lost his tassel loafers. The shoes blew off his feet while he’d made a jaw-dropping dash that would have shamed an Olympic sprinter. Danny stood there in muddy, bare feet, shaking his head. And they had seen Karen King fighting the ants. Her twists and leaps, soaring through the air.
It was clear they could do things in the micro-world they couldn’t have dreamed of before.
They investigated the supply station quickly, as a raiding column of ants could show up at any moment. The tent, stocked with various boxes, sat atop a concrete floor. In the center of the floor, there was a round steel hatch. The steel hatch was operated with a wheel lock, like a bulkhead door of a submarine. Peter Jansen spun the wheel and lifted up the hatch. A ladder went down into darkness. “I’ll check it out.” He put the headlamp on his head and switched it on, and descended the ladder.
He ended up standing in the middle of a dark room. As he swung his headlamp around, the beam fell across bunks and tables. Then he spotted a bank of power switches on the wall. He threw them, and the lights came on.
The room was a concrete bunker. It contained spartan living quarters. Tiered bunks were stacked along two walls. There were laboratory benches, equipped with basic lab supplies. There was a dining area, with a table and benches and a cooking stove. A door led to the bunker’s power source: a pair of D-size flashlight batteries, looming far above their heads. Another door led to a toilet and shower. A chest held some freeze-dried meals in pouches. The bunker was secure against predators, a sort of bomb shelter in a dangerous biological environment.
“It’s not a Disneyland ride out there,” Peter Jansen said. He sat slumped at the table in the bunker, exhausted. He felt unable to think clearly. Images of Kinsky’s death ran through his mind.
Karen King leaned against the wall. She was splashed with ant blood. The blood was gooey and clear, with a slightly yellowish color, and it dried fast.
Danny Minot sat hunched at the dining table. He had resumed picking at his face and nose with his fingertips.
A computer sat on the lab bench. “We could learn something from this,” Jenny Linn said, and switched it on. The computer booted, but a password screen came up. Of course, they didn’t know the password. And Jarel Kinsky wasn’t there to help them with things like that.
“We’re not safe here,” Rick Hutter remarked. “Drake could show up.”
Amar Singh agreed. “I propose, let’s stock up with food and gear and leave immediately.”
“I don’t want to go outdoors,” Erika Moll said, her voice trembling, as she sat down on a bunk. Why had she ever left the university in Munich? She longed for the safe world of European research. These Americans played with fire. Hydrogen bombs, megapower lasers, killer drones, shrunken micro-people…Americans were demon- raisers. Americans awakened technological demons they couldn’t control, yet they seemed to enjoy the power.
“We can’t stay here,” Karen said to her, speaking gently. She could see how frightened Erika was. “The most dangerous organism we face is not an insect. It’s human.”
It was a good point. Peter Jansen suggested that they stick to the original plan: go to the parking lot, try to get on a truck to Nanigen, get into the tensor generator somehow. “We have to get restored to normal size as soon as possible. We don’t have much time.”
“We don’t know how to operate the generator,” Jenny Linn said.
“We’ll cross that bridge later.”
Rick said, “We have some good tools for getting ourselves on the truck, including the rope ladder we found in the pack.” He had been poking around in the supply boxes, and he’d pulled out something: another pair of radio headsets. This meant they now had a total of four communication radios.
“There is only one thing to do,” Danny Minot murmured. “Call for help.” He held up a radio headset.
“You call Nanigen,” Rick said to him, “and Vin Drake will come around looking for us, and not with any magnifying glass. With the toe of his boot.”
Peter suggested that they keep radio silence except in an emergency, in case Drake was listening for them.
“I don’t see the point,” Danny said. “We need to call for help.”
Jenny Linn did not take part in the conversation. Instead, she opened all the cabinets, one by one, and went through them carefully. She found a lab notebook. She opened it and began flipping through the pages. Somebody had jotted handwritten notes on the first few pages-weather readings, logs of sample-gathering activities, mostly. It didn’t seem useful, until she came to the map.
“Look at this, guys,” Jenny said, spreading the notebook on the table.
On a page of the lab notebook, somebody had sketched a rough map of the Manoa Valley. The map showed the locations of ten supply stations, scattered through Fern Gully and partway up the mountain slopes toward Tantalus Peak, at increasing distances from the greenhouses and parking lot. The supply stations were designated by letters of the NATO alphabet, from Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, up to Kilo. There was an arrow marked TO TANTALUS BASE-GREAT BOULDER. Tantalus Crater wasn’t shown on the map, nor was the base.
The map, as crude and incomplete as it was, still contained valuable information. It showed the basic layout of the supply stations. The location of each supply station was indicated by landmarks around the station-trees, rocks, clumps of ferns-making it possible to find the station as long as you could locate the landmarks. There was a station next to the parking lot. It was Station Alpha, and it was located under a clump of white ginger plants, according to a note on the map.
“We could head for Station Alpha,” Peter Jansen said. “Maybe not stay at Alpha, but at least we could search it for more supplies and information.”
“Why should we go anywhere?” Danny said. “Kinsky was right. We have to negotiate with Vin.”
“Don’t you dare try!” Rick was practically shouting.
“Please, stop this!” Amar Singh said. He couldn’t stand conflict. First there had been all the fighting between Rick and Karen, and now Rick was getting into a hassle with Danny. “Rick, people have different styles. You need to be more tolerant of Danny…”
“Cut the crap, Amar. That guy is going to be the death of us all, with his stupid-”
Peter Jansen could feel the situation spiraling out of control. The one thing that would certainly destroy them would be conflict within the group. They had to become a team, Peter thought, or they would soon be dead. Somehow, he had to get this quarrelsome, catty group of intellectuals to understand that survival required cooperation. He stood up and went to the head of the table, and waited for silence. Eventually they quieted down.
“Are you done squabbling?” he said. “Now I have something to say. We’re not in Cambridge anymore. In the academic world, you guys got ahead by cutting down your rivals and proving you’re smarter than everybody else. In this forest, it’s not about getting ahead, it’s about staying alive. We have to cooperate to survive. And we have to kill whatever threatens us or we will be killed.”
“Oh, it’s kill or be killed,” Danny said dismissively. “An outmoded pseudo-Darwinian philosophy dating back to Victorian times.”
“Danny, we have to do whatever it takes to survive,” Peter said. “But there’s more to survival than just killing. Think about who we are as humans. A million years ago, our ancestors survived on the plains of Africa by operating in teams. Bands is a better word for it-we were bands of humans, back then. A million years ago, we were not at the top of the food chain. All kinds of animals hunted us-lions, leopards, hyenas, wild dogs, crocodiles. But we humans have been dealing with predators for a very long time. We survive with brains, weapons, and cooperation-teamwork. I think we were built for this journey. Let’s think of it as the chance of a lifetime to see incredible things in nature no one has ever seen before. But whatever course of action we decide on, we will have to work together or we’ll die. We’re only as strong as the weakest member of our team.” Peter stopped, wondering if he’d gone too far, if he had sounded too preachy to these grad students.
There was a period of silence as they digested Peter’s speech.
Danny Minot was the first to speak. He turned to Peter. “By ‘weakest member,’ I assume you mean me.”
“I didn’t say that, Danny-”
Danny cut him off. “Excuse me, Peter. I am not a slack-lipped hominid with a beetling brow, clutching a chunk of stone in my hairy-knuckled fist and cheerfully bashing in skulls of leopards. In fact, I am an educated
