The sun had moved halfway across the blue chamber before the entourage stopped for rest. The borderlands with their familiar smells were far behind them. Everything was unfamiliar now. Aside from Seed-getter, this was the first time these youngsters had seen the outside, and they marvelled at it. The sky, so bright and vast, was at the same time exhilarating and oppressive. They enjoyed the warmth of the sun, and could not understand the warnings of their elder not to spend too much time in the open.

"Bright! Up! Bright! Up!" they giggled.

"Rest," said Seed-getter, instinctively knowing when it was time to go into the shade.

"REST," commanded the almost-mother through her scent glands.

The entourage crawled under the lip of a large round rock and formed a bivoac, a temporary fortress of their own bodies. As their legs cooled down, they sampled odors in the breeze.

The path they followed was old and deep with scents of their ancestors. Pheremones can last a very long time, even decades, for it only takes a few molecules striking the antennae to trigger a strong emotion or memory. So it was possible to read the atmosphere of an area like a journal.

"Fight," said one of the youths. "Bad fight."

Seed-getter waggled her antennae in agreement. The scent of battle was strong in this place. Years ago many ants, perhaps thousands of them, gathered here for a skirmish. The anguish of the fallen, with their severed limbs and bleeding bodies, was preserved in the soil and rocks. It raised the hairs on her abdomen.

Stories of these wars, fierce and grand and sad, were passed from elder new newling. Seed-getter thought perhaps this could have been the site of a young-hive rebellion, where a young ant mother establishes a colony, then refuses to observe the peerage order. This snub against the older hives cannot be tolerated. It is an affront to the Pan-Mind, the spirit of all ants. It has happened many times, and each time the rogues are exterminated. One cannot imagine any other outcome.

Seed-getter tried to explain this the best she could with her limited storytelling ability. "Bad ants!" she pointed, pausing to let it sink in. "Attend Mother always."

"Attend Mother always," the younglings repeated.

Feeling a cold breeze, she decided it was time to get going. She didn't want to get caught outside at night again. "Gotta gotta gotta," she said, stretching her back. Her sisters took their positions at her sides and acted as crutches to help her hobble on.

"Sister, I must confide in you something. The Pan-Mind informs me that our journey is greater than we can hope to make with even the fleetest of carrier ants. We require assistance. I will try to craft a vision for you. Let me connect with your antennae."

Almost-mother laid her antennae on the getter's. A complex stream of visual data crossed the synapse into the smaller ant's mind. Packets of information taken directly from the Pan-Mind flooded her tiny cortex. Had she not been encased in a wooly blanket and her legs not enfeebled, she would have sprinted away.

The vision was of a race of giants who strode on two legs, were stinky and loud, and covered the world in their own hives. The giants had monstrous, shiny carriers that could cross vast distances quickly. If they could find matches to the cyclopedic patterns, the Pan-Mind would show them how to employ them in their mission.

"The Pan-Mind tells me where we can find one of the giant carriers. It is a place of endless black stone, which I know from the scouts is close to here. I have ordered the entourage to travel in that direction. We should arrive in a few sun-widths."

The ant mass roved through the land swiftly. Carriers at the bottom hefted a living shell of ants linked together foot to mouth. Guards walked alongside, alert and prepared for defense. Scouts went off to gather a few quick-eats along the way, but most effort was spent searching for the endless black stone. As Almost-mother had predicted, they found it in a few hours.

The endless black stretched farther than the highest ants could see. Their vision was not very good anyway. Their segmented eyes were best suited to analyzing objects close by. But the Pan-Mind sensed everything somehow. The young Almost-mother directed them forward over the hot oil-smelling plain. In a short while, they found themselves at at the base of a huge, smooth, mountainous thing.

"Bad smell," warned Seed-getter. "Giants."

"Yes," said Almost-mother. "I smell it too. This is a giants' carrier. Pan-Mind instructs that we enter it."

Without hesitation, the micro-hive streamed up a black leathery wall, along a rust-tasting path, and into a warm, oily cavern. After many turns and passages past alien structures, they emerged through a tunnel into daylight again.

"What sort of hive is this?" marvelled Almost-mother. "Well, I shall do as the Pan-Mind requests. This will be very complicated. A must divide the micro-hive into teams."

She relayed instructions through the antennae of ants to program them for the immense challenge to come. Some ants went into dark places while others climbed to great heights. Some were tasked with chewing through foul-tasting strands, as others pushed the strands together, making bright sparks fly. The giants' carrier rumbled and made terrible noise. But the courageous ants never strayed from the pheremonal direction of their leader.

The giants' carrier required a great deal of pushing and pulling on various large objects to command it to move. Almost-mother was surprised the giants could not invent a more intelligent and responsive beast. They managed to follow the checklist correctly and soon, the thing was in motion. Ants perched on the tops of the see-through walls told her so, as their antennae sensed a strong wind from outside.

"Good! Good!" said the Almost-mother with a squirt of approving scent. "Now, I will channel the Pan-mind's directions as we go swiftly over the great distance."

It was Sunday, and all the trucks at Vinnie Tosca's Gravel Company were locked up in the rear parking lot. Vinnie's nephew Joe, the security guard on duty that day, sat back in his metal folding chair, watching a football game on the television and sipping a pepsi. When he heard a truck start up, he thought it was one of his relatives come by to do some weekend work. He thought he should go out and say hello.

He walked past the row of trucks and up to the cab of the one now idling. Hoisting himself up the step, he peered in and saw the cab empty. The doors were both locked and there was no key in the ignition.

"Hey!"

He pounded on the window, figuring some car thief was hiding inside. But there was no one inside. He stepped down and scratched his head. The truck suddenly went into gear and ran over his foot.

Joe screamed and hopped around as the truck rumbled past, slowly accelerating faster. It crashed through a chain link fence, rolled off the driveway, through a ditch, and onto the highway. Nearly causing an accident in both directions, the truck weaved clumsily through traffic as it went on its way.