Part 3

Verification came quickly. The woman-creature beside him simply said, “You will be injected with a paralysis secretion. Permanent disability. Its eggs will hatch under your skin, and the larvae will burrow into your body. You will die many kinds of deaths, and you will tell the Queen and the Mo-Sanshon what they want to know. You will tell where the cage is, how the mercenaries are created and how they operate. You will tell us where your notes and formulae are located. After that you will die as all males learn to die--for the Mo-Sanshon.”

Ward didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. Protestations would be futile here. The centipede-like monstrosity waved its fangs and edged nearer. The woman-creature spoke again.

“The Queen wishes me to say to you that your humanoid species is unjustified in its egomania. You think humanoids the most rapidly evolving organism in the Solar System, but that belief is not relative enough in regards to duration. Our culture had reached a degree of social organization more highly advanced than yours before what you call the Tertiary epoch. Once our culture ruled a world--Mars. Why did our culture stop, why did it not advance for thousands of years? Why did our marvelous instinctive culture fail to conquer the System? Why have we stood still after perfecting a type of super social science? We simply had advanced as far as we could without benefit of violent, drastic mutation.”

“May I ask one question,” managed Ward, “before I become food for centipede larvae?” No reply. The centipede writhed impatiently. Ward tried to ignore it. “How,” he asked, “do you create these imitation human organisms?”

“Specialization. Of specialization the so-called ‘insect’ species are the accepted genius of all species of life wherever they are found. Given species can reproduce equal, and in many cases superior, creations of humanoid intelligence by individual adaptation. There are more specialized types among our kind than all other organisms in the System combined. The Mo-Sanshon is now master of them all.”

That was, of course, true, thought Ward. There were insects that could spin cables stronger in ratio than any alloy strands, could create acids that undermined stone and steel, could create cities that, in proportion, dwarfed human cities into significance; they had perfected telepathy; they could grow wings, develop gills and live in water as mud or marine worms, or fly in the air, or burrow into the land. Their superiority was accomplished through specialized millions of marvelous individual instincts.

The centipede moved close, and its _ocelli_ gazed at Ward fixedly. Its many legs quivered. Its fangs reached out and brushed lightly over Ward’s shrinking body.

“Where is the mercenary cage?” the voice asked again.

Ward said weakly, “I don’t know.” He thought of a nice home-loving girl back in Midcity who could cook wonderfully and who liked babies and whose name was Ann, before he said, “Tell the damn centipede to get it over with.”

The centipede struck, but in the middle of its darting move a crackling explosion hit it. Its chitinous shell curled, crackled, and the centipede knotted up into a tight burned lump.

* * * * *

A scream of hate and fear rang through the colossal cavern beneath the Martian deserts. Ward turned, his eyes dimmed. It was Red. Somewhere he had gotten hold of an electronic blaster and had paused, blasted the centipede, and was now running on across the cavern. He held the levitated cage easily in one hand.

He waved the gun at Ward and his thin face smiled. He stopped half way between Ward and the towering translucent bowl that housed the Queen Mother of the Mo-Sanshon. But the normal pulsing of the giant breeding brain was visibly agitated now. It shivered in pounding undulations. Waves of frantic force emanated from its throbbing bulk.

Ward saw the woman-creature beside him lean forward, her hands trembling. Her voice was a bit higher, that was all. “You! You live, Molakh! You were dead!”

Red laughed as he unfastened the cage door. It was a drawn taut laugh, without mirth. Ward yelled, “Red! I understand now! Don’t open it! Suicide if you--”

Red’s face was a mask of hate and conflicting emotions in the yellow glow. The make-up was almost all gone, giving his face a ragged, weird aspect.

“Right, Doc,” he said. “A radical male. A revolting male. We get them every once in a while here. There are many kinds of mutation. They use them for experimentation in the laboratories. You should see the laboratories here, Doc, with bugs secreting chemicals and living bodies as test tubes. I was one of their recent experiments with humanoid duplication. They thought they had disposed of me, but I eluded them. I’m a slippery individual, you know. I found out about your work and knew you were right, and I decided to help you. Only I could have helped you, Doc. Thanks, Doc, for the adventure. You’ll never know what it means to feel the grandeur of the stars--you’ve never been a myopic bug.”

* * * * *

The gray pulpy mass in the bowl was shivering now, pulsing in great heavings like a heart, dying. And then a dull growing swishing was audible from all sides like a slowly rising wind.

Ward saw the polyglot of insect horror that was edging in through the various tunnels and corridors. Great, jumping spiders with hairy legs and many coal-black glittering eyes and poison fangs dripping below. Winged Hippiscus with huge jaws working hungrily. Sharp-jawed Paratenodera, and shining-winged Cementarium. And countless others, though ant and termite forms dominated, with a grotesque intermingling of anthropomorphic shapes that had assumed almost every possible degree of distortion of human development.

And in the center of the ring stood Red with the cage unfastened. Ward’s mouth was cotton. His heart pounded madly. His face exuded streams of sweat. Red, a Mo-Sanshon, a rebel, a mutant. No wonder he had talked of how he longed for freedom. How he had hated female culture, the Mo-Sanshon! The synthesization and study had brought about a high degree of anthroponomy, although his acquired knowledge of human culture had been of the past rather than the present. His revolt had been one of extremes. He came from a social system whose complete submergence in the colony struck his individualism with horror, and he had reacted to the opposite extreme--a worship of anarchy.

“No, Red!” Ward was screaming wildly, irrationally. “Don’t open it! If you do--” But then the ring of monsters would anyway.

Red’s answer was to open the cage.

Shuddering, retching, Ward closed his eyes. His experiments had enabled him to breed and evolve strains of armored, ferocious parasite insects and germs which could be bred in millions, any number required, and whose powers of reproduction was enormous. Soon there’d be a stupendous army of these warrior insects who would specifically and effectively control the Mo-Sanshon. He had perfected these mercenaries in laboratories, and had succeeded in isolating and inbreeding, by the most intricate processes involving ray mutation of infinitely small genes. He had cultivated new insect-like forms, like one of our other ancient scientists did garden peas. Armies of insects to do man’s fighting for him against his insect enemies.

He had developed a thousand living specimens and tested them. Any opposing species of insect, regardless of size, they devoured immediately. The thousand were in that cage. They would sweep across the insects they were bred to destroy and devour it in seconds, as their own ant-prototypes stripped humans to bare skeletons in seconds.

Ward had to open his eyes again. He was crawling ... crawling ... dragging his infected leg behind him, unconscious of the pain. Crawling beneath a dense, black buzzing cloud of whirring wings and clicking mandibles. The vengeful army of insect mercenaries were descending on the helpless Queen Mother in swarms, and the ring of insects that had been closing in were now trying frantically to escape. Many of them did. But the mercenaries would hunt them out. They were specialized mass killers.

And the first one they had gotten, of course, had been Red.

* * * * *

The dense hordes of enthusiastic insect warriors ignored Ward as he crawled to the cage. Nothing remained of Red except his clothing, shredded, and a few bits of tendons on which mercenaries still fed ferociously. And a tattered copy of an ancient Twentieth Century thriller called “Hounds of the Void.”

High overhead, a direct beam of sunlight filtered down through the spiraling vapor, glinted on sheeny wings, as Ward sprawled out on the hard, cold stone. He would make it all right now. There would be evidence now to clear him of his psycho label, and the Mo-Sanshon would be wiped out. But Red was gone. Red, the Adventurer.

Ward wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him before. He, an entomologist, too. But the pronunciation had fooled him. The sharp accent on the “i” had distorted its true significance. Spelled out, Formica meant ANT, of course.

RED ANT.