Slowly, in fits and starts at first, Nell drove the ROV around the bus. "How do I lower the swab?"

"Here," Abrams said. "Now?"

"Yes."

He pointed the gun down, and the yardstick taped to the barrel lowered the saturated wad of cotton to the ground.

They watched as Nell drove the Talon to the other side of the bus and then began steering it in a wide circle around the clearing. The fast-moving amphipods began flowing behind the bot as they picked up the scent of the sternal glands.

When Nell had almost completed the circle, she turned the bot into a gradual spiral, ultimately toward the center of the clearing. The gammies emptied off the bus and came from between the rows on either side to follow the powerful scent the bot was dragging. Each time she came around in a clockwise motion, the gammarids filled in an ever-tightening spiral.

"What are you doing?" Nastia asked.

"They're taking the bait, all right," Abrams observed. "That's the damnedest thing I ever saw! Nice driving, by the way."

"Thanks," said Nell, sticking her tongue out as she operated the joystick with her thumb.

Hender was nearly invisible with terror as he stood next to the others in front of the window.

Nell finally reached the center of the clearing with the Talon and shut it down, exhaling a long sigh as her shoulders slumped.

"Awesome job," Abrams said.

Gammarids north and south continued to emerge from the rows of the farm to join the circle, climbing on top of one another into the vortex and piling into a higher and higher mountain as they reached the dead end at the center the spiral.

"OK! That should keep them occupied," Nastia said.

"For how long?" Bear asked, incredulous.

"If they're anything like ants, as long as they live." Nell said. "When army ants get locked into death circles, they keep on going until they starve."

"No shit," Abrams said, laughing as the widening mass of amphipods rotated in front of them, like a glowing galaxy.

"Now what?" Bear asked.

"We turn on the lights and then run to the northwest corner. There's a secret entrance there, not far from the palace," said Nell.

"There is?" asked Galia, surprised.

"Sasha showed it to me," Nell said.

"Right on," Abrams said, climbing into the XOS suit. "Then what?"

"There may be more ghost octopuses in the tunnel," Nell said.

"I hate them." Hender shuddered.

"OK. We'll take care of them when we get there. We should be able to blast our way through. It's not far to the palace."

"Great plan, Nell. Dima, Bear, and I will turn the lights on and be right back," Abrams said. "When we come back this way, you get out and follow us north between those benches. Got it? Suit up. I'll go first," Abrams said.

"No, no," Dima protested. "Bear and I should go first and fire at whatever we see. You can hold our ammo bag."

"That's more like it," Bear said, unloading the eighty-pound bag from his back.

"All right," Abrams said, taking the duffel bag of ammo easily on one robotic forearm. "But let's save some for any ghosts that might be in the tunnel."

Abrams set the arms to steady-carry the load in front of him and freed his own arms to carry an AK-47. "OK, everyone out of the way, I'm coming through." Abrams power-walked toward the bus door, his XOS suit dangling bags and equipment and cradling the ammo packs. Bear and Dima pulled the door open and he jumped out ahead of them.

01:26:12.

Kuzu watched the humans inside the bus on Maxim's laptop. He showed the city's map on the screen of his phone to Maxim. "Where?"

As the creature used a common phone, Maxim realized he was not some hallucination or mythological creature. He realized it must be one of the famous hendropods. How or why it was here was a mystery to him. Maxim shivered and felt the nants that coated his flesh rippling as they shifted. His skin felt pleasantly numb, thick, and somehow impervious. Then his captor touched his chest and in an instant turned his shield into a layer of acid that burned his flesh. Maxim quickly indicated Sector 5 on the map.

"Where they go?"

Maxim pointed to Sector One. "The palace," he groaned, too readily.

"Why?"

"I don't know!" Maxim sighed in agony, reaching under the mattress of his bed and grasping the loaded Beretta he had hidden there.

Kuzu looked at him quizzically, then extended a hand, exuding the ameliorating pheromone that prevented the nants from devouring the human's flesh. The sel decided that the human was not deceiving him. Kuzu looked back at the screen as three of the humans burst out of the vehicle, running toward the camera.

01:25:59.

Bear, Dima, and Abrams ran the fifty-yard dash to the gate.

Down the road behind them rushed gammies like Pac-Mans coming out from between the rows of benches and funneling into the road. But they were not nearly so abundant as they had been before.

As Dima reached the switch beside the gate, a horse-sized soldier gammarid charged at him from the right. Abrams fired at the animal. Dima, oblivious, jumped the last two yards as smaller gammarids raced down the wall and crawled over his feet. He grabbed the switch with both hands, pulled it down through squealing corrosion, and slammed it against the wall.

Even the humans were blinded by the sudden swell of light that filled the cavern as the lattice glowed white hot above.

Dima kicked the amphipods off his legs as he bolted behind the others. The creatures that had been following them scattered, trampling one another as they sought shelter from the blazing sunlike heat generated by the lights.

01:24:27.

Kuzu saw the humans running toward the bus and noticed Hender and the others bursting out of its door to meet them. They all turned north.

01:23:10.

They ran in single file up one of the rows. Each row of growing benches was a pyramid of shelves rising eight feet, many of them holding two-hundred-gallon glass flasks designed for growing algae. Nell looked above at the floating carnival of creatures that were crashing blindly into one another in the blazing light. Some of the buoy-sized man-of-wars rose too close to the crisscrossing beams on the ceiling and burst as they were fried by the heat. Thankfully, at least, the avenue they raced down was clear of gammies at the moment. Nastia looked up, awestruck, as a flock of globular orange butterflies drifted above them, making clicking noises. "What are these things in the air?" she wondered aloud.

"Mollusks, mostly," Nell said.

"Then why are they flying?" she asked.

"They do that here," Nell said.

"I don't like mollusks," Hender grumbled, running ahead of Nell, Nastia, and Galia. Abrams, Bear, and Dima charged in front.

Nastia noticed something coming up behind them in the visor of her helmet. "Nell!"

Nell looked back and saw an aggregator, rippling like a thirty-foot centipede as it chased them. She noticed that every segment of the beast had an eye on each side.

Nastia screamed.

"Shush!" Nell said, realizing all creatures down here must have acute hearing.

"It's moving faster than us!" Nastia yelled. Suddenly, she dived under the row of shelves to the right.

"Nastia!" Nell hissed. She dived under after her, rolling to the other side as six segments broke off the aggregator and followed them.

Hender leaped over the shelves.

Alone behind Abrams and Dima now, Galia saw the many-legged animal behind him. "Something's coming!"

"Shoot it," Abrams said, ahead of them.

Nastia raced down the next row in a panic, and Nell had a hard time catching up to her. Hender landed ahead of Nell, nearly invisible now as fear triggered his camouflage.

Galia turned and emptied the Glock they had given him into the head of the creature. It fell, revealing the next head, which ate the first. The rest of the aggregator kept charging toward Galia over the other segments, and he threw the empty gun at it and ran.

Nell noticed the pieces of the aggregator reassemble as it chased them, rowing legs like a galley's oars. She held the machine gun low to pierce as many of its segments as possible and fired. The three segments in the back broke away and scampered under the shelves on each side. "Keep running!"she said, turning and charging after Hender and Nastia.

Suddenly, Galia screamed from the next row as the lead segment of the aggregator detached and grabbed his pant leg in a bear trap of teeth, slashing his calf through the Dragon Skin armor. He stomped his other foot down on the pale white creature, crushing its outer shell as another leaped forward. Dima fired at it, and it fragmented like a pumpkin as Galia limped forward, his right knee surging with agony with each step.

Dima brought up the rear then. "Keep going, old man," he said. "I can't carry you if you fall." He looked behind them and saw with horror the growing train of the aggregator as more segments joined it. Above, a flock of firebombers, colorless now in the light, drifted over them, their pale tentacles glistening in the artificial sun.

In the next row, behind Nell and Nastia, another long aggregator was forming. And the bulbs of drifting firebombers swooped down, seeming to follow the running people.

Nell fired her gun at the glass flasks lining the shelves behind them. As they exploded, showers of shrapnel spread over the path and blasted into the air.

Seeing what she was doing, Dima followed suit, firing at the giant jars behind them and filling the air with flying blades that pierced the flock of firebombers while covering the ground with slicing shards that stopped the rushing aggregators and gammarids in their tracks.

They reached the northern wall of the farm. "Go left!" Nell shouted, and they all turned west toward the hidden door. Galia's left leg was covered with blood, but the older man hustled to keep up.

They continued laying down a wall of flying glass beside them as they ran, but as they reached the northwest corner, they saw that they could go no farther. A slope of thousands of tons of fallen rock had buried the door.

"We're screwed," Bear said.

"What now?" Abrams said.

A squadron of pale spheres trailing pink tentacles drifted through the breach of Pandemonium above, sinking straight for them.

"More firebombers. Take cover," Nell said. "They drop stinging cells that can paralyze on contact."

"Where the hell can we go?" Nastia yelled.

"Over here!" cried a voice.

"Nell!" squealed another voice, behind them.

They turned and saw a large open door in the north wall. Geoffrey and Sasha frantically waved at them in the door.

"Oh, awesome!" Abrams said, running in the limping exoskeleton behind Bear. "Come on!"

As they all turned back, Nastia, Nell, and Hender reached the door first. Geoffrey reached out to hug Nell as Hender pushed him away. "No, Geoffrey!"

Sasha ran out the door with Ivan at her side, waving the others in. "Come on!" she yelled.

"Sasha," cried Galia as he came behind the others, stumbling. "Dear girl! I'm so happy to see you." As he hobbled toward her, a large firebomber dipped down above him, streaming its tentacles with their payloads of nematocysts. "I told you I would come back," he cried.

"Who are you?" she asked.

Galia pulled off his helmet, and an uncharacteristic smile broke over his grim face. "I'm Galia, dear!"

"I hate you!" Sasha shouted.

"OK." Galia smiled. "I love you, little girl."

Red sparks showered from the tentacles of the sphere, sprinkling over them. Galia saw the firefall and leaped forward, tackling Sasha, and it felt like molten lava was pouring over his neck and head.

"Get off me!" she screamed underneath him.

"You're safe, Sashinka," Galia whispered. He had landed on his knees and elbows, but now he collapsed with his full weight on top of her. She convulsed under him and screamed even as Abrams reached down with his robot arm and pulled him off, rolling his limp body aside. His eyes were frozen open. "Let's go, honey!" Abrams barked.

She sprang up, crying, and ran through the door.

Dima ran to Galia, shooting down a number of spheres, the bullets breaking stalactites off the high ceiling in the distance. Galloping down the slope of broken rock from the cave-in above was a giant soldier gammarid mounted by a fantastic ghost octopus with a dazzling coat of orange thorns that elaborated on the gammy's design. It raced toward him and sprayed two streamers of goo at them.

"Old man!" Dima shouted, trying to rouse Galia, but then he realized that Galia was dead.

Bear leaped through the door, and Dima jumped after him as a rope of goo caught his ankle. Before they could close the door, Dima was pulled backwards and they saw Galia's body being reeled in by the other rope. They yanked Dima through and the door cut the goo-rope, preventing Dima from Galia's fate.

"What happened to him?" Sasha bawled. "What happened to Uncle Galia?"

"He's gone, sweetie," Abrams said.

"No!" she screamed.

"Sasha," Geoffrey said. "We've got to go now."

Hender was amazed to see the human child. He had never actually met one this close. The golden hair and blue eyes of the miniature human beguiled him, and he reached out and touched her head as his own fur blazed golden, with bubbling rings of blue and pink.

Sasha looked up and her face wiped clean with awe. "Hender?" she asked. All children on Earth had seen his image.