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Zero pointed to the south, panning his camera. “What’s that?”

“It looks like saltwater,” the driver answered.

A dead zone of white salt crystals, barren of life, surrounded the pool at the end of the stream. As the rover moved down the slope they caught a glimpse of daylight and ocean through the fissure in the cliff from which the pool must have been fed.

“Seawater must get in at high tide or during storms,” Zero said.

“That crack looks pretty recent,” Andy pointed out.

“Based on the salt buildup on the rocks, that pool must be at least a few decades old,” Quentin corrected.

“I meant recent by
geological
standards.”

“Everything’s recent by geological standards.”

The rover climbed the other side of the meadow. The landscape dried out as they passed from the clover to the barren core of weather-carved rock formations at the island’s center.

The driver searched for a passable route through the core to give them a shortcut across the island.

The rumble of the rover vibrated the rock and sand, waking the hives.

The low-frequency vibrations triggered pheromone signals inside the purple honeycombed towers that lined the flat bottom of the ravine.

The pheromones stimulated hundreds of drones.

Budlike panels under the drones’ heads popped open. Three translucent wings expanded like blue flowers.

The fanged lamprey-mouths flexed on their abdomens, ready
to latch onto passing prey to suck its blood and feed their colonies.

The towering hives were the nurseries of drill-worms. These half-worms were their juvenile form. When they matured, the vampire drones would double in size by growing a new segment shaped like a drill bit with three legs and a second brain and mouth. Then they would leave the hive to hunt in the jungle, drilling through the hard sheaths of the trees.

A mature drill-worm bitten in half could regenerate its other half. Either segment could mate and give birth to polyplike eggs— eggs that multiplied into new hives that budded vampire drones.

The XATV-9 throttled forward across the canyon’s flat bottom, which cut directly across the island’s arid core.

The men observed a gallery of urchinlike cacti, yuccalike trees, and bloated purple towers lining the canyon walls to either side of the rover. The towers reminded Zero of termite mounds or pillar coral.

The driver turned on the outboard mikes again and as the rover passed the men inside heard the sibilant buzz of the purple hives coming to life. Blue swarms emerged, attacking the rover’s windows then retreating to their hives.

The silent men gazed through the rover’s windows down the lush green slope on the far side of the island’s core. The lake in the distance lay still and dark inside the outer ring of the jungle.

“There it is.” Quentin pointed over the driver’s shoulder as they roared down to the green plain at sixty miles an hour, headed straight for the lake.

The rover braked abruptly and stopped at the water’s edge.

A hundred yards to their left rose the outer ring of the jungle, rimming the far side of the lake.

Only thirty feet to their right, an isolated cluster of three tall trees rose on the shore. Two of the three trunks split into three branches, each of which bore crowns of long fronds covered with
green clover. Like a broken umbrella, the tallest tree pointed five splaying fronds up into the air. Chains of red berries dangled under the fronds of all three trees, twitching and coiling as they caught bugs lured by the fruit.

“We should not stop,” said Zero.

“We’re safe, don’t worry,” said the driver.

Radio static burst from the speakers, and they heard Briggs’s voice:
“We’re evacuating StatLab. Repeat, we are evacuating StatLab! Return—base—”

Then they could hear Nell’s voice over the breaking signal.
“We’re los—transmission signal. The com—array—choked—tation— over?”

“Oh great,” Quentin groaned.

“The clover must be eating StatLab’s dish.” Andy turned pale.

Pound frowned. “Are we in danger here, if we can’t go back to the lab?”

The driver shook his head. “We’ll just radio
Enterprise.
She’ll send a transport. They’ll hook on and take us home.”

“How can they take this thing back to a ship?” Zero asked. “Who knows what’s stuck to it now?”

“They’ll take us to the
Philippine Sea
,”the driver said.

“They’ll sterilize and quarantine it there,” Quentin said.

“Don’t worry,” the driver said. “They’ll hose this thing down with chlorine dioxide, formaldehyde—hell, the Navy’ll probably scuttle the whole damn ship when this is over, just to be on the safe side. They’re plenty paranoid.”

Pound grabbed the radio mike. “StatLab, proceed with evacuation. We’ll catch our own ride home.”

They heard Briggs’s voice over the radio:
“Can’t—Over?”

Pound shouted into the radio. “We’ll get our own ride home, StatLab. Copy?”

Nell and the technicians stared over Otto’s shoulder as the video feed broke up.

“Damn, we lost them!”

“Keep trying,” Nell urged.

“Their com array must be damaged.” Otto checked the camera overlooking one of StatLab’s microwave dishes. “It’s definitely not on our end.”

“OK,” Briggs said. “That’s it! I want all hard drives packed and ready to go when the Sea Dragon gets here, people. All euthanized specimens need to be sealed in sterilized specimen cases. No live specimens are to leave the island under
absolutely
any circumstances.
No
pets! And
no
souvenirs!”

The men inside the rover heard nothing but a blizzard of white noise on the radio.

“Yeah, their com array’s definitely down,” Quentin said.

Andy nodded. “Lichenovores must have gotten to it.”

“Clovores, you mean.”

“Oh right.”

“How’d you guys like to get a look inside the lake?” asked the driver, who still seemed reassuringly gung ho, despite being cut off from the lab.

Quentin glanced at Andy, arching his eyebrows. “You can actually do that?”

“Sure can!” the driver said.

“Bitchin’!”

“We should call the
Enterprise
now,” Zero said.

“Right after this, we will,” Pound agreed. “Let’s make sure to tape this for the President, OK?”

Bugs were starting to swarm around the rover as an ROV deployed from the end of one of the robot arms, maneuvering down into the lake on a thin, Day-Glo orange tether.

The driver used what looked like Xbox controls to steer it and flick on its headlight, illuminating the black water. The crew watched the ROV’s camera view on a screen above the forward window.

The small vehicle buzzed down into the depths.

“How deep can it go?” Andy was giddy.

“About three hundred feet,” the driver said.

“Awesome.” Quentin grinned at Andy.

A huge animal, like an overgrown fairy shrimp, appeared on the screen, paddling in the inky darkness, and suddenly a wondrous world of Cambrianesque creatures materialized on the screen around it.

Segmented creatures of fantastic designs crossed the camera’s view like apparitions: spiked saucers, horned boomerangs, finned champagne glasses, a Christmas tree with kicking legs.

“Omigod,” Quentin breathed. “Stephen Jay Gould, eat your HEART OUT, baby!”

“It’s the Burgess Shale come to life.” Andy sounded shell-shocked.

“We were right!” Quentin said.

“Wow, OK, guys, keep talking. Are you getting all this?” Pound asked Zero.

Zero looked up from his videocam. “We should move. We shouldn’t stay—”

Even as he spoke, he was cut off by a huge
BOOM!

The rover lurched, and then they heard another
BOOM!

The rover pitched forward and a third of the front window plunged into the water.

“What the hell just happened?” Pound yelled.

“Oh shit,” the driver said.

“We can still drive, right?” Pound said.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” the driver said.

“We can still drive, though… right?” Zero asked.

The half-tracks bore into the wet bank of the lake as they backtracked, but the front axles of the blown tires gripped the steep bank like anchors and the vehicle sank lower as it dug in. Then they suddenly stopped functioning. Red lights flashed on the control panel.

The driver looked at them. “Uh… that would be a negative.”

“We’ve got half-tracks, for Christ’s sake—why can’t we just power out of here, man?” Zero asked.

“This is a prototype—it was designed to terminate functionality in the event of any malfunction that might cause damage to equipment worth millions of dollars.”

“Inflatable rubber tires?” Andy screeched. “I thought this thing was a Mars rover!”

The driver shook his head. “It’s experimental. And those tires are ten-inch-thick steel radials, for Christ’s sake! I don’t understand how both of them could blow like this.”

Quentin looked out the side window and saw the shredded rubber above water. “Oh shit, it’s smoking!”

Zero videoed out the right window. “Same on this side.”

“We may have run over some clovores.”

“What?”

“Animals that eat clover and probably use sulfuric acid to dissolve it,” Quentin told Pound. “The acid inside them may have eaten away our tires, I guess.”

“Shit!” the envoy snapped. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You were the one in such a huge frickin’ hurry!” Quentin shouted.

Andy jabbed a finger at the driver. “He said we can radio for a transport!”

“Radio the ship for a transport now,” Zero said.

The driver nodded and flicked on the radio. “Kirk to
Enterprise
, Kirk to
Enterprise.”

He glanced up at the others, who were glaring at him. “It’s my NAME, OK?” He clicked the radio again. “This is XATV-9, do you read,
Enterprise?”

White noise.

“Do you read,
Enterprise?
This is XATV-9…Kirk to
Enterprise?”

Kirk looked up at the rest of them, shrugged.

“Keep trying!” Pound urged.

“But don’t say ‘Kirk to Enterprise,’” Andy said.

Zero put the camera in his lap, popped out the memory stick, slid it into his pocket, snapped the flap, and hung his head down over his lap. Laughter gently rocked his body. “Why did I trust you idiots?” he moaned.

“Don’t worry,” Kirk told them. “We can just sit tight. Sooner or later they’ll send a transport.”

A shrieking alarm sounded; blue lights flashed at the rear of the rover.

“Now what?” Andy yelped.

Kirk looked puzzled. “The smoke alarm!”

He squeezed between them and rushed to the rear of the rover to disable the blaring siren. Looking up at the ceiling, he shook his head grimly.

“What?” Pound demanded. He squeegeed the sweat off his forehead with the side of his hand, like a windshield wiper.

“Hey that’s funny,” Kirk said.

“What’s funny?” Zero said. “I need a laugh.”

Kirk pointed at the roof. “Something seems to be burning through the hull here…”

“Ha ha.”

“What’s the hull made of?” Quentin asked.

“Superhardened plastic, so there’s no way any impact could—”

“Oh shit.” Quentin looked at Andy.

“You guys better take a look at this.” Zero pointed at the ROV monitor.

Large shadowy creatures stirred on the screen just beyond the range of the ROV’s headlights.

“Jeez, we were right!” Quentin crowed.

“Right about what?” Pound’s voice cracked.

“Giant mantis shrimp—that eye must be attached to an animal as big as a saltwater crocodile!”

The ROV appeared to shine its spotlight on the football-sized compound eye of a slumbering leviathan.

“Call off the ROV now!” Zero said.

Kirk killed the light. He reversed the winch on the ROV’s cable, zipping it up at top speed.

Andy and Quentin cringed as the camera pulled away from the creature. Pound sagged in relief.

“Good man,” Zero said softly.

Through the partially submerged window of the rover they
had an above-and-below view of the black lake as a chevron of ripples headed toward them across its surface.

More ridges appeared on the water, moving parallel to the first.

The scientists and technicians quickly donned blue cleansuits as they prepared to evacuate StatLab.

Nell watched through the window as the first wave of scientists boarded the first two Sea Dragon helicopters. All carried sleek titanium hard-drive containers and stacks of aluminum specimen cases onto the loading ramps, which slowly rose like drawbridges as the helos took off.

“Damn it, Briggs,” she said, “these suits are a waste of time. Any microbes here must have evolved to attack a totally different biology from ours. Zero and I breathed the air on this island and nothing happened to us!”

Briggs rolled his eyes. “Interesting theory, Nell. Better start suiting up!”

She looked over Otto’s shoulder at the static-filled screen. “You go ahead, Briggs. Come on, Otto! Keep trying to make contact with them!”

Briggs frowned as Otto typed rapidly, the aluminum splint on his thumb clicking the computer keys.

“Can’t you reel that thing in any faster?” Pound complained. The arrows of ripples on the lake’s surface all pointed straight at the mired rover.

“Stop reeling it in,” Zero said.

“OK. I’m cutting it loose!” Kirk said.

“Good thinking!” Zero agreed.

Kirk flicked a button and a cable-shear on the end of the robot arm chopped the tether. The monitor went black.

“I’ve got a satellite phone,” Pound suggested.

Kirk shook his head. “Good luck using a satphone inside this thing. You need to be out in the open.”

“Do you think we can step outside for a minute?” the presidential envoy asked.

“Are you kidding?” Zero laughed.

“We don’t have cleansuits on this rig,” Kirk said.