hold. But he could not use that treasure to buy his way toa landing on a colonized world.
Carol's voice; she was frightened.
"_Something's coming! It's--terribly big! It's coming out of the mist!_"
* * * * *
Moran pushed past Harper in the trench that ended at the wreck'slock-door. He moved on until he could see over the edge of that trenchas it shallowed. Now there were not less than forty of the giant antsabout the remnants of the monstrous centipede Moran had killed. Theymoved about in great agitation. There was squabbling. Angry, whiningstridulations filled the air beneath the louder and more gruesome soundsfrom fartheraway places. It appeared that scouts and foragers from twodifferent ant-cities had come upon the treasure of dead--iftwitching--meat of Moran's providing. They differed about where thenoisesome booty should be taken. Some ants pulled angrily against eachother, whining shrilly. He saw individual ants running frantically awayin two different directions. They would be couriers, carrying news ofwhat amounted to a frontier incident in the city-state civilization ofthe ants.
Then Moran saw the giant thing of which Carol spoke. It was truly huge,and it had a gross, rounded body, and a ridiculously small thorax, andits head was tiny and utterly mild in expression. It walked with anenormous, dainty deliberation, placing small spiked feet at the end offifteen-foot legs very delicately in place as it moved. Its eyes weremultiple and huge, and its forelegs though used so deftly for walkinghad a horrifying set of murderous, needle-sharp saw-teeth along theiredges.
It looked at the squabbling ants with its gigantic eyes that somehowappeared like dark glasses worn by a monstrosity. It moved primly,precisely toward them. Two small black creatures tugged at a hairysection of a giant centipede's leg. The great pale-green creature--amantis; a praying mantis twenty feet tall in its giraffe-like walkingposition--the great creature loomed over them, looking down as throughsunglasses. A foreleg moved like lightning. An ant weighing nearly asmuch as a man stridulated shrilly, terribly, as it was borne aloft. Themantis closed its arm-like forelegs upon it, holding it as if piouslyand benignly contemplating it. Then it ate it, very much as a man mighteat an apple, without regard to the convulsive writhings of its victim.
* * * * *
It moved on toward the denser fracas among the ants. Suddenly it raisedits ghastly saw-toothed forelegs in an extraordinary gesture. It was themantis's spectral attitude, which seemed a pose of holding out its armsin benediction. But its eyes remained blind-seeming andenigmatic,--again like dark glasses.
Then it struck. Daintily, it dined upon an ant. Upon another. Uponanother and another and another.
From one direction parties of agitated and hurrying black objectsappeared at the edge of the mist. They were ants of a specialcaste,--warrior-ants with huge mandibles designed for fighting indefense of their city and its social system and its claim to fragmentsof dead centipedes. From another direction other parties of no lesstruculent warriors moved with the swiftness and celerity of a strikingtask-force. All the air was filled with the deep-bass notes of somethinghuge, booming beyond visibility, and the noises as of sticks trailedagainst picket fences, and hootings which were produced by the rubbingof serrated leg-joints against chitinous diaphragms. But now a newtumult arose.
From forty disputatious _formicidae_, whining angrily at each other overthe stinking remains of the monster Moran had killed, the number of antsinvolved in the quarrel became hundreds. But more and more arrived. Thespecial caste of warriors bred for warfare was not numerous enough totake care of the provocative behavior of foreign foragers. There was ageneral mobilization in both unseen ant-city states. They became nationsin arms. Their populations rushed to the scene of conflict. The burrowsand dormitories and eating-chambers of the underground nations wereswept clean of occupants. Only the nurseries retained a skeleton staffof nurses--the nurseries and the excavated palace occupied by theant-queen and her staff of servants and administrators. All theresources of two populous ant-nations were flung into the fray.
* * * * *
From a space of a hundred yards or less, containing mere dozens ofbelligerent squabblers, the dirty-white ground of the fungus-plainbecame occupied by hundreds of snapping, biting combatants. Theycovered--they fought over--the half of an acre. There were contendingbattalions fighting as masses in the center, while wings of fightingcreatures to right and left were less solidly arranged. Butreinforcements poured out of the mist from two directions, and momentlythe situation changed. Presently the battle covered an acre. Groups offresh fighters arriving from the city to the right uttered shrillstridulations and charged upon the flank of their enemies.Simultaneously, reinforcements from the city to the left flungthemselves into the fighting-line near the center.
Formations broke up. The battle disintegrated into an indefinite numberof lesser combats; troops or regiments fighting together often movedahead with an appearance of invincibility, but suddenly they broke andbroke again until there was only a complete confusion of unorganizedsingle combats in which the fighters rolled over and over, strugglingferociously with mandible and claw to destroy each other. Presently thebattle raged over five acres. Ten. Thousands upon thousands of black,glistening, stinking creatures tore at each other in murderous ferocity.Whining, squealing battle-cries arose and almost drowned out the deepernotes of larger but invisible creatures off in the mist.
Moran and Harper got back to the _Nadine_ by a wide detour past warriorspreoccupied with each other just before the battle reached its mostsavage stage. In that stage, the space-yacht was included in thebattleground. Fights went on about its landing-fins. Horrifying duelscould be followed by scrapings and bumpings against its hull. From theyacht's ports the fighting ants looked like infuriated machines, engagedin each other's destruction. One might see a warrior of unidentifiedallegiance with its own abdomen ripped open, furiously rending an enemywithout regard to its own mortal wound. There were those who hadliterally been torn in half, so that only head and thorax remained, butthey fought on no less valiantly than the rest.
* * * * *
At the edges of the fighting such cripples were more numerous. Ants withantenna shorn off or broken, with legs missing, utterly doomed,--theysometimes wandered forlornly beyond the fighting, the battle seeminglyforgotten. But even such dazed and incapacitated casualties came uponeach other. If they smelled alike, they ignored each other. Everyant-city has its particular smell which its inhabitants share.Possession of the national odor is at once a certificate of citizenshipin peacetime and a uniform in war. When such victims of the battle cameupon enemy walking wounded, they fought.
And the giant praying mantis remained placidly and invulnerably still.It plucked single fighters from the battle and dined upon them whilethey struggled, and plucked other fighters, and consumed them. Itignored the battle and the high purpose and self-sacrificing patriotismof the ants. Immune to them and disregarded by them, it fed on themwhile the battle raged.
Presently the gray light overhead turned faintly pink, and became adeeper tint and then crimson. In time there was darkness. The noise ofbattle ended. The sounds of the day diminished and ceased, and othermonstrous outcries took their place.
There were bellowings in the blackness without the _Nadine_. There werechirpings become baritone, and senseless uproars which might beunbelievable modifications of once-shrill and once-tranquil night-soundsof other worlds. And there came a peculiar, steady, unrhythmic patteringsound. It seemed like something falling upon the blanket-like uppersurface of the soil.
Moran opened the airlock door and thrust out a torch to see. Itsintolerably bright glare showed the battlefield abandoned. Most of thedead and wounded had been carried away. Which, of course, was notsolicitude for the wounded or reverence for the dead heroes. Dead ants,like dead centipedes, were booty of the only kind the creatures of thisworld could know. The dead were meat. The wounded were dead before theywere c
arried away.
Moran peered out, with Carol looking affrightedly over his shoulder. Theair seemed to shine slightly in the glare of the torch. The patteringsound was abruptly explained. Large, slow, widely-separated raindropsfell heavily and steadily from the cloud-banks overhead. Moran could seethem strike. Each spot of wetness glistened briefly. Then the rain-dropwas absorbed by the ground.
But there were other noises than the ceaseless tumult on the ground.There were sounds in the air; the beating of enormous wings. Moranlooked up, squinting against the light. There were things moving aboutthe black sky. Gigantic things.
Something moved, too, across the diminishingly lighted surface about theyacht. There were glitterings. Shining armor. Multi-faceted eyes. Agigantic, horny, spiked object crawled toward the torch-glare,fascinated by it. Something else dived insanely. It splashed upon theflexible white surface twenty yards away, and struggled upward and tookcrazily off again. It careened blindly.