Fragment

9:08 P.M.

On their monitors inside the Trigon’s control center, three Army Radio Telephone Operators noticed Blue One on the move in the theater of operations.

“Blue One just took a nosedive!” one RTO reported, turning to his CO in the communications room.

The Commanding Officer on duty opened a radio channel. “Blue One, what’s your status, damn it!”

“I don’t think they’ll be answering, sir,” the RTO said, staring at the screen. “They must have fallen about fifty feet off a cliff before they hit jungle.”

“When did they last check in?”

“About twenty-three minutes ago, sir. They were collecting specimens.”

The icon indicating the Hummer’s transponder vanished from the map on their screens.

“Fuck it!” the CO snarled. “Send a search-and-rescue chopper, but don’t drop anyone in. I’m not leaving one more soldier on this goddamned island, is that understood?”

“Yes, sir! But there were some VIPs on board Blue One, sir. Um…Dr. Cato, Dr. Redmond, and Dr. Binswanger… and Nell Duckworth. Plus that survivor they picked up.”

“Oh, Christ. I’ll call General Harris-Jesus Christ!-the shit’s going to spray on this one, guys. Fuck! My order still stands, Lieutenant. Do not drop anyone in there, under any circumstances.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel! That’s affirmative.”

Thatcher stumbled the last ten feet to the door as the spigers closed the gap behind him, coming within one leap of their quarry. He shoved the door open as the alpha spiger landed on the doorstep.

Thatcher heard the whistle of its arms slash the air behind his head as he slammed the door to Hender’s house, wheezing and gasping for breath. He tore the taped label from the specimen case, and then he pushed himself up the spiral stairs. Reeling and dizzy, Thatcher thought his blood pressure was going to pop his eyes like corks.

The alpha spiger’s warning signals triggered as it sensed the tree’s pheromones and the warning pheromones of other creatures that had approached it. But the spiger was disoriented; the electromagnetic flux generated by the island’s seismic activity interfered with the predator’s instincts as a static of confusing impulses fired in its brains.

The spiger drew its tail forward underneath it and dug it into the ground, cocking its giant rear legs as it lowered its head at the front of Hender’s house.

Then it slung its mass forward, clawing out with its spiked arms, and smashed the door to pieces with the top of its head.

As it thrust its body into the fuselage, the nostrils on the alpha’s forehead sampled the scents in the air and found a strand of Thatcher winding up the stairway.

Nell watched Hender carry Copepod with four hands as he swung to the creaking basket.

“Where’s Thatcher?” Andy called from the basket, his voice echoing off the cliff.

“I don’t know,” Nell said, looking around.

“I’d like to know what that explosion was.” Geoffrey stood beside Andy in the basket.

“Screw Thatcher, let’s go!” Andy urged.

“I’ll go get the last case and see where he is,” Nell said.

She turned-and there was Thatcher, flushed and panting for breath, and hugging an aluminum case. She looked him up and down. “Good timing, Thatcher. Come on!”

She grabbed the case out of his hands, and saw his look of surprise.

Without a second thought she handed the case to Hender, who swung across the monkey bars and tossed it to the others in the basket before returning to Nell.

“Our turn,” Nell told Thatcher.

Thatcher stood at the edge of the cliff looking at the rungs reaching out over the cliff. “Good God!” he said. “There is no way I can do this.”

“Hender!” Nell called.

The spiger extended its spiked front legs two yards in front of it and shimmied rapidly up the spiraling tunnel of stairs.

Since it did not have vertebrae, it stretched forward as the legs attached to its three bony rings grabbed hold and hauled it forward up the stairs like a muscular Slinky.

The other two spigers caterpillared their way furiously through the corkscrewing tunnel behind it.