Micro - Michael Crichton [121]
She got her arms around Rick and dragged him out of the chamber, leaving the headless grub thumping the walls. A strange odor chased them.
That’s bad, Hutter said silently. That’s an alarm pheromone.
King realized it, too. The dying larva was screaming for help, wailing for its mother in the language of scent. The scent was filling the nest. If the mother detected it…
Danny’s voice came on. “What’s going on?”
“I have Rick. He’s alive. Stand by, I’m bringing him out.”
Rick was like a sack of potatoes, a dead load, but her strength was incredible. She had got Rick and she would fight to the death before she’d give him up now. Dragging him, she crawled through the big chamber, heading for the vertical shaft…
Just then, Danny’s voice came on her headset: “She’s back!”
Chapter 37
Tantalus Crater
31 October, 2:00 p.m.
The solitary wasp flew in slowly, a paralyzed caterpillar dangling between her legs. She began to fly back and forth in zigzags over her nest, then settled lower, searching for the mud chimney of her burrow.
Within moments she had registered that her chimney had been smashed. Her nest had been damaged and invaded. There was an intruder.
Danny Minot wrapped himself around the rock, hiding under the plant, trying to make himself as rocklike or plantlike as possible. “You idiot!” he whispered to Karen. He’d been left alone in the micro-world.
The mother landed, carrying the caterpillar. Vibrating her wings, she advanced to the entrance. At that moment she caught the scent of her baby’s death leaking out of the hole. She began beating her wings furiously. The air filled with the thunder of her wings. She dropped the caterpillar, then charged into the hole headfirst.
Karen King heard a rumbling sound in the earth above—a buzz of wasp wings, a clatter and clash of a wasp’s exoskeleton.
“Danny!” she called. “What’s happening?”
There was no answer.
“Talk to me, Danny!”
The mother surged down into her nest, a toxic, armored bundle of maternal rage.
Karen listened to the wasp coming. She crouched in the chamber at the foot of the vertical shaft, with Rick lying on the floor behind her. The sounds were frightening—and informative. A sharp smell wafted into the room—an advance wave of the mother’s fury.
Karen got out her diamond sharpener and began to frantically hone her machete, zing, swish, zing. “Hang on, Rick,” she muttered. She worked the sharpener over the steel, bringing the blade to an extreme edge. It would have to slice through massive bioplastic armor. Then she poised herself by the opening with the blade raised over her head. “Come on, come on,” she muttered.
The mother reached the bottom of the shaft. There was a pause.
And then the wasp’s head, huge, black-and-yellow, appeared in the opening.
Upside down.
She swung the machete at the wasp’s face with every ounce of her strength.
The blade bounced off the wasp’s eye, leaving a mark. The lady had armored eyes.
The wasp thrust her head—still upside down—into the room, snapped her jaws around the machete, and tore the blade out of Karen’s hands, dragging it back into the hole. Karen heard crunching metallic sounds: the wasp was cutting up her last weapon.
The room shook: the wasp was pounding her wings against the tunnel walls. Getting ready to charge. She heard the wasp gasping.
She glanced over her shoulder, and her headlamp beam passed over Rick. He looked dead—
In swinging her head around, she became aware of the little knife dangling from her neck. She’d sworn never to carry it in her pocket again. My knife. She thumbed the blade open and yanked the cord off her neck.
The wasp’s head was in the room now—still upside down—and the jaws snapped at her. Karen dove down to the floor, and slid her body underneath the wasp’s upside-down head. The head was covered with bristles. She gripped the bristles. The head