"But we haven't seen anything else,” Connell said. “We haven't seen one living thing down here. So, if they're spiders, what do they eat?"
Neither man answered. O'Doyle simply shrugged, stood, and continued down the tunnel. Connell watched the big man's light bob up and down along the walls of the cavern, not just on the floor and sides anymore, but the ceiling as well. Connell counted off twenty of O'Doyle's paces and followed, waving back down the tunnel for the rest of the party to continue.
He checked the ceiling every third step, hoping that he wouldn't see a flash of silver.
After six hours of walking and climbing and crawling, the party stopped to rest. With their yellow KoolSuits covered in dirt and grime, they looked like exhausted athletes from some futuristic sport.
"Twenty minute break,” O'Doyle called out. “Everybody off your feet.
Sanji and Veronica practically collapsed on the silt-covered ground. Connell, Lybrand and O'Doyle gathered around Mack, who knelt on one knee, his headlamp shining on the map.
"How are we doing?” Connell asked.
"Not bad,” Mack said. “O'Doyle is moving us along nicely, but it gets more complicated from here on out. The closer we get to the Dense Mass, the more tunnels there are. I think I should be up front."
Connell looked at O'Doyle, who looked at the map one more time, then looked up and nodded. “Mack's probably better at reading that map."
"Fine,” Connell said. “Lybrand, anything unusual from the rear?"
She shook her head. “Nothing that I've seen or heard."
Connell looked at the map, trying to make sense of the complicated network of tunnels. There were so many side passages, so many connectors — it would be simple for someone to slip in behind them. He thought of the tiny sliverbug tracks, and how O'Doyle had seen them while on the move and in very poor lighting.
"O'Doyle, I think you should bring up the rear for awhile when we move out. We can't afford to let someone sneak up on us."
"But sir—"
"Just do it, okay?” Connell said with a forced smile. “Lybrand can take point with Mack."
O'Doyle started to say something, then looked at Lybrand. She nodded. O'Doyle cleared his throat. “Yes, sir, that sounds fine."
"Okay,” Connell said. “Twenty minutes then we move out. I'll take watch."
"You do know where we're at, don't you?” Lybrand asked. She tried to sound like she was only teasing, but a hint of genuine concern lurked in her voice. She wasn't sure Mack knew what he was doing.
"Of course I know,” Mack said. “I'm just trying to figure out the best way for us to go, that's all.” He sat on his haunches, clutching the plastic-coated map in a death-grip, his shaking hands making the paper quaver slightly.
They'd stopped at a triple-branch in the tunnels. One branch led off at ninety degrees to the left, another went steeply up and about fifteen degrees to the left, and the last headed gently down at about thirty-five degrees to the right. Mack was obviously trying to orient their position. He'd rotated the map three times so far. It looked upside down, but she reminded herself there was no upside down on a three-dimensional map. He knew what he was doing. He had to know.
She turned away from him and looked down the tunnels, her light probing the passages’ dark depths. They all looked the same to her. It seemed logical to take the tunnel heading down, as they were still above the Dense Mass, but they'd taken two up-slopes already en route to another down-slope. The added dimensions made her disoriented so quickly, she didn't know—
click-click, click-click
She stared intensely into the downward slope, her light probing back and forth with the quick, jerky, birdlike movements of her head. She'd heard something. Until that moment there had been no noise except her and Mack's footsteps. Mack sat quietly, still staring at the map, oblivious to the sound.
click-click, click-click, click
Her ears couldn't pick out a direction. The tunnel amplified the small sound until it seemed to pour from every inch of the ragged stone, as if the walls themselves breathed with the noise. Her light bounced violently back and forth across the tunnel floor, looking for the source. Her fingers gripped the knurled handle of the H&K as her thumb quietly slipped off the safety.
click-click-click, click, click-click
The noise sounded random, like halting movement, or like… like little scurrying feet scraping on rock. She remembered the tiny tracks, and she remembered Connell and O'Doyle checking the ceiling every few yards. Her light flashed upward, where it reflected brightly off a moving, silvery sphere only fifteen feet from her face.
Chapter Twenty-four
Lybrand's voice was a hiss between clenched teeth. “Mack! Look over here!"
He looked up at Lybrand, then in the direction of her pointed gun and focused stare — up to the ceiling. There, frozen in the glow of the headlamps, only a few feet from Lybrand's head, perched a silverbug.
Instantly he could see where he'd been wrong. It wasn't a spider, or even a bug.
It was a machine.
Its spherical body was slightly bigger than a softball. A long, wedge-shaped protrusion jutted forth from one end and pointed toward Lybrand's head. Other chunks and baubles broke up the outline — an impression of the old Russian Sputnik satellite stuck in Mack's mind.
Four long legs — each divided into three eight-inch long segments — stuck out from the ball's equator, one every ninety degrees. The first segment of each leg jutted away from the round body, the second paralleled the ceiling, and the last segment pointed the leg back to touch the roof, almost exactly like an insect's legs. Mack thought it looked like a silvery Daddy Long-Legs, but with only four limbs.
The last segment of each spindly leg was actually two thin pieces, giving the silverbug eight contact points with which to cling to the rock. Mack was too far away to see the little feet, but the way its body hung effortlessly from the cave ceiling he knew strong hooks or claws dotted the end of each one.
The silverbug's body stood rock-still, but some of the sphere-body parts moved with small whirring and buzzing noises. From end to end, the silverbug looked to be about fifteen inches long. With the segmented legs stretched out flat, it might be as long as five feet.
Mack's mind could focus on little more than the silverbug. “What do you want me to do?” he asked in a whisper.
"Go get the others, get O'Doyle,"
"I can't leave you here alone with that thing."
"Do it! We don't know what this is and I'm not letting it out of my sight. Go get the others, now!"
Mack hesitated only a second, then turned and ran back up the tunnel, moving as fast as he could over the rough footing.
"Does anyone read me?” Cho Takachi said into the walkie-talkie. “This is an SOS, is anybody out there?” His monotone voice droned the words repeatedly. He'd lost count of how many times he'd said that phrase or how many times he'd tried each channel. Nothing came in. Nothing at all. It made no sense. The walkie-talkie should have picked up something. The nearest town was just over twenty miles away — there had to be radio traffic in the area, yet thick static dominated every channel.