Part 3 (1/2)

Were they building their city from the sand of the desert, these h.e.l.lish glaciers?

Carter decided to find out.

”Well, here goes!” he muttered, diving straight for that dazzling citadel, one hand on the stick, the other gripping the trigger of his automatic camera. ”This'll make a picture for the Old Man, all right!”

Off to the east the dawn was breaking, and he saw, as he swept down, its pearly pastel shades blending weirdly with that blinding orange glare.

Pressing the trigger now, he drove his screaming plane on with throttle wide--and yes, it was gla.s.s!--gla.s.s of some sort, that crazy nightmare down there.

”Whew!” gasped Carter as waves of dazing heat rose about him. ”Boy, but it's hot! I can't stand much of this. Better get out while the getting's good.”

But he clenched his teeth, and dove on down to see what those fiery demons looked like. Funny they didn't make any effort to attack.

Surely they must see him now.

”Take that, my beauties!--and that!” he gasped, pressing the trigger of his camera furiously.

Then, at a scant two thousand feet, he levelled off, his wings blistering with the heat, and zoomed up again--when to his horror, his engine faltered; died.

In that agonizing moment it came to Jim that this perhaps was why neither the Television News nor the War Department pilots had been able to get pictures of the h.e.l.l below.

Had something about that daring heat killed their motors, too, as it had his? Had they plunged like fluttering, sizzling moths into that inferno of orange flame?

”Well, I guess it's curtains!” he muttered.

A glance at his altimeter showed a scant eighteen hundred now. Another glance showed the western boundary of the city, agonizing miles ahead.

Could he make it? He'd try, anyway!

So, nursing his plane along in a shallow glide, Jim slipped down through that dazing heat.

”Got to keep her speed up!” he told himself, half deliriously, as he steadily lost alt.i.tude. ”Can't pancake here, or I'll be a flapjack!”

At an alt.i.tude of less than a thousand he levelled off again, eased on down, fully expecting to feel his plane burst into flames. But though his eyebrows crisped and the gas must have boiled, the st.u.r.dy little plane made it.

On a long last glide, he put her wheels down on the sandy desert floor, a bare half mile beyond that searing h.e.l.l.

The heat was still terrific but endurable now. He dared breathe deeper; he found his head clearing. But what was the good of it? It was only a respite. The monsters had seen him, all right--no doubt about that! Already they were swooping out of their weird citadel like a pack of furious hornets.

On they came, incredibly fast, moving in a wide half-circle that obviously was planned to envelop him.

Tense with horror, like a doomed man at the stake, Jim watched the flaming phalanx advance. And now he saw what they really were; saw that his first, fantastic guess had been right.

They were _ants_--or at least more like ants than anything on earth--great fiery termites ten feet long, hideous mandibles snapping like steel, hot from the forge, their huge compound eyes burning like greenish electric fire in their livid orange sockets.

And another thing Jim saw, something that explained why the fearful insects had not flown up to attack him in the air. Their wings were gone!

They had molted, were earthbound now.