America is a police state, and it is about to be threatened by the most hellish enemy in the world: insects.

When the Agency discovered that Dr. Hellstrom’s Project 40 was a cover for a secret laboratory, a special team of agents was immediately dispatched to discover its true purpose and its weaknesses—it could not be allowed to continue. What they discovered was a nightmare more horrific and hideous than even their paranoid government minds could devise.

First published in Galaxy magazine in 1973 as “Project 40,” Frank Herbert’s vivid imagination and brilliant view of nature and ecology have never been more evident than in this classic of science fiction.

Praise

“A speculative intellect with few rivals in modern SF.”--The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

About the Author(s)

Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert is the author of the 1965 science fiction classic, Dune. He passed away in 1986.

Excerpt

Chapter One

Words of the brood mother, Trova Hellstrom. I welcome the day when I will go into the vats and become one with all of our people.

(Dated October 26, 1896.)

The man with the binoculars squirmed forward on his stomach through the sun-warmed brown grass. There were insects in the grass and he did not like insects, but he ignored them and concentrated on reaching the oak shadows at the hillcrest with minimum disturbance of the growth that concealed him even while it dropped stickers and crawling things on his exposed skin.

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