“Tell me it isn’t always like this,” I said to Tom. “Trees being chucked at us by a kaiju, I mean.”
“First time it’s ever happened to me,” Tom promised.
The speakers clicked on again. “Gold Team, just reported into Tanaka Base. You’ll be happy to know Kevin’s tracker is safe and sound and reporting in from eighty klicks away,” Perez-Schmidt said. “Best thinking is one of his parasites dislodged it somehow. Anyway, now some of us will have a new mission on the schedule, getting him another tracker. Sorry about the surprise. If we’d known, we’d have taken her up before we hit land. The good news is we’re still on schedule and we don’t anticipate any more surprises between here and base.” He clicked off.
“No one anticipates surprises,” Kahurangi said. “That’s what makes them surprises.”
In the distance now, there was a mournful cry of a mountain in pain.
CHAPTER
7
About fifteen minutes before arrival, a Gold Team member walked through the cabin, distributing hats and gloves. Everyone took them, and so did we. The gloves looked suspiciously small, as did the hat, which looked like a cap with a veil that went all the way around.
“This looks like a jellyfish,” I said. “A small one.”
“It stretches,” Tom said. “So do the gloves. Put them on. The veil attaches to your suit like Velcro. Get a good seal.” He nodded to Aparna and Kahurangi, both of whom had long hair. “You’ll want to tuck your hair into your cap.”
“Well, this is a fashion statement,” Niamh said, when we had all put on our accessories.
“I’m guessing insects,” Aparna said. “Bitey ones.”
“You’re not wrong,” Tom said.
“How bad are they?”
Tom smiled. “The good news is, it’s only until we get to the base proper. The bad news is, that’s two hundred meters.”
“Look.” Niamh pointed out the window. “I think we’re here.”
Out of the trees was a clearing, either a natural or man-made meadow. On one side of it, on pylons, was an immense wooden hangar, accompanied by smaller hangars on each side. I assumed the large one was for the Shobijin, and the smaller ones for things like helicopters or tinier airships. This suspicion was confirmed as I saw what looked like a two-person helicopter being towed out onto an adjoining pad. A small distance away was another platform that looked like it held, of all things, a refinery. Farther out, another platform, holding an array of solar panels and three lazily turning vertical wind turbines.
Some distance away from all of that was the Shobijin’s mooring station, alongside which were mobile gangways that led to a platform raised off the meadow floor. From the platform, a walkway stretched up and over into a gathering of sequoia-size trees. Among the trees were wooden platforms and walkways and buildings, the whole affair swaddled in what looked like fine nettings and coverings.
“That’s Tanaka Base?” I asked.
“It is.”
“Did you mean to make it look like an Ewok village, or was that just an accident?”
“Well, technically speaking, Tanaka predates the Ewok village by a couple of decades. So it looks like us.”
“Does George Lucas know that?”
“He might.”
The Shobijin was maneuvered into her moorings and the gangways extended. We had officially landed. People got up and grabbed their things.
“Ready?” Tom said.
The doors opened. We shuffled out, stepped through the doorway onto the gangplank, and were immediately swarmed by apparently all the small flying insects that ever existed in the history of the universe.
“Jesus,” Kahurangi said, swatting.
“Don’t swat,” Tom said to him. “It just encourages them.”
“They’re very excited to eat me.”
“It’s not personal, they want to eat everyone. Just keep walking.”
“Is this usual?” I asked.
“This is light,” Tom said. He pointed to Tanaka Base, which everyone was moving speedily toward. “Now you know why the whole place is screened in.”
“You could have warned me about the danger of being exsanguinated in my first five minutes here,” I said.
“It gets better,” he said. “Watch.” He pointed to the long walkway into the base, which was covered and screened. As we got closer, I heard the sound of fans blowing air forcefully away from the entrance of the covered walkway, blowing away the swarm as they did so. Ten steps into the covered walkway and the number of flying insects had dropped from dangerous to merely annoying. Twenty-five steps in and they were mostly gone.