“Now,” speaking carefully, “apparently these Sanusian bees have developed something that is not unknown to certain forms of earth’s insect life.  I mean, a soldier type.  A kind of bee which specializes on fighting!”

Van Emmon was listening closely, yet he had got another idea:  “Perhaps this soldier type is simply the plain worker bee, all gone to sting!  It may be that these bees have given up labor altogether!”

“Still,” muttered Smith, under his breath, “all this doesn’t solve the real problem.  Why aren’t the humans supreme?” For once he became emphatic.  “That’s what gets me!  Why aren’t the humans the rulers, doc?”

Kinney waited until he felt sure the others were depending upon him.  “Smith, the humans on Sanus are not supreme now because they were never supreme.”

Smith looked blank.  “I don’t get that.”

“Don’t you?  Look here:  you’ll admit that success begets success, won’t you?”

“Success begets success?  Sure!  ‘Nothing succeeds like success.’”

“Well, isn’t that merely another way of saying that the consciousness of superiority will lead to further conquests?  We humans are thoroughly conscious of our supremacy; if we weren’t we’d never attempt the things we do!”

Van Emmon saw the point.  “In other words, the humans on the earth never began to show their superiority until something—­something big, happened to demonstrate their ability!”

“Exactly!” cried Kinney.  “Our prehistoric ancestors would never have handed down such a tremendous ambition to you and me if they, at that time, had not been able to point to some definite feat and say, ’That proves I’m a bigger man than a horse,’ for example.”

“Of course,” reflected Billie, aloud; “of course, there were other factors.”

“Yes; but they don’t alter the case.  Originally the human was only slightly different from the apes he associated with.  There was perhaps only one slight point of superiority; today there are millions of such points.  Man is infinitely superior, now, and it’s all because he was slightly superior, then.”

“Suppose we grant that,” remarked the geologist.  “What then?  Does that explain why the bees have made good on Sanus?”

“To a large degree.  Some time in the past the Sanusian bee discovered that he possessed a certain power which enabled him to force his will upon other creatures.  This power was his poisonous sting.  He found that, when he got his fellows together and formed a swarm, they could attack any animal in such large numbers as to make it helpless.”

“Any creature?”

“Yes; even reptiles, scales or no scales.  They’d attack the eyes.”

“But that doesn’t explain how the bees ever began to make humans work for them,” objected Van Emmon.