Still the injured creature came on, with Jim ever retreating, twisting and dodging from one side of the huge room to the other, leaping over the smaller paralyzed insects and darting behind the larger carcasses. But now the thing's movements were very slow—as were the movements of its companion.
Another leg fell hollowly to the floor, like an abandoned piece of armor; and then two at once from the second termite.
Both stopped, shuddering convulsively. The agony of those two enormous, dumb and blind things must have been inconceivable. The acid was by now spending its awful force in their vitals, having seeped down through every joint and crevice in their living armor. They were hardly more than huge shells of horn, kept alive only by their unbelievable vitality.
One more feeble lunge both made in concert, toward the puny adversary that had outwitted them. Then both, as though at a spoken command, stopped dead still. Next instant they crashed to the floor, shaking it in their fall.
For a second Jim could only stand there and gaze at their monstrous bodies. His plan had succeeded beyond all belief; and realization of this success left him dazed for an instant. But it was only for an instant.
Recovering himself, he raced to the acid vat to recover the spear he'd punctured it with—only three feet of it was left: the rest had been eaten away by the powerful stuff—and then wheeled to help Denny.
By now the crackling brown stuff had fallen from Denny, too—enough, at least for him to struggle to his feet and hasten its cracking by tearing at it with partially loosened hands. As Jim reached him, he freed himself entirely save for the last few bits that stuck to him as bits of shell cling to a newborn chick.
They turned together toward the corner where the termite-ruler was cowering behind the guards that surrounded it. Intellect to a degree phenomenal for an insect, this thing might have; but of the blind fierce courage possessed by its subjects, it assuredly had none! In proof of this was the fact that when the half dozen specialized soldiers ringing it round might have leaped to the aid of the two clumsy door guards and probably have ended the uneven fight in a few minutes, the craven monarch had ordered them to stay at their guard-posts rather than take the risk of remaining unguarded and defenseless for a single moment! Increasing intelligence apparently had resulted (as only too often it does in the world of men) in decreasing bravery!
An attack on the thing, closely guarded as it was, seemed hopeless. Those enormous, flat-topped heads held ready to present their steely surfaces as shields! Those armored terrors with the syringe-heads—one of which still held a full cargo of the terrible brown fluid that at a touch could bind the limbs of the men once more in the straitjacket embrace! What could the two do against that barrier?