Micro

A thundering sound passed by overhead in the leaves. Instinctively, the humans ducked, grabbing at leaves and wedging themselves down. Peter went sprawling. “Look out!” he yelled. A butterfly zoomed past. Its wings, patterned with orange, gold, and black, made booming sounds as the creature whipped and twisted through sunlight. The insect seemed to be playing. Then it hovered, wings thundering, and landed on an ohia flower.

Droplets of nectar gleamed in the blossom. The butterfly unrolled its proboscis and sent it deep into the flower, until the tip touched a droplet. They heard sucking, squishing sounds as the butterfly pumped seemingly endless gallons of nectar into its stomach.

Peter slowly raised his head.

Karen was laughing. “You should see yourself, Peter. Frightened by a butterfly.”

“It’s, uh, impressive,” Peter said sheepishly.

The species, Erika told them, was the Kamehameha butterfly, native to Hawaii. It fed in the flower for a while, poking here and there, while the wind carried a bitter stench to the humans. The butterfly might be lovely to look at, but it gave off a nasty smell.

“It’s a chemical defense,” Erika Moll said. “Phenols, I think. The compounds are bitter enough to make a bird throw up.”

The butterfly ignored the humans. It took off from the flower and with powerful strokes caught the wind, and soared outbound into the blue oceans of air.

The butterfly had taught the humans a lesson. The flowers dripped with liquid sugar. Just what they needed for energy. Karen King crawled into a flower headfirst. She reached a glob of nectar and began scooping it into her mouth with both hands. “You guys have to try this,” her voice came out of the flower, muffled with stickiness. She could feel her body ramping up with energy almost as soon as she swallowed the nectar.

The others crawled into flowers and drank as much nectar as possible.

While they gorged on nectar, a movement in the distance caught Peter’s eye. “Somebody’s coming,” he said.

They stopped drinking and watched as a vehicle approached in the distance, coming up the winding road from Honolulu. It was a black pickup truck. It followed the road along the cliff edge as it climbed, and stopped at the gate in front of the tunnel. Here the driver got out. Peter, studying the scene with binoculars, saw the man take a yellow sign from the back of the pickup truck. The man placed the sign on the gate.

“He put up a sign,” Peter said.

“What does it say?” Karen asked.

Peter shook his head. “I can’t see.”

“Is it the shuttle truck?”

“Hold on.”

The man drove the truck through the gate; it closed behind him. Moments later the truck emerged from the tunnel and descended into the valley, and stopped in the parking lot. The man got out.

Peter studied the scene through the binoculars. “I think it’s the same man who dug up the supply stations. Muscular guy, wearing an Aloha shirt. There’s a sign on the truck that says NANIGEN SECURITY.”

“That doesn’t sound like the shuttle,” Karen said.

“No.”

In the parking lot, the man walked around, scuffing at things, peering at the ground. Then he got down on his knees and started running his hand back and forth under a clump of white ginger plants.

“He’s searching the ground around the edge of the parking lot,” Peter said.

“For us?” Karen asked.

“Looks like it.”

“That’s not good.”

“Now he’s talking on a handheld radio to somebody. Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“He’s looking straight at us.”

Karen scoffed. “He can’t see us.”

“He’s pointing toward us. And talking on the radio. It’s like he knows where we are.”

“That’s impossible,” Karen said.

Now the man went over to the back of the truck and lifted out a spray tank of some kind. He hoisted the tank to his shoulder on a strap and walked around the edge of the parking lot, spraying the vegetation. Then he sprayed the surface of the parking lot as well.

“What is that about?” Erika asked.

“Poison, I bet,” Karen said to her. “They know we’re alive. They’ve guessed we’d try to hitch a ride on the shuttle, so they’re nuking the parking lot. And I’m sure there’s no shuttle now. They’re trying to trap us in this valley. They’re figuring we’ll die here.”

“Let’s make them wrong,” Peter said.

Karen remained very skeptical. “How?”

“We’ll revise our plan,” said Peter.

“How?” Karen asked.

“We’ll go to Tantalus,” Peter answered.

“Tantalus? That’s insane, Peter.”

“But why?” Erika asked.

Peter said, “There’s a Nanigen base up there. There could be people at the base. They might help us, you don’t know. And Jarel Kinsky talked about airplanes at Tantalus. He called them micro-planes.”

“Micro-planes?” Karen said.

“Well, I’ve seen a very small Nanigen airplane. And you guys did too-remember? I found it in my brother’s car. Amar and I magnified it. It had controls and a cockpit. Maybe we could steal some micro-planes and fly.”

Karen stared at Peter. “That’s completely, totally crazy. You don’t know anything about Tantalus Base.”

“Well, at least they won’t expect us at Tantalus, so we have the element of surprise.”