times he laughed, andthe _marigees_ laughed. Sometimes, the queerly shaped Venusian treestalked too, but their voices were quieter. The trees were submissive,they were good subjects.
Sometimes, fantastic thoughts went through his head. The race of trees,the pure race of trees that never interbred, that stood firm always.Someday the trees--
But that was just a dream, a fancy. More real were the _marigees_ andthe _kifs_. They were the ones who persecuted him. There was the_marigee_ who would shriek "_All is lost!_" He had shot at it a hundredtimes with his needle gun, but always it flew away unharmed. Sometimesit did not even fly away.
"_All is lost!_"
At last he wasted no more needle darts. He stalked it to strangle itwith his bare hands. That was better. On what might have been thethousandth try, he caught it and killed it, and there was warm blood onhis hands and feathers were flying.
That should have ended it, but it didn't. Now there were a dozen_marigees_ that screamed that all was lost. Perhaps there had been adozen all along. Now he merely shook his fist at them or threw stones.
The _kifs_, the Venusian equivalent of the Terran ant, stole his food.But that did not matter; there was plenty of food. There had been acache of it in the shack, meant to restock a space-cruiser, and neverused. The _kifs_ would not get at it until he opened a can, but then,unless he ate it all at once, they ate whatever he left. That did notmatter. There were plenty of cans. And always fresh fruit from thejungle. Always in season, for there were no seasons here, except therains.
But the _kifs_ served a purpose for him. They kept him sane, by givinghim something tangible, something inferior, to hate.
Oh, it wasn't hatred, at first. Mere annoyance. He killed them in aroutine sort of way at first. But they kept coming back. Always therewere _kifs_. In his larder, wherever he did it. In his bed. He sat thelegs of the cot in dishes of gasoline, but the _kifs_ still got in.Perhaps they dropped from the ceiling, although he never caught themdoing it.
They bothered his sleep. He'd feel them running over him, even when he'dspent an hour picking the bed clean of them by the light of the carbidelantern. They scurried with tickling little feet and he could notsleep.
He grew to hate them, and the very misery of his nights made his daysmore tolerable by giving them an increasing purpose. A pogrom againstthe _kifs_. He sought out their holes by patiently following one bearinga bit of food, and he poured gasoline into the hole and the earth aroundit, taking satisfaction in the thought of the writhings in agony below.He went about hunting _kifs_, to step on them. To stamp them out. Hemust have killed millions of _kifs_.
But always there were as many left. Never did their number seem todiminish in the slightest. Like the Martians--but unlike the Martians,they did not fight back.
Theirs was the passive resistance of a vast productivity that bred_kifs_ ceaselessly, overwhelmingly, billions to replace millions.Individual _kifs_ could be killed, and he took savage satisfaction intheir killing, but he knew his methods were useless save for thepleasure and the purpose they gave him. Sometimes the pleasure wouldpall in the shadow of its futility, and he would dream of mechanizedmeans of killing them.
He read carefully what little material there was in his tiny libraryabout the _kif_. They were astonishingly like the ants of Terra. So muchthat there had been speculation about their relationship--that didn'tinterest him. How could they be killed, _en masse_? Once a year, for abrief period, they took on the characteristics of the army ants ofTerra. They came from their holes in endless numbers and swepteverything before them in their devouring march. He wet his lips when heread that. Perhaps the opportunity would come then to destroy, todestroy, _and destroy_.
Almost, Mr. Smith forgot people and the solar system and what had been.Here in this new world, there was only he and the _kifs_. The _baroons_and the _marigees_ didn't count. They had no order and no system. The_kifs_--
In the intensity of his hatred there slowly filtered through a grudgingadmiration. The _kifs_ were true totalitarians. They practiced what hehad preached to a mightier race, practiced it with a thoroughness beyondthe kind of man to comprehend.
Theirs the complete submergence of the individual to the state, theirsthe complete ruthlessness of the true conqueror, the perfect selflessbravery of the true soldier.
But they got into his bed, into his clothes, into his food.
They crawled with intolerable tickling feet.
Nights he walked the beach, and that night was one of the noisy nights.There were high-flying, high-whining jet-craft up there in the moonlightsky and their shadows dappled the black water of the sea. The planes,the rockets, the jet-craft, they were what had ravaged his cities, hadturned his railroads into twisted steel, had dropped their H-Bombs onhis most vital factories.
He shook his fist at them and shrieked imprecations at the sky.
And when he had ceased shouting, there were voices on the beach.Conrad's voice in his ear, as it had sounded that day when Conrad hadwalked into the palace, white-faced, and forgotten the salute. "There isa breakthrough at Denver, Number One! Toronto and Monterey are indanger. And in the other hemispheres--" His voice cracked. "--the damnedMartians and the traitors from Luna are driving over the Argentine.Others have landed near New Petrograd. It is a rout. All is lost!"
Voices crying, "Number One, _hail_! Number One, _hail_!"
A sea of hysterical voices. "Number One, _hail_! Number One--"
A voice that was louder, higher, more frenetic than any of the others.His memory of his own voice, calculated but inspired, as he'd heard iton play-backs of his own speeches.
The voices of children chanting, "To thee, O Number One--" He couldn'tremember the rest of the words, but they had been beautiful words. Thathad been at the public school meet in the New Los Angeles. How strangethat he should remember, here and now, the very tone of his voice andinflection, the shining wonder in their children's eyes. Children only,but they were willing to kill and die, _for him_, convinced that allthat was needed to cure the ills of the race was a suitable leader tofollow.
"_All is lost!_"
And suddenly the monster jet-craft were swooping downward and starkly herealized what a clear target he presented, here against the whitemoonlit beach. They must see him.
The crescendo of motors as he ran, sobbing now in fear, for the cover ofthe jungle. Into the screening shadow of the giant trees, and thesheltering blackness.
He stumbled and fell, was up and running again. And now his eyes couldsee in the dimmer moonlight that filtered through the branches overhead.Stirrings there, in the branches. Stirrings and voices in the night.Voices in and of the night. Whispers and shrieks of pain. Yes, he'dshown them pain, and now their tortured voices ran with him through theknee-deep, night-wet grass among the trees.
The night was hideous with noise. Red noises, an almost _tangible_ dinthat he could nearly _feel_ as well as he could see and hear it. Andafter a while his breath came raspingly, and there was a thumping soundthat was the beating of his heart and the beating of the night.
And then, he could run no longer, and he clutched a tree to keep fromfalling, his arms trembling about it, and his face pressed against theimpersonal roughness of the bark. There was no wind, but the tree swayedback and forth and his body with it.
Then, as abruptly as light goes on when a switch is thrown, the noisevanished. Utter silence, and at last he was strong enough to let go hisgrip on the tree and stand erect again, to look about to get hisbearings.
One tree was like another, and for a moment he thought he'd have to stayhere until daylight. Then he remembered that the sound of the surf wouldgive him his directions. He listened hard and heard it, faint and faraway.
And another sound--one that he had never heard before--faint, also, butseeming to come from his right and quite near.
He looked that way, and there was a patch of opening in the trees above.The grass was waving strangely in that area of moonlight. It moved,although there was no breeze to move it. And there was
an almost sudden_edge_, beyond which the blades thinned out quickly to barrenness.
And the sound--it was like the sound of the surf, but it was continuous.It was more like the rustle of dry leaves, but there were no dry leavesto rustle.
Mr. Smith took a step toward the sound and looked down. More grass bent,and fell, and vanished, even as he looked. Beyond the moving edge ofdevastation was a brown floor of the moving bodies of _kifs_.
Row after row, orderly rank after orderly rank, marching resistlesslyonward. Billions of _kifs_, an army of _kifs_, eating their way acrossthe night.
Fascinated, he stared down at them. There was no danger, for theirprogress was slow. He retreated a step to keep beyond their front rank.The sound, then, was the sound of chewing.
He could see one edge of the column, and it was a neat, orderly edge.And there was discipline, for the ones on the outside were larger thanthose in the center.
He retreated another step--and then, quite suddenly, his body
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