started awake as a hand touched his shoulder. He sat up, angrily
flinging a coverlet from him.

"I didn't intend to sleep!" he muttered, rubbing his eyes and realizing
where he was--below ground in the spiders' colony, whither he and Qanya
had been taken and where he had been persuaded to lie down and rest a
little while the warning was carried by others.

The tall blonde spider, Purri, was grinning maliciously down at him.
"Hear the beetle talk! I suppose, after a day spent in what, for you was
comparative idleness, you felt like doing something really strenuous ...
say going out and demolishing the drones' hive bare handed...?"

Dworn climbed to his feet. With a violent effort he kept from wincing at
the protest of stiffened muscles and yesterday's collection of bruises.

"What's going on out there now? Where's Qanya?"

"There's really nothing more _you_ can do, you know. I merely woke you
because I thought you'd want to hear that your beetle-folk have been
contacted--they'd holed up to lick their wounds about twenty miles south
of here--and have joined the fighting force that's getting ready to
attack the drones at dawn. As for dear little Qanya, she's sleeping
angelically in the next chamber...."

"No, she isn't," said Qanya from the doorway.

"You, too?" said Purri with irritation. "And what do you want,
scapegrace?"

Qanya's black eyes narrowed dangerously. She moved forward to Dworn's
side and took a grip on his arm. "I might ask what you're doing here
disturbing--"

"Both of you, you're wasting time," growled Dworn.

He'd heard with a queer pang that his people--those who remained
alive--had been located. Not that it made any real difference, of
course. His father was dead, and he, Dworn, was dead too as far as his
own kind was concerned. Nor, in this world, was there anywhere else he
could turn.

For the present, under the threat of the Drone, that didn't matter. All
laws of all peoples were in abeyance for the duration of the great
emergency. But once the threat was dissolved, and the old laws resumed
their force, the plight of Dworn and of Qanya also would be what it had
been--that of outcasts in a world where an outcast had no chance of
survival.

Well, it was no use thinking of the future. Dworn said determinedly: "I
want to see the end of this business, at least."

"And I!" declared Qanya. "We've earned that right."

Purri eyed them sourly, shrugged. "As you like. I'm in command here
whi