n circle that moved swiftly to encompass him. They leaped....

With barely a foot left him, Jim darted back, then poised his spear and
shot it straight toward the bulging, live sack that held the acid above
the guards.

The acid spurted from the spear hole. Jim clenched his fists and
unconsciously held his breath till his chest ached, as the scarlet
liquid spread over the great hulks that twisted and fought in ponderous
frenzy to untangle legs and antennae and mandibles from the snarl their
collision had made of them.

The acid bit through steel and human flesh. On the other hand, it had
not harmed the horny flipper of the termite worker that had flicked it
onto the garden slug. Did that mean that the flipper was immunized to
the stuff, like the lining of the stomach, which is unharmed by acids
powerful enough to decompose other organic master? Or did it mean that
_all_ horn was untouched by it?

He groaned aloud. The two great insects had drawn apart by now, and had
sprung from under the shattered acid vat. Again they were on the trail.
The maneuver had been fruitless! The chase was on again, which
meant--since he could not hope to elude the blind but ably directed
creatures forever--that all hope was lost....

* * * * *

Then he shouted with triumph. A massive foreleg dropped from one of the
guards, to crash to the floor. Whether or not the acid was able to set
on the horny exterior of the termites, it was as deadly to their soft
interiors as to any other sort of flesh! The acid had found the joint of
that foreleg and had eaten through it as hot iron sinks through butter!

Still the injured creature came on, with Jim ever retreating, twisting
and dodging from one side of the huge room to the other, leaping over
the smaller paralyzed insects and darting behind the larger carcasses.
But now the thing's movements were very slow--as were the movements of
its companion.

Another leg fell hollowly to the floor, like an abandoned piece of
armor; and then two at once from the second termite.

Both stopped, shuddering convulsively. The agony of those two enormous,
dumb and blind things must have been inconceivable. The acid was by now
spending its awful force in their vitals, having seeped down through
every joint and crevice in their living armor. They were hardly more
than huge shells of horn, kept alive only by their unbelievable
vitality.

One more feeble lunge both made in concer