A double panel just ahead and to his left slid open and a column of small worker Kralons, two abreast, started marching into the corridor.
The two leaders saw the engineer almost simultaneously, and both started for him with mandibles clacking furiously.
Malherne started on a dead run for the "Hive" entrance. Behind him he heard the harsh rustle of chitin-clad limbs.
It seemed for a moment as though he were gaining, then the foremost insect lunged and caught his jacket. It threw Malherne off stride, and he caromed against the wall of the corridor. He regained his balance almost instantly, but he had lost ground, and he felt another limb clutch his right arm.
He jerked to a stop, pivoted suddenly in an attempt to dislodge the hold. His motion threw the foremost Kralon into the one immediately behind, and the human and the two huge insects went down in a heap.
When Malherne hit the floor under a tangle of limbs, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a knife, snapping the spring blade open in the same motion.
He slashed viciously at everything which touched him, and was rewarded with a raucous clatter of mandibles and the sticky feel of a warm liquid which spattered his hands and face and rendered his knife almost too slippery to hold.
He pulled free from the two mangled Kralons, slashed at a third which had hooked through the fabric of his sleeve. Then he went down as a heavy blow caught him in the temple.
When consciousness pushed through the haze, Malherne found himself back in the stockade. He was lying on a crude bed in the main hut. Zor Ala was bending over him.
"How do you feel?" the man from the 43rd century asked solicitously. "It appears that you encountered a little trouble."