But the Geiger tracker went suddenly silent. Peter Hubbard looked around unhappily. Had he lost the insects after all? He stuck the counter out at arm’s length and revolved a full circle. Nothing. The sheriff and Homer watched with disappointed expressions. In their hearts they had somehow expected this to fail. The pariah bugs were proving too smart for even the smartest of them!

But when Hubbard retraced his steps to the fence and tried the ground on his knees, the faint ticking began once more. He did not stop to question what had caused the diversion, but signaled quickly to the others to continue the strange chase. They came on with renewed confidence.

The sheriff saw that they were taking a course between the dump and Dickens Point. He whispered to Homer, “Out that way’s the pirate cave we talked about!”

“It’d be all overgrown now.”

“Sh-­sh!” Hubbard was motioning for them to approach him. He had left the forest and moved down a small incline to a sandy ledge. The three men stood on a plateau about six feet wide that dropped to another earthen ledge about four feet below. That platform, in turn, extended some three feet before dipping into high sand dunes bordering the step-­like formation.

Peter Hubbard’s face became flushed. The Geiger counter was louder and clearer than before. “They’ve gone down here!” Hubbard said with certainty. “Right here!”

“You mean this is it?” Russell Homer gulped. It was hard, almost impossible, to believe that the terrible search was over, that the danger might be beneath their feet, vulnerable to their own powers of destruction.

“Hallelujah, goddamn!” exploded Amos Tarbell. Could the Judas roaches have led them to the answer Yarkie needed so critically! Peter Hubbard was a genius!—Unless. Unless this too turned out a dry hole, with the diabolical insects fooling them again . . .

There was a whispered exclamation from Russell Homer as Hubbard kept checking the Geiger instrument. “Look down there!” On the ledge below, the three men viewed what no human eyes had ever beheld. It was a brute roach as large as a good-­size crab, with mandibles as ferocious looking. The scientist bent carefully and showed the others a hole from which it had emerged. The opening was an inch in diameter, barely large enough for the misshapen insect to squeeze through.

Another of the giants appeared out of the opening, and a third. The gargantuans rotated their big ugly heads like combatants seeking their opponents. Their leathery antennae whipped the air toward the men, like fighters shaking challenging fists. Their thick shells on their overgrown bodies shone like gladiators’ shields in the early sun. Their folded wings—seeming as large as bats’ to the men looking down—reflected an ominous metallic iridescence in the daylight.