Micro - Michael Crichton [126]
He turned his head and smiled, and looked at her. She rubbed his hands, his arms, to get the circulation going.
“Your hands feel warmer. You’re getting better I think.”
They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves, because they didn’t know what to expect from the inhabitants of the base, Nanigen employees who might well be following orders from Vin Drake. They decided to watch the base for a time, looking for activity. They lay down under a mamaki plant. The Great Boulder loomed above like a mountain.
There was no activity on the runway. The place seemed deserted.
The runway was strewn with stones, dried mud, plant debris. A cone of dirt had risen next to it, an ant nest. An ant trail extended across the runway and headed downslope toward the bottom of the crater.
“It doesn’t look good,” Danny Minot whispered.
Karen’s heart fell. If no micro-humans lived here, then there wouldn’t be any shuttle to Nanigen, and no chance of help. This place hadn’t been tended to; it had been overrun by ants.
But there might be airplanes.
They walked slowly down the hillside and went into the hangar. There were tie-downs for aircraft, but no planes. While Rick sat and rested with Danny, Karen explored the base. She found a room that she guessed had once held mechanical parts and supplies, but it had been emptied out, leaving bent metal pins and bolts protruding from the walls and floor. She went into another room. Empty. The next room contained living quarters. It had been flooded by rain and was half-filled with mud.
There was no sign of human life anywhere. Tantalus Base had been abandoned. There was no sign of a road to Honolulu, either. No shuttle truck. No airplanes. Only the trade wind endlessly worrying the ground and whistling through the empty halls of Tantalus.
They emerged from the complex and sat by the runway looking down into the crater. They could see the city, too, through the gap in the crater’s wall, and beyond the city the Pacific Ocean ran off into blue. Nanigen was miles away from this crater, and there was no way home.
Danny Minot lay in the rubble, holding his arm. He began to cry. His sobs echoed off the hangar and drifted into a sky shot with gray rolling clouds and wind.
Karen watched an ant hurry across the runway, carrying a seed. She turned her gaze up to the Great Boulder, and then past it to the horizon line and the clouds. Something moved against the sky near the boulder, and she suddenly realized it was the figure of a man.
Chapter 39
Tantalus Base
31 October, 5:00 p.m.
How long the man had been standing there Karen couldn’t say—possibly he had been watching them the entire time they’d explored the base. She saw his hair flash in the breeze, long, white. He wore armor of some kind, but she couldn’t tell what it was made of. His eyes looked hard and cold, even at that distance. He lifted up an object, and she saw it was a gas rifle.
“Down!” Karen shouted, grabbing Rick.
He fired. There was a hiss, and glint of steel ripped past them and buried itself in the ground somewhere beyond, and exploded with a thump. Karen began crawling, dragging Rick behind her, but there was nowhere to hide. Another sniper…Drake had found them…
The man’s voice came to them over the wind. “That was a warning. Stand up and show me your hands. If you have weapons, drop them in front of you.”
They obeyed him. Karen held up the blowgun so he could see it, and dropped it on the ground. She placed the container of darts next to it.
“Put your hands on your head.”
Karen obeyed, and called out, “We have two injured. We need help.”
He didn’t answer. He moved toward them, keeping the gun raised. As he got closer, they saw that he was an older man, with a weather-beaten face bronzed by the sun, and deep-set blue eyes. He clearly had muscles, and he looked physically powerful. How old was he? He could have been anywhere from fifty to eighty, it seemed. His armor had been carved from the hard parts of a beetle. A scar ran across his forehead and wandered down his neck and ran under