have been that I was looking for you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you that the escudo green is pale."

"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what is this thing you have about spiders?"

"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite for supper."

"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider, Orison," he said.

She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature, flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked. "Here. You hold him."

"I'd rather not," she protested.

"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.

Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.

"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.

"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."

"What do they do?" Orison asked.

"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."

"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus, perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.

"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder, comfortably close. "They're 

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