what he vaguely sensed was
the interior of one of the barracks.

Some time later--he didn't know or care when, for he had lost all
conception or even definition of time--he looked up the deep
everlengthening shaft of himself into the eyes of another Mr. Eumenes or
Mr. Sphex or Dr. Vespa or whatever he called himself. He was in white
and wore a stethoscope around his neck.

Beside him stood another of his own kind. This one wore lipstick and a
nurse's cap. She carried a tray on which were several containers. One
container held a large and sharp scalpel. The other held an egg. It was
about twice the size of a hen's egg.

Jack saw all this just before the veil took on another shade of red and
blurred completely his vision of the outside. But the final thickening
did not keep him from seeing that Doctor Eumenes was staring down at him
as if he were peering into a dusky burrow. And Jack could make out the
eyes. They were large, much larger than they should have been at the
speed with which Jack was receding. They were not the pale pink of an
albino's. They were black from corner to corner and built of a dozen or
so hexagons whose edges caught the light.

They twinkled.

Like jewels.

Or the eyes of an enormous and evolved wasp.

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ January 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.

End of Project Gutenberg's They Twinkled Like Jewels, by Philip Jose Farmer

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