The Challenge Of The Mound

: The Raid On The Termites

It was a curious, somehow weird-looking thing, that mound. About a yard

in height and three and a half in diameter, it squatted in the grassy

grove next the clump of trees like an enormous, inverted soup plate.

Here and there tufts of grass waved on it, of a richer, deeper color,

testifying to the unwholesome fertility of the crumbling outer stuff

that had flaked from the solid mound walls.



Like an excres ence on the flank of Mother Earth herself, the mound

loomed; like an unhealthy, cancerous growth. And inside the enigmatic

thing was another world. A dark world, mysterious, horrible, peopled by

blind and terrible demons--a world like a Dante's dream of a second

Inferno.



Such, at least, were the thoughts of Dennis Braymer as he worked with

delicate care at the task of sawing into the hard cement of a portion of

the wall near the rounded top.



His eyes, dark brown and rimmed with thick black lashes, flashed

earnestly behind his glasses as they concentrated on his difficult job.

His face, lean and tanned, was a mask of seriousness. To him, obviously,

this was a task of vital importance; a task worthy of all a man's

ability of brain and logic.



Obviously also, his companion thought of the work as just something with

which to fill an idle afternoon. He puffed at a pipe, and regarded the

entomologist with a smile.



To Jim Holden, Denny was simply fussing fruitlessly and absurdly with an

ordinary "ant-hill," as he persisted in miscalling a termitary. Playing

with bugs, that was all. Wasting his time poking into the affairs of

termites--and acting, by George, as though those affairs were of supreme

significance!



He grinned, and tamped and relighted the tobacco in his pipe. He

refrained from putting his thoughts into words, however. He knew, of

old, that Denny was apt to explode if his beloved work were interrupted

by a careless layman. Besides, Dennis had brought him here rather under

protest, simply feeling that it was up to a host to do a little

something or other by way of trying to amuse an old college mate who had

come for a week's visit. Since he was there on sufferance, so to speak,

it was up to him to keep still and not interrupt Denny's play.



The saw rasped softly another time or two, then moved, handled with

surgeon's care, more gently--till at last a section about as big as the

palm of a man's hand was loose on the mound-top.



Denny's eyes snapped. His whole wiry, tough body quivered. He visibly

held his breath as he prepared to flip back that sawed section of

curious, strong mound wall.



He snatched up his glass, overturned the section.



Jim drew near to watch, too, seized in spite of himself by some of the

scientist's almost uncontrollable excitement.



Under the raised section turmoil reigned for a moment. Jim saw a horde

of brownish-white insects, looking something like ants, dashing

frenziedly this way and that as the unaccustomed light of sun and

exposure of outer air impinged upon them. But the turmoil lasted only a

little while.



Quickly, in perfect order, the termites retreated. The exposed honeycomb

of cells and runways was deserted. A slight heaving of earth told how

the insects were blocking off the entrances to the exposed floor, and

making that floor their new roof to replace the roof this invading giant

had stripped from over them.



In three minutes there wasn't a sign of life in the hole. The

observation--if one could call so short a glimpse at so abnormally

acting a colony an observation--was over.



* * * * *



Denny rose to his feet, and dashed his glass to the ground. His face was

twisted in lines of utter despair, and through his clenched teeth the

breath whistled in uneven gasps.



"My God!" he groaned. "My God--if only I could see them! If only I could

get in there, and watch them at their normal living. But it's always

like this. The only glance we're permitted is at a stampede following

the wrecking of a termitary. And that tells us no more about the real

natures of the things than you could tell about the nature of normal men

by watching their behavior after an earthquake!"



Jim Holden tapped out his pipe. On his face the impatiently humorous

look gave place to a measure of sympathy. Good old Denny. How he took

these trivial disappointments to heart. But, how odd that any man could

get so worked up over such small affairs! These bugologists were queer

people.



"Oh, well," he said, half really to soothe Denny, half deliberately to

draw him out, "why get all boiled up about the contrariness of ordinary

little bugs?"



Denny rose to the bait at once. "Ordinary little bugs? If you knew what

you were talking about, you wouldn't dismiss the termite so casually!

These 'ordinary little bugs' are the most intelligent, the most

significant and highly organized of all the insect world.



"Highly organized?" he repeated himself, his voice deepening. "They're

like a race of intelligent beings from another planet--superior even to

Man, in some ways. They have a king and queen. They have 'soldiers,'

developed from helpless, squashy things into nightmare creations with

lobster-claw mandibles longer than the rest of their bodies put

together. They have workers, who bore the tunnels and build the mounds.

And they have winged ones from among which are picked new kings and

queens to replace the original when they get old and useless. And all

these varied forms, Jim, they hatch at will, through some marvelous

power of selection, from the same, identical kind of eggs. Now, I ask

you, could you take the unborn child and make it into a man with four

arms or a woman with six legs and wings, at will, as these insects, in

effect, do with theirs?"



"I never tried," said Jim.



"Just a soft, helpless, squashy little bug, to begin with," Denny went

on, ignoring his friend's levity. "Able to live only in warm

countries--yet dying when exposed directly to the sun. Requiring a very

moist atmosphere, yet exiled to places where it doesn't rain for months

at a time. And still, under circumstances harsher even than those Man

has had to struggle against, they have survived and multiplied."



"Bah, bugs," murmured Jim maddeningly.



* * * * *



But again Denny ignored him, and went on with speculations concerning

the subject that was his life passion. He was really thinking aloud,

now; the irreverent Holden was for the moment nonexistent.



"And the something, the unknown intelligence, that seems to rule each

termitary! The something that seems able to combine oxygen from the air

with hydrogen from the wood they eat and make necessary moisture; the

something that directs all the blind subjects in their marvelous

underground architecture; the something that, at will, hatches a dozen

different kinds of beings from the common stock of eggs--what can it be?

A sort of super-termite? A super-intellect set in the minute head of an

insect, yet equal to the best brains of mankind? We'll probably never

know, for, whatever the unknown intelligence is, it lurks in the

foundations of the termitaries, yards beneath the surface, where we

cannot penetrate without blowing up the whole mound--and at the same

time destroying all the inhabitants."



Jim helped Denny gather up his scientific apparatus. They started across

the fields toward Denny's roadster, several hundred yards away--Jim,

blond and bulking, a hundred and ninety pounds of hardy muscle and bone;

Denny wiry and slender, dark-eyed and dark-haired. The sledge-hammer and

the rapier; the human bull, and the human panther; the one a student

kept fit by outdoor studies, and the other a careless, rich young

time-killer groomed to the pink by the big-game hunting and South Sea

sailing and other adventurous ways of living he preferred.



"This stuff is all very interesting," he said perfunctorily, "but what

has it to do with practical living? How will the study of bugs, no

matter how remarkable the bug, be of benefit to the average man? What I

mean is, your burning zeal--your really bitter disappointment a minute

ago--seem a bit out of place. A bit--well, exaggerated don't you know."



* * * * *



Denny halted; and Jim, perforce, stopped, too. Denny's dark eyes burned

into Jim's blue ones.



"How does it affect practical living? You, who have been in the tropics

many times on your lion-spearing and snake-hunting jaunts, ask such a

thing? Haven't you ever seen the damage these infernal things can do?"



Jim shook his head. "I've never happened to be in termite country,

though I've heard tales about them."



"If you've heard stories, you have at least in idea of their deadliness

when they're allowed to multiply. You must have heard how they literally

eat up houses and the furnishings within, how they consume telegraph

poles, railroad ties, anything wooden within reach. The termite is a

ghastly menace. When they move in--men eventually move out! And their

appearance here in California has got many a nationally famous man half

crazy. That's what they mean to the average person!"



Jim, scratched his head. "I didn't think of that angle of it," he

admitted.



"Well, it's time you thought of something besides fantastic ways of

risking your life. The termite has been kept in place, till now, by only

two things: ants, which are its bitterest enemies, and constantly attack

and hamper its development; and climatic conditions, which bar it from

the temperate zones. Now suppose, with all their intelligence and force

of organization--not to mention that mysterious and terrible unknown

intelligence that leads them--they find a way to whip the ants once for

all, and to immunize themselves to climatic changes? Mankind will

probably be doomed."



"Gosh," said Jim, with exaggerated terror.



* * * * *



"Laugh if you want to," said Dennis, "but I tell you the termite is a

very real menace. Even in its present stage of development. And the

maddening thing is that we can't observe them and so discover how best

to fight them.



"To get away from the light that is fatal to them, they build mounds

like that behind us, of silicated, half-digested wood, which hardens

into a sort of cement that will turn the cutting edge of steel. If you

pry away some of the wall to spy on them, you get the fiasco I was just

rewarded with. If you try to penetrate to the depths of the mystery,

yards underground, by blowing up the termitary with gun powder, the only

way of getting to the heart of things--you destroy the termites. Strays

are seldom seen; in order, again, to avoid light and air-exposure, they

tunnel underground or build tubes above ground to every destination.

Always they keep hidden and secret. Always they work from within, which

is why walls and boards they have devoured look whole: the outer shell

has been left untouched and all the core consumed."



"Can't you get at the beasts in the laboratory?" asked Jim.



"No. If you put them into glass boxes to watch them, they manage to

corrode the glass so it ceases to be transparent. And they can bore

their way out of any wood, or even metal, containers you try to keep

them in. The termite seems destined to remain a gruesome, marvelous,

possibly deadly mystery."



* * * * *



He laughed abruptly, shrugged his shoulders, and started toward the car

again.



"When I get off on my subject, there's no telling when I'll stop. But,

Jim, I tell you, I'd give years of my life to be able to do what all

entomologists are wild to do--study the depths of a termite mound. God!

What wouldn't I give for the privilege of shrinking to ant-size, and

roaming loose in that secretive-looking mound behind us!"



He laughed again, and slapped Holden's broad back.



"There would be a thrill for you, you bored adventurer! There would be

exploration work! A trip to Mars wouldn't be in it. The nightmare

monsters you would see, the hideous creations, the cannibalism, the

horrible but efficient slave system carried on by these blind,

intelligent things in the dark depths of the subterranean cells! Lions?

Suppose you were suddenly confronted by a thing as big as a horse, with

fifteen-foot jaws of steely horn that could slice you in two and hardly

know it! How would you like that?"



And now in the other man's eyes there was a glint, while his face

expressed aroused interest.



Every man to his own game, thought Denny curiously, watching the

transformation. He lived for scientific experiments and observations

having to do with termites. Holden existed, apparently, only for the

thrill of pitting his brain and brawn against dangerous beasts, wild

surroundings, or tempestuous elements. If only their two supreme

interests in life could be combined....



"How would I like it?" said Jim. "Denny, old boy, when you can introduce

me to an adventure like that ..." He waved his arm violently to complete

the sentence. "What a book of travel it would make! 'The Raid on the

Termites. Exploring an Insect Hell. Death in an Ant-hill....'"



"Termitary! Termitary!" corrected Denny irritably.



"Whatever you want to call it," Jim conceded airily. He dumped the

apparatus he was carrying into the rear compartment of the roadster.

"But why speak of miracles? Even if we were sent to a modern hand

laundry, we could hardly be shrunk to ant-size. Shall we ramble along

home?"