Wanda Lindstrom wasn’t finished. “We can’t draw any final conclusions from just two specimens, but we haven’t seen any sign of a natural enemy here, not so far. We have to suppose that the population of these brute roaches has simply been exploding on your island in a kind of organic flashpoint, and has now spilled out visibly.” She added, “Perhaps as a result of the new poisons you have mentioned. We will be investigating that, of course.”

Russell Homer exclaimed shakily. “From the tree, it looked like a zillion of them coming on at us! The whole damn ground was just cockroaches!”

Peter Hubbard answered quickly, “We’re still just guessing, mostly. But in fairness I have to tell you what we do now know. It seems plain that these roaches can attack any body opening, including the ears. I told Dr. Lindstrom what Russell and Craig said about the dump rats running around dizzily. Now I think that roaches ate their way through the middle ear which, as you know, controls balance. I have to say it,” the man went on with a scowl of his own revulsion, “these confounded creatures can kill in many ways. They can get up an animal’s nostrils and down its throat, causing suffocation. They can get at the brain, as we’ve said already. Their mandibles are so strong and their teeth so sharp they can needle through skin to veins and arteries, causing death by hemorrhage.”

Everyone was grimacing. The thought of slimy cockroaches sliding into every opening of a living animal shook them with more than disgust.

Ben Dorset said, unexpectedly, “Just seeing that roach get into the rabbit’s eye was the most awful thing . . .”

Reed Brockshaw was listening with a blank expression, a look of incomprehension. His ears heard what was being said, but the enormity of it was too great for his mind to accept.

Elias Johnson voiced a question on everyone’s mind. “Why didn’t we find anything of Sharky except the ear? I mean, all right, say these roaches killed him, but how did he vanish? Craig and I looked over every inch. Even say these bastards—” the old man did not stop to apologize to the ladies “—even say these bastards came at Sharky by the thousands like the piranha fish we all know about—we’d at least find the skeleton, wouldn’t we?” His voice rose with the ire of his bafflement.

Peter Hubbard had to tell the man, “Elias, there are insects that leave no skeletons.”

Johnson’s widened eyes showed he couldn’t believe it. “What? These roaches eat the bones?”

“They have teeth so sharp, and appetites so ravenous, that they can grind bones to powder and ingest them. Any bone and all bone.” Hubbard added with an expression of his own disgust, “Including the skull, when they want to.”

New murmurs of horror went around the table.