There was always juicier news. It would pass.

Of course, there would be difficulties inside the company itself. This visit was to have been a major addition to Nanigen staffing, a very needed addition, too, because of the recent losses of staff. And therefore it would have been a major boost to his company. He would have to finesse this matter with skill.

The sports car scraped and lurched along the dirt road; he gripped the wheel firmly. He was heading south to Kaena Point (“where souls leave the planet”) and the surf raged up on both sides of the trail. He made a mental note to wash the salt water off his car and tires. Better to take it to a standard car wash over in Pearl City.

He checked his watch. Three thirty a.m.

Oddly enough, he felt no urgency, no nervousness. There was time enough to get back to the other side of the island, to Waikiki, near Diamond Head. And time enough to check the kids’ hotel rooms for artifacts, scientific objets they had brought with them.

And then plenty of time for Vin to drive back to his own luxurious apartment on the Kahala side, and slide into bed. So he could awaken shocked to learn of the absurd behavior of his chief financial officer and the talented students she had led astray.

Chapter 14

Manoa Valley 29 October, 4:00 a.m.

The seven students and Kinsky walked through the forest single-file, listening, watching, steeped in darkness and deep shadow, and enveloped in alien sounds. As Rick Hutter moved along, stumbling his way among leaves on the ground and scrambling under dead branches that seemed bigger than fallen redwoods, he held a homemade grass spear across his shoulder. Karen King wore the backpack, and kept her knife gripped in her hand. Peter Jansen led the group on point, peering around, trying to pick a route. Somehow, in his quiet way, Peter Jansen had become the leader. They were not using the headlamp, for they didn’t want to attract any predators. Peter couldn’t see much of the terrain in front of him. “The moon has gone down,” he said.

“Dawn must be-” Jenny Linn began.

A terrible cry drowned her out. It began as a low wail and rose into a series of throaty shrieks, coming from the depths somewhere above. It was an eerie sound, dripping with violence.

Rick spun around, holding his spear up. “What the hell was that?”

“A bird singing, I think,” Peter said. “We’re hearing sounds at a lower pitch.” He looked at his watch: 4:15 a.m. It was a digital watch. It was running normally, even when shrunk. “Dawn’s coming,” he said.

“If we could find a supply station, we could try to call Nanigen on the radio,” Jarel Kinsky suggested. “If they heard our signal, they would rescue us.”

“Drake would kill us,” Peter said.

Kinsky didn’t argue, but it was clear he didn’t agree with Peter.

Peter went on, “We have to get ourselves into the tensor generator, so that we can be restored to full size. To do that, we have to get back to Nanigen. Somehow. But I think it would be a mistake to ask Drake for help.”

“Can we call 911?” Danny broke in.

“Great idea, Danny. Just tell us how,” Rick said scornfully.

Jarel Kinsky explained that the radios in the supply stations only had a range of about a hundred feet. “If somebody from Nanigen is nearby and listening at the right frequency, they can communicate with us. Otherwise nobody will pick up our signal.” And the radios, he explained, didn’t broadcast on any frequency that the police or emergency services used, anyway. “The Nanigen micro-sized radios broadcast at around seventy gigahertz,” Kinsky explained. “That’s a very high frequency. It works well for the field teams over short distances, but it’s useless for long-distance communication.”

Jenny Linn said, “When Drake was showing us around the arboretum, he mentioned there’s a shuttle truck that goes to Nanigen from here, from Manoa Valley. We could stow away on the truck.”

Everybody fell silent. Jenny had come up with what sounded like a good idea. Indeed, as they thought about it, Vin Drake had mentioned a shuttle truck. But if the field teams had been withdrawn from the micro-world, would the shuttle still be running? Peter turned to Jarel Kinsky. “Is the shuttle truck still making runs to Nanigen, do you know?”

“I don’t know.”

“What time does the truck normally arrive at the arboretum?”

“Two o’clock,” Kinsky answered.

“Where does it stop?”

“The parking lot. Next to the greenhouse.”

Everybody absorbed that, thinking about it.

“I think Jen’s right. We should try to get on that truck,” Peter said. “Get ourselves back to Nanigen, then try to get into the tensor generator-”

“Wait-how the hell are we going to climb up onto a truck when we’re this small?” Rick Hutter demanded. He faced Peter Jansen. “It’s a crazy plan. What if there’s no truck? Nanigen is fifteen miles from here. We’re a hundred times smaller than we used to be. Think about it. It means that one mile is like a hundred miles for us. If it’s fifteen miles from here to Nanigen, that’s really like fifteen hundred miles for us. Basically we have to do what Lewis and Clark did. And we have to do it in less than four days or we’ll die of the bends. It’s a shitty bet, guys.”

“Rick’s idea is to wring his hands and give up,” Karen said.

Rick turned on her angrily. “We need to get practical-”

“You’re not being practical. You’re whining,” Karen said to him.

Peter tried to defuse the argument. He put himself between Rick and Karen, figuring he could make himself a target of their wrath rather than let them continue to pick at each other. “Please,” he said, putting his hand on Rick’s shoulder. “Arguing isn’t going to help anybody. Let’s take things one step at a time.”

The group set off again, walking in silence.

Half an inch tall on the forest floor, they had difficulty seeing much of anything, even as the sun rose. Ferns, thick and abundant, grew everywhere, and were especially difficult to deal with, for they blocked the view and created deep shadows. They lost sight of the greenhouse building, and couldn’t find any recognizable landmarks. Still, they kept moving. The sun broke forth, and beams of light slanted through the forest canopy.

In the daylight, they saw the soil more clearly. It was churning with small organisms-nematode worms, soil mites, and other little, abundant creatures. This is what Jenny Linn had felt wriggling against her feet in the dark. The soil mites were very small, spider-like creatures of many different species, crawling around or hiding in cracks in the soil. The mites would have been almost invisible to the naked eye of a normal-size person, but in relation to the micro-humans the soil mites were much larger. To the micro-humans, the mites appeared to be anywhere from the size of grains of rice up to the size of golf balls. Many of the mites had small, egg-shaped bodies covered with thick armor and spiky hairs. The mites were arachnids; Karen King, the arachnologist, kept stopping to gaze at them. She didn’t recognize a single mite; they all seemed to be unknown, a vast number of different kinds of mites. She couldn’t get over the richness of nature: here was biodiversity as far as the eye could see. The mites were everywhere. They reminded her of crabs on a rocky seashore: small and harmless, busy and scuttling, carrying on their small, hidden lives. She picked up a mite and set it down on the palm of her hand.

The creature seemed so delicate, so perfect. Karen felt her spirits lifting. What was going on? To her surprise, she realized that she felt happy in this strange new world. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I feel like I’ve been searching all my life to find a place like this. It’s like I’m coming home.”

“Not me,” Danny said.

The mite walked up Karen’s arm, exploring it.