Triangular blue tubes coursed through bedrock, sparkling with energy, pulsating at each juncture, like neural signals in some vast underground brain.
Janine sat up, startled, her coke beeping insistently, her dream fading.
The spider-bot was alerting her it had obtained the samples she"d requested.
She was out of bed in a moment and only the icy floor reminded her she needed to dress. Pants, shoes, shirt and jacket, and Janine was out the door, valise in hand.
The compound, although fenced, had only a cursory gate which always stood open. She headed for the nearest hover and cursed it to life, its liftoff slow, comming Doctor Carson.
Her geopositioner showed the spider-bot a mile down the hill, at the marina. Engines screaming, the hover banked and shot that way, the bay-side cluster
