#638: The Search explain

[Two ants are facing each other with their antennas almost touching. They are on a tiled floor with the two nearest rows of tiles fully shown, and those further back covered partly be the speech text of the ant to the right.]

Ant: We’ve searched dozens of these floor tiles for several common types of pheromone trails.

Ant: If there were intelligent life up there, we would have seen its messages by now.

[Caption below the panel:]

The world’s first ant colony to achieve sentience calls off the search for us.