Micro - Michael Crichton [95]
The spider used the trigger line to sense the presence of prey in the web. Cutting the trigger line was like cutting a nerve. It also alarmed the spider.
The spider suddenly fled, running away and tucking itself inside a curled-up leaf—its home.
“Most of ’em scare easily,” Karen said to Erika. She cut another thread, and the two women fell free, while Karen called back to the spider, “Sorry, sweetheart.”
They landed together on the ground amid a tangle of sticky silk. Erika was badly shaken. “I thought I was going to die.”
Karen pulled threads of silk off her. “Nothing to worry about as long as you know the structure of the web.”
“But I’m a beetle person,” Erika answered.
Peter and Danny landed nearby, crashing into leaves. Finally Rick appeared, lowering Amar with the help of the rope. They gathered in a group at the base of the ohia tree, and Peter explained the change of plan. They would head for Tantalus.
Ten minutes later, with Rick and Peter carrying Amar between them, they entered a fern forest, a seemingly endless maze of sword ferns, tall and dripping with moisture, arching over tunnels that ran in all directions. Koa trees, olopua trees, and white kokio hibiscus trees sprang from among the ferns, twisting into the upper story of the forest.
Peter sighted with the compass. “That way,” he said, and they began to walk down a long, winding passageway among the ferns. Fronds arched far overhead, covering the world in green.
Danny was stumbling along, when he stopped, stared at Amar Singh. Danny’s eyes widened. “He’s—he’s bleeding.”
Nobody had noticed. Rick lowered Amar, and Amar sank to his knees, while a rivulet of blood trickled out of one nostril and ran across his upper lip. The blood began falling to the ground in a steady drip.
“Leave me,” Amar whispered. “I have the bends.”
Chapter 26
Beneath the Green Canopy
30 October, noon
They’re hiding in there,” Telius said to Johnstone, looking through binoculars into a mass of sword ferns on the forest floor. The two men were hanging upside down in their seat harnesses in the hexapod. The machine, in turn, hung upside down from a leaf in the pandanus tree, clinging to the leaf with its feet. They had been able to get a fix on the radios.
Telius stared for a while, then gestured silently with one finger: Drop us.
Johnstone hit a button and the footpads let go of the leaf, and the hexapod went into free fall. Johnstone, working the controls, folded the legs under the vehicle as it fell. It tumbled a few times, its legs tucked underneath it, and hit the ground, and bounced, and came to rest upside down. The roll cage had protected the humans inside.
Johnstone popped open the legs. They lashed out and flipped the vehicle upright, and the hexapod moved off, stalking its way around the edge of the fern forest, and went into the ferns. Telius stood up and turned his head, listening. He had heard them talking. He indicated with his finger where the people were, then directed Johnstone to drive up a fern stem.
The hexapod climbed the stem, got in among the fronds, and stopped. Telius took up the binoculars and stared through them. He had acquired the targets. Six of them, down below. Somebody was sick, had a bloody nose. Might be the bends. The others were gathered around the victim. Indian guy, looked like. Blood streamed from the guy’s nose and over his upper lip and chin. Yup—the man had the bends. He was a goner. “Poor fucker’s having a bend bleed-out,” he murmured to Johnstone, who grunted.
As he studied the group, Telius identified the leader—slender guy, light brown curly hair, standing slightly apart and talking