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“Still hoping for a benign species?” the botanist asked.

Geoffrey smiled. “Nell, it just seems impossible to me that something from this island can’t be preserved.”

“I felt the same way, Geoffrey. I don’t anymore,” she said. “More than a dozen people I knew have been killed on this island. If you expect me to apologize for wanting it nuked, forget it.”

The driver barked responses into the radio. He wore green camouflaged Army fatigues, body armor, and a helmet. Nell saw him kiss a gold crucifix that hung around his neck and tuck it under his armored vest.

Then she recognized the man sitting in the shotgun seat, holding a camcorder. The cameraman also wore body armor and Nell noticed the NASA headband camera on the photographer’s head with the viewfinder retracted over his ear.

She tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, Nell!” Zero Monroe shouted, and he turned toward her with a big grin.

“Back for more?”

“You, too, darlin’?”

Nell squeezed his arm. “You OK?”

“Yeah. They patched me up. The poison wore off. I can even move my leg again.” He laughed.

“Does Cynthea know you’re here?”

“No, not this time—when I heard this was going down I came straight from the
Enterprise
sick bay.”

“Somebody’s
out there,”
she said softly.

“I know.” He nodded. “I keep wondering if someone survived that first day… But that’s impossible.” He shook his head, grimacing, remembering the sound of the shrieks inside the crevasse.

Someone tapped on the window next to Zero. Zero opened the door.

“Got room for one more?” Dr. Cato asked.

“Sure, but you’ll have to sit in the middle. I need the window,” Zero said, jumping out.

The white-haired scientist climbed in and greeted Nell in the backseat. She frowned.

“It may not be safe, Dr. Cato. Are you sure you want to come along?”

“Well…” Dr. Cato sighed. “It looks like the last chance I’ll get to see this island up close.” He seemed a bit distracted. “I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t take the opportunity, Nell.” Then he turned and met her gaze. “Besides, somebody should look after you and make sure you don’t do anything too dangerous out there, my dear.”

Zero climbed in and slammed the Hummer door.

“OK, listen up!” the driver yelled to get their attention. “I am
Sergeant Cane! You scientists have been embedded on this mission, but it is
my
mission, and I do
not
like the idea. So you all need to know that I make the rules here, and my rule is FINAL. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” Geoffrey said. “That’s cool!”

Cane glared at each of the others. “Does everyone
else
understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Dr. Cato nodded.

“You got it,” Nell said.

“Very well, Sergeant,” Thatcher sighed.

“Yup” came from Zero.

“Good!” the sergeant said. “So here’s rule number one: do not open any windows. We don’t even want
one
of those wasps gettin’ in here. Because they will MESS YOU UP. Is that understood?”

“Yes!” everyone said, except for Thatcher.

“Rule number two: do not go near the jungle. Do I hear an ‘OK, Sergeant Cane’?”

“OK, Sergeant Cane,” they all said.

“Does this thing have rubber tracks?” Zero asked.

“Kevlar and steel.” Cane hit the gas and the rescue convoy left the safety of the base.

The signal, which appeared to be reflected sunlight, continued to flash intermittently from the highest visible ledge of the rock stairway. As the sun sank behind the western rim, the shadow it cast across the island spread toward the sunlit ledge. They knew the signal would be doused all too soon.

Thatcher gazed out the window at the swarms of insects flying into and out of the roof of the jungle below, and the strange animals that streaked over the open ground.

“Hey, Helo One and Two,” Cane said into the radio. “Have you guys spotted anyone? Blue One over.” Cane pointed at the two helicopters circling the north ridge.

“Still negative, Blue One, infrared vision shows warm-blooded creatures all over the ledges. We can’t pick out anything human down there.”

“Thanks, guys. The cavalry’s coming.”

The three Hummers rumbled toward the north slope in single file up a curving grade of strata that made a natural road.

“That was quite a power play back there,” Thatcher sniffed. “The President as God! But I can’t say that I’m surprised.”

“It seems that either way we’re playing God, Thatcher.” Geoffrey gazed out in wonderment at the green slopes rising to the edge of the bowl. The buckled strata ringing the island gave it the appearance of an enormous ruined coliseum. The broken rows seemed to have been carved for giants.

“Maybe God’s playing God here,” Dr. Cato mused, sadly scanning the landscape around them.

“Geoffrey’s right,” Nell said. “If we don’t do this, we’ll be unleashing Armageddon. It would just be a matter of time.”

Thatcher looked avidly out the window at the jungle below. A pack of four enormous spigers loped over the clover fields with their back legs pumping like locomotives as they tried to head off two Army Hummers along a lower road near the jungle. The lead Hummer opened machine-gun fire and felled one of the beasts. The others immediately turned on their wounded comrade and ripped into its flesh. “That just might be the best thing that ever happened to this planet,” the zoologist murmured.

Geoffrey groaned and Dr. Cato shook his head.

“Excuse me?” Nell said, glaring at Thatcher.

“Armageddon might just save the world from humanity.” Thatcher turned to face her with a paternal smile. “Of course, I’m only joking, Dr. Duckworth. But if what we’ve heard so far is true, no intelligent life could ever evolve in this environment. It’s no wonder this ecosystem has lasted so long, evolving on an unbroken continuum since the Cambrian explosion itself. We may have discovered the perfect ecosystem!”

His eyes twinkled, but Nell looked away in disgust.

Zero turned from the window where he was shooting and gave Thatcher a deadly look. “I think you need a little quality time with the local wildlife, Professor.”

The Humvee climbed the natural road all the way up to the northeast edge of the island. As the vehicle crested the rise at the cliff edge, Sergeant Cane pointed out the right window.

“Check out these critters, Dr. Redmond!”

Thatcher leaned over Nell to see.

Sprawled and tangled on the sheer cliff of the island’s rim, dry tendrils swirled to form what looked like nests, occupied by hundreds of birds’ eggs and hatchlings. Geoffrey saw chicks suckling at appendages that rose from the tangled mass—bulbous pods shaped disturbingly like birds’ heads. “What the…?”

“Hatcheries,” Dr. Cato told him, peering out the window in awe.

Thatcher grunted as he nearly flopped across Nell’s lap to peer out. “Really?”

“Could you explain that?” Geoffrey said.

“Some seabirds migrate here to breed,” Dr. Cato replied.

“The plants eat the parents, and the nestlings hatch and imprint on their new mommies. Later they return here all fattened up as adults to nest, lay their eggs, and get eaten. The circle of life.” Nell smiled darkly at Geoffrey, who looked back at the hatcheries, speechless.

“We’ve even discovered a subspecies of frigates that has adapted its juvenile beak to fit the nipples on these things,” Dr. Cato told them. “So apparently these creatures have been good bird mommies for a very long time.”

“My God,” Geoffrey whispered, his heart racing at the implications. “A predator-prey relationship in which the
prey
is evolving to improve the predators’ chances? I think I’m going to be sick. These things have hijacked the frigate’s natural selection. They’re fricking
breeding
their own food!”

“Just like we do,” Thatcher drawled. “Haven’t you seen a chicken? The difference is that this has carefully evolved in tandem with its prey to preserve just what it needs to survive and not expand beyond its resources. You could devote a lifetime to studying any one of this island’s organisms.”

“A short lifetime,” Zero muttered.

Sergeant Cane chuckled sourly as they passed the squawking nesting grounds rimming the high cliff.

Zero videoed intently, cursing when a stream of cloudy juice sprayed the window, obscuring his shot.

Sergeant Cane laughed. “The vines around the nests squirt concentrated salt-juice at your eyes. They can zap wasps right out of the air at twenty feet.”

Geoffrey noticed an adolescent bird flung out of a nest. Each time the bird tried to climb back in, a spring-loaded plant stalk flung it back out.

Thatcher was ecstatic. “Fantastic!” he crooned, leaning fully across Nell now as he looked at the bird breeders.

“OK, enough,” Nell said, shooing Thatcher back into his seat.

The ramp of exposed strata sloped down from the island’s edge as it continued around the island. Cane pushed the throttle, and the train of three Humvees accelerated down the natural ramp.

Geoffrey gripped the back of Zero’s seat and watched Nell, who stared at the shadow of the island’s rim as it reached the ridge and doused the flashing light.

Eventually they reached a flat lower stratum. They continued around the bowl to the north, leaving brown tracks in the clover that gradually turned green again behind them.

The shelves of the high slopes were melted soft by erosion like the terraced hills of the Peruvian Andes, pelted with green, gold, and purple clover.

Ahead, patches of jungle topped the succession of rock ledges that erupted from the slope.

“See that highest ledge there?” Cane said, pointing through the windshield.

“Yep, that’s where I made it out to be,” Zero said.

“Good, no jungle on that ledge.” Cane spoke into the radio: “Blue Two and Three, we’re going to start on the highest shelf. Suggest you guys search the next two down for the survivor. Over?”

“This is Blue Two. We copy you, Blue One.”

“This is Blue Three. Sounds good.”

“Looks like we got a swarm, guys,”
the first voice said.

“Copy that, thanks.” Cane twisted the handle of a crudely retrofitted valve on the ceiling of the cab as a swarm of wasps attacked the caravan of Humvees.

They could hear the squeak and hiss of faucets spurting to life.

Sprinkler-heads telescoped on the roofs of the Hummers, and a fine umbrella of water sprayed over each vehicle.

Sergeant Cane chuckled. “Bastards don’t like saltwater.”

Zero turned his head and gave a deadpan look at Nell.

“I see that we’ve already adapted to this environment,” Thatcher drawled, “and dominated it with our technological defenses.”

Cane chuckled. “It’s like the Marines say, ‘improvise, adapt, overcome.’ The Army just does it better.”

“Exactly,” Thatcher sneered.

Cane turned off the Hummer’s sprinklers after the swarm retreated. Blue One dug in its four Mattracks, powering up the steep incline beside the giant stairs.

The other Humvees followed close behind, each one peeling off at its assigned ledge. Blue One rumbled onward, rising fifty more feet to the highest ledge, a curving tier of rock jutting out of the slope.

They turned onto the flat lip of rock. On the left side swayed the palmlike crowns of trees rising from the lower tier. On the right side stood a sheer, three-story rock wall, which the ledge hugged, curving around a bend and out of sight ahead. Above this thirty-foot escarpment, the green fields rose unbroken to the island’s rim.

A fallen tree blocked them from driving farther onto the ledge.

Cane tried to drive over the log, but it was five feet thick, too much even for Mattracks to climb over: it looked more like the neck of Godzilla than the trunk of a tree.

“That’s the outer cuticle of a giant arthropod,” Dr. Cato pointed out. “The trees are actually related to the island’s flying bugs.”

“Good God,” Thatcher chuckled.

“Looks like a rockslide brought it down.” Geoffrey pointed at the fresh chunk missing from the cliff above. “So this island’s pretty unstable?”

“Yeah. There’s been a lot of seismic activity,” Nell replied.

Cane eased off the throttle and they heard something so incongruous they didn’t register it at first: a dog was barking.

“What the hell?” Cane muttered.

A bull terrier sprinted out on the ledge from around the cliff, yapping wildly. Then it darted back around the corner and disappeared.

“Copey!” Nell cried.

“I don’t believe it!” Zero said as he steadied his hand on his camera.

Copepod sprinted out from around the cliff once again, barking furiously, then ran back around the bend out of sight.

Nell grabbed Cane’s shoulder. “He’s trying to get us to follow him. Let’s go!”

Cane throttled forward against the trunk one more time, then stopped. He shook his head. “We can’t get over this tree in the Hummer. And no way are we getting out of this vehicle, not with that jungle so close.”

“Somebody
signaled us and needs help, Sergeant! If Copey survived here, so can we! There’s somebody there!”

“No way. I’m not going out there.”

“Zero.” Nell turned to the cameraman. “You survived out there. Can we just run down quick and have a look around the corner? And then run back?”

Zero frowned. “Do we have any weapons?”

“Super Soakers,” Cane said. There was a moment of stunned silence. “Seriously. Full of saltwater. And if you leave the Hummer you have to put sterile booties on. In those packets. And before you get back in the Hummer take them off and throw them away.” The sergeant looked at Nell and shook his head. “But I
don’t like it. That jungle’s too close.” He pointed off the side of the ledge, where the trees waved in the wind.

“It’s just a few treetops,” Thatcher said.

“Super Soakers?” Nell said. “Give me your gun, Cane.”

Cane locked eyes with her, hesitating.

“OK.” He finally nodded, and gave her his M9 Beretta handgun. “It won’t do much good out there,” he cautioned as he slid off the safety.