Chapter 3: Yuri Or Formis?

The earth-man grimaced, but then smiled. Perhaps, his succeeding to the toga of King Yuri might prove to be an omen.

“So Yuri is king of the ants?” he asked.

“Yes,” his captor replied, “for Queen Formis did not survive the trip across the boiling seas.”

“Then what of your empire?” Myles inquired. “No queen. No eggs. How can your race continue? For you Formians are like the ants on my own planet Minos.”

Doggo’s reply astounded him.

“Do you remember back at Wautoosa, I told you that some of us lesser Formians had occasionally laid eggs? So now behold before you Doggo, Admiral of the Formian Air Navy, and mother of a new Queen Formis.”

This was truly a surprise! All along Cabot had always regarded the Formians as mannish. And rightly so, for they performed in their own country the duties assigned to men among the Cupians. Furthermore, all Formians, save only the reigning Formis herself, were called by the Porovian pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English.

When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment, he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.

“Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person of some importance among the Formians.”

“It ought to,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me. Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and for the Formians exclusively.”

“Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own difficulties.

But Doggo wrote in horror, “It would be treason!” Then tore up all the correspondence. It is difficult to inculcate the thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an autocracy.

The earth-man, however, persisted.

“How many of the council can you count on, if the interests of Yuri should clash with those of Formis?”

“Only one—myself.”

And again Doggo tore up the correspondence.

Myles tactfully changed the subject.

“Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked.

“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and approached you.”

At about this point the conversation was interrupted by a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.

During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty of writing and eating at the same time. But now Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:

“Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking on the planet Poros?”

“No,” the ant-man wrote in reply.

“Have you ever known me to be untrue to a principle, a cause, or a friend?”

“No,” Doggo replied.

“Then,” Myles wrote, “let us make your daughter queen in fact as well as in name.”

“It is treason,” Doggo wrote in reply, but this time he did not tear up the correspondence.

“Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason? Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become of the national pride of the once great Formians? Look! I pledge myself to the cause of Formis, rightful Queen of Formia. Formis, daughter of Doggo! What say you?”