After a period of intense watching, Cabot tired and permitted his gaze to shift to the other holes about him, then to the edge of the plain, then to the country beyond. Whereat he was startled, and a bit annoyed, to find that a stretch of road was in plain view but a short distance from his position. Conversely his position must be in plain view from the road, and therefore he was in danger of being observed by the occupants of any passing kerkool.
Instantly his quest, and his duty to his country and his family became uppermost in his mind. Forgotten was his scientific interest in the mysterious plain with its strange depressions, as he jumped to his feet to resume his journey northward.
But, unfortunately, his scrambling to his feet disturbed the ground where he had been sitting. It crumbled away beneath him. He stood for a moment at the very edge of the crater, pawing the air, struggling for a foothold; and then, amid a shower of pebbles, he slid down into the depths.
His slide was not absolutely precipitate. He struggled upward as the gravel rolled down beneath him; and thus, slipping, scrambling, gaining an inch and then losing two, he gradually approached the bottom.
His descent was momentarily stayed by a piece of rotten log about the size of his own body, which projected from the side of the crater, and with which he came in contact; but finally his struggles loosened it, and it bounded down the slope ahead of him. As he slid after it, he instinctively watched its downward course. It rolled to the exact center of the bottom of the pit; and as it came to a stop, the sand beneath it heaved convulsively, and from each side of it rose out of the ground a glittering scimitar fully ten feet long, which closed upon the log like the blades of a pair of buttonhole scissors, and dragged it beneath the surface.
A moment later, and Cabot himself rolled to the exact spot where the log had been seized and had disappeared.
Like a flash he realized the full extent of his predicament. He had fallen into the trap of a gigantic ant-bear. Years ago, as a boy at Atlantic City, he had often lain on the piazza floor of the bathhouse and watched through the cracks the antics of the miniature beasts of prey in the sand below. He had seen them dig their pits; two or three inches across; he had seen them plow a trail to their pits; he had seen inquisitive beach ants, in search of food, follow these trails, fall into the pit, and be dragged struggling beneath the surface, to furnish a meal for the ant bear which lay in wait, buried in the center of the depression which it had dug. But never had he pictured himself as falling into one of these traps.
Was he in one now? It could hardly be. And yet, as there were huge ants ten feet long on Poros, and also slightly smaller breeds without the intelligence which characterized the Formians, why not ant-bears in proportion? It certainly sounded plausible.
Of course, these thoughts, which take so long to set down here, passed through Cabot’s brain in a single instant. He felt no fear, merely a keen scientific interest in the situation. But, quickly as his mind worked to analyze his predicament, it worked as quickly to determine a course of action.
The subterranean beast spewed up the unappetizing log of wood which it had seized, and snapped its mandibles together again; but Cabot had already sprung to his feet, and had passed beyond the fatal spot. The sharp jaw just barely missed him.