The Micones showed no signs of moving, so Sturm announced that they'd best proceed on foot. The gnomes were already untied and sliding off the backs of their mounts. Sturm got down and patted the Micone on the head, a habit he'd always had since owning his first horse.
The giant ant cocked its wedge-shaped head and clacked its mandibles together. A response of pleasure? Sturm wonder ed. It was hard to tell.
The rubbish around them was knee-deep to Sturm and chest-deep to the gnomes. Sturm found Sighter examining a piece of the red leather with his magnifying glass.
"Hm, doesn't look like vegetable material," said Sighter.
Cutwood tried writing on the soft brown parchment-stuff, but it wouldn't take a pencil mark; it was too soft and supple.
Sturm tried to tear a sheet of it in two, but couldn't do it.
"This would make admirable boot tops," he said. "I won der what it is?"
"I would say it's some form of animal hide," said Sighter, snapping his glass back into its case.
"We haven't found any animals on Lunitari, except the dragon," Stutts objected. "Even the Micones are more min eral than animal."
"Maybe," Wingover said slowly, "there are other kinds of animals in these caves. Animals we haven't seen before."
Rainspot swallowed audibly. "Gnome-eating animals?"
" "Bosh," said Sighter. "The Micones wouldn't allow any thing dangerous to live near the dragon eggs. Stop scaring yourselves."
Flash was off a little ways, touching the white crust on the walls. He plucked a tack hammer from his tool-laden belt and butted a cold steel chisel against the wall. Back swung the hammer.
Bong! The little hammer hit the chisel, and the whole cavern reverberated with the sound. So powerful were the vibrations, that the gnomes lost their footing and fell in the thick rubbish. Sturm braced himself against a squat stalag mite until the ringing ceased.
"Don't do that!" Cutwood said plaintively. With his aug mented hearing, the tone had been enough to start his nose bleeding. All the Micones were clicking their mandibles and shaking their heads.
"Fascinating," said Stutts. "A perfect resonant chamber!
Ah! It makes sense!"
"What does?" asked Roperig.
"This extraneous jetsam. It's padding, to deaden the ants' footsteps on the floor."
They waded though the rubbish toward the end of the oblong chamber. The ceiling level fell and the floor rose to form a tight circular opening. The rim of the opening had been notched with jagged spikes of quartz, probably by the
Micones. Anything softer than a giant ant would be cut to pieces if it tried to walk or crawl over the spikes. The gnomes held back and proposed many solutions to the problem of the entrance. Sturm planted his fists on his hips and sighed. He turned back and gathered up an armful of the tough parchmentlike shreds, then laid them across the spikes. He put his hands on the parchment and pushed. The spikes poked through three or four layers, but the top layers remained unpierced.
"Allow me," said Sturm. He lifted Stutts and sat him on the padding. Stutts slid through the opening to the chamber beyond. One by one, the other gnomes followed. Sturm went last. The gnomes plunged ahead in their bumbling, fearless way, and he had to catch up with them.
Sturm hurried down the narrow slit in the rock and into another large chamber. Here veins of wine red crystal oozed out of fissures in the rock. When the soft crystal touched the warmer, moister air of the cavern, it lightened to clear crim son and began to take more exact form. Around them were dozens of half-formed Micones; some only heads, some whole bodies but without legs, and some so complete that their antennae wiggled.
"So this is the ant hatchery," said Wingover.
"'Hatchery' isn't the right word for it," said Roperig.
"Living rock crystal," said Stutts breathlessly. "I wonder what influences it to take on an ant shape?"
"The dragon, I would think," said Sighter, turning a com plete circle to see all the budding Micones. "Remember, he said he tried to make the tree-folk into servants but failed.
He must have uncovered this living crystal and decided to use it to make perfectly obedient and hard-working slaves."
They walked in single file down the center of the high, narrow cavern. As before, bluish stalactites on the ceiling shed a weak light on the scene. Flash approached one of the nearly finished Micones and tried to measure the width of its head. The ant moved like lightning and clamped its power ful jaws on the gnome's arm. Flash let out a yell.
"Get back!" Sturm cried, drawing his sword. He tried to lever the jaws open, but the creature's grip was too strong.
The cruel saw-toothed jaws could easily cut through flesh and bone -
Sturm noticed that Flash's arm wasn't bleeding. The gnome struggled, beating the stone-hard ant on the head with his flimsy folding rule.
"Has he got you by the arm?" Sturm asked.
"Uh! Agh! Yes! What do you think this is, my foot?"
Sturm eased his hand forward and felt Flash's arm. The
Micone's jaws had missed the gnome's flesh. All it had was his jacket sleeve.
"Take your jacket off," Sturm said calmly.
"Uh! Argh! Eeel I can't!"
"I'll help you." Sturm reached in front of the gnome and undid the complex series of buttons and lacings on his jack et. He pulled Flash's left arm out, then his right. The empty jacket dangled in the Micone's jaws. The half-formed
Micone did not move.
"My jacket!" Flash howled.
"Never mind! Just thank your gods that your arm didn't get caught in that thing's pincers," Sturm said.
"Thank you, Reorx," said the gnome. He looked longing ly at the lost jacket. A big tear rolled down his cheek. "I designed that jacket myself. The One Size Fits All Wind proof Jacket Mark III."
"You can make another," Wingover said consolingly. "An even better one. With detachable sleeves, in case you ever get in such a predicament again."
'Yes, yes! What a splendid notion, detachable sleeves!"
Flash made a hasty sketch on his white shirt cuff.
Beyond the ant hatchery the cavern wound off in several directions, and there was no clear indication which way the explorers should go. Cutwood suggested that they split up and try all the tunnels, but Stutts vetoed that, and Sturm agreed.
"We've no idea how large this caverns is, and if you go off on your own, you stand a good chance of getting lost forever.
We also don't know how the Micrones will react to us if we split up," Sturm said.
"They do seem very literal-minded," Sighter said. "Sepa rate pairs may not mean the same thing to them as a band of ten." The sight of Flash's jacket locked in the unbreakable grip of the Micone's jaws was a powerful inducement to stay together. Nothing more was said about splitting up.
They chose the widest, straightest path onward. The floor sloped down from the Micones' birth chamber at such a steep angle that the gnomes gave up trying to walk down and instead sat down to slide. Sturm would have preferred to walk down, but the floor was slick with dew, so it didn't take him long to decide to do as the gnomes did.
Sturm slid gently into another, lower cavern. It was very much warmer and wetter here; the air was steamy. Water trickled down the walls and dripped from overhead. As he stood up, he saw the gnomes' dark shapes strolling through the wispy white clouds of steam.
"Stutts! Sighter! Where are all of you?" he called.
"Right here!" Sturm walked uncertainly into the mist.
The cavern was well lit from above (from a large number of the glowing stalactites), and considerable heat radiated from the floor.
"Mind the magma," said Cutwood, appearing in the steam in front of him. The gnome pointed to a raised funnel of glazed rock in their path. A fiery halo hung over the wide mouth.
Sturm bent over it and saw that the natural bowl was full of a bright orange liquid. A bubble burst wetly in its center.
"Molten rock," Cutwood explained. "That's why the cave is so warm.
"
Sturm had an almost irresistible urge to touch the bub bling stuff, but the glare of heat on his face told him quite plainly how hot the magma was. Another gnome,
Wingover, appeared in the swirling steam.
"This way!" he cried.
They wended their way through a garden of seething cauldrons, each one emitting gurgles as the molten rock boiled. The air around them became sulfurous and hard to take in. Sturm coughed and held a kerchief to his face.
The vapors abated somewhat near the cavern wall. The remaining gnomes were clustered by a small hole in the wall. Sturm raised his head and saw that the hole was dark.
"Is that it?" Sturm wondered aloud.
"Must be," said Sighter. "Seems to be no other way out."
"Perhaps one of the other tunnels we missed," Roperig suggested. The black circle was not very inviting.
"The established path clearly leads here," said Stutts. "As senior colleague, it is up to me to go first — "
"No, you don't," Sturm said. "I'm armed. 111 go first to make sure it's safe."
"Oh, excellent idea!" said Rainspot.
"Well, if you insist — " said Stutts.
"You will need a light," said Flash. He unbuttoned one of the capacious pockets on the front of his trouser legs. "Give me a moment and I'll lend you my Collapsing Self-Igniting
Pocket Lamp Mark XVI." Flash unfolded a flattish box of tin and set it on the floor. From a separate wooden case he extracted a bit of gooey stuff that resembled axle grease. He put a dollop of this in the lamp. From a different pocket,
Flash produced a slender glass vial, tightly stoppered. He broke the wax seal and popped the cork. A sharp, volatile aroma filled the cavern. Flash crouched down and extended his arm cautiously to the lamp. One eye clenched shut as a single drop of the fluid fell from the vial.
The droplet hit the plug of grease and went poof! The flash lit up the whole area, and the grease burned merrily.
Sturm reached for it, and the lamp popped and sputtered, sending bits of flaming grease in all directions.
"Are you sure this is safe?" he asked.
"Well, after a few minutes, the tin will melt," Flash said.
"But it should be all right until then."
"Wonderful." He picked up the violent little lamp by its slim metal ring and started through the hole. The gnomes clustered around the opening, their pink faces and white beards facing upward like so many daisies seeking the sun.
Sturm walked up a curving ramp and soon entered a chamber of profound silence. Even the lamp's sputtering declined to a fitful flicker. He stepped off the ramp and onto the roughly cleared stone floor and beheld a sight that no mortal had seen in millennia.
Dragon eggs. Row upon row of carved niches, each hold ing a single melon-sized egg. Row after row, tier upon tier, stretching far beyond the feeble range of light from the Col lapsing Self-Igniting Pocket Lamp Mark XVI. The lips of each niche glittered with dew, formed when the steamy air below met the cooler air of this chamber.
A gnomish voice drifted to Sturm. "What do you see?"
"This is it," he called back, hand cupped to his mouth.
"The great egg chamber!"
The gnomes scrambled up the ramp and spilled into the cavern, jostling past Sturm for a better view. They oohed and aahed and uttered fervent exclamations to their holy trio: Reorx, gears, and hydrodynamics.
"How many eggs do you suppose there are?" breathed Fit ter. Sturm shot a glance at Sighter.
"In view, there are eight tiers," said Sighter. "And sixty two per tier."
"For a total of — " Cutwood figured frantically.
"— 496, said Sturm, recalling the figure that Cupelix had given him.
"That's right," said Stutts, totting up his numbers.
They walked forward with Sturm leading. Wingover hovered at the rear, since the lamp dazzled his piercing eye sight. He could see through the velvet darkness, so he was able to keep their entry hole in sight.
"Ow," Sturm muttered, shifting the lamp to his other hand. The ring was getting very hot.
"This way! Turn this way!" said Roperig suddenly. Sturm turned to his left.
"What was it?" he asked.
"Something moved over there. I didn't see it very clearly."
A jet black thing scuttled out of the niche behind the eggs and leaped into the air toward Sturm's light. He recoiled clumsily and dropped the lamp. Something small and furry feeling brushed over his foot and was gone. The gnomes were all yelling and stamping their feet.
"Silence! Silence, I say!" Sturm roared. He found the lost lamp. Its fuel was almost extinguished. Only a faint corona of blue flame circled the lump of grease. Sturm sheltered the tiny fire with his hands and it grew brighter. He picked up the lamp and faced the gnomes.
They were not scared in the least. Wingover had bounded forward from his place in line and planted his foot on the thing that had burst from the egg niche. It squirmed under his toes, trying to get away. At first sight, it resembled a fat, hairy spider, but as Sturm brought the lamp nearer, they all recognized it.
"It's a glove!" said Stutts.
"One of Kit's gloves," said Sturm, recognizing the pattern of stitching on the back. "It's one of a pair she left behind on the Cloudmaster when we went off on our ore expedition."
"How'd it get here?" asked Rainspot. Birdcall twittered a question of his own.
"He says, 'Why is it alive?"' Stutts added.
Rainspot grasped the glove by its 'fingers' and told
Wingover to lift his foot. The weather seer brought the wriggling thing to eye level and grunted. "Strong little thing!"
Sighter glared through his ever-present lens. "This glove is made of cowhide and rabbit fur, but the seams have disap peared." He pressed a finger into the soft leather side. "It has a heartbeat."
"Ridiculous," Flash said. "Gloves don't come to life."
"On Lunitari?" said Stutts. "Why not?"
Sturm remembered Cupelix's remark about the cumula tive life force of all the dragon eggs being responsible for the intense aura of magical power on Lunitari. He offered this bit of information to the gnomes.
"Ah," said Sighter with a sage expression. "The level of magical force must be particularly high in these caverns. " dare say, any animal or vegetable product left down here long enough might develop a life of its own."
Roperig looked down at his own pigskin boots. "You mean my shoes might take on life and run away with me?"
"We shan't be down here long enough for that to happen,"
Stutts assured him.
Rainspot put the glove down on its back and pinned it with his foot. Cutwood suggested that they dissect it to see what internal organs it had.
"Let it go. It's harmless," said Sturm. "We don't have time to fool around with it."
Rainspot raised his foot and the glove flipped over. It scampered into the recesses of the egg niches.
"I wonder," said Flash, "what a living glove eats?"
"Finger food," said Fitter. Roperig cuffed him lightly on the head and his hand promptly stuck there.
"Are you finished?" Sturm said impatiently. "There's more of the cave to see, and I don't think the lamp will last much longer." Indeed, even as he spoke, silver drops of mol ten tin dripped off the lamp's front end.
They hurried down the tunnel. Sounds of movement came to them and they halted. The rear legs and teardrop abdomen of a working Micone maneuvered out of the dark ness. The Micone sensed their light and scuttled around to face the intruders. Its antennae almost straightened while it studied the man and gnomes. Sturm had a momentary flash of fear. If the Micone attacked, his lone sword would never prevail.
The Micone kinked its feelers again and turned away.
Sturm and the gnomes let out a collective sigh of relief.
They inched past the giant, who was busy chipping away glassy 'dew' from the shelf below a row of eggs. A fragment of the clear encrustation landed at Rainspot's feet, and he pounced on it. He
dropped it in a tiny silk bag and pulled the drawstring. "For later analysis," he said.
The caverns gave no sign of ending, and after penetrating a hundred yards or so into them, Sturm called a halt. The place they stopped was thick with Micones, and the giant ants swept past the explorers without any heed. Cupelix had told the ants to ignore them, and the ants obeyed, in their precise, unswerving way.
"We'd best go back before we get trampled," Sturm said, dodging a flurry of Micone legs.
Rainspot drifted away from the others to where the ants were engaged in cleaning the dragon eggs. As they chipped and anointed and turned the blockish eggs, the ants exposed the undersides of the eggs to the air. Some of the shells had a scabrous layer peeling off, and the ants scrupulously removed this dead layer. It was this cast-off shell that made the parchmentlike skin they'd found in the first chamber.
Rainspot picked up a sheaf of cast-offs below the lowest egg shelf. A Micone turned sharply toward him and snatched the leathery shell fragment with its mandibles.
"No!" said Rainspot stubbornly. "It's mine, you threw it away!" The gnome dug in his toes and pulled. The shell wouldn't yield and neither would the ant. Rainspot got angry. His enveloping cloud thickened and lightning flashed within it.
"Rainspot, leave it. We'll take samples from the outer cave," said Wingover. But the Micone's implacable resist ance made the usually mild gnome madder and madder. A cyclone four feet wide lashed at the ant, and miniature claps of thunder reverberated through the cave.
Sturm entered Rainspot's tiny tempest. To his surprise, the whirling rain was hot. "Rainspot!" he said, grabbing the little fellow by the shoulders. "Let go!"
A bolt of lightning, diminutive by nature's standards, yet still five feet long, struck the Micone in the center of its head. The strike knocked Sturm and Rainspot backward at least six feet. The gnome landed on Sturm, shook his head, and found that he was holding the scrap of eggshell.
"I have it!" he said triumphantly.
Sturm, flat on his back and not happy, said, "Do you mind?" Rainspot blushed and rolled off the man's stomach.
"Look at that," Cutwood said in awe. The gnomes ringed the lightning-struck ant.
The bolt had split the createature's head in half with the pre cision of a diamond cutter. The Micone's headless body col lapsed, the thorax sagging to the floor. Immediately, two more Micones appeared and began to clean up. They nipped the shattered ant's carcass apart and carried each bit away.
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