in a few minutes?”
“No we can’t,” Richard answered. “We’re still down in the room with the boilers. We must be at least three and a half kilometers away. Did Ellie say how many people might be on each boat?”
“I would guess about ten or twelve, Dad,” Ellie replied. “I didn’t stay around to count them. But the boats were not the only unusual thing I saw while I was topside. During my run back to the lair, the southern sky lit up with wild bursts of color that eventually became a giant rainbow. It’s near where you told us the Big Horn should be.”
Ten seconds later Richard shouted into the radio. “Listen to me, Nicole, Ellie, all of you. Evacuate our lair immediately. Take the children, the hatchlings, the melons, the sessile material, the two rifles, all the food, and as many personal belongings as you can comfortably carry. Leave our stuff alone-we have enough on our backs to survive in an emergency. Go directly to the octospider lair and wait for us in that large room that was a photo gallery years ago. Nakamura’s troops will come to our lair first. When they don’t find us, if Katie’s with them, they may go to the octospider lair as well, but I don’t believe they will go into the tunnels there.”
“What about you and Max and Patrick?” Nicole asked.
“We’ll come back as fast as we can. If there is nobody- By the way, Nicole, leave a transmitter, with the volume on high, in the White Room, and another in the nursery. That way we’ll know if anybody is in our lair… Anyway, as I was saying, if our home has not been invaded, we’ II join you right away. If Nakamura’s men are occupying our living quarters, we’ll try to find another entrance to the octospider lair from down here. There must be one.”
“All right,” Nicole interrupted. “We must get started with the packing. I’ll leave the receiver on in case you need us.”
“So you think we’ll be safest in the octospider lair?” Max said after Richard had switched off his transmitter.
“It’s a choice,” Richard said with a wan smile. “There are too many unknowns here behind the screen. And we know for certain we won’t be safe if Nakamura’s police and troops find us. The octospiders may not even be living in their lair anymore. Besides, as Nicole has said many times, we have no unambiguous evidence that the octos are hostile.”
The men moved as quickly as they could. At one point they halted briefly while Patrick transferred some of the weight off Richard’s pack into his own. Both Richard and Max were sweating profusely by the time they reached the Y in the corridor.
“We must stop for a minute,” Max said to Patrick, who was out in front of his two older companions. “Your Uncle Richard needs a rest.”
Patrick pulled a water bottle from his pack and passed it around. Richard drank eagerly from the bottle, wiped his brow with a handkerchief, and after a minute’s rest began jogging again toward the lair.
About five hundred meters away from the small platform behind the black screen, Richard’s receiver began picking up indistinct noises from the inside of the lair. “Maybe someone in the family forgot something important,” Richard said, slowing down to listen, “and came back to retrieve it.”
A short time later the three men heard a voice they could not identify. They stopped and waited. “It looks as if some kind of animal has been living back here,” the voice said. “Why don’t you come take a look?”
“Damn,” said a second voice. “They have definitely been here recently. I wonder how long ago they left.”
“Captain Bauer,” someone shouted. “What do you want me to do with all this electronic gear?”
“Leave it for now,” the second voice answered. ‘The rest of the troops should be down in a few minutes. We’ll decide what to do then.”
Richard, Max, and Patrick sat quietly in the dark tunnel. For about a minute they didn’t hear anything on the receiver. Apparently none of the members of the search party was in the White Room or the nursery during that time. Then the three men heard Franz Bauer’s voice again.
“What’s that, Morgan?” Bauer said. “I can barely hear you… There’s some kind of racket… What? Fireworks? Colors?… What in the world are you talking about? All right. All right. We’ll come up immediately.”
For another fifteen seconds the receiver was quiet. “Ah, here you are, Pfeiffer,” they then heard Captain Bauer say plainly. “Round up the other men and let’s go back upstairs. Morgan says there’s an amazing fireworks demonstration in the southern sky. Most of the troops were already spooked by the skyscrapers and the dark. I’m going up to calm everyone’s nerves.”
“This is our chance,” Richard whispered, rising to his feet. “They will certainly be out of the lair for a few minutes.” He started to run and then stopped himself. “We may need to separate. Do both of you remember how to find the octospider lair?”
Max shook his head. “I’ve never been over—”
“Here,” Richard said, handing Max his portable computer. “Enter an M and a P for an overview of New York. The octospider lair is marked with a red circle. If you touch L, followed by another L, a map of the inside of their lair will be displayed. Now let’s go, while we still have some time.”
Richard, Max, and Patrick encountered no troops inside their lair. A pair of guards were stationed, however, a few meters away from the exit to New York. Fortunately, the guards were so transfixed by the fireworks in the Rama sky above their heads that they didn’t hear the three men slipping up the stairs behind them. For safety, the threesome split up, each taking a different route to the octospider lair.
Richard and Patrick arrived at their destination within a minute of each other, but Max was delayed. As luck would have it, the route he had chosen led through one of the plazas where five or six of the colony troops had gathered for a better view of the fireworks. Max raced down an alley and huddled against one of the buildings. He pulled out the computer and studied the map on the monitor, trying to figure out an alternate path to the octospider lair.
Meanwhile, the spectacular fireworks show continued overhead. Max glanced up and was dazzled as a great blue ball exploded, throwing hundreds of rays of blue light in all directions. For almost a minute, Max watched the hypnotic display. It was grander than anything he had ever seen on Earth.
When Max finally reached the octospider lair, he descended the ramp quickly and entered the cathedral room from which the four tunnels led into the other parts of the lair. Max entered two Ls on the computer and the map of the octospider domain appeared on the tiny monitor. Max was so engrossed in the map that at first he did not hear the sound of dragging mechanical brushes accompanied by a soft, high-pitched whine.
He did not look up until the sound became quite loud. When Max finally raised his head, the large octospider was standing no more than five meters away from him. The sight of the creature sent powerful shivers down Max’s spine. He stood quite still and fought against his desire to flee. The creamy liquid in the octospider’s single lens moved from side to side, but the alien did not advance any closer to Max.
Out of one of the parallel indentations on both sides of the lens came a burst of purple color, which circumnavigated the octospider’s spherical head, followed by bands of other colors, all of which disappeared into the second of the two parallel slits. When the same color pattern repeated, Max, whose heart was pounding so fiercely he could feel it in his jaw, shook his head and said, “I don’t understand.” The octospider hesitated for a moment and then lifted two of its tentacles off the ground, clearly pointing in the direction of one of the four tunnels. As if to underscore its point, the octo shuffled in that general direction and then repeated the gesture.
Max stood up and walked slowly toward the indicated tunnel, being careful not to come too close to the octospider. When he reached the entrance, another series of color splashes raced around the head of the alien. “Thank you very much,” Max said politely as he turned and walked into the passageway.
He didn’t even stop to look at his map until he was three or four hundred meters into the tunnel. As Max walked along, the lights always came on automatically in front of him and were extinguished in the tunnel segments through which he had already passed. When he did finally examine the map carefully, Max discovered that he was not far from the designated, room.
A few minutes later Max entered the chamber where the rest of the family was gathered. He had a big grin on his face. “You’ll never guess who I just met,” Max said only moments before Eponine greeted him with an embrace.
Soon after Max finished entertaining everyone with the story of his encounter with the octospider, Richard and Patrick cautiously backtracked to the cathedral room, stopping every hundred meters or so and listening
