Sturm wonder ed. It was hard to tell.
The rubbish around them was knee-deep to Sturm and chest-deep to the gnomes. Sturm found Sighter examining a piece of the red leather with his magnifying glass.
'Hm, doesn't look like vegetable material,' said Sighter.
Cutwood tried writing on the soft brown parchment-stuff, but it wouldn't take a pencil mark; it was too soft and supple.
Sturm tried to tear a sheet of it in two, but couldn't do it.
'This would make admirable boot tops,' he said. 'I won der what it is?'
'I would say it's some form of animal hide,' said Sighter, snapping his glass back into its case.
'We haven't found any animals on Lunitari, except the dragon,' Stutts objected. 'Even the Micones are more min eral than animal.'
'Maybe,' Wingover said slowly, 'there are other kinds of animals in these caves. Animals we haven't seen before.'
Rainspot swallowed audibly. 'Gnome-eating animals?'
' 'Bosh,' said Sighter. 'The Micones wouldn't allow any thing dangerous to live near the dragon eggs. Stop scaring yourselves.'
Flash was off a little ways, touching the white crust on the walls. He plucked a tack hammer from his tool- laden belt and butted a cold steel chisel against the wall. Back swung the hammer.
Bong! The little hammer hit the chisel, and the whole cavern reverberated with the sound. So powerful were the vibrations, that the gnomes lost their footing and fell in the thick rubbish. Sturm braced himself against a squat stalag mite until the ringing ceased.
'Don't do that!' Cutwood said plaintively. With his aug mented hearing, the tone had been enough to start his nose bleeding. All the Micones were clicking their mandibles and shaking their heads.
'Fascinating,' said Stutts. 'A perfect resonant chamber!
Ah! It makes sense!'
'What does?' asked Roperig.
'This extraneous jetsam. It's padding, to deaden the ants' footsteps on the floor.'
They waded though the rubbish toward the end of the oblong chamber. The ceiling level fell and the floor rose to form a tight circular opening. The rim of the opening had been notched with jagged spikes of quartz, probably by the
Micones. Anything softer than a giant ant would be cut to pieces if it tried to walk or crawl over the spikes. The gnomes held back and proposed many solutions to the problem of the entrance. Sturm planted his fists on his hips and sighed. He turned back and gathered up an armful of the tough parchmentlike shreds, then laid them across the spikes. He put his hands on the parchment and pushed. The spikes poked through three or four layers, but the top layers remained unpierced.
'Allow me,' said Sturm. He lifted Stutts and sat him on the padding. Stutts slid through the opening to the chamber beyond. One by one, the other gnomes followed. Sturm went last. The gnomes plunged ahead in their bumbling, fearless way, and he had to catch up with them.
Sturm hurried down the narrow slit in the rock and into another large chamber. Here veins of wine red crystal oozed out of fissures in the rock. When the soft crystal touched the warmer, moister air of the cavern, it lightened to clear crim son and began to take more exact form. Around them were dozens of half-formed Micones; some only heads, some whole bodies but without legs, and some so complete that their antennae wiggled.
'So this is the ant hatchery,' said Wingover.
''Hatchery' isn't the right word for it,' said Roperig.
'Living rock crystal,' said Stutts breathlessly. 'I wonder what influences it to take on an ant shape?'
'The dragon, I would think,' said Sighter, turning a com plete circle to see all the budding Micones. 'Remember, he said he tried to make the tree-folk into servants but failed.
He must have uncovered this living crystal and decided to use it to make perfectly obedient and hard-working slaves.'
They walked in single file down the center of the high, narrow cavern. As before, bluish stalactites on the ceiling shed a weak light on the scene. Flash approached one of the nearly finished Micones and tried to measure the width of its head. The ant moved like lightning and clamped its power ful jaws on the gnome's arm. Flash let out a yell.
'Get back!' Sturm cried, drawing his sword. He tried to lever the jaws open, but the creature's grip was too strong.
The cruel saw-toothed jaws could easily cut through flesh and bone -
Sturm noticed that Flash's arm wasn't bleeding. The gnome struggled, beating the stone-hard ant on the head with his flimsy folding rule.
'Has he got you by the arm?' Sturm asked.
'Uh! Agh! Yes! What do you think this is, my foot?'
Sturm eased his hand forward and felt Flash's arm. The
Micone's jaws had missed the gnome's flesh. All it had was his jacket sleeve.
'Take your jacket off,' Sturm said calmly.
'Uh! Argh! Eeel I can't!'
'I'll help you.' Sturm reached in front of the gnome and undid the complex series of buttons and lacings on his jack et. He pulled Flash's left arm out, then his right. The empty jacket dangled in the Micone's jaws. The half- formed
Micone did not move.
'My jacket!' Flash howled.
'Never mind! Just thank your gods that your arm didn't get caught in that thing's pincers,' Sturm said.
'Thank you, Reorx,' said the gnome. He looked longing ly at the lost jacket. A big tear rolled down his cheek. 'I designed that jacket myself. The One Size Fits All Wind proof Jacket Mark III.'
'You can make another,' Wingover said consolingly. 'An even better one. With detachable sleeves, in case you ever get in such a predicament again.'
'Yes, yes! What a splendid notion, detachable sleeves!'
Flash made a hasty sketch on his white shirt cuff.
Beyond the ant hatchery the cavern wound off in several directions, and there was no clear indication which way the explorers should go. Cutwood suggested that they split up and try all the tunnels, but Stutts vetoed that, and Sturm agreed.
'We've no idea how large this caverns is, and if you go off on your own, you stand a good chance of getting lost forever.
We also don't know how the Micrones will react to us if we split up,' Sturm said.
'They do seem very literal-minded,' Sighter said. 'Sepa rate pairs may not mean the same thing to them as a band of ten.' The sight of Flash's jacket locked in the unbreakable grip of the Micone's jaws was a powerful inducement to stay together. Nothing more was said about splitting up.
They chose the widest, straightest path onward. The floor sloped down from the Micones' birth chamber at such a steep angle that the gnomes gave up trying to walk down and instead sat down to slide. Sturm would have preferred to walk down, but the floor was slick with dew, so it didn't take him long to decide to do as the gnomes did.
Sturm slid gently into another, lower cavern. It was very much warmer and wetter here; the air was steamy. Water trickled down the walls and dripped from overhead. As he stood up, he saw the gnomes' dark shapes strolling through the wispy white clouds of steam.
'Stutts! Sighter! Where are all of you?' he called.
'Right here!' Sturm walked uncertainly into the mist.
The cavern was well lit from above (from a large number of the glowing stalactites), and considerable heat radiated from the floor.
'Mind the magma,' said Cutwood, appearing in the steam in front of him. The gnome pointed to a raised funnel of glazed rock in their path. A fiery halo hung over the wide mouth.
Sturm bent over it and saw that the natural bowl was full of a bright orange liquid. A bubble burst wetly in its
