“Roaches don’t have brains!” Russell Homer made bold to scoff. A person didn’t have to go to Harvard to know that!

Hubbard corrected the man quietly, “Of course the individual roaches do have brains. Rudimentary, but brains. The question here is whether there may be a larger center, controlling a colony of individuals.”

“That’s my question,” Elizabeth nodded—aghast at her own thought.

“Such colonies are not unusual in nature,” Hubbard resumed. “We all know the groups formed by ants and termites. Still, Russ is right in a way. The social organization of insects doesn’t take place through a ‘brain.’ It works through a kind of community instinct. Each individual fits into the overall social pattern, something like robots running on a central computer program.”

Russell Homer ejaculated, “That’s what I said they looked like! Robots!”

Wanda Lindstrom contributed, “Peter, they ought to know that we did find an unusual and advanced nervous development in the specimen we dissected. Ordinarily, given the size of this roach, the brain should be no bigger than a small pea, sitting just behind the juncture of the antennae with the head. But in our specimen, the brain was at least twice as large. Also, the ganglia, which normally are only slight swellings in the insect’s ventral nerve—that’s a primitive chord that runs along the ventral side the way the vertebrate spine runs up the back—these ganglia are double the normal number, and they form more distinct nerve centers than I have ever seen in any insect species. So whatever signals these roaches are exchanging, they seem well-­equipped to work together, whether in hunting down prey or disposing of it once they’ve killed it.”

Hubbard took the ball again. He addressed the sheriff. “Now, have you told us everything you observed when the roaches went after the rabbit? Everything exactly as you saw it?”

He sounded like a district attorney, he knew, but this cross-­examination could be important. The laymen would not understand the significance of subtle behavior that might be key points to the biologists.

The three men who had escaped with the rabbit trap concentrated. Russell Homer, especially, had his eyes screwed up, trying to replay every detail. He was thinking that if it was his fault the camera was lost, he would retake every exposure in his mind. He started to report aloud as the images followed upon each other. Click: “The rabbit stopped eating the carrot all of a sudden. It looked around, scared. That’s when I heard the noise, the way we told you. Like a puffing sound, a kettle letting off steam. Not a whistle, just a hiss.”

Wanda Lindstrom nodded emphatically.

“We thought it was mice.”

Bonnie, who had come in quietly and was leaning against the doorpost, said softly, “I heard that, too, just before Sharky ran away.”