The mother reached the bottom of the shaft. There was a pause.

And then the wasp’s head, huge, black-and-yellow, appeared in the opening.

Upside down.

She swung the machete at the wasp’s face with every ounce of her strength.

The blade bounced off the wasp’s eye, leaving a mark. The lady had armored eyes.

The wasp thrust her head-still upside down-into the room, snapped her jaws around the machete, and tore the blade out of Karen’s hands, dragging it back into the hole. Karen heard crunching metallic sounds: the wasp was cutting up her last weapon.

The room shook: the wasp was pounding her wings against the tunnel walls. Getting ready to charge. She heard the wasp gasping.

She glanced over her shoulder, and her headlamp beam passed over Rick. He looked dead-

In swinging her head around, she became aware of the little knife dangling from her neck. She’d sworn never to carry it in her pocket again. My knife. She thumbed the blade open and yanked the cord off her neck.

The wasp’s head was in the room now-still upside down-and the jaws snapped at her. Karen dove down to the floor, and slid her body underneath the wasp’s upside-down head. The head was covered with bristles. She gripped the bristles. The head jerked up and down, battering her against the floor. The wasp could see her: a trio of little eyes stared at her from the top of the head.

Karen clung to the head as it rotated and beat her against the tunnel, the jaws crossing and snapping. She was getting a terrible thrashing. Even so, in searching for a grip, she reached behind the wasp’s head and managed to get her fingertips wedged in the occipital suture, the crack between the head capsule and the pleuron, the first armored plate of the thorax. This was the back of the wasp’s neck. There was a joint in the armor at that spot. Her fingertips felt soft tissue in the crack.

The neck was so narrow that she was able to wrap her fingers entirely around the wasp’s neck. She had gotten a stranglehold. Maybe she could choke the wasp.

At that moment, the wasp jerked backward into the tunnel, dragging Karen along. Now she was jammed in the tunnel, being crushed by the wasp’s head, which continued to hammer against her body. The wasp curled its body, and Karen realized it was trying to bring its abdomen forward and sting her. The wasp pushed her back into the room again, and began twisting, trying to throw her off its neck. But she held her grip. Having located the neck joint, she let go of the neck with one hand, grabbed her knife, then slipped the tip of her knife into the crack. Then she quickly ran the knife blade around the neck, following the crack and sawing as she went. All the way around.

The wasp’s head fell off.

It rolled on top of her, and she scrambled back into the room, followed by a spurt of blood.

The mandibles snapped twice and froze. The body exsanguinated fast, blood spewing out of the severed neck all over Karen. The wings of the headless body thumped against the walls in the tunnel, the wing-beats weakening and slowing down, until the corpse quieted and lay still.

Karen pulled herself away and knelt by Rick and took his hand. She was shaking badly. “I did it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Rick saw movement behind her. He blinked his eyes and shouted in his mind: Look out!

The master brain inside the severed head had lost contact with the eight minor brains in the wasp’s body, but those minor brains were still sending out messages to the rest of the body. The wasp’s legs went into action, dragging the headless body into the room. The abdomen curled and thrust forward, and the stinger came out.

A noise at her back made Karen whirl around. Just in time she saw the stinger coming, and jumped aside as the abdomen slammed her into the wall. She struggled, trapped, as the sting waved past her face. She saw the twin blades working against each other, inches from her eyes. The sting palps popped out and tapped her cheek, and entered her mouth. But finally the stinger went still, lightly resting on Karen’s collarbone, the blades bared. A dewdrop of poison swelled from the blades and hung there. She could see her face reflected in the droplet of wasp venom.

She delicately extricated herself from under the sting, avoiding contact with the liquid and blades. Then she got down on her knees and wiped the dirt from Rick’s face. “How’re you doing, soldier?”

He seemed completely paralyzed. Rick’s face looked like a mask. Eyes moving, blinking, but no expression. The muscles in his face had gone AWOL and he had peed his pants. At least he was breathing, and his heart was beating. The wasp venom was tricky stuff, she realized. It had disabled some of his nervous system but not all of it. Was he trying to talk? She couldn’t be sure.

“Can you blink?” she asked. “If you blink your eyes, it means yes. If you don’t blink, it means no. Can you understand me?”

He blinked once. Yes. Then something trembled in his face.

“Rick! Is that a smile?”

Yes. Trying to.

“That’s a start. Does anything hurt?”

Yes.

“What hurts?…Never mind. I’m going to carry you. Will that hurt?”

He didn’t blink. No.

She lifted Rick under the arms and dragged him around the dead wasp, keeping their bodies away from the big droplet of venom that still hung from the wasp’s stinger. As she dragged Rick, though, she could see how dire his condition was. He would never survive unless he could move his muscles. His nervous system needed help. That fucking venom-the droplet of poison gleamed in her headlamp, suspended from the stinger-that venom had acted like a smart bomb, taking out only parts of his nervous system. Horrible poison, but sophisticated, too. Nature could do magic with chemistry that no human drug could accomplish.

Rick needed help or he would die.

Staring at that clear drop of poison, Karen got an idea. The venom that had paralyzed Rick might also help save him.

She needed to collect it. She groped at her waist, and found a water bottle suspended on a cord from her machete belt. She poured out the water, then held the open mouth of the bottle to the venom droplet, and watched as the liquid dripped into the bottle. She screwed on the top. Okay.

“I’ve got a plan, Rick. It’s crazy but it might work.”

He just stared at her.

Jamming her knees against the walls of the shaft, Karen pushed him up the shaft ahead of her as she climbed. She felt like Superwoman; she never could have done this in the big world. It was a long climb, accomplished in stages with rests in between, and she was glad she was as strong as an ant. Finally she arrived at the mouth of the nest.

Danny Minot had given up hope. He couldn’t believe his eyes when Rick Hutter popped out of the hole, followed by a battered-looking Karen King. “I got him,” she said fiercely, and hoisted him across her shoulders. She carried him across the sand and dropped him in the shade of the plant beside Danny.

She knelt by Rick and studied him. Danny huddled nearby, crouching to keep out of the wind.

“Can you stand up?” she asked Rick.

He blinked once.

“Yes? You want to try?” She helped him stand up. He swayed, tottering, and dropped to his knees, then sank and fell over.

She showed him the canteen of wasp venom. “This might save you, Rick. No guarantees. What we need to do now-” she looked at the line of towering bamboo across the open ground-“is get ourselves back into the forest.”

She was thinking of the death of that sniper, how the man had gone into a grand mal seizure from the spider venom. The man’s death carried information that might save Rick.

Chapter 38

Tantalus Base 31 October, 2:30 p.m.

The wind blew across the ridgeline of Tantalus Crater. Karen King and Danny Minot walked along slowly, carrying Rick in a stretcher made from a space blanket. Karen wore the backpack, and the blowgun was slung across her back. They moved step by step, making their way painstakingly toward the wall of bamboo trees and the Great Boulder. Rick’s breathing came hoarsely from the stretcher.