Red’s answer was to open the cage.
Shuddering, retching, Ward closed his eyes. His experiments had enabled him to breed and evolve strains of armored, ferocious parasite insects and germs which could be bred in millions, any number required, and whose powers of reproduction was enormous. Soon there’d be a stupendous army of these warrior insects who would specifically and effectively control the Mo-Sanshon. He had perfected these mercenaries in laboratories, and had succeeded in isolating and inbreeding, by the most intricate processes involving ray mutation of infinitely small genes. He had cultivated new insect-like forms, like one of our other ancient scientists did garden peas. Armies of insects to do man’s fighting for him against his insect enemies.
He had developed a thousand living specimens and tested them. Any opposing species of insect, regardless of size, they devoured immediately. The thousand were in that cage. They would sweep across the insects they were bred to destroy and devour it in seconds, as their own ant-prototypes stripped humans to bare skeletons in seconds.
Ward had to open his eyes again. He was crawling ... crawling ... dragging his infected leg behind him, unconscious of the pain. Crawling beneath a dense, black buzzing cloud of whirring wings and clicking mandibles. The vengeful army of insect mercenaries were descending on the helpless Queen Mother in swarms, and the ring of insects that had been closing in were now trying frantically to escape. Many of them did. But the mercenaries would hunt them out. They were specialized mass killers.
And the first one they had gotten, of course, had been Red.
The dense hordes of enthusiastic insect warriors ignored Ward as he crawled to the cage. Nothing remained of Red except his clothing, shredded, and a few bits of tendons on which mercenaries still fed ferociously. And a tattered copy of an ancient Twentieth Century thriller called “Hounds of the Void.”
High overhead, a direct beam of sunlight filtered down through the spiraling vapor, glinted on sheeny wings, as Ward sprawled out on the hard, cold stone. He would make it all right now. There would be evidence now to clear him of his psycho label, and the Mo-Sanshon would be wiped out. But Red was gone. Red, the Adventurer.
Ward wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him before. He, an entomologist, too. But the pronunciation had fooled him. The sharp accent on the “i” had distorted its true significance. Spelled out, Formica meant ANT, of course.
RED ANT.