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  “It was his brain that conceived our daring plan of escape. If there were other lands beyond the boiling seas, the lands which tradition taught were the origin of the Cupian race, then there we might prosper and raise up a new empire. At the worst we should merely meet death in another form, rather than at your hands. So we essayed.

  “Your planes followed us, but turned back as we neared the area of terrific heat. Soon the vapor closed over us, blotting our enemies and our native land from view.”

  For page after page Doggo, the ant-man, related the harrowing details of that perilous flight across the boiling seas, ending with the words:

  “Here we are, and here are you, in Yuriana, capitol of New Formia. But how is it that you, Myles Cabot, have arrived here on this continent in exactly the same manner and condition in which I discovered you in old Formia eight years ago?”

  When Myles reached the end of reading this narrative, he in turn took the pad and stylus and related how he had gone to the planet Minos (which we call the Earth) to learn the latest discoveries and inventions there, and how his calculations for his return to Poros had been upset by some static conditions just as he had been about to transmit himself back. Oh, if only he had landed by chance upon the same beach as on his first journey through the skies!

  Wisely he refrained from mentioning the “S O S” message from Lilla. But his recollection of her predicament spurred him to be anxious about her rescue.

  His immediate problem was to learn what the ant-men planned for him; so the concluding words which he wrote upon the pad were: “And, now that you have me in your power, what shall you do with me?”

  “Old friend,” Doggo wrote in reply, “that depends entirely upon Yuri, our king, whose toga you now have on.”

  III

  YURI OR FORMIS?

  The earth-man grimaced, but then smiled. Perhaps, his succeeding to the toga of King Yuri might prove to be an omen.

  “So Yuri is king of the ants?” he asked.

  “Yes,” his captor replied, “for Queen Formis did not survive the trip across the boiling seas.”

  “Then what of your empire?” Myles inquired. “No queen. No eggs. How can your race continue? For you Formians are like the ants on my own planet Minos.”

  Doggo’s reply astounded him.

  “Do you remember back at Wautoosa, I told you that some of us lesser Formians had occasionally laid eggs? So now behold before you Doggo, Admiral of the Formian Air Navy, and mother of a new Queen Formis.”

  This was truly a surprise! All along Cabot had always regarded the Formians as mannish. And rightly so, for they performed in their own country the duties assigned to men among the Cupians. Furthermore, all Formians, save only the reigning Formis herself, were called by the Porovian pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English.

  When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment, he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.

  “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person of some importance among the Formians.”

  “It ought to,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me. Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and for the Formians exclusively.”

  “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own difficulties.

  But Doggo wrote in horror, “It would be treason!” Then tore up all the correspondence. It is difficult to inculcate the thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an autocracy.

  The earth-man, however, persisted.

  “How many of the council can you count on, if the interests of Yuri should clash with those of Formis?”

  “Only one—Thyself.”

  And again Doggo tore up the correspondence.

  Myles tactfully changed the subject.

  “Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked.

  “We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and approached you.”

  At about this point the conversation was interrupted by a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.

  During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty of writing and eating at the same time. But now Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:

  “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking on the planet Poros?”

  “No,” the ant-man wrote in reply.

  “Have you ever known me to be untrue to a principle, a cause, or a friend?”

  “No,” Doggo replied.

  “Then,” Myles wrote, “let us make your daughter queen in fact as well as in name.”

  “It is treason,” Doggo wrote in reply, but this time he did not tear up the correspondence.

  “Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason? Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become of the national pride of the once great Formians? Look! I pledge myself to the cause of Formis, rightful Queen of Formia. Formis, daughter of Doggo! What say you?”

  This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo signified an affirmative. And thus there resulted further correspondence.

  “Doggo,” Myles wrote, “can you get to the antenna of the queen?”

  The ant-man indicated that he could.

  “If she has inherited any of your character,” Myles continued, “she will assert herself, if given half a chance.”

  So the Pitmanesque conversation continued. Long since had the pink light of Porovian evening faded from the western sky. The ceiling vapor-lamps were lit. The night showed velvet-black through the slit-like windows. And still the two old friends wrote on, Myles Standish Cabot, the Bostonian, and Doggo, No. 334-2-18, the only really humanlike ant-man whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant race of Poros.

  Finally, as the dials indicated midnight, the two conspirators ceased their labors. All was arranged for the coup d’ etat.

  They tore into shreds every scrap of used paper, leaving extant merely the ant-man’s concluding words: “Meanwhile you are my prisoner.”

  Doggo then rang a soundless bell, which was answered by a worker ant, whom he inaudibly directed to bring sufficient draperies to form a bed for the earth-man. These brought, the two friends patted each other a fond good night, and the tired earth-man lay down for the first sleep which he had had in over forty earth hours.

  It hardly seemed possible! Night before last he had slept peacefully on a conventional feather-bed in a little New England farmhouse. Then had come the SOS message from the skies; and here he was now, millions of miles away through space retiring on matted silver felting on the concrete floor of a Porovian ant-house. Such are the mutations of fortune!

  With these thoughts the returned wanderer lapsed into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  When he awakened in the morning there was a guard posted at the door.

  Doggo did not show up until nearly noon, when he rattled in, bristling with excitement.

  Seizing the pad he wrote: “A stormy session of the Council of Twelve! We are all agreed that you must be indicted for high crimes and misdemeanors. But the great question is as to just what we can charge you with.”

  “Sorry I can’t assist you,” the earth-man wrote. “How would it be if I were to slap your daughter’s face, or something? Or why not try me for general cussedness?”

  “That is just what we finally decided to do,” the ant-man wrote in reply. “We shall
try you on general principles, and let the proper accusation develop from the evidence.

  “At some stage of the proceedings it will inevitably occur to some member of the council to suggest that you be charged with treason to Yuri, whereupon two members of the council, whom I have won over to the cause of my daughter, will raise the objection that Yuri is not our king. This will be the signal for the proclaiming of Queen Formis. If you will waive counsel the trial can take place tomorrow.”

  “I will waive anything,” Myles replied, “counsel, immunity, extradition, anything in order to speed up my return to Cupia, where Lilla awaits in some dire extremity.”

  “All right,” Doggo wrote, and the conference was at an end. The morrow would decide the ascendancy of Myles Cabot or the Prince Yuri over the new continent.

  IV

  THE COUP D’ETAT

  The next morning Myles Cabot was led under guard to the council chamber of the dread thirteen: Formis and her twelve advisers. The accused was placed in a wicker cage, from which he surveyed his surroundings as the proceedings opened.

  On a raised platform stood the ant queen, surmounted by a scarlet canopy, which set off the perfect proportions of her jet-black body. On each side of her stood six refined and intelligent ant-men, her councillors. One of the twelve was Doggo.

  Messenger ants hurried hither and thither.

  First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished with a written copy.

  The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors. They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved Formia. Their testimony was brief.

  Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders, sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of making an argument through the antennae of another.”

  Whereupon the queen and the council went into executive session. Their remarks were not intended for the eyes of the prisoner, but he soon observed that some kind of a dispute was on between Doggo, supported by two councillors named Emu and Fum on one side, and a councillor named Barth on the other.

  As this dispute reached its height, a messenger ant rushed in and held up one paw. Cabot’s interpreter, not deeming this a part of the executive session, obligingly translated the following into writing:

  The messenger: “Yuri lives and reigns over Cupia. It is his command that Cabot die.”

  Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye, members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our prisoner here to-day.

  “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians, and he has been in constant communication with these ever since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.

  “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that some of our own people would regard his departure as desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his fatherland and to the throne which is his by rights?”

  To which the messenger added: “And he offers to give us back our own old country, if we too. will return across the boiling seas again.”

  “It is a lie!” Doggo shouted.

  “Yuri, usurper of the thrones of two continents. Bah!” shouted Emu.

  “Yuri, our rightful leader,” shouted Barth.

  “Give us a queen of our own race,” shouted Fum.

  “Release the prisoner,” shouted the Queen.

  And that is all that Myles learned of the conversation, for his interpreter at this juncture stopped writing and obeyed the queen. The earth-man was free!

  With one bound he gained the throne, where fighting was already in progress between the two factions. Barth and Doggo were rolling over and over on the floor in a death grapple, while the ant-queen had backed to the rear of the stage, closely guarded by Emu and Fum.

  Seizing one of the pikes which supported the scarlet canopy, Myles wrenched it loose and drove it into the thorax of Barth. In another instant the earth-man and Doggo stood beside the queen.

  Ant-men now came pouring into the chamber through all the entrances, taking sides as they entered and sized up the situation. If it had still been in vogue among the Formians to be known by numbers rather than names, and to have these identifying numbers painted on the backs of their abdomens followed by the numbers of those whom they had defeated in the duels so common among them, then many a Formian would have “got the number” of many another, that day.

  As Myles battled with his pike beside Formis, queen of the ants, he could well imagine the conflicting shouts of “Death to the usurper!” “Formia for the Formians!” “Long Live Queen Formis!” “Long live Prince Yuri!” which must have resounded throughout the chamber; but to him all was silence, for he was without the antennae wherewith to pick up the radiated speech of the contenders.

  So as he wielded the pike in silence, he had opportunity to reflect on the incongruity of his position. Here was he, Myles Cabot regent of Cupia, the man who had driven the ants forever from their dominion over his people, and yet now fighting side by side with their leaders defending the life of their queen.

  Yet was she not the daughter of Doggo his only friend among the ants? And would not her victory mean the speedy return of Myles to his own continent?

  As the earth-man jabbed to right and left among the supporters of his enemy Yuri there came to his human ears the sound of rifle fire. It might prove a godsend or an added menace, according to whose paw held the rifle. But no chances must be taken on the life of the queen. So Myles made frantic signs to Doggo of impending danger.

  The queen and her supporters, outnumbered, were fighting with their backs to one of the walls of the room. A short distance along this wall on the side where Cabot stood was a door; so he now began edging his way along the wall to this door. This was not difficult, as the ant-men, having only their mandibles to fight with, greatly respected his pike.

  He gained the door and passed by, but not through it. The shots came nearer and nearer. Then Doggo opened the door and slipped through with Formis and the rest of her immediate supporters; the door closed, and Myles Cabot stood guarding the exit with his pike—alone against the hordes of antdom.

  He had no difficulty in defending himself from those in front of him, but the ants who began to close in on him from each side were a different matter.

  He received several bad scratches on his shoulders and hips, and his toga was ripped and torn; but fortunately he was able to ward off their paralyzing bites. Nevertheless, his enemies pressed so close that it was difficult for him to manipulate his long weapon. In fact, it was only the jamming of the ants upon one another and upon the dead bodies of their slain comrades that kept them from him.

  He now was holding his pike by the middle, with both hands, using one end as a club and the other as a dagger. The black circle of the ants was steadily closing in on him. A pair of mandibles from the left snapped angrily within a few inches of his throat. Instantly he drove the point of his lance home between horrid jaws. But at the same instant its butt was seized by a pair of jaws to his right. He could not pull it free.

  At last he was weaponless, and not only that, but pinned to the wall by the shaft of his own pike as well.

  And then to his surprise the ants before him separated as at a command. The butt of his lance was dropped. As Myles wrenched the point loose from the dead body of the Formian in which it had been stuck, and gazed expectant down the long aisle which had opened before him, he saw confronting him at the other end an ant-man armed with the peculiar type of claw-operated rifle which the Formians had adapted from
those which Myles himself had built for Cupian use in the first war of liberation.

  Briefly the two surveyed each other. Then slowly the rifle was raised until its aim settled squarely upon the earth-man’s chest.

  Instantaneously the glance of Myles Cabot swept the black hordes which hemmed him in on each side. There was no escape!

  Yet how can man die better, Than facing fearful odds?

  With a wild war-whoop, which was utterly lost on the radio-sense of the assembled Formians, Myles charged down the narrow way, straight into the muzzle of the rifle of his antagonist. The astonished ant-man hastily pulled the trigger. A shot rang out. But still the impetuous rush of Myles continued, and before the rifle could be discharged a second time, Myles had driven his spear deep into the leering insect face.

  The Formian staggered back. The rifle clattered to the floor. The earth-man, not waiting to withdraw his own weapon, stooped, seized the fallen firearm, and wheeled to confront his enemies, who fell back in a snarling arc before this new menace.

  Myles stood now in one of the entranceways of the council chamber, and thus was secure against flank attack. But not against an assault from the rear. In fact, even as he stood thus irresolute, a rattling noise behind him in the hallways revealed to his human ears the approach of a new enemy. What was he to do? To remain as he was meant carte blanche to this newcomer, whereas to turn about would mean that those within the chamber would undoubtedly rush him.

  In this predicament Myles grasped his gun firmly, and wheeled backward to the left until he was flattened against the wall of the corridor in which he was standing. From this position he could turn his head slightly to the left and see into the council chamber, or to the right and look down the long hall.