A twenty-foot, brown, chitinous form scurried ferociously out of the shadows and rushed toward Ward. He tried to rise and escape, but his shattered, swollen leg stopped him in a burst of blinding pain.
It was an incredibly big giant of the Myriapoda class, having a long hard shiny body with many similar pairs of legs, each as large as Ward’s finger. He plainly saw, without benefit of microscope now, the pair of antennae, three pairs of mouth parts, two groups of simple ocelli which ogled him hungrily. And then Ward’s fevered, shocked consciousness was concentrating on the poison fangs projecting out from its first body segment.
He knew they were intended for him.
Verification came quickly. The woman-creature beside him simply said, “You will be injected with a paralysis secretion. Permanent disability. Its eggs will hatch under your skin, and the larvae will burrow into your body. You will die many kinds of deaths, and you will tell the Queen and the Mo-Sanshon what they want to know. You will tell where the cage is, how the mercenaries are created and how they operate. You will tell us where your notes and formulae are located. After that you will die as all males learn to die—for the Mo-Sanshon.”
Ward didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. Protestations would be futile here. The centipede-like monstrosity waved its fangs and edged nearer. The woman-creature spoke again.
“The Queen wishes me to say to you that your humanoid species is unjustified in its egomania. You think humanoids the most rapidly evolving organism in the Solar System, but that belief is not relative enough in regards to duration. Our culture had reached a degree of social organization more highly advanced than yours before what you call the Tertiary epoch. Once our culture ruled a world—Mars. Why did our culture stop, why did it not advance for thousands of years? Why did our marvelous instinctive culture fail to conquer the System? Why have we stood still after perfecting a type of super social science? We simply had advanced as far as we could without benefit of violent, drastic mutation.”
“May I ask one question,” managed Ward, “before I become food for centipede larvae?” No reply. The centipede writhed impatiently. Ward tried to ignore it. “How,” he asked, “do you create these imitation human organisms?”
“Specialization. Of specialization the so-called ‘insect’ species are the accepted genius of all species of life wherever they are found. Given species can reproduce equal, and in many cases superior, creations of humanoid intelligence by individual adaptation. There are more specialized types among our kind than all other organisms in the System combined. The Mo-Sanshon is now master of them all.”
That was, of course, true, thought Ward. There were insects that could spin cables stronger in ratio than any alloy strands, could create acids that undermined stone and steel, could create cities that, in proportion, dwarfed human cities into significance; they had perfected telepathy; they could grow wings, develop gills and live in water as mud or marine worms, or fly in the air, or burrow into the land. Their superiority was accomplished through specialized millions of marvelous individual instincts.