The audience stared uneasily at each other. There was a slow shaking of heads, but at last one man rose and followed the woman out of the room. He would not meet anyone’s eye. Finally, at a signal from MacDougal, those remaining picked up their Monitor sets and placed them over their heads.

Luther Brachis waited for the correlator field transients to settle, and the disturbing moments of double sensory inputs to fade. The briefings had told him what was happening. Telemetry couplers in the headset translated sensory inputs from his own tiny simulacrum to electrical impulses within his brain. At the same time his brain’s intention signals, the ones that normally cause activity in his body’s motor control system, were intercepted and translated into cyber-signals in the body of his Adestis simulacrum.

As MacDougal had explained it, “Your actual brain never sees anything, anyway. It’s blind. It can’t see, just as it can’t hear, smell, taste, or touch. All it gets from your senses are streams of electrical inputs, and it interprets them as sensations. Well, now those electrical inputs will be coming from your simulacrum. You’ll see, hear — and feel — what it sends.”

The sensory hold was tightening. Brachis grunted in surprise; or rather, his simulacrum did. He had expected the simulations to be plausible, since although the makers of Adestis admitted that they had imitators, they denied that they had real competitors. Still he was staggered by the uncanny quality of the sensory inputs. They were like life itself. He had no other body. The simulacrum was his body.

He looked down, and saw that he was standing on a damp, pebble-strewn plain. Tiny wormlike animals wriggled away from him as he moved his feet. Fifty paces away a gigantic fly skimmed past on iridescent wings. Brachis stared all around him. Two dozen others stood in a rough circle, all experimentally raising arms, moving feet, and watching each other. The exception was Dougal MacDougal, recognizable by his ease of movement and confident manner.

“As soon as you’re ready,” he said. “Get the feel of the environment, get to know who you all are — your suits are color-coded, just the way they were in the war-room. You ought to learn to recognize each other as quickly as you can. Then you want to practice the feel of your weapon. After that we can get on with it. “Look over there.” He pointed away to the left, through air that seemed dusty, thick, and smoke-filled. “It’s hard to spot from here, but there’s the trap. The spider will be sitting at the bottom of the pit. She already knows that we are here, because she feels the vibrations through the ground. Don’t bother to try to walk lightly. You’ll do that anyway. Remember, you’re only half a centimeter tall and you now weigh only about one five-hundredth of a gram. At this size and mass, gravity isn’t too important. We can all tolerate a fall of many times our height, with no injury. On the other hand, we’re attacking something that’s more than twice as tall as we are, with legs six times as long and a mass that outweighs the lot of us put together. Don’t get over-confident.’

There was a gasp from a green-bodied simulacrum next to Brachis. He has to be joking!”

Brachis shook his head experimentally. It felt perfectly natural. “He’s not joking. He’s just giving what he thinks is good advice. Maybe he’s right, and some people come into Adestis believing that the trapdoor spider is just another bug you could stand up and step on.”

“Not me.” Green tried a shake of his head, too. “If that’s just a bug, the Hyperion Vault is just a hole in the ground. I’m telling you, if I didn’t work in his office, and if he hadn’t put the pressure on me to come along on this …”

The party was slowly becoming more organized. Four of the members had taken part in Adestis on other occasions and they assumed lead roles. Everyone was permitted two practice shots from the projectile weapons, aiming at head-high moss growths fifty paces off to the left. Brachis noted that even with recoil compensation the gun he was holding delivered quite a jolt to his arm. That was a good sign. He had been wondering if the organizers of Adestis expected them to knock off the spider with weapons like peashooters. He also noticed that his gun pulled a little to the left. He took careful aim, made the adjustment, and put his second shot exactly through the fluffy pink ball of a head of moss-flower.

Halfway to the trapdoor pit the group halted again. MacDougal, who had taken the lead position, turned to them… “After this, each of you is on your own. So one last word. Don’t go down into the pit. Not even if you think we’ve won, not even if you believe the spider is dead. This species has been known to sham, and the floor of that trap is her home territory. Let her come to you, and don’t be afraid to run for it if things get too hot. The rest of us will try to draw her away from anyone who seems to be in trouble. And remember what I said: Don’t shoot at the carapace. You won’t penetrate it, and the ricochet could go anywhere. You’ll be a damned sight more dangerous to the rest of us than you will to her.”

His final words were interrupted by a shout from the black-clad simulacrum who had been detailed to keep watch on the trap. The thick lid was being pushed to one side. As they watched the great body of the spider heaved itself out and crouched on open ground.

“She’s going on the offensive,” shouted MacDougal. “Sooner than I expected. Scatter!”

His advice was unnecessary. The simulacra were already spilling away in all directions except toward the spider.

Luther Brachis took a quick look around him. He had worried that their approach to the trapdoor spider’s lair paid too little attention to good ground cover. Now the only place to hide was twenty paces off to his right, where a stand of grey-green moss sprouted hip-high. He ran that way, dived for cover, and rolled up to a kneeling position with his weapon at the ready.

The difference between the spider’s image in the briefing room and the arachnid herself was terrifying. The beast towered three times as high as his head, a gigantic armored tank that could move to the attack with unbelievable speed. Against that mass the weapon in his hands seemed useless. He could pump a hundred projectiles into that vast, glistening side, and have no effect at all.

The spider turned. Brachis had a perfect view of its broad abdomen and splayed legs as the cephalothorax swooped down on a magenta simulacrum and jerked it aloft. In the grip of the chelicerae, the pointed crushing appendages at the front of the spider’s maw, the simulacrum hung dwarfed and helpless. There was a cry of agony, and a projectile weapon dropped uselessly to the ground.

Two others had been foolish enough to run directly beneath the spider’s body. Brachis saw them firing upwards, pumping shots into the soft area of the genitals and the exposed ovipositor. The spider jerked and shuddered as the projectiles penetrated its body, and the two attackers cheered at each spasm and shouted encouragement to each other. They moved to the rear, to take more shots at point-blank range. Dougal MacDougal’s warning shout came too late. A spout of gossamer jetted suddenly from the spinnerets, enveloping both simulacra in an unbreakable net of fast-drying silk.

The spider took a rapid shuffle backward, ducked its cephalothorax close to the ground, and hoisted both the helpless attackers to grind them in its maw.

Brachis scanned the predator from chelicerae to ovipositor. From where he was kneeling he had a choice of three targets. He could aim at a leg, or at the pedicel that connected the abdomen to the cephalothorax, or he could shoot at one of the chelicerae. The legs were the easiest target. They were also the least effective one. The pedicel was a vital area, but it was heavily armored and it would need an exceptionally lucky shot to do any good.