But the two never reached the northern edge of no-man’s-land, for a
Formian bullet brought Myles Cabot to the ground.
A terrible crashing noise in his ears, and then all was over!
* * * * *
After a seemingly interminable time the earthman became vaguely
conscious again. It was twilight. Shadowy forms were dragging him along
the ground.
Then he rolled over and over down a steep decline, and shovelfuls of
dirt began to land on him from above. One of the shadowy forms descended
and pressed upon his abdomen with a blunt instrument of some sort.
Was he dead? Was this hell? Or where was it?
A sharp pain in his abdomen brought him to his senses. He sprang to his
feet, throwing off his tormentor, who thereupon let forth a vile smell.
Then Cabot realized his situation.
He was standing in a shallow pit in the midst of the battlefield,
surrounded by beetles, one of which had just sought to impale him with
its ovipositor. These beasts now scattered and left him alone. A live
man was no concern of theirs.
Myles felt of his head. His left earphone was smashed and there was a
welt on his left temple. He had been merely stunned, rather than killed,
or even seriously wounded.
By the aid of the rapidly fading pink glow in the western sky, the weary
man picked his way across the battlefield to the little ravine through
which he had entered it. There the Cupian bar-pootah took him in charge
and dispatched him by kerkool to the nearest army hospital. In a few
days he was himself again.
Then Myles Cabot took the field in person, with Poblath as his aide.
Bthuh’s illness had merely been a bluff, and both men were thoroughly
disgusted. They had remained behind the lines too long. Now they
intended to press the war to a successful conclusion.
Nothing further was seen or heard of the renegade prince, although the
ground was dug up all around the wrecked kerkool, in the hope of finding
his body.
So, through many weary sangths, the Formians were driven to the southern
tip of the continent and totally exterminated. Even their numerous
pets—some fifteen hundred varieties—were killed off, too. For, with
all the sport loving proclivities of the Cupians, they do not waste very
much time and affection on pets.
The only ants spared were the royal husbands. They, poor stupid drones,
were not to blame for the tyranny and treachery of their race. So they
were shut up in cages in the gr-ool—i.e. zoo—of Kuana, for the
edification of the children of Cupia.
The serial numbers of all slain Formians were recorded, even those
buried by the beetles being exhumed for this purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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