“I came back each day, when I could spare the time, and by the end of the week we were firm friends. It may surprise you that I was able to conceal these visits from my colleagues, but the island was quite large and we each did a lot of exploring. I felt somehow that Professor Takato was my private property, and did not wish to expose him to the curiosity of my companions. They were rather uncouth characters-graduates of some provincial university like Oxford or Cambridge.
“I’m glad to say that I was able to give the Professor a certain amount of assistance, fixing his radio and lining up some of his electronic gear. He used radioactive tracers a good deal, to follow individual termites around. He’d been tracking one with a Geiger counter when I first met him, in fact.
“Four or five days after we’d met, his counters started to go haywire, and the equipment we’d set up began to reel in its recordings. Takato guessed what had happened: he’d never asked me exactly what I was doing on the islands, but I think he knew. When I greeted him he switched on his counters and let me listen to the roar of radiation. There had been some radioactive fall-out-not enough to be dangerous, but sufficient to bring the background way up.
“‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘that you physicists are playing with your toys again. And very big ones, this time.’
“‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ I answered. We wouldn’t be sure until the readings had been analyzed, but it looked as if Teller and his team had started the hydrogen reaction. ‘Before long, we’ll. be able to make the first A-bombs look like damp squibs.’
“‘My family,’ said Professor Takato, without any emotion, ‘was at Nagasaki.’
“There wasn’t a great deal I could say to that, and I was glad when he went on to add: ‘Have you ever wondered who will take over when we are finished?’
“‘Your termites? I said, half facetiously. He seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he said quietly, ‘Come with me; I have not shown you everything.’
“We walked over to a comer of the lab where some equipment lay concealed beneath dust-sheets, and the Professor uncovered a
rather curious piece of apparatus. At first sight it looked like one of the manipulators used for the remote handling of dangerously radioactive materials. There were handgrips that conveyed movements through rods and levers, but everything seemed to focus on a small box a few inches on a side. ‘What is it? I asked.
“‘It’s a micromanipulator. The French developed them for biological work. There aren’t many around yet.’
“Then I remembered. These were devices with which, by the use of suitable reduction gearing, one could carry out the most incredibly delicate operations. You moved your finger an inch-and the tool you were controlling moved a thousandth of an inch. The French scientists who had developed this technique had built tiny forges on which they could construct minute scalpels and tweezers from fused glass. Working entirely through microscopes, they had been able to dissect individual cells. Removing an appendix from a termite (in the highly doubtful event of the insect possessing one) would be child’s play with such an instrument.
“‘I am not very skilled at using the manipulator,’ confessed Takato. ‘One of my assistants does all the work with it. I have shown no one else this, but you have been very helpful Come with me, please.’
“We went out into the open, and walked past the avenues of tall, cement-hard mounds. They were not all of the same architectural design, for there are many different kinds of termites-some, indeed, don’t build mounds at all. I felt rather like a giant walking through Manhattan, for these were skyscrapers, each with its own teeming population.
“There was a small metal (not wooden-the termites would soon have fixed that!) hut beside one of the mounds, and as we entered it the glare of sunlight was banished. The Professor threw a switch, and a faint red glow enabled me to see various types of optical equipment.
“‘They hate light,’ he said, ‘so it’s a great problem observing them. We solved it by using infra-red. This is an image-converter of the type that was used in the war for operations at night. You know about them?
“‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Snipers had them fixed on their rifles so that they could go sharp-shooting in the dark. Very ingenious things -I’m glad you’ve found a civilized use for them.’
“It was a long time before Professor Takato found what he wanted. He seemed to be steering some kind of periscope arrangement, probing through the corridors of the termite city. Then he said: ‘Quick-before they’ve gone!’
“I moved over and took his position. It was a second or so before my eye focused properly, and longer still before I understood the scale of the picture I was seeing. Then I saw six termites, greatly enlarged, moving rather rapidly across the field of vision. They were traveling in a group, like the huskies forming a dog-team. And that was a very good analogy, because they were towing a sledge … .
“I was so astonished that I never even noticed what kind of load they were moving. When they had vanished from sight, I turned to Professor Takato. My eyes had now grown accustomed to the faint red glow, and I could see him quite well.
“‘So that’s the sort of tool you’ve been building with your micromanipulator!’ I said. ‘It’s amazing-I’d never have believed it.’
“‘But that is nothing,’ replied the Professor. ‘Performing fleas will pull a cart around. I haven’t told you what is so important. We only made a few of those sledges. The one you saw they constructed themselves.’
“He let that sink in: it took some time. Then he continued quietly, but with a kind of controlled enthusiasm in his voice: Remember that the termites, as individuals, have virtually no intelligence. But the colony as a whole is a very high type of organism -and an immortal one, barring accidents. It froze in its present instinctive pattern millions of years before Man was born, and by itself it can never escape from its present sterile perfection. It has reached a dead-end-because it has no tools, no effective way of controlling nature. I have given it the lever, to increase its power, and now the sledge, to improve its efficiency. I have thought of the wheel, but it is best to let that wait for a later stage-it would not be very useful now. The results have exceeded my expectations. I started with this termitary alone-but now they all have the same tools. They have taught each other, and that proves they can cooperate. True, they have wars-but not when there is enough food for all, as there is here.
“‘But you cannot judge the termitary by human standards. What I hope to do is to jolt its rigid, frozen culture-to knock it out
of the groove in which it has stuck for so many millions of years. I will give it more tools, more new techniques-and before I die, I hope to see it beginning to invent things for itself.’
“‘Why are you doing this? I asked, for I knew there was more than mere scientific curiosity here.
“‘Because I do not believe that Man will survive, yet I hope to preserve some of the things he has discovered. If he is to be a dead-end, I think that another race should be given a helping hand. Do you know why I chose this island? It was so that my experiment should remain isolated. My super termite, if it ever evolves, will have to remain here until it has reached a very high level of attainment. Until it can cross the Pacific, in fact … .
“‘There is another possibility. Man has no rival on this planet. I think it may do him good to have one. It may be his salvation.’
“I could think of nothing to say: this glimpse of the Professor’s dreams was so overwhelming-and yet, in view of what I had just seen, so convincing. For I knew that Professor Takato was not mad. He was a visionary, and there was a sublime detachment about his outlook, but it was based on a secure foundation of scientific achievement.
“And it was not that he was hostile to mankind: he was sorry for it. He simply believed that humanity had shot its bolt, and wished to save something from the wreckage. I could not feel it in my heart to blame him.
“We must have been in that little hut for a long time, exploring possible futures. I remember suggesting that perhaps there might be some kind of mutual understanding, since two cultures so utterly dissimilar as Man and Termite need have no cause for conflict. But I couldn’t really believe this, and if a contest comes, I’m not certain who will win. For what use would man’s weapons be against an intelligent enemy who could lay waste all the wheat fields and all the rice crops in the world?