Darkness approached. Styggy, the few remaining warriors, and a dozen workers cycled out through the last living airlock-ant and into the dimness. Darkness fell over them as they crouched. Their back legs were all locked against the metal. It grew instantly cold. Workers cut and consumed the silk around the rock, while still others tried their best to scrape off any volatiles which had condensed on the cooling metal. Everything suddenly appeared slate black, as the ring set behind the enormous planet which engulfed their field of view. Faint crescents of light shined dimly through the thin upper atmosphere of their gas giant, and it was all that could be seen.

Then the signalers, with their long antenna touching everyone, gave the order.

Push!

All legs fired at once and pushed the iron off below and behind them. Their colony rock now gained more momentum. They had escaped certain death.

For now.

All walked back inside, save for two or three watchers, big-eyed ants which spied for any signs of danger.

Styggy crawled back inside and fell into a deep rest. In the night, a signaler ant activated his antennae and Styggy had dreams of leaping and soaring through space. Dreams were times for new lessons from other ants, though he was the only scout ant left. This time though, the signaler was not there to give, but to borrow his expertise.

Jumps and landings, danger and searching. Biting and fighting!

The dream ant would harvest those memories and transfer them into the last crop of scouts, which would soon emerge from their eggs. Life’s energy margin was too thin to waste wisdom.

The colony’s rock floated safely through the black shadow.

No ant jumped at night. The colony’s activity died down to conserve oxygen. Watchers surveyed the colony’s position from the scattered light. They were certainly in a higher orbit, but none knew for how long, nor if there were now nearby neighbors.

But, the darkness's safety was all too short for the colony.

Styggy was awoken by the beating of many legs. All striking to rouse everyant with one message:

Alarm!

It was dawn, and the watchers saw something hurtling toward them.

Styggy ran through the tunnels to the nearest door-ant. He smelled the scent in the air and received the slimmest of information from the antenna of others.

General fear.

A raid.

Out of the lock, he stood leg to leg with his warrior brethren. They swarmed to one side of the colony rock, prepared to fight to the death. There, floating not more than a few body lengths away, was a free rock. No enemy space-ant was seen, and the rock was tumbling over two axes in their direction. It was a chaotic, uneven spin which spoke: unoccupied. So close that Styggy felt no fear of jumping untethered. Still, the weavers wrapped one strand around him. Styggy eyed the prize. It was longer than it was wider, and he aimed for the center, where the rotations were the least. He leaped and snagged it with his powerful claws.

The spin coiled his silk around it. A rock to wind a string around. It tightening up naturally. Workers came up the line, but Styggy stood still, trying to listen for any vibrations from inside the rock. All seemed dead. If this was another colony, he’d be swarmed over already.

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Workers finished tying up the stone. The captured asteroid was huge, easily twice the length of their colony's rock, but far too light, as though it were completely hollow.

The thin string continued to wind up both rocks, and imparted an odd little rotation to the colony.

Styggy crawled over the rock, searching for an entrance. There he found a dead door-ant which was clenched shut in rigor mortis. Styggy silently posture communicated back to the others and two warriors came over. They all ran their antennae over the big dead head, confirming it was actually dead, and they tried to lift the skeletal remains. Door-ants are such that in death, both ends will tightly clench the lock closed.

The head lifted. Since two warriors together could not fit, Styggy and one warrior entered first. The dead head dropped, then they pushed the abdomen. Inside, heavy in the thin air, was the stink of death.

A grave, he tried to tap out to the warrior ant.

It was cold, and there were no hostile vibrations. The air was stale and too thin to ever breathe well. Styggy detected no pressure changes, like if a large body were running towards him. Nothing... Dead. The other warrior cycled through and they began their exploration, up walls and over floors. They searched through wide spiral tunnels, often catching only the fresh scents of each other at intersections. They cleared the long tubes which contained only the empty dead. They found no surprises. The exoskeletons of the dead had already been picked clean, as if some other colony had long ago cast off this refuse for a higher orbit.

Styggy made it to a large chamber, which seemed once to have been a nesting hall. He saw a strange red glow. The walls were splattered with bioluminescent fungi, and the still fungus carpeted a bump in the center of the chamber. These fungi often grew on the outside of colonies, feeding directly from their gas giant’s radiation band, but here they were seen inside a room. Styggy did not have the intellect to comprehend. He wasn’t an exobiologist. But, he had enough instinct to sense the strangeness. But without any ideas, he instead rifled through desiccated exoskeletons of long-dead ants from this unrelated colony, looking for anything to scavenge.

Hollowed exoskeletons slowly floated as the exterior workers finally halted the rock’s spin.

In the center of the chamber, Styggy burrowed through the fungal mat and found a strange rock. It was warm, and his compound eyes could see an ultraviolet glow. He tapped his antennae on it, then picked it up. It was heavy and dense, and he knew, at the very least, it would be worthy of momentum.

The rock stayed warm, and he was forced to drop it at the dead door-ant. It floated ahead and gently ricocheted off the wall. By now, he heard other workers at the door.

Take your last breath, a worker’s antenna said as it danced over Styggy’s head.

He tapped back in the affirmative.

Styggy took as deep of a breath as he could, then helped the worker dismember the door-ant. They grabbed on the joint between the petiole and the gaster, and squeezed it between his mandible jaws. He could feel the crunch shake his body and then a pop.

The gaster detached freely with Styggy still holding it.

He felt a brief hiss of air escaping as workers finally pried off the head of the door.

Holding himself and the meaty prize steady, he felt the strange warmth of the dense rock under him.

Many of the smaller workers crawled inside the abdomen, pulling out any glands, intestines, and other organs. (The colony would eat well tonight.)

With the abdomen exoskeleton emptied of flesh, Styggy tried to move it out from the cramped tunnel. The hot dense rock was pushed backward. Styggy shoved the abdomen forward, trying to find a split in the tunnel to place it aside and then grab the heavy rock. He turned his head to the right, but the hot rock did too, he pushed, pushed again, then felt something give.

Styggy probed at the exoskeleton with his antennae, then realized he wedged the hot rock inside. Briefly, he thought of cutting the exoskeleton off his prize rock, but instead brought the entire abdomen with hot-rock inside, back to the colony; he needed a new breath and moments were passing quickly. He crawled through the newly cut hole and back home.

Tie up. Styggy communicated with a worker. At next darkness, they could kick it off into space and gain a quanta of momentum. Until then, it would remain tethered at the rear of their home rock.

The last of the ants hatched. New scouts, workers, and warriors. Only one egg remained. The old queen chittered around it. It was her glory, a royal egg, the egg of the new queen. One which could stay in stasis indefinitely. It was covered in an insect jelly to nourish it wherever it may fall. Embedded inside was the menagerie of other species. Aphid eggs, bacteria, and spores of their fungal breeds, everything; and all caked with gelatinized starches, needed to feed the new colony whenever it reseeded.

But higher orbits, though different in their dangers than lower ones, are not intrinsically safer. Danger still remains.