Instantly, she was nearly overwhelmed by a blast of powerful scents coming from all directions. “Wow,” said Lenora, looking at the ant, “is this how you talk to one another?” The ant did not move, but through the interpreters came a strong smell of something like honey, which seemed to indicate Yes.

Ant language—pheromones! Lenora scribbled in her notebook.

“Now then,” Lenora said, hopping back onto the ant’s waiting jaws. “What should I call you? I mean, what is your name?”

The reply came, not in words of course, but in a complex odor that smelled a little like lavender, a bit like fresh asphalt before it hardens, and a lot like cinnamon. “Cinnamon, I think I’ll call you,” said Lenora, “if that’s all right with you.”

Cinnamon produced a strawberry jam–ish scent that suggested to Lenora that she found this absolutely delightful, and off they went.

The sign advertising ANT CITY had not lied. She and Cinnamon were now hustling down the sunlit streets of a metropolis of ants, millions of them, in a maze of vast corridors, broad avenues, and ant superhighways arching through the air. Towering structures that seemed taller to Lenora than any skyscraper reached for the skies. Atop most of them, turbines spun busily. Wind power, thought Lenora. Brilliant. She also noticed that as ants passed one another, they touched their antennae together. Ant handshakes? she wrote in her notebook, to look up later.

They went over an arched bridge spanning a river, down which floated a structure that was composed of nothing but ants clinging to one another to form an island. Lenora was putting so many things in her notebook, she wished she had brought a spare. As she wrote, she pondered what it must be like to have millions of sisters (for Lenora knew that worker ants were all female) instead of being an only child.

At last they came into a round room with a domed ceiling that had a hole at the top open to the blue sky. It made Lenora think of a class field trip to an observatory. In the middle of the room squatted the strangest animal Lenora had ever seen. It was about a quarter of the size of the ant and looked a little like a furless bear and a little like a caterpillar with eight legs. Each of its legs had a claw that the animal was working busily—one claw in a toolbox, one claw making markings on a chalkboard, two others playing chess (apparently with each other), another making a sandwich, and the final three making adjustments to a rickety, pointy vessel standing on three legs, its sharp tip aimed directly at the opening in the ceiling.

It was, undoubtedly, a spaceship.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lenora Gets It