dge of the jubilant
crowd, and looked out across the vast litter of smoking wreckage where
scarcely a shell-holed wall stood upright now, from which the Enemy
would no longer come to threaten the life of the Earth.

"One got away," said Qanya soberly.

"Yes. Somewhere it will all be to do over again." Dworn glanced toward
the empty west, whither the queen flier had disappeared--where, perhaps,
by now it would have crash-landed two or three hundred miles away, to
spew forth its cargo of pygmy workers and (if the inhabitants or the
area where it descended didn't discover and scotch it in time) to
construct more workers, fighters, a hive no less formidable than the one
that had perished today.

Dworn said, brow thoughtfully furrowed: "But maybe there's a good
reason, even for the drones. Maybe they serve a purpose...." He
faltered, unable to phrase the idea that had come to him--a thought that
was not only unaccustomed but downright heretical. According to
tradition the drones were the spawn of ancient evil and themselves
wholly evil--but, Dworn was thinking, perhaps their existence produced
good if, once in a generation or in ten generations, they came to remind
the warring peoples that fundamentally all life was one in its eonlong
conflict with no-life.

But he sensed, too, that that idea would take a long, long time to be
worked out, to be communicated, to bear fruit....

Qanya's hand pressed his, and she said softly, "I think I know what you
mean."

On one impulse they turned their backs to the ruins and gazed out across
the throng of people, milling happily about, rejoicing, among the grim
war-machines that stood open and abandoned on every hand. Near by, a
crew of pill-bugs had tapped containers of the special beverage they
brewed for their own use, and were inviting all passers-by to pause and
drink.

"Your people are here somewhere," said Qanya. Her eyes on Dworn were
troubled. "Over there to the south, I think I saw some beetles parked.
Do you want to visit them?"

Dworn sighed. "Your people are here too."

"I know."

* * * * *

Neither of them moved. They stood silent, their thoughts the same; in a
little while now, the Peace of the Drone would be over, and all this
celebrating crowd would grow warily quiet, would climb back into their
various fighting machines, close the hatches and man the guns and creep
away in their separate directions. The world would go its way