymovements sounded furtively through the night, and from above the heavythrob of mighty wing-beats was continuous.

  The tribe was hidden in the midst of a tangled copse of toadstools toothickly interwoven for the larger insects to penetrate. Only the littlemidgets hid in its recesses during the night-time, and the smaller mothsduring the day.

  About and among the bases of the toadstools, however, where their spongystalks rose from the humid earth, small beetles roamed, singingcheerfully to themselves in deep bass notes. They were small and round,some six or eight inches long, and their bellies were pale gray.

  And as they went about they emitted sounds which would have been chirpshad they been other than low as the lowest tone of a harp. They weretruffle-beetles, in search of the dainty tidbits on which epicures oncehad feasted.

  Some strange sense seemed to tell them when one of half a dozenvarieties of truffle was beneath them, and they paused in theirwandering to dig a tunnel straight down. A foot, two feet, or two yards,all was the same to them. In time they would come upon the morsel theysought and would remain at the bottom of their temporary home until itwas consumed. Then another period of wandering, singing their cheerfulsong, until another likely spot was reached and another tunnel begun.

  In a tiny, open space in the center of the toadstool thicket thetribefolk slept with the deep notes of the truffle-beetles in theirears. A new danger had come to them, but they had passed it on to Burlwith a new and childlike confidence and considered the matter settled.They slept, while beneath a glowing mushroom at one side of the clearingBurl struggled with his new problem. He squatted upon the ground in thedim radiance of the shining toadstool, his moth-wing cloak wrapped abouthim, his spear in his hand, and his twin golden plumes of the moth'santennae bound to his forehead. But his face was downcast as a child's.

  The red mushrooms had begun to burst. Only that day, one of the women,seeking edible fungus for the tribal larder, had seen the fat, distendedglobule of the red mushroom. Its skin was stretched taut, and glistenedin the light.

  The woman paid little or no attention to the red growth. Her ears wereattuned to catch sounds that would warn her of danger while her eyessearched for tidbits that would make a meal for the tribe, and moreparticularly for her small son, left behind at the hiding-place.

  A ripping noise made her start up, alert on the instant. The redenvelope of the mushroom had split across the top, and a thick cloud ofbrownish-red dust was spurting in every direction. It formed a pyramidalcloud some thirty feet in height, which enlarged and grew thinner withminor eddies within itself.

  A little yellow butterfly with wings barely a yard from tip to tip,flapped lazily above the mushroom-covered plain. Its wings beat the airwith strokes that seemed like playful taps upon a friendly element. Thebutterfly was literally intoxicated with the sheer joy of living. It hademerged from its cocoon barely two hours before, and was making itsmaiden flight above the strange and wonderful world. It flutteredcarelessly into the red-brown cloud of mushroom spores.

  The woman was watching the slowly changing form of the spore-mist. Shesaw the butterfly enter the brownish dust, and then her eyes becamegreedy. There was something the matter with the butterfly. Its wings nolonger moved lazily and gently. They struck out in frenzied, hystericalblows that were erratic and wild. The little yellow creature no longerfloated lightly and easily, but dashed here and there, wildly andwithout purpose, seeming to be in its death-throes.

  It crashed helplessly against the ground and lay there, moving feebly.The woman hurried forward. The wings would be new fabric with which toadorn herself, and the fragile legs of the butterfly contained choicemeat. She entered the dust-cloud.

  A stream of intolerable fire--though the woman had never seen or knownof fire--burned her nostrils and seared her lungs. She gasped in pain,and the agony was redoubled. Her eyes smarted as if burning from theirsockets, and tears blinded her.

  The woman instinctively turned about to flee, but before she had gone adozen yards--blinded as she was--she stumbled and fell to the ground.She lay there, gasping, and uttering moans of pain, until one of the menof the tribe who had been engaged in foraging near by saw her and triedto find what had injured her.

  She could not speak, and he was about to leave her and tell the othertribefolk about her when he heard the clicking of an ant's limbs, andrather than have the ant pick her to pieces bit by bit--and leave hiscuriosity ungratified--the man put her across his shoulders and bore herback to the hiding-place of the tribe.

  It was the tale the woman had told when she partly recovered that causedBurl to sit alone all that night beneath the shining toadstool in thelittle clearing, puzzling his just-awakened brain to know what to do.

  The year before there had been no red mushrooms. They had appeared onlyrecently, but Burl dimly remembered that one day, a long time before,there had been a strange breeze which blew for three day and nights, andthat during the time of its blowing all the tribe had been sick and hadwept continually.

  Burl had not yet reached the point of mental development when he wouldassociate that breeze with a storm at a distance, or reason that thespores of the red mushrooms had been borne upon the wind to the presentresting-places of the deadly fungus growths. Still less could he decidethat the breeze had not been deadly only because it was lightly ladenwith the fatal dust.

  He knew simply that unknown red mushrooms had appeared, that they wereeverywhere about, and that they would burst, and that to breathe thered dust they gave out was grievous sickness or death.

  The tribe slept while the bravely attired figure of Burl squatted underthe glowing disk of the luminous mushroom, his face a picture ofquerulous perplexity, and his heart full of sadness.

  He had consulted his strange inner self, and no plan had come to him. Heknew the red mushrooms were all about. They would fill the air withtheir poison. He struggled with his problem while his people slumbered,and the woman who had breathed the mushroom-dust sobbed softly in hertroubled sleep.

  Presently a figure stirred on the farther side of the clearing. Sayawoke and raised her head. She saw Burl crouching by the shiningtoadstool, his gay attire draggled and unnoticed. She watched him for alittle, and the desolation of his pose awoke her pity.

  She rose and went to his side, taking his hand between her two, whileshe spoke his name softly. When he turned and looked at her, confusionsmote her, but the misery in his face brought confidence again.

  Burl's sorrow was inarticulate--he could not explain this newresponsibility for his people that had come to him--but he was comfortedby her presence, and she sat down beside him. After a long time sheslept, with her head resting against his side, but he continued toquestion himself, continued to demand an escape for his people from thesuffering and danger he saw ahead. With the day an answer came.

  When Burl had been carried down the river on his fungus raft, and hadlanded in the country of the army ants, he had seen great forests ofedible mushrooms, and had said to himself that he would bring Saya tothat place. He remembered, now, that the red mushrooms were there also,but the idea of a journey remained.<
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  The hunting-ground of his tribe had been free of the red fungoids untilrecently. If he traveled far enough he would come to a place where therewere still no red toadstools. Then came the decision. He would lead histribe to a far country.

  He spoke with stern authority when the tribesmen woke, talking in fewwords and in a loud voice, holding up his spear as he gave his orders.

  The timid, pink-skinned people obeyed him meekly. They had seen the bodyof the clotho spider he had slain, and he had thrown down before themthe gray bulk of the labyrinth spider he had thrust through with hisspear. Now he was to take them through unknown dangers to an unknownhaven, but they feared to displease him.

  They made light loads of their mushrooms and such meat-stuffs as theyhad, and parceled out what little fabric they still possessed. Three menbore spears, in addition to Burl's long shaft, and he had persuaded theother three to carry clubs, showing them how the weapon should bewielded.

  The indefinitely brighter spot in the cloud-banks above that meant theshining sun had barely gone a quarter of the way across the sky when thetrembling band of timid creatures made their way from their hiding-placeand set out upon their journey. For their course, Burl depended entirelyupon chance. He avoided the direction of the river, however, and thepath along which he had returned to his people. He knew the redmushrooms grew there. Purely by accident he set his march toward thewest, and walked cautiously on, his tribesfolk following him fearfully.

  Burl walked ahead, his spear held ready. He made a figure at once braveand pathetic, venturing forth in a world of monstrous ferocity andincredible malignance, armed only with a horny spear borrowed from adead insect. His velvety cloak, made from a moth's wing, hung about hisfigure in graceful folds, however, and twin golden plumes noddedjauntily from his forehead.

  Behind him the nearly naked people followed reluctantly. Here a womanwith a baby in her arms, there children of nine or ten, unable to resistthe Instinct to play even in the presence of the manifold dangers of themarch. They ate hungrily of the lumps of mushroom they had been orderedto carry. Then a long-legged boy, his eyes roving anxiously about insearch of danger followed.

  Thirty thousand years of flight from every peril had deeply submergedthe combative nature of humanity. After the boy came two men, one with ashort spear, and the other with a club, each with a huge mass of ediblemushroom under his free arm, and both badly frightened at the idea offleeing from dangers they knew and feared to dangers they did not knowand consequently feared much more.

  So was the caravan spread out. It made its way across the country withmany deviations from a fixed line, and with many halts and pauses. Oncea shrill stridulation filled all the air before them, a monster soundcompounded of innumerable clickings and high-pitched cries.

  They came to the tip of an eminence and saw a great space of groundcovered with tiny black bodies locked in combat. For quite half a milein either direction the earth was black with ants, snapping and bitingat each other, locked in vise-like embraces, each combatant coupletrampled under the feet of the contending armies, with no thought ofsurrender or quarter.

  The sound of the clashing of fierce jaws upon horny armor, the cries ofthe maimed, and strange sounds made by the dying, and above all, thewhining battle-cry of each of the fighting hordes, made a sustaineduproar that was almost deafening.

  From either side of the battle-ground a pathway led back to separateant-cities, a pathway marked by the hurrying groups of reinforcementsrushing to the fight. Tiny as the ants were, for once no lumberingbeetle swaggered insolently in their path, nor did the hunting-spidersmark them out for prey. Only little creatures smaller than thecombatants themselves made use of the insect war for purposes of theirown.

  These were little gray ants barely more than four inches long, whoscurried about in and among the fighting creatures with marvelousdexterity, carrying off, piece-meal, the bodies of the dead, and slayingthe wounded for the same fate.

  They hung about the edges of the battle, and invaded the abandoned areaswhen the tide of battle shifted, insect guerrillas, fighting for theirown hands, careless of the origin of the quarrel, espousing no cause,simply salvaging the dead and living debris of the combat.

  Burl and his little group of followers had to make a wide detour toavoid the battle itself, and the passage between bodies ofreinforcements hurrying to the scene of strife was a matter of somedifficulty. The ants running rapidly toward the battle-field were hugelyexcited. Their antennae waved wildly, and the infrequent wounded one,limping back toward the city, was instantly and repeatedly challenged bythe advancing insects.

  They crossed their antennae upon his, and required thorough evidence thathe was of the proper city before allowing him to proceed. Once theyarrived at the battle-field they flung themselves into the fray,becoming lost and indistinguishable in the tide of straining, fightingblack bodies.

  Men in such a battle, without distinguishing marks or battle-cries,would have fought among themselves as often as against their foes, butthe ants had a much simpler method of identification. Each ant-citypossesses its individual odor--a variant on the scent of formicacid--and each individual of that city is recognized in his world quitesimply and surely by the way he smells.

  The little tribe of human beings passed precariously behind a group of ahundred excited insect warriors, and before the following group of fortyequally excited black insects. Burl hurried on with his following,putting many miles of perilous territory behind before nightfall. Manytimes during the day they saw the sudden billowing of a red-browndust-cloud from the earth, and more than once they came upon the emptyskin and drooping stalk of one of the red mushrooms, and more oftenstill they came upon the mushrooms themselves, grown fat and taut,prepared to send their deadly spores into the air when the pressure fromwithin became more than the leathery skin could stand.

  That night the tribe hid among the bases of giant puff-balls, which at atouch shot out a puff of white powder resembling smoke. The powder wasprecisely the same in nature as that cast out by the red mushrooms, butits effects were marvelously--and mercifully--different; it wasinnocuous.

  Burl slept soundly this night, having been two days and a night withoutrest, but the remainder of his tribe, and even Saya, were fearful andafraid, listening ceaselessly all through the dark hours for themenacing sounds of creatures coming to prey upon them.

  And so for a week the march kept on. Burl would not allow his tribe tostop to forage for food. The red mushrooms were all about. Once one ofthe little children was caught in a whirling eddy of red dust, and itsmother rushed into the deadly stuff to seize it and bring it out. Thenthe tribe had to hide for three days while the two of them recoveredfrom the debilitating poison.

  Once, too, they found a half-acre patch of the giant cabbages--therewere six of them full grown, and a dozen or more smaller ones--and Burltook two men and speared two of the huge, twelve-foot slugs that fedupon the leaves. When the tribe passed on it was gorged on the fat meatof the slugs, and there was much soft fur, so that all the tribefolkwore loin-cloths of the yellow stuff.

  There were perils, too, in the journey. On the fourth day of the tribe'straveling, Burl froze suddenly into stillness. One of the hairytarantulas--a trap-door spider with a black belly--had fallen upon ascarabaeus beetle, and was devouring it only a hundred yards ahead.

  The tribefolk, trembling, went back for half a mile or more inpanic-stricken silence, and refused to advance until he had led them adetour of two or three miles to one side of the dangerous spot.

  Long, fear-ridden marches through perilous countries unknown to them,through the golden aisles of yellow mushroom forests, over the flakingsurfaces of plains covered with many-colored "rusts" and molds; pausesbeside turbid pools whose waters were concealed by thick layers of greenslime, and other evil-smelling ponds which foamed and bubbled slowly,which were covered with pasty yeasts that rose in strange forms ofdiscolored foam.

  Fleeting glimpses they had of the glistening spokes of symmetricalspid
ers'-webs, whose least thread it would have been beyond the power ofthe strongest of the tribe to break. They passed through a forest ofpuff-balls, which boomed when touched and shot a puff of vapor fromtheir open mouths.

  Once they saw a long and sinuous insect that fled before them anddisappeared into a burrow in the ground, running with incredible speedupon legs of uncountable number. It was a centipede all of thirty feetin length, and when they crossed the path it had followed a horriblestench came to their nostrils so that they hurried on.

  Long escape from unguessed dangers brought boldness, of a sort, to thepink-skinned men, and they would have rested. They went to Burl withtheir complaint, and he simply pointed with his hands behind them. Therewere three little clouds of brownish vapor in the air, where they couldsee, along the road they had traversed. To the right of them adust-cloud was just settling, and to the left another rose as theylooked.

  A new trick of the deadly dust became apparent now. Toward the end of aday in which they had traveled a long distance, one of the littlechildren ran a little to the left of the route its elders werefollowing. The earth had taken on a brownish hue, and the child stirredup the surface mould with its feet.

  The brownish dust that had settled there was raised again, and the childran, crying and choking, to its mother, its lungs burning as with fire,and its eyes like hot coals. Another day would pass before the childcould walk.

  In a strange country, knowing nothing of the dangers that might assailthe tribe while waiting for the child to recover, Burl looked about fora hiding-place. Far over to the right a low cliff, perhaps twenty orthirty feet high, showed sides of crumbling, yellow clay, and from whereBurl stood he could see the dark openings of burrows scattered here andthere upon its face.

  He watched for a time, to see if any bee or wasp inhabited them, knowingthat many kinds of both insects dig burrows for their young, and do notoccupy them themselves. No dark forms appeared, however, and he led hispeople toward the openings.

  The appearance of the holes confirmed his surmise. They had been dugmonths before by mining bees, and the entrances were "weathered" andworn. The tribefolk made their way into the three-foot tunnels, and hidthemselves, seizing the opportunity to gorge themselves upon the foodthey carried.

  Burl stationed himself near the outer end of one of the little caves towatch for signs of danger. While waiting he poked curiously with hisspear at a little pile of white and sticky parchment-like stuff he sawjust within the mouth of the tunnel.

  Instantly movement became visible. Fifty, sixty, or a hundred tinycreatures, no more than half an inch in length, tumbled pell-mell fromthe dirty-white heap. Awkward legs, tiny, greenish-black bodies, andbristles protruding in every direction made them strange to look upon.

  They had tumbled from the whitish heap and now they made haste to hidethemselves in it again, moving slowly and clumsily, with immense effortand laborious contortions of their bodies.

  Burl had never seen any insect progress in such a slow and ineffectivefashion before. He drew one little insect back with the point of hisspear and examined it from a safe distance. Tiny jaws before the headmet like twin sickles, and the whole body was shaped like a roundeddiamond lozenge.

  Burl knew that no insect of such small size could be dangerous, andleaned over, then took one creature in his hand. It wriggled franticallyand slipped from his fingers, dropping upon the soft yellowcaterpillar-fur he had about his middle. Instantly, as if it were aconjuring trick, the little insect vanished, and Burl searched for amatter of minutes before he found it hidden deep in the long, soft hairsof the fur, resting motionless, and evidently at ease.

  It was a bee-louse, the first larval form of a beetle whose horny armorcould be seen in fragments for yards before the clayey cliff-side.Hidden in the openings of the bee's tunnel, it waited until thebee-grubs farther back in their separate cells should complete theirchanges of form and emerge into the open air, passing over the clusterof tiny creatures at the doorway. As the bees pass, the little bee-licewould clamber in eager haste up their hairy legs and come to rest in thefur about their thoraxes. Then, weeks later, when the bees in turn madeother cells and stocked them with honey for the eggs they would lay, thetiny creatures would slip from their resting-places and be left behindin the fully provisioned cell, to eat not only the honey the bee had solaboriously acquired, but the very grub hatched from the bee's egg.

  Burl had no difficulty in detaching the small insect and casting itaway, but in doing so discovered three more that had hidden themselvesin his furry garment, no doubt thinking it the coat of their natural,though unwilling hosts. He plucked them away, and discovered more, andmore. His garment was the hiding-place for dozens of the creatures.

  Disgusted and annoyed, he went out of the cavern and to a spot somedistance away, where he took off his robe and pounded it with the flatside of his spear to dislodge the visitors. They dropped out one byone, reluctantly, and finally the garment was clean of them. Then Burlheard a shout from the direction of the mining-bee caves, and hastenedtoward the sound.

  It was then drawing toward the time of darkness, but one of thetribesmen had ventured out and found no less than three of the greatimperial mushrooms. Of the three, one had been attacked by a parasiticpurple mould, but the gorgeous yellow of the other two was undimmed, andthe people were soon feasting upon the firm flesh.

  Burl felt a little pang of jealousy, though he joined in the consumptionof the find as readily as the others, and presently drew a little to oneside.

  He cast his eyes across the country, level and unbroken as far as theeye could see. The small clay cliff was the only inequality visible, andits height cut off all vision on one side. But the view toward thehorizon was unobstructed on three sides, and here and there the blackspeck of a monster bee could be seen, droning homeward to its hive orburrow, and sometimes the slender form of a wasp passed overhead, itstransparent wings invisible from the rapidity of their vibrations.

  These flew high in the air, but lower down, barely skimming the tops ofthe many-colored mushrooms and toadstools, fluttering lightly above theswollen fungoids, and touching their dainty proboscides to unspeakablethings in default of the fragrant flowers that were normal food fortheir races--lower down flew the multitudes of butterflies the age ofmushrooms had produced.

  White and yellow and red and brown, pink and blue and purple and green,every shade and every color, every size and almost every shape, theyflitted gaily in the air. There were some so tiny that they would barelyhave shaded Burl's face, and some beneath whose slender bodies he couldhave hidden himself. They flew in a riot of colors and tints above aworld of foul mushroom growths, and turgid, slime-covered ponds.

  Burl, temporarily out of the limelight because of the discovery of astore of food by another member of the tribe, bethought himself of anidea. Soon night would come on, the cloud-bank would turn red in thewest, and then darkness would lean downward from the sky. With thecoming of that time these creatures of the day would seek hiding-places,and the air would be given over to the furry moths that flew by night.He, Burl, would mark the spot where one of the larger creaturesalighted, and would creep up upon it, with his spear held fast.

  His wide blue eyes brightened at the thought, and he sat himself down towatch. After a long time the soft, down-reaching fingers of the nighttouched the shaded aisles of the mushroom forests, and a gentle hazearose above the golden glades. One by one the gorgeous fliers of thedaytime dipped down and furled their painted wings. The overhangingclouds became darker--finally black, and the slow, deliberate rainfallthat lasted all through the night began. Burl rose and crept away intothe darkness, his spear held in readiness.

  Through the black night, beneath deeper blacknesses which were the darkundersides of huge toadstools, creeping silently, with every sensealert for sign of danger or for hope of giant prey, Burl made his slowadvance.

  A glorious butterfly of purple and yellow markings, whose wings spreadout for three yards on either side of its delicately f
ormed body, hadhidden itself barely two hundred yards away. Burl could imagine it, now,preening its slender limbs and combing from its long and slenderproboscis any trace of the delectable foodstuffs on which it had fedduring the day. Burl moved slowly and cautiously forward, all eyes andears.

  He heard an indescribable sound in a thicket a little to his left, andshifted his course. The sound was the faint whistling of air through thebreathing-holes along an insect's abdomen. Then came the delicaterustling of filmy wings being stretched and closed again, and themovement of sharply barbed feet upon the soft earth. Burl moved inbreathless silence, holding his spear before him in readiness to plungeit into the gigantic butterfly's soft body.

  The mushrooms here were grown thickly together, so there was no room forBurl's body to pass between their stalks, and the rounded heads weredeformed and misshapen from their crowdings. Burl spent precious momentsin trying to force a silent passage, but had to own himself beaten. Thenhe clambered up upon the spongy mass of mushroom heads, trusting to luckthat they would sustain his weight.

  The blackness was intense, so that even the forms of objects before himwere lost in obscurity. He moved forward for some ten yards, however,walking gingerly over his precarious foothold. Then he felt rather thansaw the opening before him. A body moved below him.

  Burl raised his spear, and with a yell plunged down on the back of themoving thing, thrusting his spear with all the force he could command.He landed on a shifting form, but his yell of triumph turned to a screamof terror.

  This was not the yielding body of a slender butterfly that he had comeupon, nor had his spear penetrated the creature's soft flesh. He hadfallen upon the shining back of one of the huge, meat-eating beetles,and his spear had slid across the horny armor, and then stuck fast,having pierced only the leathery tissue between the insect's head andthorax.

  Burl's terror was pitiable at the realization, but as nothing to theultimate panic which possessed him when the creature beneath him uttereda grunt of fright and pain, and, spreading its stiff wing-cases wide,shot upward in a crazy, panic-stricken, rocket-like flight toward thesky.