Micro: A Novel by Michael Crichton & Richard Preston

Author:Michael Crichton & Richard Preston [Crichton, Michael & Preston, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Adult
ISBN: 0060873027
Amazon: 0060873175
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2011-11-22T06:00:00+00:00

Not far away, a hexapod walker vehicle strode rapidly across the forest floor, climbing over pebbles and pushing leaves aside, its six legs working with seemingly boundless energy. Motors on the legs whined.

Johnstone was driving, his hand sunk in a glove-like device, a hand controller, while he watched the readouts. The readouts told him the levels of power the servomotors were delivering to the vehicle’s six legs. Telius sat next to him in the open cockpit, his eyes tracking left and right, up and down. Both men wore full-body armor.

The walker was powered by a nano-laminate micro-lithium power pack. It had a long range and plenty of power. Regular vehicles didn’t work well in the micro-world; they got stuck, the wheels spun uselessly. Wheeled vehicles couldn’t climb over obstacles, either. Instead, the Nanigen engineers had copied the design of an insect. The design worked extremely well.

The walker arrived at a hole in the ground.

“Stop,” Telius said.

Johnstone brought the vehicle to a halt and stared into the hole. “That’s Echo.”

“Was,” Telius corrected him.

Both men leaped out of the vehicle in soaring jumps, their armor clattering. They landed on their feet. They had a lot of practice at physical movement in the micro-world, and they knew how to use their strength. They began circling around the hole, examining moss, crumbs of dirt. The rain earlier in the day had obliterated most traces of the students’ passage across the surface, but Johnstone knew that clues remained. He could track anybody anywhere. A growth of moss on a rock attracted his attention. He went up to it and studied it. The moss stood waist-high. He touched a narrow stalk that came up out of the moss: it was a spore stalk with a broken spore capsule at the end of it. The stalk was bent at a right angle, broken, and spores had spilled out, some of them clinging to the moss. In the sticky fluff of wet spore granules Telius found the imprint of a human hand. Somebody had grabbed the spore stalk, broken it, spilled the pollen, then put their hand in it. Farther on, Telius found a confused set of human footprints, clambering over a lump of dirt, in a spot under a spreading leaf that had protected the ground underneath from rain splashes.

Johnstone knelt and examined the footprints. “There’s five of them—no, six. Walking in a line. He looked off. “Heading southeast.”

“What’s southeast?” Telius said.

“Parking lot.” Johnstone narrowed his eyes and smiled.

Telius looked at him quizzically.

Johnstone picked a mite off his shoulder plate, crushed it, flicked it away. “Fucking mites. Now we know their plan.”

“What plan?”

“They’re looking for a ride back to Nanigen.”

He was right, obviously. Telius nodded and began walking swiftly ahead, following clues. Johnstone jumped back into the hexapod and began driving it, following Telius as he moved swiftly ahead of the walker, often leaping over things, traveling at a pace somewhere between a dogtrot and a flat-out run. Occasionally Telius stopped to examine tracks in the soft soil.

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