Web of Fire Bind-up (33 page)

The lucky ones managed to evacuate and get picked up by other crews. Those less fortunate were never seen again. Over a hundred ant crews had been lost in this way and now all Earth missions were cancelled until further notice.

Jancy had several teams of his best engineers working on the problem, but so far no malfunctions had been discovered.

It was proving to be a logistical nightmare and now, as if that wasn't bad enough, he had heard rumours that another major attack was being planned against the people of Earth. Not that this bothered Jancy in itself – Earth would certainly be a whole lot better off without them – but it meant that General Martock was breathing down his neck, insisting that the ant problem be rectified immediately. Martock was the Emperor Odoursin's second-in-command and he was not a man to be crossed.

Jancy shut his eyes and sighed. He knew that if he didn't sort this one out pretty quickly he would be ‘relieved of duty' as the government liked to put it. He was just beginning to imagine some of the horrible things they might do to him when there was a knock at the door and he opened his eyes to see Alya, the new research assistant, standing in the doorway of his office. She was young, keen, and quite pretty, Jancy thought.

He also thought that he didn't need any interruptions right now.

‘I think I know what your problem is,' Alya said, and walked into the office.

Jancy frowned, adjusted his glasses and peered over them at her in order to make a point. The point being that junior research assistants do not just barge into their superior's office whenever they feel like it.

‘Young lady. Firstly, I was not aware that I had a problem. Secondly, if I
did
have a problem then I believe I would have more sense than to share it with you.'

Alya blushed and began to look uncomfortable. Jancy watched her tuck a wisp of long, black hair behind her ear and waited for her to explain herself.

‘I'm sorry – I didn't mean…'

Satisfied that her discomfort had reached an appropriate level, Jancy gestured towards an empty chair next to his desk. He had heard that she was a good student who worked hard for the company and decided, for once, to be magnanimous.

‘So tell me,' he said in the more kindly, indulgent tones of an uncle listening to a slow-witted niece, ‘what is my problem and what should I do about it?'

Alya folded her hands in her lap and looked at him with serious brown eyes.

‘The ants,' she said. ‘I think they're infected.'

‘Infected?' Jancy raised an eyebrow quizzically. ‘With what, may I ask?'

‘With a parasitic worm,' Alya replied.

‘I see,' said Jancy. He smiled patiently. ‘Perhaps you would like to explain?'

Taking Jancy's tone to be a sign of encouragement, Alya continued with renewed confidence.

‘Well… Like a lot of parasites, the worm has to move between several different hosts before it can reproduce successfully. In this case it needs to live inside snails and ants before moving on to sheep.'

Jancy studied the young woman carefully as she spoke and decided that he was not dealing with a fool. She knew what she was talking about, and Jancy's interest stepped up a gear.

‘Go on.'

‘The worm starts life as an egg which is eaten by a snail. The worm hatches out inside the snail before being expelled in a ball of slime. The slime is then eaten by an ant which in turn is eaten by a sheep. The worm is then released into the bloodstream of the sheep to continue the next stage of its life cycle.'

Jancy shook his head. ‘But sheep don't naturally eat ants. They eat grass. They might occasionally eat an ant by mistake, but surely there's too great an element of chance for it to be a reliable method of transmission?'

‘That's just it,' said Alya, leaning forward excitedly. ‘Don't you see? It isn't left to chance at all. The worm instinctively knows that, under normal circumstances, an ant is unlikely to be eaten by a sheep. So somehow, it rewires the ant's brain and suddenly, all the ant wants to do is climb to the top of a blade of grass and
hang around until a sheep comes along and eats it. The worm has actually figured out a way of
controlling
the ant's behaviour.'

Jancy narrowed his eyes and looked at her.

‘Prove it,' he said.

The double doors swung open and Jancy led the way through the sterile neon glare of the insect labs to an area where one of the research teams was carrying out its investigation. The head of a malfunctioning ant had been recovered from Earth and brought back for analysis. Sections of the head had been dismantled and various switches and circuit boards were laid out on workbenches. Coloured electrical wires hung like spaghetti from the remaining head section which had been hoisted onto a tall scaffolding tower to allow better access.

The engineer in charge, a thin, arrogant looking man called Frinser, clambered down from the tower clutching a screwdriver and a handful of crocodile clips.

Jancy nodded. ‘How's it going?'

Frinser threw the clips and screwdriver onto a bench and shook his head.

‘Can't find anything wrong,' he said. ‘We've checked nearly all of the circuits and they're fine, sweet as the day we installed 'em.' He wiped his hands on his overalls and shrugged. ‘I don't suppose,' he added pointedly, ‘we could be talking about driver error here?'

Alya stepped forward. ‘Maybe you should check the brain stem.'

Frinser threw Jancy a
Who the hell is this?
look. Then he stared back at Alya and gave her a condescending smile.

‘I don't know who you are, my dear, but you obviously don't know much about bio-mechanics. You see, there is really no need to go delving down into sensitive brain tissue. All our electrical connections are made directly to neurons on the periphery of the brain. If we were to start rooting around in the central brain cortex we'd cause all kinds of damage.' His smile widened. ‘Didn't they teach you that at college?'

Alya smiled back. ‘I guess not,' she said. She walked across to the work bench and picked up what appeared to be a small silver torch. ‘A cellular restructuring beam,' she said. ‘Mind if I borrow it?'

‘Hey!' Frinser protested. ‘Don't mess with that!'

Jancy put a hand on his arm and quietened him. ‘Let her be,' he said.

The two men watched as Alya climbed the scaffolding tower and pointed the CRB at the ant's head. There was a blue flash and a hole the size of a football appeared just below the ant's antennae.

‘What's she doing?' hissed Frinser.

‘I think,' said Jancy acidly, ‘she may just be doing your job for you.'

With a loud squelch, Alya thrust her arm deep into the hole and cautiously began to feel around inside the ant's head.

Frinser winced and mumbled something under his breath.

Suddenly, Alya gave a shout, dropped the CRB and braced herself against the metal scaffolding poles. Plunging her other arm into the gaping hole she leaned backwards and pulled hard. There was a sucking, slurping sound like a wet flannel being dragged through a tube and then without warning a white, slimy worm as thick as a man's arm came slithering out into the light. With a final grunt Alya turned her body around, flicking her arms so that the worm flew from her hands and landed, writhing and twisting, at Frinser's feet.

Alya climbed down the scaffolding, returned the CRB to the bench and dried her hands on a towel. Then she turned to the white-faced Frinser and smiled.

‘They didn't teach me that in college either,' she said.

Frinser tried to speak, but all he could do was stare into space, opening and closing his mouth like a drowning man.

Alya held up a hand. ‘Please,' she told him. ‘No need to thank me.' Then she turned to Jancy and saw that he was still looking down at the worm in amazement.

‘What do you think, Doctor?' she asked. ‘Do you want me to check the others?'

Jancy shook his head. ‘No need,' he replied. ‘I think that Frinser and his team should be able to manage on their own now. Don't you think so, Mr Frinser?'

Frinser blinked and came out of his shock-induced trance. ‘Yes, of course,' he said hurriedly. ‘We'll get on to it immediately.'

As Frinser walked off to gather his team together, Alya
turned to Jancy and said, ‘What do you want me to do, Doctor Jancy? I could help them if you like. I know which part of the brain the worms will be located in.'

Jancy took her by the arm and steered her towards the double doors. ‘I'm sure you do, my dear,' he said. ‘But I think I'd rather you came with me.'

He smiled.

‘You see, there are some people I'd like you to meet.'

Sam was about halfway down the mountain when he noticed two tiny black specks moving quickly across the white plains below him. At first he thought that it was just his eyes playing tricks on him, that he had merely been dazzled by the glare of sun on snow, but after closing his eyes for a few moments and then opening them again he saw that the black specks were getting nearer. They seemed to be travelling at an incredible speed and Sam guessed that it would only be a matter of minutes before they reached the mountain.

His recent experience with the fly told him that getting caught out in the open might not be such a good idea, so he ran towards a clump of pine trees and concealed himself behind their thick trunks.

A few minutes later he heard a curious
thwump, thwump
sound, as if something was travelling rapidly up the mountain and repeatedly hitting the powdery snow. The sound became progressively louder until
suddenly Sam heard a shout and a wet crunching noise. This was followed by another
thwump, thwump, thwump
and then the sound of laughter began to echo around the mountains.

Cautiously, Sam peered out from behind the trees. Crouched in the snow was a dark brown, very flat insect with a segmented body and keel-shaped head. Its body was covered in backward pointing bristles and its long hind legs were tensed as if it was ready to pounce at a moment's notice. Sam realised that he was staring at a very large flea. Sideways on, it looked like a squashed penny stood on end, but it was about the same size as a powerful sports motorbike and on either side of its head were silver handlebars with what appeared to be brake levers on the front. Its upper back had been sculpted and covered with a seat of thick, padded blue foam. Sitting on the flea with his boots just touching the snow was a young man with dark, shoulder-length hair and a week's worth of stubble on his chin. He wore a brown leather flying jacket and a pair of grubby blue trousers which were ripped above his left knee. He was laughing loudly and staring at the big snowdrift next to him.

Sam followed his gaze and saw that another flea was partially buried in the snow. A pair of boots waved languidly around in the air, as if their owner – who appeared to reside somewhere within the snowdrift – was not unduly worried by his new surroundings.

Sam looked back at the first man and suddenly remembered where he had seen him before. They had
been sitting together in a big hall, listening to Commander Firebrand discuss plans for an attack against Vermia. His hair was longer now and he no longer wore the neatly pressed uniform that Sam remembered, but he felt sure that it was the same person.

Wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes, the man climbed down from his flea, kicked out its side-stand and walked across to the snowdrift.

‘What y'doin' in there, Mump?' he called, still laughing. ‘Building an igloo?'

Mump.

Sam smiled a sudden smile of recognition, for in that moment he clearly remembered standing at the side of a swimming pool during his training as a wasp pilot, with the dark-haired man and another thin, gawky-looking man standing next to him.

Zip and Mump.

Sam got up from his hiding place and walked over to where the man was leaning forward to grab hold of the still waving boots.

‘Hi,' he said. ‘Need any help?'

In less time than it takes to blink the man dropped to one knee, pulled a silver hunting knife from his jacket and leapt at Sam with such speed and force that he was knocked backward into the snow.

‘Zip,' Sam gasped as he felt the cold steel of the blade press against his throat, ‘it's me, Sam.'

The pressure on his throat suddenly relaxed and as he stared up he saw Zip's astonished face silhouetted
against the grey winter sky. His eyes shone with amazement.

‘Sam?'
he said.
‘Sam Palmer?'

Sam grinned, which isn't easy when you've just had the wind knocked out of you.

‘Yeah,' he said. ‘It's me.'

The next thing he knew, Zip was pulling him to his feet and grabbing him in the biggest, roughest, most welcoming bear hug he had ever experienced.

‘Sam, my
man
!' he said, lifting Sam up so that his feet were several centimetres above the snow. ‘I don't believe it! You're alive!' He set Sam down on the snow again and took a step back to take a proper look at him. ‘Oh boy, this is just incredible. I can't… I mean, this is amazing. Unbelievable. We heard you got killed in the attack.'

Sam shrugged. ‘I don't really remember much about it. All I know is – here I am.'

Zip scratched at his stubble and shook his head in disbelief.

‘And you look… oh, just you wait ‘til Mump hears about this!'

He looked at Sam and then they both turned towards the snowdrift where the boots had started to flail and kick at the air with a newfound urgency.

‘Uh-oh,' said Zip. ‘Time we defrosted him, I reckon.'

Running across to the snowdrift, they each grabbed a boot and pulled. For a few seconds there was only the muffled sound of grunting as Sam and Zip tugged determinedly at his legs; Mump had obviously been travelling
at high speed when he hit the snow and drilled himself down deep. But then, in a slither of ice, Mump emerged swearing and spluttering into the light. He tried unsuccessfully to stand up but lost his balance and fell down again, wobbling around on all fours like a baby polar bear. Finally deciding it was all too much effort, he rolled over onto his back and lay with his arms by his sides, gazing up at the sky.