viewpoint of a child. What was near was important and what was distant could be ignored. Anything not imminent still seemed to him insignificant—and he was preoccupied.

The source of this sound was important, however. Its origin was a myriad of clickings compounded into a single noise. It was, in fact, the far-away but yet perceptible sound of army ants on the march. The locusts of Earth were very trivial nuisances compared to the army ants of this planet.

Locusts, in past ages on Earth, had eaten all green things. Here in the lowlands were only giant cabbages and a few rank, tenacious growths. Grasshoppers were numerous here, but could never be thought of as a plague; they were incapable of multiplying to the size of locust hordes. Army ants, however....

But Burl did not notice the sound. He moved forward briskly though cautiously, searching the fungus-landscape for any sign of garments, food, and weapons. He confidently expected to find all of them within a short distance. Indeed, he did find food very soon. No more than a half mile ahead he found a small cluster of edible fungi.

With no special elation, Burl broke off a food supply from the largest of them. Naturally, he took more than he could possibly eat at one time. He went on, nibbling at a big piece of mushroom abstractedly, past a broad plain, more than a mile across and broken into odd little hillocks by gradually ripening mushrooms which were unfamiliar to him. In several places the ground had been pushed aside by rounded objects, only the tips showing. Blood-red hemispheres seemed to be forcing themselves through the soil, so they might reach the outer air. Careful not to touch any of them, Burl examined the hillocks curiously as he entered the plain. They were strange, and to Burl most strange things meant danger. In any event, he had two conscious purposes now. He wanted garments and weapons.

Above the plain a wasp hovered, dangling a heavy object beneath its black belly across which ran a single red band. It was the gigantic descendant of the hairy sand-wasp, differing only in size from its far-away, remote ancestors on Earth. It was taking 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 burrow with its caterpillar-prey momentarily laid aside.

It vanished underground into a vertical shaft dug down forty feet or more. It evidently inspected the refuge. Reappearing, it vanished into the hole again, dragging the gray 

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