to reach had not forgotten! At some time early in the one-sided struggle
it had sent out a soundless call to arms. And now, in the doorway,
struggling to force through in numbers too great for the entrance's
narrow limits, were the first of the soldier hordes the ruler had
commanded to report here for fight duty. And behind them, as far as the
eye could see, the tunnel was blocked by yet others marching to kill
the creatures that menaced their leader. The abortive effort at escape,
it seemed, was doomed.

The strength of desperation augmented Jim's naturally massive muscular
power. He whirled his spear high over his head, clubwise. Disdaining now
to try for a thrust behind and to one side of the great conical head
that faced him, he brought the bar down with sledge-hammer force on the
horn-plated thing.

As though it had been a willow wand, the big bar whistled through the
air in its descent. With a crack that could be heard even above the
crashing mandibles of the soldiers pouring across the hundred-yard floor
toward the scene of battle, the bar landed on the living buckler of a
head.

The head could not have been actually harmed. But the brain behind it
was patently jarred and numbed for an instant. The great creature stood
still, its head weaving slowly back and forth. Jim swung his improvised
club in another terrific arc....

* * * * *

Denny darted around behind the ponderously wheeling bulk of the last
remaining guard to the team of worker termites. He, too, swung his arms
high--over the bloated brain-bag that cowered down between the backs
that bore it--leaping here and there to avoid the blunt mandibles of the
burden bearers. He, too, brought down his three-foot length of bar with
all the force he could muster, the sight of that swollen, hideous head
atop the withered remnants of termite body lending power to his muscles.

And now, just as the nearest of the soldiers reached out for them, the
termite-ruler lay helpless on the backs of its living crutches, with its
attenuated body quivering convulsively, and its balloonlike, fragile
head cleft almost in two halves. It was possible that even that terrific
injury might not be fatal to a thing so great and flexible of brain, and
so divorced from the ills as well as the powers of the flesh. But for
the moment at least it was helpless, an inert mass on the patient backs
of the termite team.

"To the acid vat," snapped Jim. "We'l