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.
Rolla inspected the shoots, and then, with her stone knife, she made a
final notch in the wood on the edge of the trough. There were twenty-odd
of these notches; whereas, on other troughs which the doctor had a
chance to see, there were over thirty in many cases, and still no
shoots.
The place, then, was an experimental station. This was proven by Rolla's
next move. She went outside the yard and studied five heaps of soil,
each of a different appearance, also three smaller piles of pulverized
mineral-nitrates, for all that the doctor knew. And before Kinney
severed his connection with the Sanusian, she had begun the task of
mixing up a fresh combination of these ingredients in a new trough.
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