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The twins shouted over the roar of the flow. "We've trapped her!"

As if she'd heard them, Karla shattered the cementlike white shell and easily parted the spray of water. With another burst of power, she sent a shockwave that backed up through the emergency valve and burst the tree-trunk-thick pipe. Frigid water exploded everywhere at once. Wynn and Torin dove out of the way.

Closer to Rlinda, one of the miners slipped on the ice, jabbing his spear in a last attempt to save himself. More than a dozen nematodes plunged in, tiny diamond teeth fastening, then chewing. The other Roamers tried to defend their fallen friend, but another mass of worms struck them from behind. Too many.

Rlinda watched the men die, but when four nematodes reared up in front of her, she couldn't spare any time for the horror welling up within her. She swung the shovel like a Viking wielding an axe on a battlefield. BeBob was barely holding his own, and then the handle of his shovel cracked. Time for Plan B.

"Can you run faster than a worm, BeBob?" Rlinda delivered a few blows to clear the way, and they sprinted across the uneven ice pack, dodging among half-ruined structures. When another nematode lunged, Rlinda swung one of her heavy legs, hitting the worm's soft membrane with her thick insulated boot. The hissing creature tumbled sideways. Rlinda made a disgusted face. "Like stepping in a bag of wet, runny shit."

"There's a lot more of them!" BeBob pointed to a new group of nematodes that squirmed in their direction, hissing and hooting. "Thousands, I think."

Rlinda made a snap decision. "We've got to make it to the lift shaft and ride our way to the surface. Unless you plan to squash them all?"

"Not me--my arm's already tired."

Though the mist and smoke made it difficult to see, they ran. She and BeBob outdistanced the squirming nematodes, but Rlinda assumed the two of them were still being tracked.

As she had anticipated, an equipment shed stood unlocked next to the elevator, whose shaft ran parallel to one of the primary water wellheads. Always before, the Plumas workers had guarded the lift shafts to make sure the two hostages couldn't escape. Now, though, the Roamers were rather preoccupied.

"Something's hit the lift, Rlinda." BeBob indicated a dark blotch next to the controls. "The access door is off track and wedged open."

"Better jammed open than shut. Or would you rather circle the base, find another lift, and hope that one's in better shape?"

With haunted eyes, he glanced back to see the cadre of scarlet nematodes coming closer, fixated on attacking them. The squirming worms were unbelievably single-minded. "Uh, no thanks. Let's try this one."

Rlinda yanked open the shed to reveal a rack of heavy-duty environment suits. She threw an average-sized one to BeBob and ransacked the garments, hoping to find one large enough to accommodate her. "Roamers are so damned lean and trim!" She went through one after another, breathing heavily, aware of how little time they had. She couldn't drive away the image of the hapless Roamer men who had fallen to the nematodes, their skin chewed away.

Rlinda saw the approaching nematodes as serpentine shadows in the curling mist. She grabbed the largest of the available suits. "I hope this thing stretches." She bounded to the damaged lift doors, which hung partly open like the slack mouth of a man who had died from a spacesuit rupture. "We'll get dressed inside the chamber. Quit dawdling!"

BeBob didn't need further encouragement. "At least the car is where it's supposed to be." Rlinda struggled to manhandle the damaged doors shut, but they were caught. As the nematodes squirmed forward like drunken inchworms, she decided there was no time for niceties. She pushed the controls, and after a brief, unpleasant grinding sound, the lift began to crawl upward.

"We'll be fine now," she said loudly enough to try to convince herself as well as BeBob. Adrenaline made time slow around her, now that she realized