Shadows in Flight, enhanced edition

door open," said Ender.
    But Sergeant was already getting a pry bar from the Puppy's exterior tool rack. After a few minutes: "There's a little give, but I think the door isn't hinged. I think it slides."
    Ender laughed. "Come on, you two. Think like a Formic! You're trying to open the door as if it were designed for a human to pass through. Formic tunnels are low and wide."
    Sergeant muttered a few unpleasant words and then began to rerig the Puppy to pull the door in the direction the Formics would have thought of as down.
    It was slow, pulling against the drag of interior machinery, but it slid open. There was an airlock, and an inner door. Sergeant closed the outer door, and opened the inner one.
    The visual from Sergeant's helmet showed almost nothing, even when Carlotta enlarged it to fill the holospace.
    "Switch on a light," said Ender.
    "Light forward," said Sergeant, sounding annoyed. Didn't he like Ender making obvious suggestions? Poor boy.
    The visual now showed a low tunnel, with tunnels branching off in a couple of directions.
    "Nobody there to greet you," said Carlotta. "They're all dead."
    "Or they laid a trap," said Ender. "Go on in and see."
    Sergeant reacted to Ender's taunt by blanking the display.
    "Hey!" protested Carlotta.
    "I warned you, Ender," said the Giant.
    "Why punish me ?" demanded Carlotta.
    "Come on," said Ender. "They're dead, there's no danger."
    "Wrong," said the Giant.

     
    The display came back on. It was obvious that Sergeant had indeed slid into the low tunnel. It was tall enough that Sergeant was probably sitting up.
    "There was motion a moment ago," said the Giant. "While you were wasting my time with your immature behavior."
    "Ender's immature behavior," said Carlotta.
    "Which you just matched," said the Giant. "Sergeant is in a dangerous place and you're wasting --"
    Motion in the display. Lots of motion. A dozen small creatures emerging from side tunnels and beelining toward Sergeant.
    "Get out of there," said the Giant.
    At once the display jiggled and swiveled nauseatingly as Sergeant threw himself feetfirst back into the airlock.
    The airlock door was half closed when two of the small creatures launched themselves through the door. One went for Sergeant's body, one for his helmet. It blocked at least one of the viewers, so the image lost its depth and went flat.
    "Open the airlock!" shouted Carlotta. Sergeant apparently had the presence of mind to remember where the lever was that controlled the outer door.
    "Catch one and hold on to it," said Ender.
    "You're a cold marubo," said Carlotta, not admiringly. But it was the right thing to do, and they both knew it.
    The creature partially blocking the helmet's viewers blew away.
    "I've got the one on my body," said Sergeant. "It's trying to eat through my suit."
    "Get rid of it," said the Giant urgently.
    "No, I'm holding it by the back now, away from me. It's just wriggling now. It's not sentient."
    "How do you know?" asked the Giant.
    "Because it's stupid," said Sergeant. "Quick but dumb, like a crab maybe."
    "Get back to the Puppy," said the Giant.
    "It's an air-breather," said the Sergeant. "Or maybe it just likes atmospheric pressure, because it finally stopped wriggling."
    "Flash frozen," said Ender. "Good way to gather specimens. Except for the destruction of every cell in its body."
    "We'll still be able to tell a lot about it," said Carlotta. "When he gets it back here."
    "You mean I'll be able to tell a lot about it," said Ender.
    "Are you going to keep what you find a secret from us?" asked Sergeant. "Or will we all know?"
    "He's just being a brat," said Carlotta. "I don't know what's got into him."
    "He's jealous because I got to do something important for once," said Sergeant.
    The words stung because they were more than a little bit true.
    "It looks to me," said Ender, "as if the rats have taken over the ship."
    "Oh, that's too much," said Carlotta, standing up and facing Ender in a rage. "Sergeant risked his life while you sat here all cozy and --"
    "Carlotta, stand down," said the Giant's voice -- over the intercom this time, instead of coming through the computer. "Ender wasn't talking about our ship."
    Carlotta instantly understood. "So you think that creature Sergeant caught is just ... vermin?"
    "Maybe it had some other function before," said Ender, "or they wouldn't have had them on their ship. But they're vermin now."
    "Sergeant will be back in a minute," the Giant said, "and we have to take this