He struggled to his feet. He noticed she didn’t help him. He was unsteady standing in the wet moss, which leaked through his sneakers. His feet were cold and wet.

“Stand over here,” she said. It was as if she was talking to a child.

He moved to stand beside her, on a patch of dry ground. “Where are the others?”

“Somewhere around here. It may take some time.”

Peter nodded, looking at the jungle floor. From his new perspective half an inch above the ground, the jungle floor was incredibly rugged. Moss-covered stumps of rotted limbs rose like skyscrapers, and fallen branches-twigs, really-made ragged arcs twenty or thirty feet above the ground. Even the dead leaves on the floor were larger than he was, and whenever he took a step, they shifted, moving around him and beneath his feet. It was like trying to move through a rotten organic junkyard. And of course everything was wet; everything was slippery, and often slimy. Where, exactly, had they landed? They had been driven around for a long time. They could be anywhere on Oahu-anywhere there was a forest, at least.

Karen jumped up on a large twig, nearly fell off, got her balance, and sat on it, her legs dangling down. Then she put her fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle. “They should all hear that.” She whistled again.

Just then something bulky and dark in color crunched out of the undergrowth. At first they couldn’t see what it was, but the moonlight revealed a gigantic beetle, jet black, moving past in a surefooted gait. Its compound eyes gleamed faintly. It was covered with jointed black armor, and had spiky hairs bristling from its legs.

Karen drew her legs up respectfully as the beetle crawled below the twig she was perched on.

Erika Moll pushed her way out through a spray of plant stems, dripping wet. “Well,” she said. “It’s probably a Metromenus. A ground crawler, it doesn’t fly. Don’t disturb it-it’s a carnivore, it’s got jaws, and I’m sure it’s got a nasty chemical spray, too.”

They didn’t want to get drenched with chemicals or become the beetle’s next meal. They stopped talking and became very still while the beetle poked along, evidently hunting. Suddenly the beetle charged forward, running remarkably fast, and seized something small in its jaws, which struggled, thrashing around. In the darkness they couldn’t see what the beetle had caught, but they could hear crunching sounds as it chopped up its prey. They got a whiff of something sharp and very nasty.

“We are smelling the beetle’s defensive chemicals,” Erika Moll commented. “It’s acetic acid-that’s vinegar-and maybe decyl acetate. I believe the bitter stench is benzoquinone. The chemicals are stored in sacs in the beetle’s abdomen, and may circulate in the beetle’s blood, too.”

They watched the beetle move off into the night, dragging its prey. “That’s a superior evolutionary design. Better than ours, at least for this place,” Erika added.

“Armor, jaws, chemical weaponry, and lots of legs,” Peter said.

“Yeah. Way more legs.”

Erika said, “Most animals that walk the earth have at least six legs.” As she knew, those additional appendages made maneuvering over rough terrain easier. All insects had six legs, and there were close to a million named insect species. Many scientists suspected that another thirty million insects were just waiting to be named, which made the insects the most varied life form on earth, apart from microscopic organisms such as viruses and bacteria. “Insects,” Erika said to the others, “have been incredibly successful at colonizing the land areas of the planet.”

“We think they look primitive,” Peter said. “We think fewer legs is a sign of intelligence. Because we walk on two legs, we think it makes us smarter and better than an animal that walks on four or six legs.”

Karen pointed to the underbrush. “Until we face this. And then we want more legs.”

They heard a scratching sound and a rotund shape emerged from under a leaf. It looked like a mole, and was rubbing its nose with both hands briskly. “This sucks,” it said, spitting dirt. It still wore its tweed jacket.

“Danny?”

“I never agreed to be half an inch tall. Okay, size matters. I already knew that. What are we going to do?”

“For starters, you could stop whining,” Karen said to Danny. “We have to formulate a plan. We have to take stock.”

“Take stock of what?”

“Our weapons.”

“Weapons? What’s the matter with you two? We don’t have any weapons!” Danny said, starting to shout. “We have nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Karen said calmly. She turned to Peter. “I’ve got a backpack.” She jumped off the twig and grabbed the pack on the ground, lifted it up. “I took it just before Drake shrunk us.”

“Did Rick make it?” somebody asked.

“You bet,” came a voice from the darkness, somewhere to their left. “This doesn’t faze me. And neither does the jungle at night. When I was doing research in the field, in Costa Rica-”

“That’s Rick,” Peter said. “Anyone else?”

From above, there was a thwap! and the splatter of water droplets. And Jenny Linn slid down a leaf and landed at their feet.

“You took your time,” Karen said.

“Got caught on a branch. About ten feet up. Had to work myself free.” Jenny sat cross-legged on the ground, and immediately jumped to her feet. “Whoa. Everything’s wet.”

“It’s a rain forest,” Rick Hutter said, emerging from foliage behind them. His jeans were drenched. “Everybody okay?” He grinned. “How you doing, Danny boy?”

“Fuck off,” Danny said. He was still rubbing his nose.

“Oh come on,” Rick said, “get into the spirit of the thing.” He pointed to the moonlight, streaking down through the canopy of trees overhead. “We’re talking science studies! Isn’t this the perfect Conradian moment? An existential confrontation of man facing raw nature, the real heart of darkness unfettered by false beliefs and literary conceits-”

“Somebody tell him to shut up.”

“Rick, leave the guy alone,” Peter said.

“No, no, not so fast,” Rick said, “because this is important. What is it about nature that is so terrifying to the modern mind? Why is it so intolerable? Because nature is fundamentally indifferent. It’s unforgiving, uninterested. If you live or die, succeed or fail, feel pleasure or pain, it doesn’t care. That’s intolerable to us. How can we live in a world so indifferent to us. So we redefine nature. We call it Mother Nature when it’s not a parent in any real sense of the term. We put gods in trees and air and the ocean, we put them in our households to protect us. We need these human gods for many things, luck, health, freedom, but one thing above all-one reason stands out-we need the gods to protect us from loneliness. But why is loneliness so intolerable? We can’t stand to be alone-why not? Because human beings are children, that’s why.

“But those are all disguises we create for nature. You know how Danny loves to tell us that the science narrative privileges the balance of power. How there’s no objective truth, except for who’s got the power. Power tells the story and everyone accepts it as truth, because power rules.” He took a breath. “But who’s got the balance of power now, Danny? Can you feel it? Take a deep breath. Feel it? No? Then I’ll tell you. The balance of power lies in the hands of the entity that always holds the balance of power-nature. Nature, Danny. Not us. All we can do is go for the ride and try to hang on.”

Peter threw his arm around Rick, and steered him away. “That’s okay for now, Rick.”

“I hate that fucking guy,” Rick said.

“We’re all a little scared.”

“Not me,” Rick said, “I’m cool. I love being half an inch tall. That’s bite size for a bird, and that’s what I am. I’m a freaking hors d’oeuvre for a mynah bird and my chances of surviving another six hours are about one in four, maybe one in five-”