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"So they ingested the gold as larvae"

"Went into a cocoon"

"And when they eold"

"And there they are," said Sel, holding up the light again Only noent closer to the colulints of reflection were from the bodies of half-formed creatures, their backs embedded in the pillars, their foreheads and bellies shiny with a layer of thin gold

"The columns are the cocoons," said Po

"Organic s specifically to extract gold"

"But what for? It's not like the formics used money Gold is just a soft metal to them"

"A useful one What's to say they didn't have bugs just like these, only bred to extract iron, platinum, aluminum, copper, whatever they wanted?"

"So they didn't need tools to mine"

"No, Po--these are the tools And the refineries" Sel knelt down "Let's see if we can get any kind of DNA sample from these"

"Dead all this time?"

"There's no way these are native to this planet The forht them here So they're native to the for native there"

"Not necessarily," said Po, "or other colonies would have found the before now"

"It took us forty years, didn't it?"

"What if this is a hybrid?" asked Po "So it exists only on this world?"