"Hold it!" he suddenly ordered. "Don't touch those dials!"
Swede and Limpy looked at him puzzledly. He pointed down at the swarming enclosure. Limpy shuffled over to him, followed the direction of his finger.
"They've dropped the fence," whispered the lookout. "They don't seem to know what they're doing."
"Yah," Swede said in an awed voice.
Below, the centaurpedes were moving about aimlessly, as if they had forgotten their orders. They had completely lost their terrible machine-like precision!
"I don't get it," Swede complained in bewilderment. "What's wrong with them?"
Mac's grin was hard and tight. "They're directed by a central brain, a sort of queen 'pede which coordinates their actions by ultra-short-wave commands, the way a queen bee directs a beehive. That's the secret of their synchronization!"
"And I was working the ultra-short—" Limpy stopped, stunned.
"That's the idea," Mac nodded. "Our signals blanket theirs! They can't get orders from the main intelligence, so they don't know what to do!"
For a moment, the men were silent. Slowly, then, Swede said: "Now all we have to do is kill the brain."