hen the bottom scrapes the
landing beach; the fierce, virginal workers struggling up from the deep
shelters of the nurseries, carrying in their mandibles the squirming
larvae, the living future of the race. The walls of the queen's prison
broken down in the innermost redoubt and the guards closing in on the
idol of the race, moving the big white body like a juggernaut.

In a matter of minutes the "activity" and "emotionality" curves on the
fluorescent screens surged to heights which Lee had never seen.

It started with the crossbreeds of "_termes-bellicosus_," with army-ants
and devil-ants, and spread quickly all along the line of non-belligerent
varieties. Famine had given them the impetus to change their mode of
life; famine, the inexorable tyrant, whipped them onward into their
exodus.

On the foremost fluorescent screens Lee saw it start: Small groups of
warriors reconnoitering into no-man's-land and quickly darting back
again.... And then the dark columns of the first assault wave descending
from their city-gates, lock-stepped like Prussian guards of old,
marching as if to the beat of drums. On the visi-screens which magnified
them a hundred times they looked an awesome sight with the rostrums of
their horns, bigger than all the rest of their bodies, swinging like
turrets of battleships being trained upon the enemy. From the
loudspeakers which magnified all noise a hundred times, the excited
tremors of their bodies, the locked steps of a million feet swelled into
a vast roar sounding almost like thunder.

Jotting down observations in rapid pencil strokes, Lee thought:
"Starvation is producing very interesting results; it's a worthwhile
experiment." With all his mental energy he suppressed the silent prayer
which struggled to arise from the deep of his unconscious: "Good Lord
let The Brain not realize _what_ is going on."

The visi-screens now showed the second wave of the assault: endless
columns of workers, their mandibles twitching with eagerness to devour,
bustling along the logs, kept in line by two rows of warriors to their
right and left. The noises they produced in the loudspeakers were as of
some big cattle-drive.

With no interruption in the lengthening line the third wave followed:
the virgin nurses, the frustrated mothers carrying the whitish larvae,
like babes in arms, carrying them with the indomitable determination to
preserve their lives which human nurses showed in the Second World War
as the