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out to catch her, but she didn't need his help. She landed on all fours on the sprawling surface.
    Wilcox scanned the electronic blueprint. “I'm making sure we're in the right place. The technicians set us down within a very small error tolerance… but I don't like that word 'error.' ”
    On the hand-held screen, he displayed the complex ULSI circuit map. A blip showed their location. Unfortunately, the dot itself was larger than several blocks of circuit paths. Not much help there. He tried to align the blueprint with parallel lines and intersecting overpasses, connected metal pathways doped with impurities to create semiconductor switches and electron gates.
    “This place looks like the L.A. freeway system, only designed by someone on hallucinogenic drugs.'
    “Figure it out, Garrett. Just think of it as a video game.”
    Tomiko knew the basic principles of large-scale integrated circuits. A thin metal film was deposited on a slice of semiconductor, usually germanium or silicon. Shining through a mask, short-wavelength x-ray lithography exposed the circuit pattern, which was then etched away, leaving only a dense lace of microscopic wires, finer than split hairs. The whole circuit, smaller than a thumbnail, contained millions of transistors and linking wires in a complete super-processing and memory unit.
    The team was supposed to discover why the pattern didn't work, but it was just a practice exercise. Their real mission into the alien capsule would begin that afternoon. They had to prove themselves here first, one last time.
    Wilcox finally pinpointed their position. He frowned. “Two paths from where we're supposed to be. We need to cross over to the right circuit line.”
    “Okay, let's move it.” She gestured over the edge to the old medical specialist standing like an ant below. “Come on up, Doctor P, and drop down your guy wire. I might need to catch you.” She knew how tough it could be to maneuver against air currents and random molecular motion at their tiny size.
    Far below, the elderly Russian man leaped into the air with a burst of compressed gas. As she'd feared, the doctor shot past the plateau edge, tumbling without slowing. “Come on, Garrett—grab him.” Tomiko reached out with acrobatic grace to snag the dangling rope and gave it a short, hard yank. The Newtonian counter-motion lifted her off the surface, but Wilcox caught her just as Pirov landed hard.
    All three studied the maze looping across the silicon plain. Holding up his illuminated circuit map, Wilcox pointed out the lines and corners they'd need to follow. “There, and then there. Turn right and take that forty-five-degree cross-connector and we'll find ourselves in the right spot.”
    “All right, Garrett, you've convinced me you're qualified to be a navigator.”
    “And a pilot, among my many skills. Just wait until we get inside that alien body, and I'll dazzle you.”
    Pirov squinted along the line Wilcox indicated. “I believe I see a dark discontinuity along the path.” From his belt, he removed a small pair of Soviet-made high-powered binoculars. “That flaw may be what we were sent to find.”
    “Let's go have a look. We'll go faster using the jetpacks, and we need to learn how to maneuver with them anyway.” Wilcox looked over at Tomiko. “Want to race?”
    Pirov looked at his watch, concerned. “Forty-four minutes remaining.”
    “Plenty of time.” Tomiko fired her jets and sailed along, the barest fraction of a millimeter above the intricate surface. “Follow the yellow-brick road.”
    Cruising along like remoras, the three of them approached the blemish Pirov had spotted. It looked like two twisted hairs as big as telephone poles embedded within the gold wall, pitch black and with an outer structure of layered scales, like fossilized trees.
    “Whoa, what is that?” Wilcox asked.
    At the age of eight, Tomiko had spent a week in Petrified Forest National Park, while her father filmed his classic Desert