one than man's, indicated the kind of society man would at some time
build up for himself. In ten or twelve more centuries we, too, might go
off in millions and deliberately starve to death because the ruling
power decided there were too many people on earth. We, too, might devour
our dead because it was essential not to let anything go to waste. We,
too, might control our births so that we produced astronomers with
telescopes in their heads instead of regular eyes, carpenters with
hammer and saw instead of hands, soldiers with poison gas sacs in their
chests so they could breathe death and destruction at will. It would be
the perfect state of society."

"Maybe--but I'm glad I'll be dead before that times comes," said Jim
with another shiver.

* * * * *

By now the wall ahead of them was complete. On the other side of it the
soldier termites stolidly fought on to their certain death. On the near
side, the workers retreated to unknown depths in the great hollow
mountain behind them. The main avenue was once more clear, and, save
for a few workers hastening on unknown errands, deserted.

"That act's over," sighed Dennis. "But it may well be no more than a
curtain raiser to the acts to come. Shall we be on our way? We're hardly
on the fringe of the termitary yet--and I want to get at the heart of
it, and into the depths far beneath it. Depths of hell, we'll probably
find them, Jim. But a marvelous hell, and one no man has ever before
seen."

They left their little haven and moved along the main tunnel toward the
heart of the termitary, walking easily upright in this tunnel which was
only one of many hundreds in the vast, hollowed mountain--which loomed
into the outer sunshine to almost a height of a yard.

CHAPTER V

_Trapped_

On along the tunnel they went. And as they progressed, Dennis got the
answer to something that had troubled him a great deal before their
entrance here--a problem which had been solved, rather amazingly, of
itself.

Termitaries, as far as the entomologist knew, were pitch-black places
which no ray of light ever entered. He had been afraid he would be
forced to stumble blindly in unlit depths, able to see nothing at all,
on a par with the blind creatures among whom he moved. Yet he and Jim
could see in this subterranean labyrinth.

He observed now the reason for that. The walls on all sides, made of
half-digested cellulose, had rotted just enough