It was a greater strain to try to nudge the board silently than if he could put all his muscle to it. The half-­buried wood yielded slightly.

“I’ll hit them with my flashlight,” Hubbard said to his two assistants. “It should stun them a split second, but only for a second and then they’ll be coming right after us. We get out fast!”

The men nodded.

Amos Tarbell bent to his job again. The whole area seemed suspended in apprehension. There was an eerie lull in the wind. Behind the tense people, the forest lifted scorched spars to the air. The clouds were so low that the leafless tree seemed to be spiking down from the sky, crazily grown upside down. It seemed appropriate enough to the group. Everything on Yarkie had been somersaulted on its head in these two incredible days.

Without warning, the wind whipped up again. It howled through the bare trees like a wounded beast. The nerve-­shattering noise punctuated the apprehension of the three men at the kettle hole and the uneasy eyes riveted on them. The searchers were frightened to their depths, yet at the same time elated. If the roach nest was below, this moment would be among the most important of their lives. For who knew what might yet happen if these mutant insects were not destroyed?

Peter Hubbard’s jaws were clenching and unclenching as he admitted his anxiety to himself. He found it hard to fill his lungs, and it was not the constraint of his black rubber suit that was making him sweat in torrents. The responsibility was his in the end. The man’s eyes were hot marbles as he waited above the kneeling sheriff, wishing the man would hurry, but glad he was being slow and careful. Tarbell was shrewd, all right. He was making no more noise than a passing animal might in stepping over the mound—sounds the creatures below would accept as unalarming.

If there were creatures below . . .

The scientist became physically itchy in his craving to know.

The sheriff bent his ear to the plank.

“Hear anything?” Hubbard inquired in an urgent whisper.

The sheriff shook his head doubtfully and looked up. “I’ve got a crack here, Peter! Do you need more?”

Hubbard checked, and said, “Can you give me a half-­inch?”

He was shivering. The crack so far was too small to let in a useful beam of light, and he had seen only blackness through the slit. But a terrible stink of death and rotting food had assailed his nose, and the acrid roach smell was unmistakable. Nothing else in the world smelled like cockroaches.

So the giant killer roaches were down in this kettle hole! Bless Elizabeth Carr for remembering!