by Paul Ernst
CHAPTER IV
_The Raid_
Bewilderedly, they looked around them.
Ahead of them, barely to be seen for the trunks of giant treesintervening, was a smoothly-rounded mountain. Majestic and aloof itsoared, dwarfing all near it--the termitary which, yesterday, had beenbut waist-high. There was their eventual goal; but meanwhile theirimmediate surroundings roused their greater interest--and all theiralertness!
When Dennis had said they would find a common grass plot a wild andexotic jungle, he had spoken perhaps more truly than he knew. At anyrate, the jungle they now found themselves in was something to exceedman's wildest dreams.
Far over their heads towered a wilderness of trees. But such trees!Without branches, shooting up and over in graceful, tangling curves,their trunks oddly flat and ribbonlike and yellow-green. It wasimpossible to look on them as grass stems.
Here and there the trees had fallen, presenting a tangled wilderness ofleathery, five-foot-wide strips. Webs of roots, tough and gnarled,whitish in color, curled in all directions to catch the feet and bafflethe eye. It was an appalling underbrush. And it was an underbrush,moreover, in which there was plenty of wild life!
A hairy, pulpy thing, reddish in color, with gauzy wings and a myriadflashing eyes scuttled close to them as though drawn by curiosity toinspect them. As big as an eagle it appeared to them; both grasped theirspears; but soon, with a wild whistle of its wings, it rose up throughthe tangle of underbrush and hummed off. A fruit fly.
* * * * *
And now a monstrous thing appeared far off, to stalk like a balloon ontwenty-foot legs in their direction. With incredible quickness it loomedover them. Six feet through, its body was roughly spherical, and carriedon those amazingly long, jointed legs. It stared at them with beady,cruel eyes, but finally teetered on its way again, leaving themuntouched.
"I'll never again be able to see a daddy longlegs without shivering,"said Jim. His voice was unconsciously sunk to little more than awhisper. This was a world of titanic dangers and fierce alarms. Instinctcautioned both of them to make no more noise than necessary. "We hadbetter make for your termitary at once."
Dennis had been thinking that for some time. But he had been unable tolocate a termite tunnel anywhere. Matt had been supposed to set themdown near one. No doubt, to his own mind, he _had_ placed them near oneof the termite highways. But his ideas of distance were now so radicallydifferent from theirs that Dennis, at least, was unable to see a tunnelopening anywhere.
He spoke his thoughts to Jim. "There must be a tunnel opening somewherevery near us," he concluded. "But I--Good heavens!"
Both crouched in wary alarm, spears held for a thrust, if necessary, atthe frightful thing approaching them from the near jungle.
Thirty feet long, it was, and six feet through, a blunt-ended, untaperedserpent that glistened a moist crimson color in the rays of the sun. Thetrees quaked and rocked as it brushed against them in its deliberateadvance. Dead leaves many feet across and too heavy for the combinedefforts of both men to have budged, were pushed lightly this way andthat as the monster moved. The very ground seemed to shake under itsappalling weight.
"If _that_ comes after us," breathed Jim, "we're through!"
But now Denny drew a long breath of relief.
"Be still," he said. "Make no sound, and no move, and it will probablypass us by. It's blind, and couldn't harm us in any way--unless itrolled on us."
The two stood motionless while the nightmare serpent crashed by. Then,with the earthworm fading into the distance, they resumed their hunt forthe near tunnel entrance.
* * * * *
Jim, whose eyes were more accustomed to searching jungle depths, finallysaw it--a black hole leading down into a small hill about two hundredyards ahead of them. He pointed.
"There we are. Come on."
Laboriously they set out toward it. Laboriously because at every stepsome almost insuperable hurdle barred their way. A fallen grass stalkwas a problem; sometimes they had to curve back on their tracks forsixty or eighty feet in order to get around it. A dead leaf, driftedthere from the trees near at hand, was almost a calamity, necessitatingmore circuitous maneuvering.
With every yard the realization of the stark peril that was now theirsincreased.
A grasshopper, blundering to the ground within a rod of them, nearlycrushed them with its several tons of weight. A bumblebee, as big as aflying elephant and twice as deadly, roared around them for severalminutes as though debating whether or not to attack them, and finallyroared off leaving them shaken and pale. But the most startling andnarrow of their narrow escapes occurred an instant after that.
They had paused for an instant, alert but undecided, to stare at acoldly glaring spider that was barring their path. It was a smallspider, barely more than waist-high. But something in its malevolenteyes made the two men hesitate about attacking it. At the same time itwas squatting in the only clear path in sight, with tangles of stalksand leaves on either side. A journey around the ferocious brute might bea complicated, long-drawn-out affair.
Their problem was decided for them.
* * * * *
Overhead, suddenly roared out a sound such as might have been made by atri-motored Fokker. There was a flash of yellow. The roar increased toan ear-shattering scream. Something swooped so breathlessly and at thesame time so ponderously that the men were knocked flat by the hurricaneof disturbed air.
A fleeting struggle ensued between some vast yellow body and theunfortunate spider. Then the spider, suddenly as immobile as a lump ofstone, was drawn up into the heavens by the roaring yellow thing, anddisappeared. A wasp had struck, and had obtained another meal.
"Thank God that thing had a one-track mind, and was concentrating on thespider," said Jim, with a rather humorless laugh.
Dennis was silent. He was beginning to realize that he knew too muchabout insects for his peace of mind. To Jim, insects had alwaysheretofore been something to brush away or step on, as the circumstancemight indicate. He had no idea, for example, of exactly what fate it washe had just missed. But Denny knew all about it.
He knew that if the wasp had chosen either of them, the chosen one wouldhave felt a stabbing thing like a red-hot sword penetrate to his vitals.He knew that swift paralysis would have followed the thrust. He knewthat then the victim would have been taken back, helpless and motionlessas the spider was, to be laid side by side with other helpless but stillconscious victims in the fetid depths of the wasp's nest. And he knewthat finally an egg would have been laid on the victim's chest; an eggthat would eventually hatch and deliver a bit of life that would calmlyand leisurely devour the paralyzed food supply alive.
"Let's hurry," he suggested, glancing up to see if any more wasps werehovering about.
The lowering tunnel mouth was very near now. Barely twenty yards away.What with the crowding monsters around them, the tunnel began to looklike a haven. Almost at a run, they continued toward it.
* * * * *
Then a commotion like that which might be made by a mighty army soundedin the underbrush behind them. Dennis looked back over his shoulder.
"Hurry!" he gasped, suddenly accelerating his pace into frank flight."Ants...."
Jim glanced back, too--and joined Denny in his flight. Pouring towardthem at express train speed, flinging aside fallen stalks, climbing overobstructions as though no obstructions were there, was coming a grim andarmored horde. Far in the lead, probably the one that had seen the menfirst and started the deadly chase, was a single ant.
The solitary leader was a monster of its kind. As tall as Jim, clashingin its horny armor, it rushed toward the fugitives.
"It's going to reach the tunnel before we do," Jim panted. "We've got tokill the thing--and do it before the rest get to us...."
The monster was on them. Blindly, ferociously it hurled its bulk at thethings that smelled like
termites however little they resembled them.The termite-paste was, in this instance, the most deadly of challenges.
Jim stepped to the fore, with his spear point slanted to receive theonslaught, spear butt grounded at his feet.
Whether the six-legged horror would have had wit enough to comprehendthe nature of the defense offered, and would have striven to circumventit, had time been given it, is a question that will never be answered.For the thing wasn't given the time.
In mid-air it seemed to writhe and try to change the direction of itsleap. But it was on the point and had transfixed itself before itsintelligence, however keen, could have functioned.
The fight, though, was by no means over. With five feet of steelpiercing it through, it whirled with hardly abated vitality towardDennis. Its gargoyle head came close and closer.
* * * * *
Dennis sprang sideways along its length, lifted the pointed bar he held,and dashed it down on what looked to him a vital spot--the unbelievablyslender trunk that held its spatulate abdomen to its armored chest.
There was a crack as the bar smashed down on the weak point. The monstersank quivering to the ground. An instant later it was up, but now itsmovements were dazed and sluggish as it dragged its half-paralyzedabdomen after it, and fumbled and caught on the heavy bar thattransfixed it.
Jim caught the bar and tugged it. "My spear!" he cried. "Denny--help!"
Together the two wrenched to jerk the spear loose from the horny armorof the dying ant. The rest of the pack were very near now.
"We'll have to let it go...." panted Denny.
But at that instant their desperate efforts tore it loose from theconvulsively jerking hulk. They darted into the tunnel mouth with theracing horde scarcely twenty yards behind them.
Without hesitation the ants poured in after them. Jim and Dennis leapedforward, in pitch darkness, now and then bumping heavily against a wallas the tunnel turned, but having at least no trouble with their footing:the floor was as smooth as though man-made.
Behind them they could hear the armored horde crashing along in theblackness. The smashing noise of their progress was growing louder. Thetwo had run perhaps fifty yards in the darkness. Another fifty, and theywould be caught!
But now, just as their eyes--sharpened also by the danger they werein--began to grow accustomed to the gloom, they saw ahead of them athing that might have stepped straight out of a horrible dream.
* * * * *
Six feet of vulnerable, unarmored body, amply protected by horny headand shoulders and ten feet of awful, scissor-mandibles, faced them. Thecreature was doing a strange sort of war dance, swaying its terriblebulk back and forth rhythmically, while its feet remained immovable. Aninstant it did this, then it charged at the two men. Simultaneously thecrashing of the fierce horde behind sounded with appalling nearness--thenoise and odor of the ants preventing the huge termite guard in front ofthe men from recognizing and approving the smell of the termite-pastethat covered their bodies.
"Follow me!" snapped Denny, remembering that the hideous attacking thingbefore them was blind, and gaining from that knowledge swiftinspiration.
Jim gathered his muscles to follow at command. But he almost shoutedaloud as he saw Denny leap--straight toward the enormous, snappingmandibles.
In an instant, however, Denny's idea was made clear. With a slide thatwould have done credit to any baseball player, the entomologistcatapulted on his chest past the snapping peril. Jim followed, with nota foot to spare. They were not past the soft rear-parts of the thing,but they were at least past its horrible jaws. And before the monstercould turn its unwieldy bulk in the tunnel, the ants were upon it.
For a few seconds, blinded to their own danger by the fascination of thestruggle going on before them, the two men witnessed the grim watcher ofthe tunnel as it drove back wave after wave of attacking ants.
Two at a time, the invaders charged that wall of living horn. And two ata time they were swept against the walls, or slashed in two by theenormous mandibles. One against an army; but it was a full minute or sobefore the one began to weaken.
"Come," whispered Dennis, at last. "If what I think is going to happenoccurs, this will be no place for us."
* * * * *
They went ahead, with the din of battle dying behind them, till they sawa small tunnel branching off beside the main stem. Into this theysqueezed. But as Jim started to go farther down its constricted length,Dennis stopped him.
"We're fairly safe here, I think. We'll stay and watch...."
Silently, motionless, they lurked in the entrance of the side-avenue,and peered out at the main avenue they had just left. And now thatavenue began to buzz with traffic.
First, more of the horrors with the enormous scissor-mandibles began tostream past them. In twos and threes, then in whole squads, theylumbered by, bound for the ant army that had invaded their sanctum.
Not quite too far ahead to be out of sight, the defenders halted.Several of their number went forward to help the dying Horatius. Therest lined up in a triple row across a wide patch in the tunnel,presenting a phalanx it would appear that nothing could beat.
"How do they know enough to gather here from distant parts of thishollow mountain?" whispered Jim to Denny. "How do they know their cityis besieged just at this spot, and that their help is needed?"
Dennis shrugged. His eyes were shining. This was the kind of thing hehad come here for. This unhampered observation of a strange and terriblerace at war and at work--it was well worth all the personal risks hemight run.
"No man can answer your question, Jim. They're blind--they can't seetheir danger so as to know how to combat it. They couldn't hear, and bealarmed by, the vibrations of battle for a distance of more than a fewyards. My only guess is that they are constantly and silently commandedby the unknown intelligence, the ruling brain, that hides deep in theearth beneath us and directs these 'soldier' termites in some marvelousway--though itself never seeing or hearing the actual dangers it guardsagainst."
"The queen?" suggested Jim.
Again Denny shrugged. "Who knows? She might be the brains, as well asthe egg layer, of the tribe. But don't talk too much. The vibration ofour voices might lead them to us in spite of their blindness."
* * * * *
Now the main avenue before them was humming with a new kind of traffic.From side to side it was being filled with a new sort of termite. Thesewere smaller than the soldiers, and entirely unprotected by either hornarmor plate or slashing mandibles.
Each of these carried an unwieldy block of gleaming substance. And eachin turn dropped its block in a growing wall behind the savage defendersagainst the ants, and fastened it in place with a thick and viscousbrown liquid that dried almost immediately into a kind of cement.
"The workers," whispered Dennis, enthralled. "The building blocks arehalf-digested wood. The cement is a sort of stuff that exudes fromtheir own bodies. In ten minutes there will be a wall across the tunnelthat no ants on earth could penetrate!"
"But the home guards, the brave lads and all that sort of thing, will beshut off on the outside of the wall with the enemy. And there arehundreds of the enemy," protested Jim.
"A necessary sacrifice," said Denny. "And so perfect is theirorganization that no one, including the soldiers to be sacrificed, evermakes any objection."
Jim shivered a little. "It's terrible, somehow. It's--it's inhuman!"
"Naturally. It's insectian, if there is such a word. And a wise man oncepredicted that the termite organization, being so much more perfect aone than man's, indicated the kind of society man would at some timebuild up for himself. In ten or twelve more centuries we, too, might gooff in millions and deliberately starve to death because the rulingpower decided there were too many people on earth. We, too, might devourour dead because it was essential not to let anything go to waste. We,too, might control our births so that w
e produced astronomers withtelescopes in their heads instead of regular eyes, carpenters withhammer and saw instead of hands, soldiers with poison gas sacs in theirchests so they could breathe death and destruction at will. It would bethe perfect state of society."
"Maybe--but I'm glad I'll be dead before that times comes," said Jimwith another shiver.
* * * * *
By now the wall ahead of them was complete. On the other side of it thesoldier termites stolidly fought on to their certain death. On the nearside, the workers retreated to unknown depths in the great hollowmountain behind them. The main avenue was once more clear, and, savefor a few workers hastening on unknown errands, deserted.
"That act's over," sighed Dennis. "But it may well be no more than acurtain raiser to the acts to come. Shall we be on our way? We're hardlyon the fringe of the termitary yet--and I want to get at the heart ofit, and into the depths far beneath it. Depths of hell, we'll probablyfind them, Jim. But a marvelous hell, and one no man has ever beforeseen."
They left their little haven and moved along the main tunnel toward theheart of the termitary, walking easily upright in this tunnel which wasonly one of many hundreds in the vast, hollowed mountain--which loomedinto the outer sunshine to almost a height of a yard.