"Snapped up?" asked Correy impatiently. "By whom? Or what?"
"By spiders!" replied Inverness, his eyes shining with the fanatical gleam of a scientist who scents something strange. "Great spiders—perhaps not true spiders, but akin to them, from the descriptions we have—of what is known on Earth as the trap-door variety, but possessed of a high degree of intelligence, the power of communication, and definitely organized."
"Organized," put in Tipene, "in the sense that they work together instead of individually; that there are those to command and those to obey."
"You say they are large," I commented. "How large?"
"Large enough," said Inverness grimly, "to enable one of them to instantly overpower a strong man."
I saw Correy glance forward, where our largest disintegrator-ray tubes were located, and his eyes lit up with the thought of battle.
"If there's anything I hate," he gritted, "it's a spider. The hairy, crawling beasts! I'll man one of the tubes myself, just for the fun of seeing them dissolve into nice brown dust, and—"
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Correy," said Inverness, shaking his head. "We're going to study them—not to exterminate them. Our object is to learn their history, their customs, their mode of communication, and their degree of intelligence—if possible."
"Yes," grunted Brady. "If possible."