My stomach felt like it was contracting into a pinhole. I almost missed what she said next.

"Dr. Abbato thinks that it is unlikely that the worms are food for the next step in the invasion. The worms are too efficient a predator. Too specialized for sentience? Rather, he thinks that the worms are a partner species and that ultimately, they will serve some kind of support function for the real invaders." She paused and looked carefully around the room. "Do you get it? The worm's are domestic animals! Dr. Abbato guesses that they're the equivalent of sheep dogs; they function as guardians of the host species' property."

Urk. I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. I didn't want to know this. My belly hurt.

"If this is so-" Dr. Fletcher was pointing out, "then it means that the worms can be tamed." She stopped and looked out over us. "Think about it. Think about the possibilities. If we can tame them-perhaps we can turn them into an ally. Perhaps we can even use them as the first line of defense against the sentients who put them here."

I doubted that, but she had my attention. You couldn't have dynamited me out of my chair. Stomach pain and all.

"The question is-how do you tame a worm?

"But let's get even more basic than that. How do you communicate with a worm? Or even--can we communicate with the worms? In fact, even more basic than that, the question is this: how intelligent are the worms? That's what we need to know first, and that is the point of today's demonstration."

Huh? Demonstration? Had I slept through something?

She lifted her podium and carried it over to the right side of the stage. "I'll open the curtain in a minute and you can see the specimen we're currently working with. We call it 'Tiny'-you'll see that it's anything but. I think you'll also see that the question of intelligence is very clearly answered by this demonstration.

"Tiny was captured near Mendocino late last year. At that time, the specimen massed four hundred and fifty kilos. It is now twice that weight. Tiny is living proof that the gastropedes have an incredible rate of growth. By the way, you'll notice that we try to be very careful not to use `he' or `she' when talking about the worms. We're still not certain of their sexuality and we don't want to accidentally prejudice our own perceptions."

She touched a button on her podium and the curtains behind her slid open to reveal a pink-lit chamber. The theater overlooked a deep-walled room, large and almost featureless; we were staring down into it. "The color of the light is halfway between Earthnormal and what we believe to be Chtorr-normal."

Dr. Fletcher touched another button and a panel on the opposite wall of the chamber slid open. There was darkness beyond. "This is Tiny," she said. A medium-sized worm slid out of the darkness, sniffing the air as it moved. It was thick and red. The brain case hump on its back was very pronounced and it held its eyes high and alert. They swiveled back and forth, up and down, scanning the entire space. The worm hesitated, blinked and paused and looked up toward us.

I'd seen worms in viewing theaters before. I always had the impression that they could somehow see through the glass-that they knew we were out here. This time was no different. Tiny looked curious. Its long dark arms were still folded against the brain case, but the claws were twitching gently. At a guess, I'd say the creature was a little impatient.

"Now," said Fletcher, "-you need to know that Tiny is essentially a child, a youngster, and like all youngsters Tiny likes an occasional treat. With dolphins you use fish, with chimps you use grapes-with Tiny, we use rabbits."

She touched another button and another panel on the wall slid open. There was a fat brown rabbit in a glass case at Tiny's eyelevel. Below the case was a complicated assembly of rods and gears and latches. In front of that was a panel of assorted knobs and switches; all were thick and heavy-looking. "That's our test setup," said Fletcher. "It's a puzzle. Each one of those knobs and levers controls a different part of the lock. If Tiny operates them all in the right order, the glass case will open and it can have the treat."

Tiny cocked its eyes sideways and looked at the rabbit. The rabbit was huddling in the corner of the case. Tiny cocked its eyes the opposite way and studied the rabbit from a different angle. The gesture gave the worm a floppy, hand-puppet expression. It would have been funny if I didn't know how dangerous a worm could be.

Tiny hunched around to examine the case and the lock and the panel of switches closer. Through the speakers we could hear the thoughtful clicking of its mandibles. It made a grunting noise and then moved up to the panel of knobs and switches.

The worm unfolded its arms and arched them over its eyes and down to the puzzle. It let is claws drift thoughtfully over the controls of the locks before it selected one.

"For your information," Fletcher said, "Tiny has never seen this puzzle before. It is not the most complicated one we've assembled, but for the purposes of this demonstration we thought we'd keep it short. All of our puzzles are rigged to keep a record of Tiny's moves-and once Tiny goes to work the life-expectancy of the rabbit can be measured in minutes. The longest Tiny has ever taken was half an hour."

Tiny was already hard at work, turning the knobs and observing what effect they had on the machinery, sliding the levers back and forth and peering cockeyed at the lock.

"As you can see," Fletcher said, "Tiny has a high degree of manipulative curiosity. We think this indicates a pretty good spatial sense for all worms-but again, that's only an extrapolation and not to be treated as hard fact."

"A question-" It was the same grim-looking colonel.

"Yes?" Fletcher asked.

"How does a human being compare on these same puzzles?" he asked.

"A good question," Fletcher acknowledged. "We haven't been running direct comparisons, but I can tell you that humans usually take at least forty-five minutes-even on the easy ones."

"So you're saying that these worms are smarter than men?"

"Not at all, Colonel. They just have a highly advanced manipulative sense. They should be very good with tools, but-" she added, "-so far, we haven't found much evidence that they use tools. At least, not naturally."

"Mm hm," said the colonel. He wasn't impressed. A chime sounded then-

"That means Tiny's solved the puzzle," said Fletcher. - the glass case popped open.

Tiny grabbed the rabbit with one dark claw, lifted it up high, it squealed, I didn't know that rabbits could scream-and shoved the creature into its gaping maw. There was a wet slobbery crunching sound, and then Tiny uttered a soft trill of pleasure, and looked around for more.

Behind me, I could feel the room stiffening. It was not pleasant to watch a worm eat. I didn't like being reminded.

Dr. Fletcher touched a control and the panel with the puzzle slid closed. She said, "Tiny took eleven minutes to solve this problem. We are now going to reset the puzzle. It'll take about two minutes. Does anyone have any questions, so far? Yes-"

A dark man with an Indian accent. "Your work is remarkably advanced, Dr. Fletcher. I am most impressed. May I ask you, how do the worms reproduce?"

"We don't know. I'm sorry, I can't even give you a good guess. There aren't any. Next? Yes-" She pointed.

"Dr. Fletcher, why do they call these things worms?" asked a broad ruddy-faced man. "It looks more like a big pink caterpillar to me. Hell, I've picked bigger caterpillars off my rosebushes back home in Amarillo." There was good-natured laughter in the room.

Even Dr. Fletcher smiled. She replied, "The first reliable sighting of a worm actually occurred about a year before the outbreak of the first plagues. Some of you may even remember. It happened in Northern Canada. A troop of scouts was on a three-day outing. They were on horseback. One of the girls was momentarily separated from the rest of the troop. She had stopped to readjust her saddle straps. Something attacked her horse. The rest of the troop heard her screams and started back for her. They met her halfway. She was so hysterical they almost couldn't catch her to calm her down. The most they could get out of her was that it was big, it was dark, it looked like a giant worm, and it kept saying, `Chtorrrr! Chtorrrrrr! "'