wonder whether their maw was dead. But the others did well enough.
Sometimes at night when he could not sleep, Kress would take a bottle of wine into the living room, where the red gloom of his miniature desert provided the only light. He would drink and watch for hours, alone. There was usually a fight going on somewhere; when there was not, he could easily start one by dropping some small morsel of food into the tank.
Kress's companions began betting on the weekly battles, as Malada Blane had suggested. Kress won a goodly amount by betting on the whites, which had become the most powerful and most numerous colony in the tank and
which had the grandest castle. One week he slid the corner of the tank top aside, and he dropped the food close to the white castle instead of on the central battleground, where he usually let food fall. So the others had to attack the whites in their stronghold to get any food at all. They tried. The whites were brilliant in defense. Kress won a hundred standards from Jad Rakkis.
Rakkis, in fact, lost heavily on the sandkings almost every week. He pretended to a vast knowledge of them and their ways, claiming that he had studied them after the first party, but he had no luck when it came to placing his bets. Kress suspected that Jad's claims were empty boasting. He had tried to study the sandkings a bit himself, in a moment of idle curiosity, tying in to the library to find out what world his pets originally came from. But the library had no listing for sandkings. He wanted to get in touch with Wo and ask her about it, but he had other concerns, and the matter kept slipping his mind.
Finally, after a month in which his losses totaled more than a thousand standards, Rakkis arrived at the war games. He was carrying a small pastic case under his arm. Inside was a spider like thing covered with fine golden hair.
'A sand spider,' Rakkis announced. 'From Cathaday. I got it this afternoon from t'Etherane the Petseller. Usually they remove the poison sacs, but this one is intact. Are you game, Simon? I want my money back. I'll bet a thousand standards, sand spider against sandkings. '
Kress studied the spider in its plastic prison. His sandkings had grown-they were twice as large as Wo's, as she'd predicted-but they were still dwarfed by this thing. It was venomed, and they were not. Still, there were an awful lot of them. Besides, the endless sandking wars lately had begun to grow tiresome. The novelty of the match intrigued him.
'Done,' Kress said. 'Jad, you are a fool. The sandkings will just keep coming until this ugly creature of yours is dead.'
'You are the fool, Simon,' Rakkis replied, smiling. 'The Cathadayan sand spider customarily feeds on burrowers that hide in nooks and crevices, and-well, watch-it will go straight into those castles and eat the maws.'
Kress scowled amid general laughter. He hadn't counted on that. 'Get on with it,' he said irritably. Then he went to freshen his drink.
The spider was too large to be cycled conveniently through the food chamber. Two other guests helped Rakkis slide the tank top slightly to one side, and Malada Blane handed his case up to him. He shook the spider out. It landed lightly on a miniature dune in front of the red castle and stood confused for a moment, mouth working, legs twitching menacingly.
'Come on,' Rakkis urged. They all gathered around the tank. Kress found his magnifies and slipped them on. If he was going to lose a thousand standards, at least he wanted a good view of the action.
The sandkings had seen the invader. All over the red castle activity had ceased. The small scarlet mobiles were frozen, watching.
The spider began to move toward the dark promise of the gate. From the tower above, Simon Kress's countenance stared down impassively.
At once there was a flurry of activity. The nearest red mobiles formed themselves into two wedges and streamed over the sand toward the spider. More warriors erupted from inside the castle and assembled in a triple line to guard where approach to the underground chamber where the maw lived. Scouts came scuttling over the dunes, recalled to fight.
Battle was joined.
The attacking sandkings washed over the spider. Mandibles snapped shut on legs and abdomen, and clung. Reds raced up the golden legs to the invader's back. They bit and tore. One of them found an eye and ripped it loose with tiny yellow tendrils. Kress smiled and pointed.
But they were small, and they had no venom, and the spider did not stop. Its legs flicked sandkings off to either side. Its dripping jaws found others and left them broken and stiffening. Already a dozen of the reds lay dying. The sand spider came on and on. It strode straight through the triple line of guardians before the castle. The lines closed around it, covered it, waging desperate battle. A team of sandkings had bitten off one of the spider's legs. Defenders leaped from atop the
towers to land on the twitching, heavy mass.
Lost beneath the sandkings, the spider somehow lurched down into the darkness and vanished.
Rakkis let out a long breath. He looked pale. 'Wonderful,' someone else said. Malada Blane chuckled deep in her throat.
'Look,' said Idi Noreddian, tugging Kress by the arm.
They had been so intent on the struggle in the corner that none of them had noticed the activity elsewhere in the tank. But now the castle was still, and the sands were empty save for dead red mobiles, and now they saw.
Three armies were drawn up before the red castle. They stood quite still, in perfect array, rank after rank of sandkings, orange and white and black-waiting to see what emerged from the depths.
Kress smiled. 'A cordon sanitaire, ' he said. 'And glance at the other castles, if you will, Jad.'
Rakkis did, and he swore. Teams of mobiles were sealing up the gates with sand and stone. If the spider somehow survived this encounter, it would find no easy entrance at the other castles. 'I should have brought four spiders,' Rakkis said. 'Still I've won. My spider is down there right now, eating your damned maw.'
Kress did not reply. He waited. There was motion in the shadows.
All at once red mobiles began pouring out of the gate. They took their positions on the castle and began repairing the damage that the spider
had wrought. The other armies dissolved and began to retreat to their respective corners. a
'Jad,' Kress said, 'I think you are a bit g confused about who is eating whom.'
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