Micro

They stopped the hexapod. Johnstone ran an electric-shock cable in a circle around the vehicle, staking the cable into the ground chest-high, while Telius dug a foxhole directly underneath the vehicle. They energized the power cable from the capacitor-it would deliver a shock to any animal that touched it-and they hunkered down in the foxhole, sitting back to back, holding their. 600 Expresses propped at their sides, loaded and ready for action.

Telius leaned back and put a dip of snuff under his lip. Johnstone took the radio locator with him into the foxhole, so that he could listen for any radio transmissions during the night. Johnstone wasn’t worried. This was his tenth trip into the micro-world, and he knew what he was doing. He turned on the locator and watched the screen, looking for signs of any radio transmissions in the seventy-gigahertz band-the frequency used by the Nanigen headsets. He saw no sign of radio chatter. “They might not even have radios,” he said to Telius.

Telius grunted in response, and spat a jet of tobacco.

They ate packaged meals. They got up to urinate separately, one man going off a few paces while the other man kept his partner covered with a gas rifle, just in case something tried to attack through the electrified wire. Some of those bastards out there could smell you when you took a piss.

Afterward, they traded watches, one man dozing while the other stayed on lookout. The lookout wore infrared goggles, his eyes just above the level of the ground.

Johnstone couldn’t get over how damn lively this world was at night. In his IR goggles he saw constant, ceaseless movements of small creatures, going about their damn business-bugs, a million bugs, crawling everywhere. He didn’t even know what they were. Seen one bug you’ve seen ’em all. As long as they weren’t some kind of predator. He watched for the warm shape of a mouse. He wanted to shoot some big game tonight. Dropping a mouse with a. 600 Express was as good as shooting a cape buffalo, which he’d done a few times in Africa.

“I’d like to blow away a mouse,” Johnstone said. “That would be fun.”

Telius grunted.

“I just don’t want to meet a fucking Scolo,” Johnstone added.

Chapter 22

Near Station Bravo 29 October, 6:00 p.m.

The six surviving students picked a rise of higher ground at the base of a small tree. At this spot they wouldn’t get flooded out if it rained during the night. The tree was an ohia, and it had gone into bloom, shining with red blossoms, which glowed in the evening light.

“We should make a palisade,” Peter said.

They gathered dry twigs and stalks of dead grass. They split the twigs and grasses into long splinters, then jammed the splinters into the ground side by side. This formed a wall of sharpened stakes surrounding their campsite, with the points of the splinters facing outward. They left an opening in the palisade just wide enough for a human to slip through, with a barrier of stakes around the opening in a zigzag, to make the entrance hard to penetrate. They continued to work on strengthening the fort as long as there was any light to see by. They dragged dead leaves inside the palisade, and used the leaves to make a roof over their heads. The roof would give protection against rain, and would also conceal them from the sight of flying predators.

They spread leaves on the ground under the roof, too. The leaf-bed kept them up off the ground, which was a constantly squirming bustle of small worms. They cut the lightweight tent to make a flat tarp out of it, and they spread the tarp on top of the leaf-bed to keep the surface dry and make the bed a little more comfortable for sleeping.

They had made a fort.

Karen brought out her spray bottle. It was nearly empty-she’d used most of it during the fight with the ants. “It’s got benzoquinone in it. If anything attacks us, there’s a couple of shots left.”

“I feel much safer now,” Danny said sarcastically.

Rick Hutter took the harpoon and dipped the point in the jar of curare. He leaned the harpoon against the palisade, ready for action.

“We should stand watches,” Peter reminded them. “We’ll change shifts every two hours.”

There was the question of whether to build a fire. If you were stranded in the wilderness at night in the normal world, you would build a fire to stay warm and drive off predators. The situation was different in the micro-world. Erika Moll summed it up: “Insects are attracted to light. If we have a fire, it could draw predators from hundreds of meters away. I suggest we do not use our headlamps, either.”

It meant they would spend the night in total darkness.

As dusk turned into night, the world was drained of color, fading into grays and blacks. They began to hear a pattering, thudding noise, coming closer-a sound of many feet passing over the ground.

“What’s that?” Danny’s voice rose in a quaver.