door I went and was drawn through the air a
few feet behind Jim. He moved ahead of me for fifteen or twenty feet and
then vanished in mid-air. I dared not struggle in mid-air and I was
drawn through a door into a large space flyer which became visible as I
entered it. The flexible wire or rod which had held me uncoiled and I
was free on the floor beside Jim Carpenter. This much was clear and
understandable, but when I looked at the crew of that space ship, I was
sure that I had lost my mind or was seeing visions. I had naturally
expected men, or at least something in semi-human form, but instead of
anything of the sort, before me stood a dozen gigantic beetles!

* * * * *

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. There was no mistaking the fact that
we had been captured by a race of gigantic beetles flying an invisible
space ship. When I had time later to examine them critically, I could
see marked differences between our captors and the beetles we were
accustomed to see on the earth besides the mere matter of size. To begin
with, their bodies were relatively much smaller, the length of shell of
the largest specimen not being over four feet, while the head of the
same insect, exclusive of the horns or pinchers, was a good eighteen
inches in length. The pinchers, which by all beetle proportions should
have been a couple of feet long at the least, did not extend over the
head a distance greater than eight inches, although they were sturdy and
powerful.

Instead of traveling with their shells horizontal as do earthly beetles,
these insects stood erect on their two lower pairs of legs, which were
of different lengths so that all four feet touched the ground when the
shell was vertical. The two upper pairs of legs were used as arms, the
topmost pair[A] being quite short and splitting out at the end into four
flexible claws about five inches long, which they used as fingers. These
upper arms, which sprouted from a point near the top of the head, were
peculiar in that they apparently had no joints like the other three
pairs but were flexible like an elephant's trunk. The second pair of
arms were armed with long, vicious-looking hooks. The backplates
concealed only very rudimentary wings, not large enough to enable the
insects to fly, although Jim told me later that they could fly on their
own planet, where the lessened gravity made such extensive wing supports
as would be needed on earth unnecessary.