Having put it together, they proceeded to lift the big box and
place it near those already inhabited. They set it down in what
looked like a good location, but almost immediately took it up again
and shifted it a foot to one side. This was not satisfactory,
either; they moved it a few inches in another direction.
All told, it took a full minute to place that simple affair where it
was wanted; and all the while those two humans behaved as though
some one were shouting directions to them--silent directions, as it
were. Billie knew that a half-dozen soldier bees, surrounding their
two heads, were coolly and unfeelingly driving them where they
willed. And when, the work done, they left the spot, two soldiers
went along behind them to see that they did not loiter.
As for the doctor, he came upon Rolla when the woman was deep in an
experiment. She stood in front of a rude trough, one of perhaps
twenty located within a large, high-walled inclosure. In the trough
was a quantity of earth, through the surface of which some tiny
green shoots were beginning to show.
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