The Micronauts

by Gordon Williams

  ‘‘You think we’ll be like the dinosaurs, sir—just a flash in the evolutionary pan?”

  Bruce snorted. “The dinosaurs effectively ruled the earth for more than a hundred million years. Homo sapiens has been around for possibly half a million years. It will be one hell of a miracle if our flash in the pan lasts as long as the dinosaurs.”

  “You don’t seem very keen on people—if I may say so, sir.”

  “Ask that stag beetle back there how keen he is on people, Captain.”

  At last they reached the end of the grass forest. They parted the stalks of grass with their prods, having learned that the hard leaf-edges could cut, and found themselves looking out over a short stretch of bare, stony ground— and beyond that the purple ocean of the sky. Magruder looked at his quartz chronometer. “That took us too long. It’s now fifteen minutes after ten and we’ve got to make Station Two before half-past six—it gets dark earlier down at this level because of all the shadows. We’d better eat here while we’re in cover and then make tracks.”

  Between mouthfuls of brown cake-concentrate and gulps of water, Robinson said, “Just like army pack- rations—you don’t know what the taste is exactly, but it isn’t good.”

  “We’ll see how you like a nice, juicy earthworm steak,” said Lena Davidson. Khomich ate quickly, standing up. He wiped his mouth and brushed his hands. He wanted to speak to Bruce, but there was no way of drawing him aside without alerting Magruder and the Australian woman.

  “I’m ready,” said Anne Richards, briskly fastening her pack.

  THE MICRONAUTS

  Magruder patted her on the back, smiling at the others. “Isn’t she terrific?’’ By now, they all shared an irritation with his determined cheerfulness, regarding him with blankfaced hostility, as if he were a professional fun leader in a holiday camp where the food was bad. “Now then,” he said enthusiastically, “in real terms, that’s only a drop of six inches or so.” Pointing down to the stony earth, “But to us, it’s the equivalent of around sixteen feet. What we normally do is— ”

  “I’m pretty sure Corporal Carr and I know how to fall down a littie cliff,” Robinson drawled, with a delicacy of insult so typically English even Khomich smiled.

  “Right then,” said the unabashed Magruder.

  Bruce was lowering himself over the edge when their eyes were dazzled by a glinting blur of light.

  “Look out, it’s a bloody wasp!” Carr yelled.

  The striped yellow and black body hovered in the air a few feet from their faces, as big as an eagle, shimmering wings beating faster than their eyes could register.

  The vast humming noise of its wings changed to an urgent whirr as it changed angle in mid-air, the countless facets of the compound eyes shining with a terrifying luster—apparently staring directly at them.

  Carr’s first shot punched a black hole in the huge, multi-faceted eye. The glimmering wings faltered, then seemed to beat even faster as the wasp tried to maintain altitude. The second bullet hit the compound eye at an angle, ripping a black scar across the shining lenses.

  The third bullet came from Robinson. It smashed into the brilliant black and yellow abdomen. The wasp hit the ground head-first. For a moment it tried to raise itself off the ground, then collapsed in a lurch, like an aircraft with a buckled undercarriage. One transparent wing buzzed frantically, a thin leg paddled against the hard earth, then it was still.

  Pale, yellowish blood began to ooze out of the hairy abdomen.

  “Good shooting, Carr,” said Robinson.

  The corporal dropped to the ground, landing easily on his toes. “I wasn’t too sure if you’d call that a hard body or not so I used the nylon bullets anyway,” he said, feeling pleased with himself, particularly when he saw the approving look on Khomich’s face.

  “Major Wollaston was right about your marksmanship, Corporal .’ 1

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Khomich turned on Bruce, who was dusting off his jacket and trousers. “Just as well you have us crude soldiers to look after you, Professor.”

  “That happens to be a hoverfly, not a wasp. Still, if shooting it has satisfied some inner compulsion— ”

  Carr glared at him angrily. ‘That’s a bloody wasp!”

  ‘‘You’re meant to think it’s a wasp, but it’s completely and utterly harmless. It’s one of nature’s mimics.”

  Khomich snorted, ‘‘Is it only mimicking when it stings?”

  ‘‘For your information that is Sericomyia borealis; it doesn’t have a sting. Mimicry of dangerous or poisonous creatures is quite common in nature—why do you think we’re wearing these yellow and black uniforms? Birds are meant to think the hoverfly is a wasp so that they’ll leave it alone. But even if it had been a wasp, it wouldn’t have stung us—they’re not like humans, you know. They don’t zoom about looking for things to kill.”

  ‘‘If they can fool other animals, you can’t blame us for not recognizing it,” Robinson protested.

  ‘‘I know,” said Khomich, ‘‘next time we’re attacked, we must all wait for the professor to tell us the bug’s life history.”

  Lena glared at Khomich. ‘‘We killed off one world— you intending to kill off this one, you bastard?”

  ‘‘Can we keep going now?” Anne Richards asked.

  Magruder smiled at Carr. ‘‘We must move quickly across this open section—if the sky turns black, that might be our unfriendly neighborhood raven—you have full permission to blast it with everything you’ve got.”

  “We do not need your permission,” Khomich snapped.

  They skirted the dead hoverfly. Its great compound eyes had already lost all luminescence. With Carr and Robinson covering the rear, they hurried across the short stretch of open ground, boots slipping on smooth stones as they watched for danger from overhead. After the cloying humidity of the tall grass, the air was burningly dry, yet they felt a slight chill. Magruder pointed them towards a large boulder.

  They reached its shadow and then gasped.

  “My God! Look at that!”

  They could have been on the very edge of limitless space.

  Immediately below was the steep rockery slope and then a dark patch of green and black—beyond that, their eyes could not focus, seeing only a shimmering mist of dark greens and reds and blacks, vague shapes looming up out of a dancing, scintillating ocean—and, above, the blinding sky, a purple-blue so brilliant it seemed to come at them in waves.

  “That’s it, my friends,” said Magruder. “That’s Arcadia.”

  “Check your radio with Control, Magruder,” Khomich said brusquely. “Find out exactly where we are on this map.”

  Magruder unclipped the radio pack from his belt and pulled out the transceiver’s whiplash aerial.

  “Magruder to Control, Magruder to Control . . .”

  Robinson touched Khomich on the arm, nodding for him to move away from the others. Bruce was flat on his back, staring up at the sky. The two women were taking off their boots to smooth out wrinkles in their heavy stockings. Robinson pretended to be showing Khomich his pistol.

  “The Australian girl was pumping me about what we’re going to do when we find Professor Richards, sir,” he murmured. “She asked me what orders you have.”

  Khomich took the pistol, squinting along its squat barrel.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “We’re here to rescue the professor—there’s no mystery about it.”

  “But they know that’s not why we came here originally, sir.”

  “These people stole a large quantity of WFC equipment and this is where our investigations brought us. Professor Richards will have to answer to the Commissioner—our job is simply to find him.” He raised his voice. “Yes, these miniaturization experts are very clever, Captain.” Nobody seemed to be listening. Magruder was speaking quietly into the radio. Khomich lowered his voice again. “I don’t trust Magruder or the

  girl—I want you to
make sure he has no chance to use the radio without our knowledge.”

  ‘‘Major Wollaston will hear all transmissions in the Control room, sir.”

  ‘‘They may have another channel with a receiver we don’t know about.”

  ‘‘Okay, sir, I’ll keep close to him.”

  Khomich put his hand on Robinson’s arm. ‘‘You find the girl attractive?”

  Robinson blinked. ‘‘Hadn’t thought about it, sir.”

  ‘‘Encourage her to talk—but treat her with maximum suspicion.”

  Magruder shouted at them. At last, Khomich released his arm. Robinson felt a strange sensation of having been near something he did not understand—something he instinctively disliked.

  “Good news,” Magruder said excitedly, “they’re picking up a bleep from one of the capsules—it’s in Section Twenty-Seven, near Crossing Two on the other side of the stream. That’s where George was near when he called in, Anne.”

  “Do we know it’s Richards in the capsule?” Bruce asked.

  “Not exactly—but he’s the only one who made contact after the last party split up.” Magruder spread out his plastic map. “We’re here—a couple of points too far east, but that won’t matter too much. Our quickest route is down there to the right— ” he pointed out across the rockery toward the shimmering haze of dark shapes and colors. “We’ve got about seven-and-a-half hours to get right across that big stretch and then climb the rockery to Station Two. I suggest we get a move on. Getting caught out in the dark isn’t really part of the recommended attractions.”

  They pulled on their packs. “What are these capsules you keep talking about?” Carr asked Magruder.

  “They’re for anybody who gets lost or injured—the Recovery Vehicle can lob them into almost every section of the garden. They have a life-support capability of

  about ninety-six hours—a refuge until somebody comes to find you. They’re only a temporary device until we finish the construction of all the Safety Stations we have planned.”

  ‘‘If anybody lets us carry out all the plans,” Lena Davidson said bitterly.

  ‘‘You’re always going to need technological backing from outside,” Bruce said as they started over the rim of the escarpment. ‘‘Kind of makes a mockery of the whole project, doesn’t it?”

  ‘‘Don’t you think we’ve made incredible progress so far? We’re explorers, Bob, pioneers—we have to take it step by step.”

  Small lumps of baked earth crumbled underfoot, starting little avalanches of grit and soil. On a steep, bare slope, Robinson lost his footing and slithered down to a gray boulder. As he stood, he put his hand against the stone. Immediately, he sprang back, face contorted with pain, violently shaking his hand.

  ‘‘Captain Robinson pays no attention to stupid scientists,” Lena Davidson said with heavy sarcasm. ‘‘Don’t you remember Gerhardt Muller warning you that stones soak up a lot of heat?”

  Robinson’s face flushed. As always, Magruder stepped in with the soothing oil. ‘‘You’ll have to forgive her, Hugh, I guess they don’t run to charm schools in Australia.”

  ‘‘Shut up, you two-faced American creep!” She threw a lump of earth at Magruder, who ducked and came up smiling. She glared up the slope at him.

  ‘‘Seems to be a bit of tension beneath all the smiles,” Robinson murmured to Khomich as they slithered past a smooth brown flint.

  ‘‘I think they are acting for our benefit, Captain.”

  Robinson decided that Khomich had been so long among the dirty work of the Security Department that his cynicism had become ingrained.

  Khomich, however, was right.

  As they climbed down toward an outcrop of purple

  heather, the humming noise became so loud they had to use the plastic earplugs of their communicators to speak to each other.

  “Only bees,” said Bruce’s deep voice. “They won’t sting unless you grab hold of them.”

  Carr’s London voice said, “Don’t their stings cure rheumatism?”

  “At our size, they’ll cure everything—permanently.”

  As they came into the shadow of the heather copse, their faces contorted against the waves of sound. They put their hands to their ears, but it was not a noise that could be blocked out. It seemed to make their very bones vibrate. They began to run. Suddenly, on a low twig, they came face to face with a giant bumblebee, its heavy black body clambering over the small purple flowers with massive delicacy. Oblivious to their presence, the bee poked its head into the flowers, so close they could see its mouth parts opening and closing as its tongue-like labium penetrated down to the nectar. At the same time, a fine dust of pollen stuck to the yellow hairs of the bee’s stripes.

  When the bee stopped drinking, its powerful, segmented legs began to brush the yellow hairs, collecting little sweepings of pollen which it methodically scraped from leg to leg before moistening it with nectar from its mouth and forcing the little ball into baskets formed by stiff black hairs on its rear legs.

  “Are we going to stand here all day?” demanded Anne Richards.

  Carr hit the gnarled heather branch with his stick. The bee spread its wings and rose straight up into the air like a flying bear—before zooming off in the sideways glide of a plane breaking formation.

  “Congratulations—you didn’t even reach for your guns,” said Lena Davidson.

  Carr gave her a lewd smile.

  They reached a narrow ridge of hard earth, looking over another impenetrable forest of purple heather, the far reaches of the garden still a misty panorama of dark

  shapes and vibrant colors. Out of the purple sky danced two blue butterflies, huge wings throwing them around and around each other in a mid-air ballet of such power and grace they all stared in awe.

  “It’s the courtship dance,’’ Bruce explained.

  “You’re beginning to enjoy yourself, aren’t you, Bob?” said Lena Davidson.

  “It’s a new perspective, I’ll say that. Maybe Towne did me a favor after all.”

  “That is most gratifying to hear,” Khomich said drily.

  The two butterflies gyrated down in ever-decreasing circles until they landed on the heather immediately below them.

  “Look,” Bruce said excitedly. “Have you ever caught a butterfly and had dust come off its wings? You can see now—it isn’t dust, it’s scales. Butterflies as big as kites! Incredible.”

  “Pretty colors,” Khomich sneered. “We go down to the right here.”

  “You’re looking at miracles, Khomich!”

  “No, just butterflies.”

  “Just butterflies? You know the painted lady migrates every year from the Sudan as far north as Finland? Two thousand miles on fragile wings like those? You know that out of every ten thousand caterpillars only about thirty manage to reach the imago stage—I mean turn into adult butterflies? Stop a minute—put your noses over that edge and see if you can smell anything.”

  “Is somebody carrying chocolate?” Robinson asked, sniffing again.

  “No—it’s the male blue, it smells of chocolate!”

  “What happens to all the other caterpillars, then?” asked Carr.

  “They get eaten by birds and flies and wasps and parasites that gnaw them from the inside. They’re everybody’s favorite snack.”

  “Glad to hear we’re not the only murderers in the world.”

  “We’re the only ones who’ve made it a pure art form. Everything else kills only to eat or to defend itself.”

  “You like all these poetical thoughts, Mrs. Richards?” said Khomich. “Would it be barbarian of me to say we re wasting time with pretty butterflies while your husband may be dying?”

  Anne Richards blushed. They started down the slope to the right of the heather. “Hey,” Carr exclaimed. “Look what they’re doing now!”

  “That’s the moment they were born for, the only reason for their existence—to give life to more butterflies.”

  “Back-to-back? Not much fun that way, I
’d like to see what— ”

  “Corporal!” Khomich’s face was red with anger. “No more of that filthy talk!”

  “It’s not filthy,” Lena Davidson said slyly, giving Carr a wink. “He’s quite right, back-to-back must be pretty joyless.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Khomich lives in a joyless world,” said Bruce. “All fun is filth and happy laughter is the chatter of a light machine gun.”

  Regaining control of himseif, Khomich said nothing but nodded meaningfully, as if agreeing with some decision he had just made with himself.

  Bruce held Anne Richards’s hand while she slithered down a scree of loose grit.

  “I’m sorry I held us up—I was carried away by those butterflies,” he said. She straightened up, pulling her hand away. Her face was bitter.

  “I don’t suppose you care what happens to George, anyway. It would be very convenient for your boss if he was never seen again.”

  “My boss?”

  “Commissioner Towne.”

  “He’s not my boss.”

  “Why are you here then?”

  “Let’s say Towne knows how to twist an arm. Still, I suppose it was worth it if only for that one moment back there.”

  THE MICRONAUTS

  Looking at the broad shoulders of Khomich a few yards below, she said bitterly, “Don’t tell me he’s here to admire the pretty butterflies.”

  Magruder waited until Lena Davidson had climbed down through a waist-high clump of red filmy fern, its delicate fronds brushing moistly against her hands. “They’re not saying what orders they have,” she murmured. “It must be serious or Khomich wouldn’t be here in person.”

  “We’ll lose them in the morning when we’re over the other side of the rockery.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “By the time they blunder about with no radio, we’ll have found George—Jany is getting the Recovery Vehicle round to the east wall opposite Station Three. George can be back to full-size before they get out of the garden—he’ll know how to deal with the Commissioner.”

  “Robinson is watching us.”