They patted each other’s cheeks again. Then, before any one could interfere, Myles Cabot unbolted the door of the cage, and out walked Doggo, a free ant once more.
The soldiery, and Jud with them, promptly scattered to the four walls of the room.
“Come over here, Jud,” Myles invited, “and meet my friend—that is, unless you are afraid.”
“Oh, no, I do not fear him,” Jud the Excuse-Maker replied, “but I do not consider it consistent with the dignity of my position to be seen fraternizing with a wild beast.”
It was typical. Myles laughed. Then he led the huge ant home with him to his quarters.
Quivven was amazed, but not at all frightened, at the great black creature; and when an introduction had been effected on paper, she and Doggo developed quite a strong liking for each other.
As soon as the Formian had been fed and assigned to a room in the ménage—some improvement over the menagerie, by the way—his host and hostess took him on a tour of inspection of their laboratory.
With the true scientific spirit so characteristic of the cultured but warlike race which once dominated Cupia, Doggo plunged at once into the spirit of the almost super-Porovian task which Myles had undertaken; and it soon became evident that the new comer would prove to be an invaluable accession. His scientific training would dovetail exactly with that of the earth-man, and would supplement it at every point.
Almost at the very start he suggested a solution of the problems which had been puzzling Myles.
Cabot’s recollection of the process of sulphuric acid manufacture had been that it required a complicated roasting furnace, two filtering towers, and a tunnel about two hundred feet long made of lead, and into which nitric acid fumes had to be injected. His recollection of nitric acid manufacture was that it required sulphuric acid among other ingredients. So how was he to make either acid without first having the other? And furthermore, where was he to procure enough lead to build a two-hundred-foot tunnel?