His improbable-­sounding hypothesis was proving one hundred percent correct, incredible though it had seemed even to him at first. He regretted only that Wanda Lindstrom had not lived to share this transfixing discovery with him.

Keenly, Hubbard stripped away more of the cover. Some of the brain-­cell roaches were still twitching, having been partially protected from the anesthetic vapors. But these little insects posed no physical danger. For one thing, they were not free. As he had suspected, the roach bodies were fastened together, antennae to antennae, like the wired component units of a computer. They had only tiny, seemingly vestigial mandibles. These bodies were clearly not designed for fighting or food gathering or reproduction or locomotion. Only for “thinking!”

The oozing liquid bathing the cells also contained their food supply, Hubbard reasoned. There were signs all around that nurse roaches, feeding off the larder brought in by the foragers, regurgitated their stomach contents into the dome’s fluid—an adaptation of trophallaxis done on a community rather than individual-­to-­individual basis. The brain would literally be bathed in food! Ingenious Nature again!

Unfortunately, there was no way this biological freak could be preserved in its entirety for the world to study. Hubbard signaled for his camera to be lowered, and began to take flash pictures. At least there would be this photo record of the incredible mutation on Yarkie Island. Science would ponder it for many a year.

His concentration was so tightly focused that Hubbard did not notice a weaving line of guard roaches coming toward him, emerging from one of the larders. They prowled like hunting animals stalking. They were dazed by the penetrating fumes in the nest, but unlike its soporific effect on most of the insects it was having a paradoxic reaction in these mutants. As happens with some humans, their nervous systems had been jolted into activity by the anesthesia.

Hubbard was finding the heavy diving gloves a nuisance as he clicked picture after picture. He managed to draw off the glove from his right hand, and returned with new satisfaction to his record-­making.

He saw the blood on his hand before he felt the incisions that were already needling down to the bone. Huge mouths were gnawing at his fingertips before he realized what was happening. He could not loosen the great mandibles without dropping the camera, and that, to him, was unthinkable.

Looking up for help, he saw the top of the nest rimmed with horrified faces. He saw mouths working, but his helmet had cut off the sound of their warning cries.