His hands closed and unclosed as I stared down at him. His forehead was drenched with sweat and he writhed as though in unbearable anguish, a hectic flush suffusing his cheeks.

My throat felt hot and swollen but I managed to whisper: "Darnel. Darnel, my lad."

Slowly his eyelids flickered open and he stared up at me, a grimace of agony convulsing his haggard features.

"Nothing seems quite real, sir," he groaned. "Except—the pain."

"Is it very bad?"

"I'm in agony, sir. I can't stand it much longer. It's as though a heated iron were resting on my chest."

"Where did that wasp take you?"

"Into the chart room, sir. When I struggled in the web it carried me into the chart room and stung me again."

I swallowed hard. "Did you experience any pain before that, lad?"

"I felt a stab the first time it plunged its stinger into me, but when I came to in the web there was no pain. The pain started in the chart room."

I was thinking furiously. Stinger—ovipositor. A few species of stinging terrestrial insects possessed organs which combined the functions of both. Evidently the wasps had simply stung us at first—to paralyze us. Now they were completing the gruesome process of providing a feast for their avaricious progeny. One of the wasps had taken Darnel from the web, and deposited a fertile, luminous egg in his flesh.

It was becoming hideously clear now. The wasp's retreat into the chart room had been motivated by a desire to complete its loathsome task in grim seclusion. It had withdrawn a short distance for the sake of privacy, passing completely through the wall out of sight.

My stomach felt tight and hollow when I contemplated the grub, which had apparently hatched out almost instantly. It seemed probable that Darnel's anguish was caused by the grub's luminosity searing his flesh, as its mouth-parts were still immobile.

"Darnel," I whispered. "The paralysis wore off. They couldn't sting us into permanent insensibility. The pain may go too."

He looked at me, his eyes filming. "I don't understand, sir. Paralysis?"

I had forgotten that Daniel wasn't even 

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