"

"We swear!" they said at the same moment.

The Spider Mother's face was like iron. She looked from one to the other
slowly.

"Then," she said stiffly and formally, leaning over to extend a wrinkled
hand to Dworn, "let there be peace between us ... between me and mine
and you and yours, and among all living peace ... till the evil is no
more!"

Dworn took the hand, and answered, hurriedly recalling ancient custom:
"Till the evil is no more!" And heard Qanya echo the words.

* * * * *

All night the desert was stirring, with a feverish hastening of
messengers. These were at first spiders--then, members of a half dozen,
a dozen other races, as the word was passed from one people to
another--as tribe after tribe of hardbitten, suspicious warriors,
fingers, fidgeting on triggers at the open approach of their hereditary
mortal foes, heard and were electrified by the news--

_The Coming of the Drone!_

And hand gripped hand, all feuds were forgotten, the peoples mingled in
a common effort of hurried mobilization. The desert land below the
cliffs crawled with them, a mixed multitude of constantly increasing
numbers, girding themselves for war.

Ferocious predatory machines--spiders, wheel-bugs, scorpions--formidable
in their armor and bristling with guns, lay alongside the more pacific
slugs and caterpillars and snails which in ordinary times were their
natural prey, and were freely fuelled and provisioned out of the stores
which normally their possessors would have fought to the death to
safeguard against the despoilers....

In the presence of the drones, there were no more natural enmities. For
the drones were the Enemy. Their coming meant that all life was kindred;
deep in the heritage of every people was the almost instinctive
knowledge that, if the drones were not checked as tradition decreed,
their blind automatic propagation would end by sweeping every living
thing from the face of the Earth.

Toward morning, the chiefs of a score of tribes held council of war in
the very shadow of the Barrier. Their consultation was brief; there was
no arguable question of what must be done, only of how. And if the
drones were about to swarm, they must act promptly. No time to wait for
the gathering of more distant peoples; no time to send word to the wasps
or the hornets and gain aerial support. They must strike with what they
had.

* * * * *

Dworn