nes
entered or emerged from the tunnel mouth at the base of the mound. The
tempo of activity in the hive was, if anything, increased as night came
on. In the deepening darkness a faint blue glow streamed from the tunnel
mouth.

As the whirring of the last salvager receded, Dworn got cautiously to
his feet. He said between his teeth, "We'd better move fast, now--"

"Wait," said Qanya tensely. "They'll sight us in the open, and then what
chance will we have?"

Dworn tried to make out her expression, but in the darkness her face was
only a white blur. "We've got to try. There's no other way."

"Perhaps there is. What about the tunnel?"

Dworn was brought up short; that idea hadn't occurred to him at all. He
said slowly, "I see what you mean, It's only big enough for one-way
traffic--and the drones evidently have some system of remote control, so
that outbound expeditions aren't using it at the same time as returning
ones...."

"So, if we wait till some of the wingless ones enter from this end, and
hurry through the tunnel close behind them--" Qanya left the sentence
uncompleted. Dworn knew she could imagine as well as he what would
happen if they failed to time it right, and met a drone column coming
from the opposite direction. Still, the sound sense of the girl's ideas
was obvious.

"All right," he said. "We'll try it that way."

It was another nerve-fraying wait until a file of ground machines came
winding near and vanished one after another into the tunnel.

The two watchers gave them a little time--not too much--to get clear of
the entrance. Then Dworn clasped Qanya's hand tightly in his own, and
together they plunged down the sliding slope of the sandhill. The tunnel
mouth yawned in its side, the bore on which it opened slanting steeply
down into the earth, inwardly lit with eery blue light.

Hearts pounding, they raced into the tunnel.

It was an unreal, nightmare flight. The blue shaft curved and descended
endlessly. Endlessly ahead of them echoed the snarling of drone engines.

They ran with lungs near to bursting, through air heavy and foul with
exhaust gases--trying frantically to keep close behind that engine
noise, while it receded inexorably before them. And once and again, amid
the tricky tunnel echoes, Dworn was almost sure that other drones had
entered and were descending the narrow way behind them, and before his
eyes flashed hideous visions of the two of them overtaken and run down,
here w