Help. Somebody help me.

It was just a thought.

He realized that the wasp venom had paralyzed only part of his nervous system, the sympathetic nerves, the nerves that are controlled by conscious will. His autonomous nervous system, the unconscious part, continued to function normally. His heart was beating, he was breathing fine, all systems go. But he couldn’t will his body to do anything. His body was like an engine stuck in idle; he couldn’t seem to find the controls or press the accelerator. Something hurt, and for a little while he didn’t know what it was, until a warmth spread underneath him as his bladder emptied automatically. He welcomed the relief.

The venom was a wasp’s version of refrigeration. It kept the prey alive and fresh until it was eaten.

The crunching and slurping activity continued near his feet. The grub seemed to be nearly finished with its meal, because he could hear a rattling sound of broken pieces of exoskeleton being shoved around. The grub was nosing at the scraps of its meal. He could hear crackling noises, scraping sounds. So the grub had jaws. He dreaded the first touch of those jaws. He couldn’t stop wondering which part of him the grub would eat first. Would it start by chewing on his face? Or would it bite off his genitals first, or burrow into his abdominal cavity?

Despite the horror of his situation, Rick Hutter felt strangely bored. Paralyzed in the dark, he had nothing to do except imagine his approaching death. He decided he’d better focus his mind on the things that had made him happy during his life. This might be his last chance for memories. He recalled wading into the surf at Belmar, on the Jersey Shore, where his family had spent a week at a motel each summer-what they could afford. His father had driven a delivery truck for a convenience store chain. He remembered standing on the driver’s seat of his father’s truck when he was five years old and telling everybody he was going to be a truck driver just like his dad. He saw himself opening the acceptance letter from Stanford and reading it with complete disbelief…a full scholarship at Stanford. Then graduate school at Harvard, again on financial support. He saw himself in Costa Rica, interviewing an old lady, a curandera, as she brewed a healing tea from the leaves of the Himatanthus tree.

His mind turned to the lab. One night he had been trying to extract a compound from the Himatanthus leaves. Karen King had been working late, tending an experiment with her spiders. They had been alone in the room together. They had worked side by side at the lab bench, right next to each other, without saying a word, the air thick with mutual dislike. But their hands had brushed by accident…Maybe I should have tried to hook up with Karen that night…of course, she probably would have punched me…

A dying man thinks mostly about missed sexual opportunities. Who said that, anyway? It might really be true…

He began to feel sleepy…drifting off…

“Rick!”

Her voice woke him up. It came faintly through the earth.

I’m here, Karen! he shouted, in his mind. But he couldn’t make his mouth move.

“Rick! Where are you?”

Hurry up! There’s a Hoover with jaws in here with me.

Karen’s light flickered briefly, the first light he’d seen in a long time-and was gone. Total darkness swallowed him again. She had moved on.

Come back! he shouted in his mind. You missed me!

Silence. She had gone away.

Then, in the darkness, the horror of horrors arrived. Something moist and very heavy slid over his ankle, pressing his foot into the ground. It’s not happening. Next he felt the segments of the larva bumping over his leg, bump, bump, bump. No! The segments were sliding over his stomach, now, then sliding over his chest, squeezing the breath out of him. No! Please, no! The wasp grub lay on top of him now, its weight pressing down on him, suffocating him. He could feel the grub’s heart beating, thumping against his chest. He heard a moist clickety-click. Those jaws were starting to work.

Click-click. Snip-snap. Snick.

The light returned. A ray shot into the cell. It revealed the black cutter knives flicking around a queerly soft mouth like a pale anus. Right in front of his face.

Karen was shining her headlamp into the cell. She saw the scene. “Oh, my God, Rick!” She began hacking at the rubble in the doorway, flinging stones aside.

The teeth brushed against his forehead. The grub was nosing around, looking for a soft spot to begin chewing. It tapped its teeth over his shoulder, leaving a streak of drool. He felt the teeth prick his nose. And the moist mouth brushed across his lips like a kiss, spewing out drool. It made him cough and choke, automatically.

“Hang on-!”

Hurry, this bastard wants to give me a hickie.

She got through the opening and threw herself at the grub, kicking the grub with both feet, pushing it away from Rick’s face. “You leave him alone!” she shouted, and thrust her machete into the grub. The grub gasped, a hiss coming out of its airholes. Karen pulled out the blade and raised the machete and swung it, beheading the grub in one blow. The blob-like head slopped away while the decapitated body went into a spasm, and began whipping back and forth in reversing C s. Karen continued to stab and slash at the beheaded grub, but that only seemed to intensify its thrashing.

She got her arms around Rick and dragged him out of the chamber, leaving the headless grub thumping the walls. A strange odor chased them.

That’s bad, Hutter said silently. That’s an alarm pheromone.

King realized it, too. The dying larva was screaming for help, wailing for its mother in the language of scent. The scent was filling the nest. If the mother detected it…

Danny’s voice came on. “What’s going on?”

“I have Rick. He’s alive. Stand by, I’m bringing him out.”

Rick was like a sack of potatoes, a dead load, but her strength was incredible. She had got Rick and she would fight to the death before she’d give him up now. Dragging him, she crawled through the big chamber, heading for the vertical shaft…

Just then, Danny’s voice came on her headset: “She’s back!”

Chapter 37

Tantalus Crater 31 October, 2:00 p.m.

The solitary wasp flew in slowly, a paralyzed caterpillar dangling between her legs. She began to fly back and forth in zigzags over her nest, then settled lower, searching for the mud chimney of her burrow.

Within moments she had registered that her chimney had been smashed. Her nest had been damaged and invaded. There was an intruder.

Danny Minot wrapped himself around the rock, hiding under the plant, trying to make himself as rocklike or plantlike as possible. “You idiot!” he whispered to Karen. He’d been left alone in the micro-world.

The mother landed, carrying the caterpillar. Vibrating her wings, she advanced to the entrance. At that moment she caught the scent of her baby’s death leaking out of the hole. She began beating her wings furiously. The air filled with the thunder of her wings. She dropped the caterpillar, then charged into the hole headfirst.

Karen King heard a rumbling sound in the earth above-a buzz of wasp wings, a clatter and clash of a wasp’s exoskeleton.

“Danny!” she called. “What’s happening?”

There was no answer.

“Talk to me, Danny!”

The mother surged down into her nest, a toxic, armored bundle of maternal rage.

Karen listened to the wasp coming. She crouched in the chamber at the foot of the vertical shaft, with Rick lying on the floor behind her. The sounds were frightening-and informative. A sharp smell wafted into the room-an advance wave of the mother’s fury.

Karen got out her diamond sharpener and began to frantically hone her machete, zing, swish, zing. “Hang on, Rick,” she muttered. She worked the sharpener over the steel, bringing the blade to an extreme edge. It would have to slice through massive bioplastic armor. Then she poised herself by the opening with the blade raised over her head. “Come on, come on,” she muttered.