The spin-spider itself was a dark mass in the upper corner of her vision. She wondered if it had already started moving towards the point where she would impact the net -- or if it would wait until she was embedded in its sticky threads. The spider looked like an expanded, splayed-open version of an Air-pig. Each of its six legs was a mansheight long, and its open maw would be wide enough to enfold her torso.

Even the suit wouldn't protect her.

She swiveled her hips and beat at the Magfield with her legs, trying to shed her velocity. But she'd been going as rapidly as she could; she wouldn't be able to stop in time. She looked quickly around the sky. Perhaps she could divert rather than stop, fly safely around the trap. But she couldn't even see the edges of the web: spin-spider webs could be hundreds of mansheights across.

The web exploded out of the sky. She could see thick knots at the intersection of the threads, the glistening stickiness of the lines themselves.

She curled into a ball and tucked her suited arms over her head.

How could she have been so stupid as to fall into such a trap? Lur and Wesa, even through their tears, would think her a fool, when they heard. She imagined her father's voice: "Always look up- and downflux. Always. If you scare an Air-piglet, which way does it move? Along the flux paths, because it can move quickest that way. And that's why predators set their traps across the flux paths, waiting for anything stupid enough to fly straight into an open mouth..."

She wondered how long the spin-spider would take to clamber down to her. Would she still be conscious when it peeled open her Hero's suit as if unwrapping a leaf, and began its work on her body?

...A mass came hurtling from her peripheral vision, her left, towards the web. She flinched and looked up. Had the spider left its web and come for her already?

But it was the Hero. Somehow he'd chased her, kept track of her clumsy arrowing through the sky -- and all without her realizing it, she thought ruefully. He carried his sword, his shining blade of Corestuff, in his bony hand.

...But he was too late; already the first strands of webbing were clutching at her suit, slowing her savagely.

In no more than a few heartbeats she came to rest, deep inside the web. Threads descended before her face and laid themselves across her shoulders, arms and face. She tried to move, but the webbing merely tightened around her limbs. It shimmered silver and purple all around her, a complex, three-dimensional mesh of light.

The web shuddered, rattling her body inside its gleaming suit. The spin-spider was approaching her, coming for its prize...

"Thea! Thea!"