Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke Read Online Free PDF

of them lay eggs and undergo a number of metamorphoses before they become perfect creatures. I am sending with this report a number of photographs and films which will give you a better idea of their infinite variety than any words of mine. I obtained most of my information on the subject from the literature which has been built up by thousands of patient students who have devoted their lives to watching insects at work. The inhabitants of Three have taken much interest in the creatures which share their world, and this, I think, is another proof that they are more intelligent than some of our scientists would have us believe.’
    At this there were smiles in the audience, for the House of Theton had always been noted for its radical and unorthodox views.
    ‘In my studies I came across accounts of some extraordinary creatures which live in the tropical regions of the planet. They are called “termites” or “white ants” and live in large, wonderfully organised communities. They even have cities – huge mounds, honey-combed with passages and made of exceedingly hard materials. They can perform prodigious feats of engineering, being able to bore through metals and glass, and they can destroy most of man’s creations when they wish. They eat cellulose, that is, wood, and since man uses this material extensively he is always waging war on these destroyers of his possessions. Perhaps luckily for him, the termites have even deadlier enemies, the ants, which are a very similar type of creature. These two races have been at war for geological ages, and the outcome is still undecided.
    ‘Although they are blind, the termites cannot endure light and so even when they venture from their cities they always keep under cover, making tunnels and cement tubes if they have to cross open country. They are wonderful engineers and architects and no ordinary obstacle will deflect them from their purpose. Their most remarkable achievement, however, is a biological one. From the same eggs they can produce half a dozen different types of specialised creature. Thus they can breed fighters with immense claws, soldiers which can spray poison over their opponents, workers which act as food stores by virtue of their immense distended stomachs and a number of other fantastic mutations. You will find a full account of them, as far as they are known to the naturalists of Three, in the books I am sending.
    ‘The more I read of their achievements, the more I was impressed by the perfection of their social system. It ocurred to me, as indeed it had to many previous students, that a termitary may be compared to a vast machine, whose component parts are not of metal but of protoplasm, whose wheels and cogs are separate insects, each with some preordained role to perform. It was not until later that I found how near the truth this analogy was.
    ‘Nowhere in the termitary is there any waste or disorder, and everywhere there is mystery. As I considered the matter it seemed to me that the termites were much more worthy of our attention, from the purely scientific point of view, than man himself. After all, man is not so very different from ourselves, though I shall annoy many by saying so, yet these insects are utterly alien to us in every way. They work, live and die for the good of the state. To them the individual is nothing. With us, and with man, the state exists only for the individual. Who shall say which is right?
    ‘These problems so engrossed me that I eventually decided to study the little creatures myself with all the instruments at my command, instruments of which the naturalists of Three had never dreamt. So I selected a small uninhabited island in a lonely part of the Pacific, the greatest ocean of Three, where the strange mounds of the termites clustered thickly, and constructed on it a little metal building to serve as a laboratory. As I was thoroughly impressed by the creatures’ destructive powers, I cut a wide circular moat round the