by Paul Ernst
CHAPTER IX
_The Cannibalistic Orgy_
At first Jim and Dennis could only comprehend the _numbers_ of thefoe--could only grip their bars and resolve to die as expensively aspossible. But then, as a few seconds elapsed during which they wereamazingly not charged by the insects, they began to notice the _actions_of the things.
They were swarming so thickly about the spot where their leader hadfallen that all the men could see was their struggling bodies. And themovements of these soldiers were puzzling in the extreme.
The things seemed, of a sudden, to be fighting among themselves! At anyrate, they were not hurrying to attack the unique, two-legged bugs bythe deflated acid bag.
Instead, they seemed to be having a monstrous attack of colic as theyrolled about their vanquished monarch. With their antennae weavingwildly, and their deadly jaws crashing open and shut along the floor,they were fairly wallowing about that section. And the crowding ring ofsoldiers surrounding the wallowers were fighting like mad things toshove them out of place.
Over each other they struggled and rolled, those on the top and sides ofthe solid mass pressing to get in and down. In stark astonishment, thetwo men watched the inexplicable conflict--and wondered why they had notalready been rushed and sliced to pieces by the steely, ten-footmandibles.
In Dennis' mind, as he watched, wide-eyed, the crazy battle of themonsters around the spot, a memory struggled to be recognized. He hadseen something vaguely like this before, on the upper earth, what wasit?
Abruptly he remembered what it was. And with the recollection--and allthe possibilities of deliverance it suggested--he shouted aloud andclutched Jim's arm with trembling fingers.
* * * * *
That scene of carnage suggested to his mind the day he had seen a cloudof vultures fighting over the carcass of a horse in the desert. The madpushing, the slashing and rending of each other as all fought for thechoice morsels of dead flesh! It was identical.
The termites, he knew, were deliberately cannibalistic. A race soefficiently run, so ingenious in letting nothing of possible value go towaste, would almost inevitably be trained to consume the bodies of deadfellow beings. And now--now ...
The gruesome monarch, that thing of monstrous brain and almostnonexistent body, was no longer the monarch. It was either dead, orutterly helpless. In that moment of death or helplessness--was it beingfallen upon and eaten by the horde of savage things it normally ruled?Did the termite hordes make a practice of devouring their helpless andworn-out directing brains as it was known they devoured all theirworn-out, no longer potent queens?
It certainly looked as if that was what the leaderless horde of soldierswas doing here! Or, at any rate, trying to do; accustomed to being fedby the workers, with mandibles too huge to permit of normalself-feeding, they would probably be able to hardly more than strainclumsily after the choice mass beneath them and absorb it in morsels sosmall as to be more a source of baffled madness than of satisfaction.
Which latter conjecture seemed certainly to support the theory that thesoldier termites were not trying to help their fallen monarch, but weretrampling and slashing it to death in an effort to devour it!
"Quick!" snapped Denny, realizing that it was a chance that must not beoverlooked; that even if he were wrong, they might as well die trying toget to the doorway as be crushed to death where they stood. "Run to theexit!"
"Through that nightmare army?" said Jim, astounded. "Why, we haven't achance of making it!"
"Come, I say!" Denny dragged him a few feet by main force. "I hope--Ibelieve--we won't be bothered. If a pair of jaws crushes us, it willprobably be by accident and not design--the brutes are too busy tobother about us now."
Still gazing at Denny as though he thought him insane, Jim tarried nolonger. He began to edge his way, by Denny's side, toward the distantdoor.
* * * * *
In a very few feet Denny's theory was proved right. None of the giganticinsects tried to attack them. But even so that journey to the exit, adistance of more than the length of a football field, was a ghastlybusiness.
On all sides the giant, armored bodies rushed and shoved. The clash ofhorn breastplates against armored legs, of mandibles and granitic headsagainst others of their kind, was ear-splitting. The monsters, in theireffort to indulge the cannibalistic instinct--at once so horrible to thetwo humans, and so fortunate for them--were completely heedless of theirown welfare and everything else.
Like giant ice cakes careening in the break-up of a flood, they crunchedagainst each other; and like loose ice cakes in a flood, every now andthen one was forced clear up off its feet by the surrounding rush, tofall back to the floor a moment later with a resounding crash.
It would seem an impossibility for any two living things as relativelyweak and soft as men to find a way through such a maelstrom. Yet--Jimand Denny did.
Several times one or the other was knocked down by a charging, blindmonster. Once Denny was almost caught and crushed between two of therock-hard things. Once Jim only saved himself from a pair of terrific,snapping jaws that rushed his way, by using his short spear as a poleand vaulting up and over them onto the monster's back, where he wasallowed to slide off unheeded as the maddened thing continued in itsrush. But they reached the door!
There they gazed fearfully down the corridor, sure there would behundreds more of the soldiers crowding to answer the last call of theirruling, master mind. But only a few stragglers were to be seen, andthese, called to the grim feast by some sort of instinct or perhaps somesense of smell, rushed past with as little attempt to attack them as therest.
The two men ran down the tunnel, turned a corner into an ascendingtunnel they remembered from their trip in, raced up this, heartspounding wildly with the growing hope of actually escaping from themound with their lives--and then halted. Jim cursed bitterly,impotently.
* * * * *
Branching off from this second tunnel, all looking exactly alike and allidentical in the degree of their upward slant, were five more tunnels!Like spokes of a wheel, they radiated out and up; and no man could havetold which to take. They stopped, in despair, as this phase of theirsituation, unthought of till now, was brought home to them.
"God! The place is a labyrinth! How can we ever find, our way out?"groaned Jim.
"All we can do is keep going on--and up," said Denny, with a shake ofhis head.
At random, they picked the center of the five underground passages, andwalked swiftly along it. And now they began to come in contact againwith the normal life of the vast mound city.
Here soldiers were patrolling up and down with seeming aimlessness,while near-by workers labored at shoring up collapsing sections oftunnel wall, or at carrying staggering large loads of food from oneunknown place to another. But now there seemed to be a certain lack ofsystem, of coordination, in the movements of the termites.
"Damned funny these soldiers aren't joining in the rush with the rest toget to the laboratory in answer to the command of the ruler," said Jim,warily watching lest one of the gigantic guards end the queer truce andrush them. "And look at the way the workers move--just running aimlesslyback and forth with their loads. I don't get it."
* * * * *
"I think I do," said Denny. He pitched his voice low, and signed for Jimto walk more slowly, on tiptoe. "These soldiers aren't with the restbecause only a certain number was called. It's simple mathematics: ifall the soldiers in the mound tried to get in that room back there wherethe ruler was, they'd get jammed immovably in the tunnels near-by. Theking-termite, with all the astounding reasoning power it must have had,called only as many as could crowd in, in order to avoid a jam in whichhalf the soldiers in the city might be killed.
"As for the aimless way the workers are moving--you forget they haven'ta leader any more. They are working by habit and instinct only, carryingburdens, building new wall sections, a
ccording to blind custom alone,and regardless of whether the carrying and building are necessary."
"In that case," sighed Jim, "we'd have a good chance to getting out ofhere--if we could only find the path!"
"I'm sure we can find the path, and I'm sure we can get out," said Dennyconfidently. "For in a mound of this size there must be many pathsleading to the upper world, and there is no reason--with the omnipotentruling brain dead and eaten--why any of these creatures should try tostop or fight us."
Which was good logic--but which left entirely out of consideration thatone factor which man so often forgets but is still inevitably governedby: the unpredictable whims of fate. For on their way out they were toblunder into the one place in all the mound which was--death or no deathof the ruling power--absolutely deadly to them; and were to arouse theterrible race about them to frenzies that were based, not on anyreasoned thought processes, or which in any case they were of themselvesincapable, but on the more grim and fanatic foundations of unreasoned,primal, outraged instinct.
CHAPTER X
_The Termite Queen_
The slope of the upward-leading tunnels had become less noticeable, fromwhich fact the two men reasoned hopefully that they were near groundlevel. And now they began to see termite workers bearing a new sort ofburden: termite eggs, sickly looking lumps that had only too obviouslybeen newly laid.
A file of workers approached. In a long line, each with an egg, lookingfor all the world like a file of human porters bearing the equipment ofa jungle expedition. Slowly, the things moved--carefully--bound for somesuch vast incubator as the one Jim and Dennis had stumbled into somehours before.
"We want to go in the opposite direction from them," Denny whispered."They're coming from the Queen termite's den--and we don't want toblunder in there!"
They about-faced, and moved with the workers till they came to thenearest passage branching away from the avenue on which the filemarched. Denny dabbed at his forehead.
"Lucky those things came in time to warn us," he said. "From whatlittle science knows of the termites, I can guess that the Queen'schamber would be a chamber of horrors for us!"
They walked on, searching for another main avenue, such as the one theyhad left; which might be an artery leading to the outside world. Butthey had not gone far when they were again forced to change theircourse.
Ahead of them, marching in regular formation, came a band of soldierslarger than the usual squad. They filled the tunnel so compactly thatthe two men did not dare try to squeeze past them.
"Here," whispered Jim, pointing to a side tunnel.
* * * * *
They stole down it; but in a moment it developed that their choice hadbeen an unlucky one: the crash of the heavy, armored bodies continued tofollow them. The soldiers had turned down that tunnel, too.
"Are they after us again?" whispered Jim.
Denny shrugged. There was still a remnant of the disguisingtermite-paste on their bodies to fool the insects. It seemed impossiblethat the ruling brain behind them had survived the cannibalistic rushand taken command of the mound again? But--was anything impossible inthis world of terror?
Steadily the two were forced to retreat before the measured advance ofthe guards. And now the tunnel they were in broadened--and abruptlyended in another of the vast chambers that seemed to dot the mound cityat fairly regular intervals. But this one appeared to be humming withactivity, if the noise coming from within it was any indication.
The two passed at the threshold, dismayed at the evidence ofsuper-activity in the chamber ahead of them. But while they pausedthere, the soldiers behind them rounded a corner. They could not goback. There were no more of the opportune side entrances to dodge into.All they could do was retreat still farther--into the vast room beforethem.
They did so, reluctantly, moving step by step as the marching bandbehind them crashed rhythmically along. But once inside the greatchamber, they shrank back against the wall with whispered imprecationsat the final, desperate trick fate had played on them.
Their path of retreat, leading around labyrinthine corners andby-passages, had doubled back on them without their having been aware ofit. They were in the very place Dennis had wished so much to avoid--thechamber of the Queen termite!
* * * * *
High overhead, almost lost in the dimness, was the arching roof. Aroundthe circular walls were innumerable tunnel entrances. At each of thesestood a termite guard--picked soldiers half again as large as theordinary soldiers, with mandibles so great and heavy that it was amarvel the insects could support them.
Hurrying here and there were worker termites. And these were centeringtheir activities on an object as fearful as anything that ever hauntedthe mind of a madman.
Up and back, this object loomed, half filling the enormous room like azeppelin in a hangar. And like a zeppelin--a blunt, bloatedzeppelin--the object was circular and tapered at both ends. But thezeppelin was a living thing--a horrible travesty of life.
At the end facing the two men was a tiny dot of a head, almost lost inthe whitish mass of the enormous body. Around this a cluster of workertermites pressed, giving nourishment to the insatiable mouth. At thefar end of the vast shape another cluster of termites thronged. Andthese bore away a constant stream of termite eggs--that dripped from thezeppelinlike, crammed belly at the rate of almost one a second.
Her Highness, the Queen--two hundred tons of flabby, greasy flesh,immobile, able only to eat and lay eggs.
"My God," whispered Jim. Utterly unstrung, he gazed at that mighty,loathsome mass, listening to its snapping jaws as it took on the tons ofnourishment needed for its machinelike functioning. "My God!"
* * * * *
Instinctively he whirled to run back through the entrance they had comethrough. But now, with the admittance of the soldier band that hadpressed them in here, the entrance was guarded again by one of thegiants permanently stationed there.
"What had we better do?" he breathed to Denny.
Dennis stared helplessly around. He had noticed that the termites inhere were acting differently from the others they had encountered sinceleaving the lair of the termite-ruler. These were moving uneasily,restlessly, stopping now and again with waving, inquisitive antennae. Itlooked ominously as though they had sensed the presence of intrudershere in the sanctum where their race was born, and were dimly wonderingwhat to do.
"We might try each tunnel mouth, one by one, on the chance that we canfind a careless guard somewhere," Dennis muttered at last. "But forheaven's sake don't touch any of the brutes! I think that at theslightest signal the whole mob of the things would spring on us and tearus to pieces. Most of the paste is rubbed off by now."
Jim nodded. He had no desire to brush against one of the colossal,special guard of soldiers if he could help it, or against any of therelatively weak workers that might give the signal of alarm.
Stealing silently along among the blind, instinctively agitatedmonsters, they worked a circuitous way from one exit to another. Butnowhere did any chance of getting out of the place present itself.Across each tunnel mouth was placed one of the enormous guards,twelve-foot mandibles opened like a waiting steel trap.
Halfway around the tremendous room they went, without mishap, but alsowithout finding an exit they could slip through. And then, in the rearof the vast bulk of the Queen, it happened.
* * * * *
One of the worker termites, bearing an egg in its mandibles, faltered,and dropped its precious burden. The thing fell squashily to the floorwithin a foot of Jim, who had brushed against the wall to let the burdenbearer pass without touching him. Jim, attempting to sidestep away fromthe spot, as the worker put out blind feelers, to search for the droppedegg, lost his balance for a fraction of a second--and stepped squarelyon the nauseous ovoid!
Frantically he stepped out of the mess he had created, and the two stoodstaring at each oth
er, holding their breaths, fearful of what mightresult from that accidental destruction of budding termite life.
The worker, feeling about for its burden, came in contact with theshattered egg. It drew back abruptly, as though in perplexity: soft andtough, the egg should not have broken merely from being dropped. Then itfelt again....
For a few seconds nothing whatever occurred. The two breathed again, andbegan to hope that their fears had been meaningless. But that was notto be.
The worker termite finally began to rush back and forth, antennaewhipping from side to side, patently trying to discover the cause of thetragedy. And Jim and Dennis rushed back and forth, too, engaged in adeadly game of blind man's buff as they tried to avoid the questingantennae--which, registering sensation by touch instead of smell, wasnot to be fooled by the last disappearing traces of the termite-paste.
The game did not last long. One of the feelers whipped against Dennis'legs--and hell broke loose!
* * * * *
The worker emitted a sound like the shriek of a circular saw gone wild.And on the instant all its fellows, and the gigantic guards at theexits, stiffened to rigid attention.
Again came the roaring sound, desolate, terrible, at once a call to armsand a funeral dirge. And now every termite in the dim, cavernous chamberbegan the battle dance Jim and Dennis had seen performed by the termiteguard when it was confronted by the horde of ants. Not moving theirfeet, they commenced to sway back and forth, while long, rhythmicshudders convulsed their grotesque bodies. It was a formal declarationof war against whatever mad things had dared invade the fountain-springof their race.
Jim and Dennis leaped toward the nearest exit, determined to take anyrisk on the chance of escaping from the horde of things now aware oftheir presence and ravening for their blood. But in this exit--the onlyone accessible to them now--the guard had commenced the jaw-clashingthat closed openings more efficiently than steel plates could have done.An attempt to pass those enormous mandibles presented no risk; what itpresented was suicide.
By now the dread war dance had stopped. All the termites in the chamberwere converging slowly toward the spot where the termite had given therasping alarm. Even the workers, ordinarily quick to run from danger,were advancing instead of retreating. Of all living things in the roomonly the Queen, unable to move her mountainous bulk, did not join in theslow, sure move to slash to pieces the hated trespassers.
Again the questing antennae of the worker that had given the alarmtouched one of the men. With a deafening rasp it sprang toward them,blind but terrible.
* * * * *
Dennis swung his steel club. It clashed against the scarcely less hardmandibles of the worker, not harming them, but seeming to daze theinsect a little.
Jim followed the act by plunging his longer spear into the soft body. Nowords were wasted by the two men. It was a fight for life again, withthe odds even more heavily against them than they had been in theruler's lair.
Behind them, blocking the only exit they had any chance whatever ofreaching, the guard continued its clashing mandible duty. If only it,too, would join in the blind search for the trespassers, thus givingthem an opportunity of slipping out! But the monster gave no indicationof doing such a thing.
Another worker termite flung its bulk at them. Its mandibles, tiny incomparison with those of the great guards but still capable of slicingeither of the men in two, snapped perilously close to Jim's body. Therewas a second's concerted action: Dennis' club lashed against the thing'shead, Jim's spear tore into the vulnerable body.
Ringing them round, the main band of the termites moved closer. Theymoved slowly, in no hurry, apparently only too sure the enemy could notpossibly get away from them. And the two worker termites killed weremere incidents compared to the avalanche of mandible and horn that wouldbe on them in about thirty seconds.
* * * * *
However, the two dead termites gave Jim a sudden inspiration. He glancedfrom the carcasses to the mechanically moving, deadly jaws of the guardthat barred the nearest exit.
"Denny," he panted, "feed it this."
He pointed first toward the nearest carcass and then toward therock-crushing, steadily snapping jaws.
"I'll try to hold the bridge here--"
But Dennis was on his way, catching Jim's idea with the first gesture.
He stooped down, and caught the dead termite by two of its legs. Closeto two hundred pounds the mass weighed; but strength is an inconstantthing, and increases or decreases according to the vital needs oflife-preservation.
Clear of the floor, Denny lifted the bulk, and with its repulsive weightclasped in his arms, he advanced toward the mighty guard.
Behind him, Jim glared desperately at the third termite that was aboutto attack. No feeble worker this, but one of the most colossal of allthe Queen's guard.
Towering over Jim, mandibles wide open and ready to smash over its prey,the giant reared toward him. And behind him came the main body of thehorde. It was painfully evident that the clash with the lone soldierwould be the last single encounter. After that the hundreds of the herdwould be on the men, tearing and trampling them to bits.
During the thing's steady, inexorable approach, which had taken far lesstime than that required to tell of it, Jim had clenched his fingersaround his spear and calculated as to the best way to hold the monsteroff for just the few seconds needed by Denny to try the plan suggested.
The monster ended its slow advance in a lunge, that, for all its greatbulk, was lightning quick. But a shade more quickly, Jim sidestepped theterrible mandibles, leaped back along the armored body till he hadreached the unarmored rear, and thrust his spear home with all hisforce.
* * * * *
The hideous guard reared with pain and rage. But this was no workertermite, to be killed with a thrust. As though nothing had happened, thehuge hulk wheeled around. The mandibles crashed shut with deafeningforce over the space Jim had occupied but an instant before.
And now the inner circle of the multiple ring of death was within a fewyards. Jim leaped to put himself behind the living barrier of theattacking soldier. But it was only a matter of a few seconds now, beforehe and Denny would be caught in the blind bull charges of the woundedsoldier or by the surrounding ring of maddened termites.
"Denny?" he shouted imploringly over his shoulder, not daring to takehis eyes off the danger in front of him.
"Soon!" he heard Dennis pant.
The entomologist had got almost up to the twelve-foot jaws that closedthe exit. He paused a moment, gathering strength. Then he heaved thesoft mass of the dead termite into the clashing mandibles.
"Jim!" he cried, as the burden left his arms.
Jim turned, raced the few yards intervening between the ring of deathand the doorway. Together they waited to see if their forlorn hope wouldwork....
It could not have lasted more than a second, that wait, yet it seemed atleast ten minutes. And then both cried aloud--and crouched to repeat themaneuver that had saved them from death when they had first entered thisinsect hell.
For the enormous, smashing jaws had caught the body of the workertermite with ferocious eagerness, and were worrying the inanimatecarcass with terrible force.
The great jaws were occupied just an instant before the monster sensedthat it was one of his own kind that he was mangling so thoroughly. Butin that instant Jim had slid on his chest along the floor past thearmored head and shoulders, and Dennis had leaped to follow.
But Dennis was not to get off so lightly.
* * * * *
The charging ring of termites had closed completely in by now. Thesnapping mandibles of the nearest one were up to him. They opened; shut.
They caught Denny on the back swing, knocking him six feet away insteadof slicing him wide open. Denny got to his feet almost before he hadlanded; but between him and the exit was the
bulk of the termite thathad felled him, and in the doorway the guard had dropped the body it wasslashing to bits, and had recommenced its slashing jaw movements.
"Jim! For God's sake...." shrieked the doomed man.
Beside himself, he managed to hurdle clear over the massive insectbetween him and the doorway. But there he stopped, with the guard'sgreat mandibles fanning the air less than a foot from him. "Jim!" camethe agonized cry again.
And behind the gigantic termite, in the tunnel, with at least apossibility of safety lying open before him, Jim heard and answered thecall.
Savagely he plunged his spear into the unarmored rear of the guard, toreit out, thrust again....
The thing heaved and struggled to turn, shaking the tunnel with itsrasping anger--and taking its attention at last away from the duty ofclosing that tunnel mouth.
With no room to run and slide, Denny fell to the floor and commenced tocreep through the narrow space between the trampling guard's bulk andthe wall. He felt his left arm and shoulder go numb as he was crushedfor a fleeting instant against the wood partition. Broken, he thoughtdimly. The collar-bone. But still he kept moving on.
* * * * *
He moved in a haze of pain and weakness. He did not see that he hadpassed clear of the menacing hulk--that his slow crawling had beenmultiplied in results by the fact that the termite guard had finally,stopped trying to turn in the narrow passage and had rushed ahead intothe Queen's chamber, to turn there and come dashing back. He did not seethat Jim was finally disarmed and completely helpless, with his spearburied beyond recovery in the bulk of the maddened guard. He hardly feltJim's supporting arm as it was thrust under him, to half drag and halflead him along the tunnel away from the horde behind.
He only knew that they were moving forward, with the din behind them--asthe grim cohorts of the Queen fought to all crowd ahead in the narrowpassage at once--keeping pace with them in spite of all they could do tomake haste. And he only knew that finally Jim gave a great shout, andthat suddenly they were standing under a rent in a tunnel roof throughwhich sunlight was pouring.
Several worker termites were laboring to close up the chink and cut offthe sunlight; but these, not being of the band outraged by thedestruction of the egg in the Queen's chamber, moved swiftly away as thetwo men advanced.
Jim reached up and tore with frantic hands at the crumbling edges of therotten wood overhead. Ignoring his gashed and bleeding fingers, hewidened the breach till he, could pull himself up through it. Then hereached down, caught Denny's sound arm, and raised him by main strength.
They were in the clear air of the outer world once more, on a terrace inthe mound low down near its base.
Jim and Dennis half slid, half fell down the near terrace slope to thejungle of grass stalks beneath. And there Denny bit his lip sharply,struggled against the weakness overcoming him--and fainted.
* * * * *
Jim caught him up over his shoulder, and staggered forward through thejungle. Behind, the termites poured out through the broken wall in anenraged flood, braving even the sunlight and outer air in their chase ofthe invaders that had, profaned the Queen's chamber.
"Matt!" shouted Jim with all the strength of his lungs, forgetting thathis voice could not be heard by normal human ears. "Matt!"
But if Matthew Breen could not hear, he could see. The slightestinattention at his guard duty at that second would have resulted in twodeaths. But he was on the alert.
Jim saw the sun blotted out swiftly, saw a huge, pinkish-gray wall swoopdown between him and Denny, and the deadly horde of termites pursuingthem. Then he saw another pinkish-gray wall, in which was setsomething--a shallow, regular, hollowed plateau--that looked familiar.The patty-dish in which he and Denny had been carried to this place ofdeath and horror.
Jim knew he could not clamber into that great plateau; he was tooexhausted. But the necessity was spared him.
The patty-dish scooped down under him, uprooting huge trees, digging upsquare yards of earth all around him. He was flung from his feet to rollhelplessly beside the unconscious Dennis, as men and earth and all wereshifted from the dish's rim to its center.
Like gigantic express elevator the dish soared dizzily up in thetremendous hand that held it, over the vast pile of the mound city, overall the surrounding landscape, and was borne back toward Matt'sautomobile--and toward the laboratory where the bulk of their bodieswaited, in protoplasmic form, in the dome of the glass bell.
CHAPTER XI
_Back to Normal_
"I think," said Jim, loading his pipe, "that now I really will settledown. No other adventures could seem like much after the one"--herepressed a shiver--"we've just passed through."
"And I think," said Dennis, following his own line of thought, "that asfar the world of science goes, my exploring has been for nothing. Try totell sober scientists of the specially evolved, huge-brained thing thatrules the termite tribe and forms and holds the marvelous organizationit has? Try to tell them--now that Matt has to stubbornly decided tokeep secret his work with element eighty-five--that we were reduced toa quarter of an inch in height, and that we went through a mound andsaw at first hand the things we describe? They'd shut me in an asylum!"
The two were sitting in Denny's apartment, once more conventionallyclothed, and again their normal five feet eleven, and six feet two.
The reassembling of Denny's body had done odd things. Jim had set thebroken bone with rough skill before stepping under the glass bell; andthe fracture had been healed automatically by the growing deposit ofprotoplasmic substance resulting when Matt threw his switch.
But Denny's missing finger had baffled the reversing process. With notiny pattern to form around, the former substance of his finger hadsimply gathered in a shapeless knob of flesh and bone like a tumorousgrowth sprouting from his hand. It would have to be amputated.
But the marvels performed under Matthew Breen's glass bell were farsecondary to the two men. The things they had recently seen andundergone, and the possibility of telling folks about them, occupiedtheir attention exclusively.
"Then you're not going to write a monograph on the real nature oftermites, as you'd planned?" Jim asked Denny.
Denny shrugged dispiritedly. "People would take it for a joke instead ofa scientific treatise if I did," he said.
Jim puffed reflectively at his pipe. A thought had come, to him thatseemed to hold certain elements of possibility.
"Why not do this," he suggested: "Write it up first as a straight story,and see if people will believe it. Then, if they do, you can rewrite itas scientific fact."
And eventually they decided to do just that. And--here is their story.
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Astounding Stories_ June 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.