By Frank Herbert

You can’t beat a yellowed and brittle paperback for $3.00 with no shipping and handling. Thanks Bob’s Books. This story first appeared as a novelette called Greensleeves, in 1965 for Amazing Stories, but was expanded for 1965’s The Green Brain.

True to Herbert’s reputation as science fiction’s eco-futurist, this brief novel explores a world where man has been waging all out war against the billions and trillions of earth’s creepy crawly insects. Rumors of ecological disaster, barren wastelands, and starvation abound, but the truth is not really discovered until a trio of would be adversaries attempt to escape from a precarious position in the middle of the infested Red Zone.

Deep in a cave in the Red Zone is a new intelligence that has evolved to command groups of insects that are capable imitating human beings that infiltrate the Green Zone which is apparently bug free.

The trio race down river trapped in the tight quarters of their escape pod, with suspicions growing until finally they turn on each other, much like the human race trapped on this shrinking earth. The tension explodes, and out of the ashes come new solutions.

Read it.