a.m. It was a digital watch. It was running normally, even when shrunk. “Dawn’s coming,” he said.
“If we could find a supply station, we could try to call Nanigen on the radio,” Jarel Kinsky suggested. “If they heard our signal, they would rescue us.”
“Drake would kill us,” Peter said.
Kinsky didn’t argue, but it was clear he didn’t agree with Peter.
Peter went on, “We have to get ourselves into the tensor generator, so that we can be restored to full size. To do that, we have to get back to Nanigen. Somehow. But I think it would be a mistake to ask Drake for help.”
“Can we call 911?” Danny broke in.
“Great idea, Danny. Just tell us how,” Rick said scornfully.
Jarel Kinsky explained that the radios in the supply stations only had a range of about a hundred feet. “If somebody from Nanigen is nearby and listening at the right frequency, they can communicate with us. Otherwise nobody will pick up our signal.” And the radios, he explained, didn’t broadcast on any frequency that the police or emergency services used, anyway. “The Nanigen micro-sized radios broadcast at around seventy gigahertz,” Kinsky explained. “That’s a very high frequency. It works well for the field teams over short distances, but it’s useless for long-distance communication.”
Jenny Linn said, “When Drake was showing us around the arboretum, he mentioned there’s a shuttle truck that goes to Nanigen from here, from Manoa Valley. We could stow away on the truck.”
Everybody fell silent. Jenny had come up with what sounded like a good idea. Indeed, as they thought about it, Vin Drake had mentioned a shuttle truck. But if the field teams had been withdrawn from the micro-world, would the shuttle still be running? Peter turned to Jarel Kinsky. “Is the shuttle truck still making runs to Nanigen, do you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“What time does the truck normally arrive at the arboretum?”
“Two o’clock,” Kinsky answered.
“Where does it stop?”
“The parking lot. Next to the greenhouse.”
Everybody absorbed that, thinking about it.
“I think Jen’s right. We should try to get on that truck,” Peter said. “Get ourselves back to Nanigen, then try to get into the tensor generator-”
“Wait-how the hell are we going to climb up onto a truck when we’re this small?” Rick Hutter demanded. He faced Peter Jansen. “It’s a crazy plan. What if there’s no truck? Nanigen is fifteen miles from here. We’re a hundred times smaller than we used to be. Think about it. It means that one mile is like a hundred miles for us. If it’s fifteen miles from here to Nanigen, that’s really like fifteen hundred miles for us. Basically we have to do what Lewis and Clark did. And we have to do it in less than four days or we’ll die of the bends. It’s a shitty bet, guys.”
“Rick’s idea is to wring his hands and give up,” Karen said.
Rick turned on her angrily. “We need to get practical-”
“You’re not being practical. You’re whining,” Karen said to him.
Peter tried to defuse the argument. He put himself between Rick and Karen, figuring he could make himself a target of their wrath rather than let them continue to pick at each other. “Please,” he said, putting his hand on Rick’s shoulder. “Arguing isn’t going to help anybody. Let’s take things one step at a time.”
The group set off again, walking in silence.
Half an inch tall on the forest floor, they had difficulty seeing much of anything, even as the sun rose. Ferns, thick and abundant, grew everywhere, and were especially difficult to deal with, for they blocked the view and created deep shadows. They lost sight of the greenhouse building, and couldn’t find any recognizable landmarks. Still, they kept moving. The sun broke forth, and beams of light slanted through the forest canopy.
In the daylight, they saw the soil more clearly. It was churning with small organisms-nematode worms, soil mites, and other little, abundant creatures. This is what Jenny Linn had felt wriggling against her feet in the dark. The soil mites were very small, spider-like creatures of many different species, crawling around or hiding in cracks in the soil. The mites would have been almost invisible to the naked eye of a normal-size person, but in relation to the micro-humans the soil mites were much larger. To the micro-humans, the mites appeared to be anywhere from the size of grains of rice up to the size of golf balls. Many of the mites had small, egg-shaped bodies covered with thick armor and spiky hairs. The mites were arachnids; Karen King, the arachnologist, kept stopping to gaze at them. She didn’t recognize a single mite; they all seemed to be unknown, a vast number of different kinds of mites. She couldn’t get over the richness of nature: here was biodiversity as far as the eye could see. The mites were everywhere. They reminded her of crabs on a rocky seashore: small and harmless, busy and scuttling, carrying on their small, hidden lives. She picked up a mite and set it down on the palm of her hand.
The creature seemed so delicate, so perfect. Karen felt her spirits lifting. What was going on? To her surprise, she realized that she felt happy in this strange new world. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I feel like I’ve been searching all my life to find a place like this. It’s like I’m coming home.”
“Not me,” Danny said.
The mite walked up Karen’s arm, exploring it.
“Watch out, it could bite you,” Jenny Linn said.
“Not this little guy,” Karen answered. “See his mouth parts? They’re adapted for sucking up detritus-dead stuff. He eats crud.”
“How do you know it’s a he?”
Karen pointed to the mite’s abdomen. “Penis.”
“A guy’s a guy, no matter how small,” Jenny remarked.
As they hiked along Karen grew animated. “Mites are incredible. They’re highly specialized. Many mites are parasites, and they’re particular about their hosts. There’s a kind of mite that lives only on the eyeballs of a certain fruit bat-nowhere else. There’s another mite that lives only on the anus of a sloth-”
“Please, Karen!” Danny erupted.
“Get over it, Danny, it’s just nature. About half of all people on earth have mites living in their eyelashes. Many insects get mites on them, too. In fact, there are mites that live on other mites-so even mites get mites.”
Danny sat down and pulled a mite off his ankle. “Little monster chewed a hole in my sock.”
“Must be a detritus eater,” Jenny said.
“That’s not funny, Jenny.”
“Anybody want to try my natural latex skin cream?” Rick Hutter said. “Maybe it’ll keep the mites off.”
They stopped and Rick took out a plastic lab bottle, and passed it around. They rubbed small amounts of the cream on their faces, hands, and cuffs. It had a pungent smell. And it worked. It did seem to repel mites.
For Amar Singh, the reality of the micro-world seemed to assault his senses. He noted that being small even changed the sensations he felt on his skin. His first impression of the micro-world involved the feeling of air flowing over his face and hands, tugging at his shirt and ruffling his hair. The air seemed thicker, almost syrupy, and he could feel every ripple of breeze as the air coiled and flowed around his body. He waved his arm, and felt the air sliding between his fingers. Moving through the air in the micro-world was a bit like swimming. Because their bodies were so small, the friction of air passing over their bodies became more pronounced. Amar staggered a little, feeling a puff of air pushing him sideways. “We’re going to have to get our sea legs in this place,” he said to the others. “It’s like learning how to walk all over again.” The others were having similar difficulties: staggering, feeling the air tugging at them, and sometimes miscalculating the steps they took. Trying to jump up on something, they would jump too far. Their bodies were clearly stronger in the micro-world, but they hadn’t learned how to control their movements.
It felt like moonwalking.
“We don’t know our own strength,” Jenny said. She gathered herself, leaped high, and grabbed the edge of a leaf in both hands. She hung by her hands for a moment, then from only one hand-it was easy. She let go and fell back to the ground.
Rick Hutter had taken a turn wearing the backpack. Though it was loaded with gear, he discovered he could jump up and down pretty easily even with the pack on-and he got himself fairly high in the air without much effort.
