sly from the heavy horn
breastplate. In answer, the monster wheeled and drenched Dennis, too,
with the loathsome liquid.

On the instant Dennis was helpless. As Jim had done, he sank to the
floor, his body constricted in a sheath that tightened as it dried and
which bound him as securely as any straitjacket might have done.

The two rolled on the floor, trying to shed the terrible coating of
hardening fluid that contracted about them. But they were as impotent as
two flies that had rolled in the sticky slime of some super-flypaper. At
last they gave it up.

Panting, helpless as mummies, they glared up at the stony eyes of the
ruler-termite. The team of workers moved, bearing their burden of almost
bodiless, mushroom brain like well-oiled machines.

Their forelegs went out. The two men were shoved along the floor ahead
of the monarch--and were laid in one of the lines of paralyzed insects
so patently held as the ruler's private food supply!

* * * * *

The great, stony eyes were next bent, as though in curiosity, on the
spears that had done such damage to the termite with the conical head.
In the true insect world there was no such phenomenon as those
glittering steel bars; and it appeared that the over-developed brain of
the monarch held questions concerning their nature.

The team of termites wheeled, and walked over to the nearest spear,
trailing the feeble, atrophied legs of their rider as they went. They
squatted close to the floor, and the staring eyes examined the spears at
close range. Then the owner of the eyes apparently sent out another
command; for one of the guards at the door left its post and drew near,
scissor-mandibles opened in obedience.

The hard mandible's clashed over one of the steel bars. The jaws
crunched shut, with a nerve-rasping grind. They made, naturally, no
impression on the bar. The guard retired to its post at the doorway.

The termite-ruler seemed to think this over, for a moment. Then at some
telepathic order, its two bearers picked up the spear and carried it,
and their physically helpless ruler, over to one of the living
cisterns--one filled with a dark red liquid.

One of the beasts of burden reached up and thrust an end of the spear
into the hugely distended abdomen filled with the unknown red liquid.
The spear was withdrawn, with about a foot of its blunt end reddened by
the fluid. The termite laid it down; the staring, dull eyes watched
i