its size, were handicapped in a
chase, too--by the very weight of their enormous mandibles. In their
thundering chase after Jim, they resembled nothing so much as two
powerful but clumsy battleships chasing a relatively puny but much more
agile destroyer.

Behind the great bulk of a paralyzed June bug, Jim halted for a fraction
while he tore his arms at last free of the clinging brown stuff. The
guards rushed around the June bug at him.

He leaped for the row of hanging cisterns; and there, while he dodged
from one to another of the loathsome vats, he thought over a plan that
had come to his racing mind. It wasn't much of a plan, and it seemed
utterly futile in the face of the odds against him. But he had boasted,
before starting this mad adventure, that Man's wits were superior to any
bug's. It was time now to see if his boast had been an empty one.

He feinted toward the far end of the laboratory. The guards, acting
always as if they had a dozen eyes instead of none, rushed to prevent
this, cutting across his path and closing the exit with clashing jaws.

Jim raced toward the spot where Denny lay. This was within twenty yards
of the spot where, behind his ring of guards, the big-brained ruler now
cowered. But, while one of the syringe-monsters sent a brown stream
blindly toward the leaping, shifting man, no other attacking move was
made. The soldiers remained chained to their posts. Jim retrieved his
spear--and the first part of his almost hopeless plan had succeeded!

It was good, the feel of that smooth steel. He balanced the ponderous
weapon lightly. An ineffective thing against the plates of living armor
covering the scissor-mandibles. But it was not against them--at least
not directly--that he was planning to use it now!

* * * * *

Once more he darted toward the living cisterns. The soldiers followed
close behind.

Under the bulging abdomen of the termite containing the reddish acid,
Jim halted as though to make a defiant last stand against the guards.
They stopped, too, then began to advance on him from either side, more
slowly, like two great cats stalking a mouse.

Muscles bunched for a lightning-quick move, eyes narrowed to mere slits
as he calculated distances and fractions of a second. Jim stood there
beneath the great acid vat. The mandibles were almost within slicing
distance now.

The guards opened wide their tremendous jaws, forming two halves of a
deadly hor