Explore "Planet of Dread" by Murray Leinster on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When morning came, its arrival was the exact reversal of the coming of / night. In the beginning there was darkness, and in the darkness there / was horror.
The creatures of the night untiringly filled the air with sound, and the / sounds were discordant and gruesome and revolting. The creatures of this / planet were gigantic. They should have adopted new customs appropriate / to the dignity of their increased size. But they hadn't. The manners and / customs of insects are immutable. They feed upon specific prey -- spiders / are an exception, but they are not insects at all -- and they lay their / eggs in specific fashion in specific places, and they behave according / to instincts which are so detailed as to leave them no choice at all in / their actions. They move blindly about, reacting like automata of / infinite complexity which are capable of nothing not built into them / from the beginning. Centuries and millenia do not change them. Travel / across star-clusters leaves them with exactly the capacities for / reaction that their remotest ancestors had, before men lifted off / ancient Earth's green surface.