"Well, the War Department had a name for it—a name they borrowed from H. G. Wells. They called it a Time Machine." He met de Terry's shocked, bewildered stare calmly. "A time machine," he repeated. "You see, John, we can give the ants a chance after all, if you like."
Fourteen hours later they stepped into the cage, its batteries charged again and its strange motor whining....
And, forty million years earlier, they stepped out onto quaking humid soil.
Gordy felt himself trembling, and with an effort managed to stop. "No dinosaurs or saber-toothed tigers in sight," he reported.
"Not for a long time yet," de Terry agreed. Then, "My Lord!"
He looked around him with his mouth open wide. There was no wind, and the air was warm and wet. Large trees were clustered quite thickly around them—or what looked like trees; de Terry decided they were rather some sort of soft-stemmed ferns or fungi. Overhead was deep cloud.
Gordy shivered. "Give me the ants," he ordered.
Silently de Terry handed them over. Gordy poked a hole in the soft earth with his finger and carefully tilted the flask, dropped one of the ant queens he had unearthed in the back yard. From her belly hung a slimy mass of eggs. A few yards away—it should have been farther, he thought, but he was afraid to get too far from de Terry and the machine—he made another hole and repeated the process.
There were eight queens. When the eighth was buried he flung the bottle away and came back to de Terry.