y
had _not_ asked us was, "Where do you stand on the matter of ants?"

There was an unwritten law in the lab for nobody ever to mention
insects, or even elderly female relatives. I guess that was why it
wasn't mentioned to the new guy, name of Robert Pringle. This fellow
Pringle worked along for a couple weeks and showed us he had the old
know-how in his fingers. A capable tech, a good joe, and we thought we
were lucky to get him.

On this particular morning, it happened that Pringle was working at
the bench next to Kenzie. Being a talented tech, like the rest of us,
his mind naturally ran along more than one channel at the same time. I
expect he was really surprised at the reaction he got when he shouted
out to the room at large.

"Hey, fellows," he yelled. "I got little green bugs on my roses. What
do you do about it?"

The silence made him look up from his work, and he couldn't help
noticing we all stood there with clinched hands and gritted teeth. We
were watching Kenzie, who snapped the juice off his soldering iron and
pointed the iron at Pringle.

"Those," said Kenzie in a hollow, impressive voice, "are aphis. If you
will look closer, Pringle, you will see among them--ants. The aphid is
to the ant as the dairy cow is to the human. Those ants are aphid
herders, carefully tending and milking their flock."

"Here we go again," moaned one of the fellows across the lab.

"The ants are a highly intelligent life form," Kenzie went on. "I
would explain it to you in detail, but I am in the middle of a problem
at this moment."

"Thank heaven for that," another tech ground out the words.

"Suffice it to say," Kenzie ignored all interruptions, "Man would well
occupy himself trying to communicate with them."

The Chief came to the doorway of his little office down at the end of
the lab. He looked us all over patiently and knowingly.

"Now give him your syllogism, Kenzie," he said quietly, "so we can all
get back to work."

"You may reflect on this, Pringle," Kenzie stated and waved his
soldering iron in the air.

"One: Man wants to communicate with intelligent life from other
planets or the stars.

"Two: We know from observation the ants communicate with one another.

"Ergo: Before we reach so far as to contact extra terrestrial
intelligence, had we not better occupy our time with solving a much
simpler communications problem; to wit: communicate with the ants? How
can we expect to solve communication with