vast shape another cluster of termites thronged. And
these bore away a constant stream of termite eggs--that dripped from the
zeppelinlike, crammed belly at the rate of almost one a second.

Her Highness, the Queen--two hundred tons of flabby, greasy flesh,
immobile, able only to eat and lay eggs.

"My God," whispered Jim. Utterly unstrung, he gazed at that mighty,
loathsome mass, listening to its snapping jaws as it took on the tons of
nourishment needed for its machinelike functioning. "My God!"

* * * * *

Instinctively he whirled to run back through the entrance they had come
through. But now, with the admittance of the soldier band that had
pressed them in here, the entrance was guarded again by one of the
giants permanently stationed there.

"What had we better do?" he breathed to Denny.

Dennis stared helplessly around. He had noticed that the termites in
here were acting differently from the others they had encountered since
leaving the lair of the termite-ruler. These were moving uneasily,
restlessly, stopping now and again with waving, inquisitive antennae. It
looked ominously as though they had sensed the presence of intruders
here in the sanctum where their race was born, and were dimly wondering
what to do.

"We might try each tunnel mouth, one by one, on the chance that we can
find a careless guard somewhere," Dennis muttered at last. "But for
heaven's sake don't touch any of the brutes! I think that at the
slightest signal the whole mob of the things would spring on us and tear
us to pieces. Most of the paste is rubbed off by now."

Jim nodded. He had no desire to brush against one of the colossal,
special guard of soldiers if he could help it, or against any of the
relatively weak workers that might give the signal of alarm.

Stealing silently along among the blind, instinctively agitated
monsters, they worked a circuitous way from one exit to another. But
nowhere did any chance of getting out of the place present itself.
Across each tunnel mouth was placed one of the enormous guards,
twelve-foot mandibles opened like a waiting steel trap.

Halfway around the tremendous room they went, without mishap, but also
without finding an exit they could slip through. And then, in the rear
of the vast bulk of the Queen, it happened.

* * * * *

One of the worker termites, bearing an egg in its mandibles, faltered,
and dropped its precious