by Paul Ernst
CHAPTER VIII
_The Coming of the Soldiers_
For a moment Jim was handicapped in fleetness and agility by the factthat his arms were hampered. But the two hideous guards, though each wasa dozen times more powerful than any man its size, were handicapped in achase, too--by the very weight of their enormous mandibles. In theirthundering chase after Jim, they resembled nothing so much as twopowerful but clumsy battleships chasing a relatively puny but much moreagile destroyer.
Behind the great bulk of a paralyzed June bug, Jim halted for a fractionwhile he tore his arms at last free of the clinging brown stuff. Theguards rushed around the June bug at him.
He leaped for the row of hanging cisterns; and there, while he dodgedfrom one to another of the loathsome vats, he thought over a plan thathad come to his racing mind. It wasn't much of a plan, and it seemedutterly futile in the face of the odds against him. But he had boasted,before starting this mad adventure, that Man's wits were superior to anybug's. It was time now to see if his boast had been an empty one.
He feinted toward the far end of the laboratory. The guards, actingalways as if they had a dozen eyes instead of none, rushed to preventthis, cutting across his path and closing the exit with clashing jaws.
Jim raced toward the spot where Denny lay. This was within twenty yardsof the spot where, behind his ring of guards, the big-brained ruler nowcowered. But, while one of the syringe-monsters sent a brown streamblindly toward the leaping, shifting man, no other attacking move wasmade. The soldiers remained chained to their posts. Jim retrieved hisspear--and the first part of his almost hopeless plan had succeeded!
It was good, the feel of that smooth steel. He balanced the ponderousweapon lightly. An ineffective thing against the plates of living armorcovering the scissor-mandibles. But it was not against them--at leastnot directly--that he was planning to use it now!
* * * * *
Once more he darted toward the living cisterns. The soldiers followedclose behind.
Under the bulging abdomen of the termite containing the reddish acid,Jim halted as though to make a defiant last stand against the guards.They stopped, too, then began to advance on him from either side, moreslowly, like two great cats stalking a mouse.
Muscles bunched for a lightning-quick move, eyes narrowed to mere slitsas he calculated distances and fractions of a second. Jim stood therebeneath the great acid vat. The mandibles were almost within slicingdistance now.
The guards opened wide their tremendous jaws, forming two halves of adeadly horn circle that moved swiftly to encompass him. They leaped....
With barely a foot left him, Jim darted back, then poised his spear andshot it straight toward the bulging, live sack that held the acid abovethe guards.
The acid spurted from the spear hole. Jim clenched his fists andunconsciously held his breath till his chest ached, as the scarletliquid spread over the great hulks that twisted and fought in ponderousfrenzy to untangle legs and antennae and mandibles from the snarl theircollision had made of them.
The acid bit through steel and human flesh. On the other hand, it hadnot harmed the horny flipper of the termite worker that had flicked itonto the garden slug. Did that mean that the flipper was immunized tothe stuff, like the lining of the stomach, which is unharmed by acidspowerful enough to decompose other organic master? Or did it mean that_all_ horn was untouched by it?
He groaned aloud. The two great insects had drawn apart by now, and hadsprung from under the shattered acid vat. Again they were on the trail.The maneuver had been fruitless! The chase was on again, whichmeant--since he could not hope to elude the blind but ably directedcreatures forever--that all hope was lost....
* * * * *
Then he shouted with triumph. A massive foreleg dropped from one of theguards, to crash to the floor. Whether or not the acid was able to seton the horny exterior of the termites, it was as deadly to their softinteriors as to any other sort of flesh! The acid had found the joint ofthat foreleg and had eaten through it as hot iron sinks through butter!
Still the injured creature came on, with Jim ever retreating, twistingand dodging from one side of the huge room to the other, leaping overthe smaller paralyzed insects and darting behind the larger carcasses.But now the thing's movements were very slow--as were the movements ofits companion.
Another leg fell hollowly to the floor, like an abandoned piece ofarmor; and then two at once from the second termite.
Both stopped, shuddering convulsively. The agony of those two enormous,dumb and blind things must have been inconceivable. The acid was by nowspending its awful force in their vitals, having seeped down throughevery joint and crevice in their living armor. They were hardly morethan huge shells of horn, kept alive only by their unbelievablevitality.
One more feeble lunge both made in concert, toward the puny adversarythat had outwitted them. Then both, as though at a spoken command,stopped dead still. Next instant they crashed to the floor, shaking itin their fall.
* * * * *
For a second Jim could only stand there and gaze at their monstrousbodies. His plan had succeeded beyond all belief; and realization ofthis success left him dazed for an instant. But it was only for aninstant.
Recovering himself, he raced to the acid vat to recover the spear he'dpunctured it with--only three feet of it was left: the rest had beeneaten away by the powerful stuff--and then wheeled to help Denny.
By now the crackling brown stuff had fallen from Denny, too--enough, atleast for him to struggle to his feet and hasten its cracking by tearingat it with partially loosened hands. As Jim reached him, he freedhimself entirely save for the last few bits that stuck to him as bits ofshell cling to a newborn chick.
They turned together toward the corner where the termite-ruler wascowering behind the guards that surrounded it. Intellect to a degreephenomenal for an insect, this thing might have; but of the blind fiercecourage possessed by its subjects, it assuredly had none! In proof ofthis was the fact that when the half dozen specialized soldiers ringingit round might have leaped to the aid of the two clumsy door guards andprobably have ended the uneven fight in a few minutes, the cravenmonarch had ordered them to stay at their guard-posts rather than takethe risk of remaining unguarded and defenseless for a single moment!Increasing intelligence apparently had resulted (as only too often itdoes in the world of men) in decreasing bravery!
An attack on the thing, closely guarded as it was, seemed hopeless.Those enormous, flat-topped heads held ready to present their steelysurfaces as shields! Those armored terrors with the syringe-heads--oneof which still held a full cargo of the terrible brown fluid that at atouch could bind the limbs of the men once more in the straitjacketembrace! What could the two do against that barrier?
* * * * *
Nevertheless, without a word being spoken, and without a second'shesitation, Jim and Denny advanced on the bristling ring--and the heartof termite power it enclosed. Not only was the slimmest of hopes ofescape rendered impossible while the super-termite lived to direct itssubjects against them--but also they had a reckoning to collect from thething if they could....
Denny glanced down at his hand, from which slow red drops still oozed.
At their approach, the guarding ring shifted so that the soldier whosehead was still bulging with the brown liquid, faced them. The two menstopped, warily. They must draw the sting from that monster before theydared try to come closer.
Jim feinted, leaping in and to one side. The guard turned with him,moved forward a bit as though to discharge a brown stream at him--butheld its fire. Jim moved still closer, then leaped crabwise to one sideas the brain behind the guards telepathed in a panic for its blindminion to release some of its ammunition. The flood missed Jim only byinches.
Denny took his turn at gambling with death. He shouted ringingly, andran a dozen steps straight at the monster that was the principal menace
.At the last moment he flung himself aside as Jim had done--but this timethe stream was not to be drawn.
Still most of the deadly liquid was left; the thing's head bulged withit. And no real move could be made till that head was somehow emptied.
"Your spear!" panted Denny, who was armed only with the three-foot clubwhich was all that was left of the spear that had entered the acid bag.
Jim nodded. As he had done under the acid vat, he drew it back for athrow--and shot it forward with all the power of his magnificentshoulders.
The glittering length of steel slashed into the flabby, living syringe.A fountain of molasseslike liquid gushed out.
* * * * *
The move had not been elaborately reasoned out; it had been a natural;almost instinctive one, simply a blow struck for the purpose of drainingthe dread reservoir of its sticky contents. But the results--as logicaland inevitable as they were astounding and unforeseen--were such thatthe move could not have been wiser had all the gods of war conspired tohelp the two men with shrewd advice.
The searching spear-point had evidently found the brain behind thesyringe of the thing; for it reared in an agony that could only havebeen that of approaching death, and ran amuck.
No longer did the ruling brain that crouched behind it have the power toguide its movements, it seemed. The telepathic communications had beensnapped with that crashing spear-point. It charged blindly, undirected,in havoc-wreaking circles. And in an instant the whole aspect of thebattle had been changed.
The ring of living armor presented by the other soldiers was broken asthe enormous, dying termite charged among them. Furthermore, thefountain of thick brown liquid exuding from its head, smeared the limbsof the soldiers the blind, crazed thing touched, as well as its own.
In thirty seconds or less the wounded giant was down, still alive, butwriggling feebly in a binding sheath of its own poison. And with it, sosmeared as to be utterly out of the struggle, were three of the others.
Quick to seize the advantage, Jim leaped to wrench his spear from theconquered giant's head. And side by side he and Denny started again thecharge against the ruler's guards, which, while still mighty in defense,were by their very nature unable to attack.
* * * * *
Three of these guards were left. Two of them were the freaks with thegreat, armored, bung-heads--and the soft and vulnerable bodies. Thethird was of the syringe type, with invulnerable horn breastplate andbody armor--but with a head that, now its fatal liquid was exhausted,was useless in battle.
"Take 'em one by one," grunted Jim, setting the example by swinging hisspear at the body of the nearest guard. "We'll get at that damn thingwith the overgrown brains yet!"
His spear clanged on iron-hard horn as the termite swung its unwieldyhead to protect its unarmored body. The force of the contact tore thespear from his hand; but almost before it could drop, he had recoveredit. And in that flashing instant Denny had darted in at the side of thething and half disembowelled it with a thrust of the acid-blunted pointof his three-foot bar, and a lightninglike wrench up and to the side.
"Only two left!" cried Jim, stabbing at the flabby head of thesyringe-monster that loomed a foot above his own head. "We'll do it yet,Denny!"
But at that moment a clashing and rattling at the doorway suddenly burstin on the din of the eery fight. Both men stared at each other withsurrender in their eyes.
"Now we _are_ all through!" yelled Jim, almost calm in his completeresignation. "But we'll try to reach that devilish thing before we'redoomed!"
* * * * *
In the heat of the swift, deadly fray, the two men had forgotten for themoment, that these few soldiers ranged against them were not all thefighters in the mound city. But the quaking intellect they were strivingto reach had not forgotten! At some time early in the one-sided struggleit had sent out a soundless call to arms. And now, in the doorway,struggling to force through in numbers too great for the entrance'snarrow limits, were the first of the soldier hordes the ruler hadcommanded to report here for fight duty. And behind them, as far as theeye could see, the tunnel was blocked by yet others marching to killthe creatures that menaced their leader. The abortive effort at escape,it seemed, was doomed.
The strength of desperation augmented Jim's naturally massive muscularpower. He whirled his spear high over his head, clubwise. Disdaining nowto try for a thrust behind and to one side of the great conical headthat faced him, he brought the bar down with sledge-hammer force on thehorn-plated thing.
As though it had been a willow wand, the big bar whistled through theair in its descent. With a crack that could be heard even above thecrashing mandibles of the soldiers pouring across the hundred-yard floortoward the scene of battle, the bar landed on the living buckler of ahead.
The head could not have been actually harmed. But the brain behind itwas patently jarred and numbed for an instant. The great creature stoodstill, its head weaving slowly back and forth. Jim swung his improvisedclub in another terrific arc....
* * * * *
Denny darted around behind the ponderously wheeling bulk of the lastremaining guard to the team of worker termites. He, too, swung his armshigh--over the bloated brain-bag that cowered down between the backsthat bore it--leaping here and there to avoid the blunt mandibles of theburden bearers. He, too, brought down his three-foot length of bar withall the force he could muster, the sight of that swollen, hideous headatop the withered remnants of termite body lending power to his muscles.
And now, just as the nearest of the soldiers reached out for them, thetermite-ruler lay helpless on the backs of its living crutches, with itsattenuated body quivering convulsively, and its balloonlike, fragilehead cleft almost in two halves. It was possible that even that terrificinjury might not be fatal to a thing so great and flexible of brain, andso divorced from the ills as well as the powers of the flesh. But forthe moment at least it was helpless, an inert mass on the patient backsof the termite team.
"To the acid vat," snapped Jim. "We'll make our last stand there."
Dodging the nearest snapping mandibles, Denny ran beside his companionto where the termite, dead now, with its distended abdomen deflated andthe last of the acid trickling from the hole caused by Jim's spear,still hung head down from the ceiling.
The powerful ruler of this vast underground city was crushed--for themoment at least. But the fate of the two humans seemed no less certainthan it had before. For now the huge chamber was swarming with the giantsoldiers. In numbers so great that they crashed and rattled against eachother as they advanced, they marched toward the place where the brokenmonarch still quivered in weak convulsions--and behind which, near theacid vat, the two men crouched.