Peter stared at Rick’s plastic bottle and the brown-colored gunk in it. “So you think that’ll take down big game? Something as big as a grasshopper?” he asked.

Rick offered him a wry smile. “It’s not finished.”

“How so?”

“We need one more ingredient.”

“Which is-?”

“Cyanide.”

“What?” Peter said, while the others gathered around, listening.

“You heard me-cyanide,” Rick said. “And I know where to get it.”

“Where?” Peter wondered.

In answer, Rick turned his head around slowly. “I can smell it. Hydrogen cyanide. Also known as prussic acid. That whiff of bitter almonds…can you smell it? Cyanide-a universal poison, it’ll kill practically anything, and fast. Cyanide-a favorite of Cold War spies. Get this-there’s an animal around here that makes cyanide. It’s probably hiding under a leaf. Probably asleep.”

The others stared, while Rick set out through the super-jungle, stopping occasionally to sniff the air, following his nose. He started turning over leaves, dragging them with both hands. The smell grew stronger; it tickled their noses now, once Rick had pointed it out to them. He stuck his head under a leaf. “Got it!” he whispered.

Under the leaf, a brownish, oily, jointed carapace gleamed, along with many curved legs. “That’s a millipede,” Rick said. “I’m just an ignorant botanist, but I know these guys make cyanide.”

Erika moaned. “Don’t! It’s a very big animal. It’s dangerous.”

Rick chuckled. “A millipede?” He turned to Karen King. “Hey-Karen! What’s the behavior of this animal when it’s threatened?”

Karen King smiled. “Millipedes? They’re scaredy cats.”

“Wait! Are you sure it’s not a centipede?” Danny quavered, remembering that Peter had said a centipede can deliver a nasty sting.

“Nah, this baby isn’t any centipede,” Karen said, kneeling and looking under the leaf. “Centipedes are predators. A millipede doesn’t eat meat, it eats rotten leaves,” she explained. “It’s a peaceful animal. Doesn’t even have a sting.”

“What I thought.” Rick hauled the leaf off the millipede, revealing it. The millipede lay curled up and seemingly asleep. It was a cylindrical animal with segmented armor and at least a hundred legs. In relation to the micro-humans, the millipede appeared about fifteen feet long, akin to the biggest boa constrictors. It breathed gently, making whistling noises through holes in its carapace; a millipede’s version of snoring.

Rick drew his machete. “Wake up!” he cried, and slapped the millipede with the flat of the blade.

The animal thrashed suddenly. The humans backed away, and the odor grew stronger. The millipede curled its body into a tight spiral, a defensive posture. Holding his nose, Rick darted forward and whacked the animal again. He didn’t want to hurt the millipede, he wanted to frighten it. The trick worked. A pungent smell of almonds mixed with a nasty, bitter stench filled the air, and blobs of an oily liquid oozed from pores in the millipede’s armor. Rick opened a clean plastic jar and quickly put on his gloves, apron, and goggles.

The millipede wasn’t going anywhere. It remained curled up, apparently frightened.

Wearing his gear, Rick advanced and scooped some of the liquid into the jar, until he’d collected about a cup of the stuff. “It’s an oil. It’s full of cyanide,” he explained. He dumped the oil into the jar that held his curare goo, and stirred the mess with a stick. “I scared the cyanide out of the poor bastard,” he said, holding up the jar of curare, which reeked of lethal chemicals. “And now,” he added, “it’s time to start hunting.”

Chapter 20

Nanigen Headquarters 29 October, 4:00 p.m.

Vin Drake stood before a window that looked into the tensor core. The window was bulletproof, and it gave the scene in the chamber the appearance of a fish tank. Inside the chamber, the hexagons of the size-translation tubes were set flush with the plastic floor. Two men walked around the core: Telius and Johnstone.

They were suiting up. They put on segments of lightweight Kevlar armor, vests, arm coverings, greaves for the legs. The armor was tough enough to turn away the jaws of a soldier ant. Each man carried a. 600 caliber Express gas rifle. The gun was powered by a pressurized gas tank. It fired a heavy steel needle tipped with a broad-spectrum super-toxin. Long range, total stopping power. The super-toxin was equally effective on insects, birds, and mammals. The gun had been designed especially for the protection of humans in the micro-world.

“Wait for the hexapod,” Drake said.

Telius nodded and searched the floor with his eyes as if he was looking for a coin he’d dropped. Telius was a man of few words.

Drake went to a door marked RESTRICTED AREA. Under the sign there was a symbol that looked vaguely like a biohazard symbol, and a word: MICROHAZARD.

This was the entry door that led from the tensor core directly to Project Omicron. No sign on the door advertised its name, of course.

Drake took up a hand controller, a device that looked a little like a video game control, and punched a code into it. This disarmed the bots inside the Omicron zone, and he entered a cluster of small, windowless labs with its own special access to the tensor core. Nobody was permitted inside Omicron except for a handful of top Nanigen engineers. In fact, few of the Nanigen employees were even supposed to know of the existence of Omicron. Inside the rooms, several lab benches stood about, and on the benches sat a series of objects draped in black cloth shrouds.

The shrouds concealed the objects. Whatever they were, they were secret. Even people permitted to enter the Omicron zone were not allowed to look at them.

Drake took a shroud off one of the objects. It was a robot with six legs, and it vaguely resembled a Mars robot lander or possibly a metal insect. It was not very big, about a foot across.

Drake carried the six-legged robot back into the tensor core, and handed it to Johnstone. “Your transportation. It’s got a full charge. Quad micro-lithiums.”

“We’re good,” Johnstone mumbled. He was chewing something.

“God damn it,” Drake barked. “What’s in your mouth?”

“Energy bar, sir. You get so hungry-”

“You know the rule. No eating in the core. You could contaminate the generator.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“It’s okay. Just swallow it.” Drake clapped the man on the shoulder in a friendly way. A little bit of mercy goes a long way with people who work for you.

Telius placed the six-legged device into Hexagon 3. The two men stood in Hexagons 2 and 1. Drake went into the control room. He would operate the generator himself. He had cleared all employees out of the core. Nobody could see him shrinking these men and this equipment. That would be a loose detail. He programmed Hexagon 3 to shrink the walker somewhat less than the humans would be shrunk. Just as he had locked down and started to initiate the sequence, Don Makele came into the control room behind him.

Drake and Makele watched together as the generator hummed and the power structures under the floor ramped up, and the hexagons descended. After the men had been shrunk, Drake placed the micro-humans in a transport box, and he put the hexapod in another box. He handed the boxes to Don Makele. “Let’s just hope the rescue succeeds.”

“Let’s hope,” Makele replied.

It was dangerous enough that Peter and the rest knew he had murdered Eric. But Drake also worried that Eric might have shared with his brother a very sensitive fact about Drake’s activities that could not be made public-and that Peter might have passed it on to the other students. This particular fact, if it were known, could destroy Nanigen’s business.

It was just business. Nothing personal, only logic. Just what had to be done in order to keep the business moving. Had Don Makele figured anything out? Drake couldn’t be sure quite what the security man thought or knew. Drake gave his security chief a sharp sidelong glance. “How many ground-floor shares do you own?”