It was the worst possible situation. Any one of our parents could wake up and discover we were not at home. That would mean frantic phone calls back and forth from our folks to our friends' parents, calls to the cops, probably search teams out beating the woods.

"Go or don't go?" Jake asked.

"Go," Rachel said, but with less enthusiasm than usual. A lot less.

"Go," I said. "But personally, I can't blame anyone who wants to sit this one out."

Cassie gave me a dirty look. I guess she took it personally. "I say go," she said. "I don't sit anything out, Marco."

"l'm not in th." Tobias said.

"l'm useless on this mission, so I don't vote."

"I go where Prince Jake goes." Ax said.

"Don't call me "prince,"" Jake said wearily for the thousandth time. "Okay, we go."

Erek immediately began telling us all he knew about Matcom and the security for the Pemalite crystal.

After about two minutes I was ready to change my vote.

But by then it was too late. We'd made our decision, and it was as if we were being swept toward a waterfall - like a bunch of canoeists who'd lost their last paddle. We'd survive ...

or not ...

but one thing was sure. We were definitely going over the edge.

"Q rek was not going with us. But he would be waiting outside Matcom when we came out.

Assuming we came out.

We flew from Cassie's barn to the Matcom building. It was one of those boring-looking, three-story glass and cement buildings you see in industrial parks everywhere. Just a bunch of blue glass rectangles with a big parking lot in back.

In fact, it looked so much like every other bor ing square building in the industrial park, we had trouble finding it. We flew around, a lost gang of owls, for a good fifteen minutes before Rachel spotted the Matcom sign.

We landed on the roof of the building. Erek had assured us there were no cameras or guards up there.

"Let's find that pipe," Jake whispered as soon as we were all human again. Or, in Ax's case, An- dalite.

"Erek said southwest corner, right?" I said.

"Astost8st8west," Cassie said.

She sounded sure, so I decided to agree.

"Yeah, that was it. Which way is northwest?"

Ax laughed in thought-speak, till he realized I was serious. "You can't find directions?" He sounded shocked. Like he'd just discovered we had hidden tail blades.

"lt's that corner over there."

The pipe was about three inches in diameter.

"I hope this works," I said. "I don't even know if my Spiderman can make silk."

"Spiderwoman," Cassie said. "Your spider morph is female. Wolf spiders don't make webs, but they do make silk. It should work."

"Easy for you say. I don't even know how to turn on the silk thing."

But Ax was already morphing into the wolf spider, so I hurried to catch up. By the time Ax and I were in spider morph, the others had all be come cockroaches.

"Man, you two are ugly at this scale." Rachel said. "Jeez, I don't ever need to see another spi der my own size again."

"We're ugly? You want to know what you look like right now? You look like dinner." I said, laughing evilly.

"Juicy cockroach. This spider morph is hungry, and you look tasty."

"Marco, get a grip."

Jake said patiently. "lancet's do this."

"l'll demorph and step on your ugly butt." Rachel growled.

From where I was standing in the gravel of the rooftop, the pipe looked like a round skyscraper. It extended above the roof by about a foot, which is quite a distance when you're half an inch high.

I scampered around the pipe. One side had been splashed with tar. It would be easy to grip. I raced easily up the pipe to stand precariously on the lip.

I could feel a breeze blowing up from the blackness beneath me. It was like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. The pipe went down through all three stories and an extra underground story. Four floors. Bad enough when you're human size. A million miles when you're a spider.

Ax came crawling up to teeter alongside me.

"0ooookay." I said.

"Now comes the fun part."

I tried to search the spider brain, looking for the subtle, secret signals that would start me spinning silk.

Fortunately, the spider wasn't exactly Albert Einstein. It only knew how to do about four things, one of which was spin silk.

The spider body sort of... well ... pushed out a strand of gooey white filament. It stuck to the edge of the pipe.

Ax did the same.

"Well, this is certainly disgusting." I said. "Ready, Ax?"

"Yes."

"Then . . .

Yeeeeee-Haaaaahhh!"

I sprang from the lip of the pipe into the darkness.

It was so totally Spiderman.

I fell slowly down, down, down, twisting and turning my way down the pipe. Behind me a long white string grew. It braked my fall, so that I was dropping in slow motion. The spider eyes were not bad at seeing in the relative dark. A bit of moonlight followed us down part of the way as we dropped.

And then it started being fun. I kicked away from the side of the pipe and cartwheeled through the air. My web looped around Ax's, and soon we were weaving a weird silk rope.

It was cool in a way . . . till I felt a certain emptiness.

"Ax! I'm running out of web."

"Yes, me, too."

"How far do you think we've dropped?"

"I don't know."

"You know which way is northwest but you don't know how far we've dropped? We could still have two stories to g." I said.

"I think our plan has a minor flaw." Ax said with his usual understatement.

"But we are very light, small creatures. We should survive a fall. So should the others in cockroach morph."

"Maybe. See, the problem is, there's only one way to find out if we'll survive. By dropping."

Ax didn't say anything.

"0h, man." I groaned.

I cut the strand of web.

And I fell. Down through the darkness, toward a landing I could only hope wouldn't kill me.

It was a long drop.

"Aaaaahhhhhhh!"

"Aaaaahhhhhhh!"

WHAP! WHAP! We hit something hard. We bounced. We hit again.

WHAP! WHAP! "You okay?" Jake called down.

"0h, yeah, I'm great."

I said. "I fell about a billion feet and landed on a steel trampoline. Couldn't be better."

"Sarcasm." Rachel commented coolly. "He must be okay."

"Laugh now, Rachel. We'll see how much you laugh when it's your turn."

The plan was for Ax and me to create a silk cable the others in cockroach morph would be able to climb down. That way, they wouldn't all have to go spider. Not that it would have helped, anyway.

"We're coming down." Jake said. "When we reach the end of the silk we'll jump. If you two survived, we will.

Nothing kills a cockroach."

"Why don't you stand right beneath me, Marco?" Rachel suggested. "You can break my Ax and I scurried out of the way. A few seconds later, after they had clambered down to the end of our silk . . .

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! Three cockroaches landed nearby.

"Where are we?" Jake asked.

"lt's pretty dark. Who knows?" I answered. "lt's a heatingstair-conditioning vent, I guess. Erek said it would be part of the furnace system. Supposedly we go west a hundred feet or so, then drop down, then go across the furnace, then down again, then right.