Only six of the Eden Project colonists stayed on sentry duty on the overlook to keep an eye out for roaming ZEDs. Still, the baleful eye of the double moon lunar eclipse filled the sky, soaking the silent landscape surrounding them in uncharacteristic rusty red half light.

Morgan Martin sat with his back to their space ship pilfered solar powered food hydrolizer and just helplessly watched as another scary event unfolded even further out in front of him. He knew the boy was dying. That was obvious. He didn't want to admit it to any of the others, but stressful situations always made him hungry. "That's just the opposite of what happens to everybody else." he mumbled to himself unhappily as he checked the charge on his armed Mag-pro for what seemed like the five hundredth time that day automatically. His stomach lashed out at him in an audible spastic growl. Restlessly, he yanked up a handful of yellow eye stalks that were watching him dutifully at the edge of the tent's door and started eating them, eyes first. "Yum." he groused sarcastically. "Nothing like chewing up a few fresh G889 mobile fries." Morgan attempted to mask their flavor with a few shakes of Earth salt from his private cylinder stash, but it didn't work and he gagged anyway as he swallowed each bite.

The rest of the group had reconvened in the med tent. Their nervousness had been greatly eased by the Balancer's overtures of friendship and her offer of social bonding, but not completely. Devon asked the one question everybody else was avoiding. "Balancer, why do you need to speak to us through this machine?" she asked, tapping one of Zero's limp arms where he stood next to her at the head of Uly's bed.

"It is not yet the time of the Crawlers. They awaken when the star that warms this world touches their glossomer lattice's heart. It is through these places that I find the Three, our home destinations." replied the absent Terrian.

Johnathon startled and his mouth flopped wide open. "D-Do you mean the radioactive spiders? The ones that join far places together inside of caves?"

Beside him, Devon became equally excited. "John! Maybe that's a faster way for us to travel to the edge of the Phage zone. Balancer, do you know if we can get to any of these tesserect locations? W- We know how to use them, and if we can again, we will be in a better position to help all of you." she gasped excitedly.

The Balancer tilted Zero's head. "Tesserect?"

Julia sighed at the scientific term. It was an Earth concept, one that might prove to be difficult to explain to an alien. But then the mind of a child solved the problem.

True demonstrated with a string between her fingers, first stretched out arms wide. Then she brought her finger tips together in a tap, folding the length of the string up until there was no distance along its length. "A point that folds up and shortens a longer journey between doorways."

Balancer raised one of Zero's arms in a leaping gesture. "Transitting... A Moon Cross?"

"Yes!" shouted Yale, the cyborg tutor. "Those. Yours must be the same thing. Why haven't we noticed this before like with Mary's Moon Cross?"

True looked at the teacher wryly. "Those pools were filled with acid. As far as we knew, those Terrians were walking down to their deaths." she remembered.

"The pool does not kill as mist. Only when it becomes heavy and flows." replied Balancer.

"Like in all the lakes and rivers." Julia surmised. She leaned over the bed and set the medi-arm's palm and fingers over Uly's chest to monitor his weak breathing.

Zero/Balancer nodded their head module. "The sky star pushes the ground fog mists into a sinking layer that is richer in presence."

"It goes liquid in sunlight?" Bess asked. "That would explain why our rainfalls are water and not acid." she said happily. "I've always wondered how that could be."

"It jives. We always seem to only see that odd yellow mist inside of caves." Danziger agreed. "Especially in Mary's Moon Pool."

"When it floats, it is both Arrival and Departure for our clans." the Terrian shared.

The babble in the tent increased as people threw out sudden ideas and their thoughts and fears.

Morgan then stated the obvious and made his voice louder over the noise. "Whoa, whoa whoa..guys. Think a little bigger huh? The big mission's off, right? We're not stuck with meeting up with anybody in New Pacifica any more. Because we're too weak on resources. This world's dying. We need food, right? And it's disappearing on us as fast as we can run. Why don't we go to one of the Moons instead, to Balancer, and use it as a emergency refuge? Going to one of those natural satellites might buy us time until we can solve the issue here."

A stunned silence covered the group.

Balancer filled it. "You are not Terrian. No other origin life is able to choose to step onto another home place."

Devon was persistent. "We are not origin life. We're not from G889. We're from Earth. And we are people, like Terrians. Will you let us try? Will you take us through Moon Cross?"

The Balancer was about to answer when a warble alert snapped into active.
A sudden shout peeled over the head gear network all the humans wore. **ZEDs!** came Cameron's frantic shout. **One of the d mn things are near by. Nearly shot my head off with a worm bullet! It hit a tree behind us!**

John, Devon, Yale, Alonzo and Bess all flicked into the gear realm once their magpros were shouldered with carrying straps and charged.

The inky black void of emergency sensor mode surrounded them. A 3D positional map was already played out before their eyes showing where Cameron was, and where a new menacing green light pointed, stationary bogie stood on a nearby sandy mountain ridge.

**Are you hurt?** Devon spoke over VR.

**No, should I come to camp? It already knows where we are!** Cameron answered.

**Hurry back. We'll fortify up and go hunt it down using our smaller sized people. There might be more out there!** Danziger warned.

**God forbid.** murmured Cameron. **There in one!**

Devon flipped back into the real world and faced the visiting remote Terrian. "Balancer, we need our machine, Zero, back. Our lives are in danger. Let us use him again."

"The interrogators come?" said Balancer.

"Yes. We call them ZEDs. They're shooting at us with their capture weapons. We need to defend ourselves!" Adair told her.

"I will go."

"Can you return before the three hours of this total eclipse are up?" Devon asked her.

There came a crashing sound as the six sentries stumbled into the tent, aiming their magpros behind them, covering their tracks and the way they had come.

"Yes. I will return before the end." And just like that, the rag doll pose on Zero clicked off. The sentry robot's voice module warped in. "Warning. One biped detected. Two deployed incendiaries are in final countdown." Zero's protection program reported.

"Two? There must be more than one of these guys for sure then. It takes s ZED ten minutes for it to reload and fire another wormie. That's what I figured out the last time we were attacked." Cameron huffed, out of breath from his desperate bolt into cover.

"Where are those landed bullets?!" roared John. "Zero, give me the coordinates through VR."

"Here." shared Zero. "They are both inside indigenous plant life cores."

"Julia!" Devon shouted.

"I'm on it. I'll get them out and throw them over the sand dune cliff into the lake. Who's with me?" Julia asked, snatching up her surgical bag which contained drills and forceps probing tools. Perfect for digging worm bullets out of tree wood.

"I'll go." said Bess volunteered.

"No, Bess!" begged Morgan. "It's too dangerous out there to bomb defuse!"

"It's more dangerous for you. I'm one of the small folks, Morgan. See? Even True's arming up. She'll be the last of us targetted if it comes to that. Stay here and guard Uly. Of all of us, he's the most important. If we lose him, we'll lose this world for anybody who survives this attack. You heard it from Balancer."

Morgan minced and felt his gorge rise even higher in a nauseating wave. "Okay, just... be careful, Bess."

"I always am." Bess said, kissing him fiercely.

"The rest of you. Let's confront directly. No hiding today." Danziger ordered. The Eden Project group fanned out, on a mission to save themselves from an encounter with the planet's worst version of instant Hell.

Devon ran out of the med tent with John and Alonzo close behind her. She was close to panicking. "We need a cave. Better concealment in a cave. We can seal it off.." she sobbed, worried for her son. She flung her back against the food hydrolizer and flipped on her VR's eye piece as a lifesign detector.

"We're nowhere near those kinds of rocks." Danziger told her. "They're at least fifteen clicks away by landrover."

"Then where are they shooting from?!" Adair demanded, highly frightened.

"Up there." Alonzo pointed, confirming his green dot tracing that Zero had given them. "They're in the trees."

"And we're in a dead forest full of them." Danziger grunted. "Terrific. This is bad."

"This is really bad." Alonzo retorted. "We need a game plan. A...a...a distraction!"

Johnathon gestured to True. He could see her belly crawling underneath a land rover to get closer to them. The Magpro she dragged behind her was bigger than she was.
"Think that Kitty chasing the snack trick will work a second time?" he asked her.

"Kitty's only got six claws to flick." True shared. "And we're out of food bars, Dad. I haven't figured out what else he likes and might go after. I haven't had time yet."

"We'll think of something else." Solace said grimly. "We always do."

"Zero!" Johnathon shouted.

"Sir?" came the robot's reply.

"Do you know how to use Uly's Terrian staff yet?" the mechanic asked.

"I think so, sir. I've been analyzing my observed parameters on it since-"

"Pick it up and use it as soon as possible. Get as close to any ZED as you can. Don't let them shoot out your eye sensors!"

"I will endeavor to do my best, sir."

Suddenly, there came a whistling hiss in the distance, growing louder by the second. A worm bullet in flight.

"Everybody down!" Alonzo warned, frantically searching VR's air grid and the sky beyond that for any sign of a directional.

Pfffttt! came the sound of impact. True screamed as a gush of blood suddenly spurted out of her side. She collapsed. "They hit me! They hit me, Dad!"

Johnathon lunged forward and grabbed his daughter by the legs. He flung her up over a shoulder, then stood up and yanked open the door of the land rover and dragged the door shut behind them into an awkward huddle. He snatched down a medkit from a back wall and fumbled with the catches. "Hang on, True. How bad is it? Talk to me.." he sobbed.

" Idunknowwhhh...A-are we safe?" she drowsed, dazed.

"They can't get us in here. Bullet proof glass, hon." he promised, stroking her face to keep her awake.

She puffed through her mouth, panting laborously. "They're not supposed to go after tiny. I'm tinier than- AhhhhHH!" she gasped as her father ripped open her shirt to get to the fresh wound beneath. "Did it go in? Oh, G*d don't let it be burrowing in." the little girl writhed.

Johnathon pulled the ugly tears of skin flaps apart. He celebrated with a cry of relief. "It missed.. I think it missed, Half Pint..." Danziger grunted, breathing fast as he closed up the hideous bloody holes with his fingers and patched over it with dermaflex. "There are two holes here. It went in and past. Just grazed your rib cage." He reached for his daughter's carotid pulse to see where it sat for rate. Her face was pale and sweaty, but not yet blue.

"Got to find the bullet, Dad." she hissed in pain, her eyes closed. "We could still blow up."

In sudden panic, Danziger waved the others out of the way and fired up the land rover, lurching its controls to full forward. The cab lumbered jerkily straight ahead and away from the clump of ashy dead trees behind it.

Seconds later, a small blossom of the incendiary inside of the worm bullet exploded, blasting apart the foilage that had stopped it after it passed through True's body. Three tree husks suddenly vaporized. What was left of the debris and fire spread out and dissipated harmlessly.

Danziger got on his head gear as True fainted in shock in his arms. He tilted her head back so she could continue to breathe on her back. **Julia, True took a torso hit.**

**What?! I'm coming back.**

**No, don't. She's fine. It didn't penetrate past the chest wall. Disarming those two wild shot WB's have priority. They might be near the med tent!**

**I see where you both are. Keep an eye out for lung contusions if she's unconscious. Force of impact might have damaged inside aveoli tissue anyway. Keep her breathing until I get there. We've just found the first one in Cameron's tree trunk.** Heller snapped. She and Bess were contorted in a huddle of branches, quickly working up to reach the bore hole where they could hear the bullet chewing.

**Watch out! Their timers seem to be set to random detonation times. Ours blew in a minute and a half.** Danziger changed tactics. **Zero! They're not sizing any more. Defend everybody equally. It's the best option!**

**Understood, sir.** replied the robot and the ripple from the others as they acknowledged the horrific discovery.

Inside of the medical tent, Morgan was hiding beneath Uly's cot. He had one of Uly's hands dangling down and he was holding it so tightly, its fingers were turning white. "Wake up you stupid kid. We need your dreamscaping pronto! ZEDs are coming! I sure hope you can hear me in there!" Martin shouted, scared beyond terror.

Somewhere far away, and somewhere very deep, a mental light glimmered into being inside of Uly's head.