With torches in one hand and sticks in the other, they followed a subterranean route never before trodden by the feet of men ...
Carr ran back in a wide detour and dropped panting behind the brick.
“Are they following me?” he gasped.
Magruder peered over the top of the brick. “No, but they seem pretty excited. They’re touching each other and running all over the place.”
“I had to smash it flat before it stopped trying to grab me.” Carr grimaced. “I’ve got its blood all over me. What a stink! You got to hand it to Khomich—! wouldn’t go into a bloody ants’ nest.”
“Do you think— ” Magruder hesitated. “Do you think we’ll ever see them again?”
“I’ll tell you, mate, there’s only one rule in this world if you’re a soldier—every time you say goodbye, you presume you won’t ever see that bloke again. Then, if you do—it’s a nice surprise, isn’t it?”
“I feel sick!”
Bruce and Khomich turned a corner in the sloping corridor and found their torches shining on fhe oval head and whiplash antennae of a medium-sized worker. It hesitated, head swinging from side to side. Then it started to pull back. Bruce jumped after it, swinging his club.
Blood spattered their faces as he smashed the stick down into the chitinous shell of the head. The ant collapsed, but its six legs went on jerking against the smooth floor of the tunnel.
“It would have carried a warning all through the nest. Come on, Khomich, jump on it!”
Bruce began stamping down brutally on the stillquivering body, smashing open the big gaster stomach, rubbing his boots in the mess.
“What are you doing that for?” Khomich growled.
“Down here they have to rely on scent and touch. If we smell like one of them they might not bother to feel us with their antennae. Hurry up, man, get it all over your boots and your trousers—once they touch you with their antennae they can see your outline as clearly as if you were floodlit.”
Dark as it was, Khomich had to close his eyes to conquer a revulsion so powerful it made his skin crawl and his stomach burn, a fear so nightmarish it seemed to threaten his very sanity ...
Their torches lit up the entrances to five different tunnels leading off a low, round chamber. Bruce chewed his lower lip. He shined his torch down each tunnel, looking for signs of newly-disturbed earth.
“That one goes back up to the top,” he was saying when they heard a rustling and scraping from the tunnel they had just come down. He switched off the torch, pulling Khomich into the side.
They stood motionless in pitch darkness. The scraping came nearer—and then passed them. They breathed slowly, trying to make no sound.
Bruce flashed the torch for a fraction of a second. An upright triangle of green leaf was disappearing into a
tunnel on the opposite side of the low connecting chamber. He pulled at Khomich’s arm.
“Give it a moment, then we’ll follow it down there,” he whispered, “and for God’s sake don’t have a fit of coughing!”
They shielded their torches with their hands, throwing narrow beams that gave just enough light to guide them down the slope. They seemed to hear echoes of rustlings and scrapings. A steady draft of warm, musty air caressed their faces. Then they sensed that they were no longer confined by the steep walls of the tunnel. Bruce felt for Khomich’s shoulder.
“I think we’re in a chamber,” he whispered. “Flash your torch just once—then be ready to run.”
In a brief moment of white light, they saw something which almost made them forget why they were there. In a space the size of a cathedral, small ants were working busily on a huge bed of pale, rounded fungi that stretched from wall to wall. Some were weeding, some were carrying newly-cut fungi, some were laying down new strips of masticated leaf paste. At the bottom of the wide slope below them, more ants were chewing on fragments of leaf piled loosely as if in a farm yard at harvest time. All of it was taking place in methodical, purposeful silence. For that brief moment, they had a sensation of having looked into the heart of something secret and timeless, a hidden world that neither knew nor cared about the clumsy, clamorous strivings of the doomed giants who crashed about on the surface of the earth.
Bruce nudged Khomich. Some of the small workers had lifted their heads, antennae testing the air.
They moved back up the tunnel.
“They’re not doing any building work down there,” Bruce murmured. “We’ll try the other tunnels.”
As they came up into the connecting chamber, they heard more rustling. Again, they pulled back against the wall, hands tightening around their sticks.
This time, the sounds were more violent. They sensed the presence of a large number of ants in the darkness at their feet, but they dared not switch on the torches. Something brushed against Khomich’s chest. He froze on a scream that went on echoing through his brain. There was a dragging sound. Delicate feet scraped on the smooth floor. They found it easier to concentrate on the patterns of noise by keeping their eyes tightly closed.
The dragging noise began to move away from them. Bruce flashed his torch.
They saw something moving into the darkness of the tunnel to their left. There was loose earth on the floor.
“They’ve just dragged a twig down there,’’ he hissed. “That could be it.’’
They felt along the walls of the tunnel, stopping every few steps to listen.
Again, they had the unmistakable sensation of being in the open. Their boots touched loose earth.
They switched on their torches simultaneously, without any need for physical communication.
“You must be quite obsessed with George,’’ Anne said grimly. “Is he in love with you?”
Lena’s wide mouth was set tight. She shrugged, unwilling to discuss it. Anne smiled reproachfully. “I used to be in love with him—or at least I thought it was love. I suppose we’re all suckers for any man who sweeps us off our feet with the great messiah act.”
“It isn’t an act! He is a great man. Your trouble is you haven’t got the imagination to— ”
“My trouble is that I’ve lived with him for six years and I know what he’s really like. Marriage to George is like adultery—you always have the guilty feeling you’re coming between him and his true love, George Richards. I often wonder if he would actually recognize my face in a crowd of two.”
For a moment, the light did not register on the nervous systems of the construction teams—big workers,
some crawling up the sides of the half-constructed chamber, some pulling and pushing at the heavy twig they had just dragged all the way from the garden and down the tunnel, others using their scissor-jaws as earth-excavators.
The torch shone on something metallic. There was a glinting reflection of light from a perspex panel.
“Richards!”
The metal capsule was buttressed into the wall of soft earth. Through the panel, they had a glimpse of a man’s face, blinking against the light.
As the big workers began to run across the floor of the chamber, they raced toward the capsule, sticks pushing at the probing antennae.
An electric charge seemed to touch each ant simultaneously. Antennae flicked the air. Convex heads jerked from side to side. Jaws opened and closed.
Bruce evaded two ants and grabbed at the handle sunk flush in the curved panel door. He shone the torch into the narrow cylinder.
Richards was sitting upright, strapped against the wall. He screwed up his face against the light.
“Can you walk?” Bruce hissed, fumbling at the metal clip of the broad canvas belt.
“Who is that?” Richards growled. “Where am I?”
“Bob Bruce—you’re in the leafcutters’ nest. Come on, man, get this belt off.”
“Bob Bruce?” said the big man with the black hair. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The belt fell away.
“Never mind that, let’s get out of here. We’ll have to run— �
�� '
“How the hell did you find out about Arcadia?”
“For God’s sake, man —get out!"
Khomich smashed his stick into the head of a big worker. Its six legs went on propelling it forward. He kicked at it. He hit out at another. The ants were going berserk—yet the communal brain of which each was only a single cell had not yet made its analysis of the disturbance.
“My legs are cramped. You’ll have to carry me,’’ Richards said irritably.
“Hurry up, Bruce,” Khomich shouted, swinging his stick viciously from side to side.
The torch fell as Bruce took Richards’s weight. He reached down for it. Thin legs ran across the beam. Antennae touched his hand.
“You’ll have to walk, damn you,” he snarled.
More ants began to pour into the chamber. The message was spreading throughout the labyrinthine tunnels and chambers of the huge nest— Attack!
Bruce tried to lift Richards onto his shoulder. Richards collapsed, making no effort to support himself.
For a moment, Bruce felt helpless. Khomich was being pushed back against the capsule by the sheer number of ants in the chamber—yet still they seemed confused, unable to focus on the source of danger, desperately running here and there in jerky spurts as they tried to identify the aliens who had dared to penetrate the fortress.
Bruce made his decision. He shoved Richards back into the capsule. “You’re not going to leave me here,” Richards snapped. “Carry me on your back.”
“We can’t fight them off and carry you as well. Just sit tight—we’ll be back, we know where you are now.”
“I won’t be going anywhere,” Richards said testily as the panel door slammed in his face.
Bruce made sure the handle was securely closed. Then he and Khomich began to dodge through the seething mass of ants, jumping to avoid the antennae, their ears filled with urgent clickings and rustlings . . .
Magruder heard the yelling. He pointed across the ants’ midden. “They’re coming out!”
“Come on,” Carr said firmly. “We’ll have to help them, by the looks of it.”
He left the shelter of the brick and ran toward the nest entrance. All along the trail, the message was being flashed. Leaf carriers dropped their huge loads and scuttled back to the fortress that must be defended to the
“Hurry up, Bruce,” Khomich shouted, swinging his stick viciously from side to side.
death; ants had no individual wills—the nest-fortress and the queen in her royal chamber down in the very heart of it was both their home and their brain, the ultimate corporate state, whose every member was programmed for self-sacrifice.
Magruder ran a few feet into the midden, then hesitated. He saw Bruce and Khomich backing out of the tunnel, shouting for help, swinging their clubs at an advancing line of antennae and jaws. An ant’s head was smashed—another ant climbed across its struggling body, throwing itself at the alien intruders.
Bruce drew his pistol and started firing. Carr ran up the slope of the midden. They all had their pistols out, firing again and again. Ants dropped on top of each other—and more ants climbed over the dead bodies. When one ant was blown to pieces, five more took its place.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, they backed away from the mound of the nest. A big soldier came forward, its jaws opening and closing like twin-scythe blades. Khomich’s bullet blew its big round gaster stomach to pieces. The jaws went on snapping, the legs went on running.
“Don’t turn your backs on them.” Once in the grip of even a single pair of jaws, there would be no escape.
Magruder closed his eyes. Then he ran back to the brick, his whole body trembling.
Bruce stumbled on loose rubbish. Two big soldiers came forward, relentless automatons. Khomich swung at their antennae with his club. Bruce got up, firing his pistol. The clip was empty.
Paralyzed with fear, Magruder watched helplessly from behind the brick. “Don’t make me go out there,” he was mumbling, when something touched his leg.
He looked down. The brown head looked like a distorted egg. For a moment, it could have been a dog nuzzling affectionately against his knee. Then he felt the pain.
He let out a scream and jumped for the top of the brick. They had spread out from the trail, driven by the
remorseless need to destroy all aliens, huge-headed sentries who had picked up a trail of animal scent.
Magruder had no ant blood on his trousers, nothing that would momentarily confuse the razor-keen perceptions of their nervous systems. The trail of alien scent had led straight to him.
He got his elbows on the flat top of the brick. His hands clawed for a grip on the rough surface. Something was pulling him back.
“Help!” he screamed, tearing off a fingernail as he tried to drag himself to safety.
Something touched his face. Thin legs straddled him. The ants had no difficulty in climbing on to a brick. He closed his eyes in terror, striking out blindly, trying to feel for his pistol. Jaws seized his legs in a grip that only death would loosen.
They turned and ran up the slope of the midden.
“Help!” came Magruder’s tortured voice. “Help me, help me, help— ”
The big jaws were clamping into the very bones of his head—and then he was silent.
Khomich and Bruce and Carr veered away from the brick and ran for their lives across the vast brown plain ...
Bruce stood with his head lowered, eyes closed. Khomich and Carr reloaded their pistols.
“They’re sniffing along your scent,” Lena hissed, crouching behind the smooth pillar of buff fungus. “They’re going to find us here before very long.”
Bruce gulped air through his mouth, his eyes still closed.
“Did you see George?” Anne demanded.
Khomich nodded. “He can’t move his legs. We couldn’t carry him because there were too many of them. I am sorry, Mrs. Richards.”
“We can’t just leave him,” Lena said accusingly.
Bruce opened his eyes. He stared up at the gray sky, his mouth hanging open.
“We would be torn to bits before we were halfway to the tunnel,” Khomich said.
“He’s right,” Anne said firmly. “There’s no point in more people getting killed. You saw what happened to Stanley— ”
“Stanley was a bloody coward,” Lena said grimly, “he just stood there and watched.” She looked at Bruce. “Could you live with your conscience—leaving George to a living death down there? Of course you couldn’t, Bob. You’re not that sort of man.”
Khomich looked across the barren ground at the seething line of ants. “If we could start a fire—no, everything is damp from the rain. But if we had petrol—”
“A fire?” Bruce shook his head. “We’d burn up the
ants in their thousands, but Richards would be right there in the heart of it.” He bit his lip. ‘‘No—you’re right—”
‘‘You can’t have a fire, you’ll burn George to death,” Lena shouted hysterically.
‘‘Not that kind of fire. Bruce to Recovery Vehicle. Do you read me, over?”
‘‘Loud and clear.”
‘‘Relay this message to Doctor Jany. Immediately. We have been inside the nest—Richards is still alive in the capsule. We need a diversion to draw the ants out of the center of the nest. Jany told me you have a colony of driver ants in your Insect House—is that correct?”
‘‘Yes, safe behind glass, thank Christ.”
‘‘Tell Jany I want those driver ants dropped on the east side of the leafcutter nest—”
‘‘How the hell do you expect us to do that?"
‘‘I don’t care how you damned well do it. Put them in a box and drop them from your crane-arm ... do whatever the hell you like, just get them down there!”
“I’ll get Doctor Jany on the relay, he’ll speak to you.”
He hissed sharply, but the radio was silent.
‘‘What’s the point of bringing in more bloody ants?” Lena demanded.
‘‘Jany to Bruce— ”
‘‘Listen, Jany. Richards is still alive in that nest. We need a diversion to give us a chance to carry him out. Please listen and then do exactly what I tell you. Get every single driver ant you have in that Insect House of yours. Put them in a box or a glass tank or whatever you like and drop them on the east side of the leafcutter nest—for Christ’s sake, get that right—the east side, we’re up here near the beech trees. Do you understand?”
‘‘Understood,” said Jany, “I’ll see to it myself. Good thinking, Bruce, you— ”
‘‘Get on with it, man!”
They heard a thunder that was the engine of the big truck with the extendable crane-arm.
“How do we know they’ll attack each other?” Carr asked.
“The driver ant is just about the most aggressive, vicious, dangerous, hostile creature on this earth. They’re blind, but they don’t find that any great handicap. Those leafcutters are in a highly tense state, they’re expecting an invasion. We’re going to start a living fire!”
On the transceiver, they heard the crane operator. “I’m going to let the glass tank fall. I can’t let it down gently because I don’t want any of those brutes crawling back up the arm.”
“Make sure the glass breaks,” Bruce snapped into the transceiver.
“I’ll raise the arm as high as it will go. If it doesn’t break I’ll smash it with the fork-handle. Can you check that I’m over the right area?”
They peered across the brown plain. The scouts and sentries were still agitatedly running back and forth between them and the nest.
“Yes—drop it now,” Bruce said.
“Bombs away then!”
They heard a vast explosion of smashing glass.
The black driver ants were hurled on to dry earth and soft mosses. Blind by human standards, they had no difficulty in finding each other. They immediately fell into their usual column, small workers herded together by massive warriors, a living river of destruction, the ultimate death machine.
Finding themselves in cold daylight, they sent out scouts. Messages flashed back to the column. With no queen or pupae to carry and protect, their automatic response was to find shelter. The column began to move, wheeling like a disciplined regiment, the huge-jawed soldiers guarding the flanks and the rear. When the column had passed, they raced to the front again, overlapping other sentries.
The Micronauts Page 19