“Veig, stop a moment!” Niall called.
“Why?” Without breaking his stride, Veig jogged on.
“I know how to get rid of them.”
“How?” This time Veig stopped.
“I’ll show you,” Niall said. “Give me the bag.” He uncoiled the rope from his shoulders and tied the end round his waist. He handed the other end to Hrolf. “I”m going to try to lead them into one of the insect craters.” The ants were dangerously close; the humans ran on with Veig in the lead.
A hundred yards farther on they saw a crater to their left. Niall swerved towards it. At the top he paused for a moment, then crouched down and slid over the edge. He halted about ten feet down the side. Stones bounced down to the bottom; the ground heaved, and the hideous face of a crater insect emerged.
A moment later, the first ant appeared at the top of the crater. Without pausing, it ran on, down towards Niall. But its feet slipped on the stones; as it tried to slow down, its legs went into an undignified collapse, and it shot past him. Another ant followed it; this one ran straight towards Niall and he had to jump aside to prevent it from cannoning into his legs. Then a dozen ants rushed over the rim of the crater and descended towards him. All of them encountered the same problem; their forward motion made it difficult to brake, and they skidded past him in a shower of stones. Other ants cannoned into them, driving them downhill.
Hrolf and Veig were standing at the top of the crater, at right angles to the direction from which they had approached; both were holding on to the rope, which was now taut. One of the ants bit into Niall’s leg as it went past, and drew blood; it made Niall aware that it would be dangerous to stay there any longer. He began to scramble cautiously across the slope, making for the opposite rim of the crater. Many of the ants followed him but, without the advantage of a taut rope, found it impossible to keep their footing. A few moments later, Niall was safe on the edge of the crater, pulled to his feet by Veig and Hrolf. Behind him, the pit was full of struggling ants. More were pouring over the edge of the pit on the opposite side and joining the heaving mass below.
In the bottom of the pit, the crater insect was demonstrating its formidable strength. It towered above the ants with its armoured bulk. As soon as an ant came within range, it descended on it with its full weight, pinning it down with its powerful forelegs. A single bite of the ape-like jaws severed the head, or bit through the waist between the thorax and petiole. The creature was obviously undismayed by the sheer mass of struggling bodies that had descended into its trap; it killed with the efficiency of a machine, and soon the bottom of its pit was slippery with blood. The ants tried to defend themselves with their stings, but it was no use; even when a dying ant succeeded in driving its sting into the creature’s throat, it merely severed the sting with its jaws.
The last of their pursuers had plunged into the crater; there must have been more than a hundred ants swarming over one another in the pit. Their sheer number made escape practically impossible. Any attempt to scale the sides of the pit was obstructed by the mass of struggling bodies. A few ants succeeded in dragging themselves out of the mass and reached the rim of the crater; the humans pushed them back with their spears, sending them rolling down to the bottom.
Now Niall understood the disadvantage of the ant communication system. The access to one another’s minds which had made them such terrifying pursuers now became a handicap, causing each of them to share the general sense of confusion and defeat.
They watched for perhaps half an hour, until the piles of ant corpses made it difficult for the crater insect to move about. The ants themselves were becoming sluggish, as if they no longer had the strength to struggle. Finally, as the sun began to approach the western horizon, the human beings turned their backs on the slaughter pit and made their way back towards the stream. They walked slowly, for the run across the stones had made their limbs stiff. Niall felt a strange heaviness inside his head, as if all his emotions had become exhausted. Even when he saw the spider balloons floating low over the trees ahead of them, he felt no alarm and watched them as if they were passing clouds.
They made a wide detour and encountered the stream at a spot about two miles below the nest of the black ants. What terrified them at this point was the possibility that the red ants might scent their burden of larvae; they knew that none of them would have the strength to flee back into the wilderness.
But they encountered no ants: only a few beetles and millipedes and one big, grey spider, which contemplated them hungrily from its web between two trees but made no attempt to follow them. Finally, as dark was falling, they reached their shelter under the rock. Several large flies had discovered their store of melons, but they drove these out by using branches as fly swatters. Then they pulled the bushes across the entrance, wrapped themselves in their blankets of spider silk, and sank into a sleep of exhaustion.
The following day they set out before dawn. When the sun rose, they were already in the wilderness. And when, an hour before nightfall, they saw in the distance the great columns of twisted red rock, Niall experienced the pleasure of homecoming with an intensity that brought him close to tears. It felt as if they had been away from the burrow for months rather than days.
Within days, the larvae had turned into baby ants, tiny, grey, helpless creatures with endlessly open mouths. Veig spent his days collecting food for them. He searched for miles around for ripe fruit that could be mashed into a sweet pulp, and spent whole mornings milking aphids for their sweet juice, which he collected in a small gourd. Niall found the ants delightful and entertaining; they had never had pets before — the pepsis wasp was too formidable and independent to be regarded as a pet — and he found them as amusing as his sister, and far more lively and mischievous. Veig made them a nest of the softest grass he could find, and there they crawled over one another, nipped one another’s legs with their mandibles, and tried to bite Niall’s finger when he poked them. Their soft shells soon hardened, and it amused Niall to flick them with his fingernail and make a metallic clinking sound. He loved to relax until he had tuned in to their simple, instinctive minds. Then it was exactly as if he had also become a baby ant; in fact, it was rather like becoming a baby again. He seemed to be part of some enormous, pleasant, furry, buzzing confusion, a glowing warmth and security that seemed to extend to the whole universe. If he went outside after lying there beside the ants, he continued to experience the same sense of total security. It seemed to him that the cacti and the shrubs were aware of his presence — not sharply and consciously, but warmly and dimly, as if from the depths of a pleasant sleep. And when a huge, sharp-nosed fly tried to alight on his arm to try and drink some of his blood, he felt no irritation or disgust, but a tolerant understanding of its need; he flicked it away gently, without resentment.
Within a few weeks, the ants were enormous, and were investigating every corner of the burrow. Veig had to spend an increasing amount of time searching for food; their appetites seemed to be prodigious.
One morning, very early, Niall was aroused from sleep by a curious scratching noise. It was coming from the depths of the burrow where the ants were kept. He groped his way down the sloping tunnel that led to the lower level and felt cautiously over the bed of dry grass that formed their nest; it was empty. Moving around slowly in the dark, he bumped into a pile of earth. The scratching noise seemed to be coming from the darkness beyond it. The mystery could only be solved with the aid of a light and so as not to disturb the others, he took the tinder box down into the tunnel and ignited a pile of wood shavings. Treading cautiously — in case he set fire to the bed of grass — he made his way into the ants’ chamber. It was empty. But behind the pile of earth at the far end, there was a hole in the wall. He held the light inside it and saw that it sloped downward. In its depths, he could see the reflection from the hard carapace of an ant. A moment later, one of the ants came back up the tunnel, its forelegs clutching a load of earth. This it deposited neatly on the pile on the floor. A few minutes later, a second ant emerged, also carrying earth.