Hunted Earth - The Ring Of Charon Part 26

"Then I'm getting started," Marcia said. She knelt down at the far end of the tunnel, in front of the hole at its end, pulled a rock hammer from hersuit's equipment belt and started chipping more rock away, making the opening large enough for people in pressure suits to get through. Jansen pulled out her own hammer and set to work alongside her. Either because he judged there wasn't enough room for a third person to work, or out of sheer blue funk, McGillicutty did not choose to join them.

It didn't much matter. It was the work of only a few minutes to make the gap big enough. Jansen, a little handier with a hammer after ten years of field geology, smoothed out the rough edges of the enlarged hole in a few practiced swings of her hammer. She stuck her head through and took a look around. "It's empty," she announced, "as least as far as I can tell. There's a pretty steep grade downward, but there's a ledge of some sort about ten meters down. I'm going to scoot down feet first, just like in the tunnel."

She pulled her head back in, drove a rockspike into the tunnel wall, rigged a line through it, and disappeared, feet first, through the hole.

McGillicutty hesitated for a moment, obviously torn between his fears of going next and being left behind. The latter apparently worried him more, for he abruptly got up, went to the hole, and forced himself through it, moving with the air of a man who was hurrying before he could change his mind.

Marcia followed after him, wondering if she was moving fast for the same reason. She was grateful that getting down to the ledge below required all of her concentration. It would not do to think too hard about exactly what they were getting themselves into.

But then she was down on the ledge, with no distractions to keep her from seeing what surrounded her.

Even without an invader outside, even if it had been a cavern formed by some other, more naturalmeans, the view would have been spectacular. They stood near the bottom of a huge ovoid laid on its side. The ledge was a groove sliced into the rock that seemed to run from one end of the hollow to the other. Marcia spotted other grooves, s.p.a.ced evenly around the circ.u.mference of the chamber.

Except one end of the chamber wasn't there anymore. It had been smashed away by the creature that had escaped from this place, leaving only jagged edges behind. Light, turned warm and ruddy by the pink Martian sky, flowed in through the broken end, bathing the entire s.p.a.ce in ochers and pinks. It was, Marcia thought, as if they were standing inside a huge egg that had just been broken open.

And that wasn't far from wrong, come to think of it. That was a major hatchling out there.

But this egg was far from empty. There were dozens, hundreds, of machines, or what seemed to be machines, moving around its interior.

Fortunately, none of them seemed to take an interest in the three humans. Marcia tried to get a good look at one of them as it pa.s.sed close by, but it was moving too rapidly. She was left only with the vague impression of fast moving arms and legs, and bodies that looked vaguely like scorpions. Jansen was taking careful shots of the entire chamber, zooming in for close-ups of the scurrying machines.

Down at the far end, Marcia saw a series of dark holes that seemed to lead back into the unhollowed body of the asteroid. More scorpion machines were hurrying in and out of the holes. What looked like the ends of conveyor belts stuck out some of the holes, and rubbled rock was tumbling down out of them.

"Down by the open end," Jansen said. "Look!

They're slicing it up."

Marcia turned and looked. Teams of the robots-if they were robots-were crowded around the edge of the hollow, all the way around itscirc.u.mference, some of them hanging from the walls and roof of the chamber. They were using what seemed to be fusion torches, hacking huge chunks of rock off the asteroid. Now and again, one or two would fall, smashing down onto the floor of the chamber. A many-legged variant of the scorpion machine, with what looked like parts bins on its back, would rush up to the victims-and disa.s.semble them, using its many legs to sort the parts into the bins on its back. None of the other robots seemed to take any notice.

But then Marcia spotted something else. She saw a line of smaller robots, a different model, headless bipedal machines not more than a meter high. They were following each other in single file out from one of the holes in the rear wall of the chamber. They had two stubby arms each, with pincerlike hands, and each was carrying an identical small brown bundle through the chamber and out onto the Martian surface.

Suddenly she understood. "Ants," she said.

"Think about ants, and look at that line of robots down there. Look at all of it, and tell me what you think of."

"Nature videos," McGillicutty said, free-a.s.sociating. "In grade school, here on Mars. I remember wondering why we were bothering to learn about weird animals on a planet fifty million kilometers away. The videos always seemed to have pictures of ants carrying-good G.o.d-ants carrying their eggs to safety."

"Jesus, yes," Jansen said. "And they have to carry them out to hatch on the surface because they're taking this whole d.a.m.n asteroid apart. Slicing up the front and tunneling up the rest of it so that they can chop it to bits the same way."

Marcia felt her blood racing. "Are either of you carrying a weapon?"

"Not really. Just an a.s.sault laser and a grenadelauncher," Jansen said sarcastically. "Are you out of your mind? Why the h.e.l.l would we be carrying weapons?"

"I didn't think you would be, I just hoped it.

Listen. In case you were forgetting, we have to get through that crowd down there. I don't know how good our odds are- but how much worse could they get if we grabbed one of the carrier robots and an egg on the way?"

"What? That would be suicidal!" McGillicutty sputtered. "There are thousands of them down there! We'd never get out if we attacked them.

They'd be all over us in a flash."

"I don't think so," Marcia said. She knelt down, and looked over the scene more carefully. There wasn't much she could say about the Lunar Wheel to Jansen. She didn't have clearance. She chose her words cautiously. "These things are related-somehow-to whatever is sending signals we've picked up from the Moon, and I've gotten some real data on them. The signals back and forth had more the flavor of computer programs than anything else. And not very flexible programs, at that. As if the systems could only handle certain types of situations. I don't believe these things are ready to handle the unexpected."

"So you're hoping that we qualify as unexpected?" Jansen asked.

"I'd say that was a safe bet," Marcia agreed. "I'd also say it'd be a safe bet we could learn a h.e.l.luva lot about these monstrosities if we had a few samples to work with-dissect, or disa.s.semble, or whatever. We need data, and this seems worth the risk."

"How do you know those things are even eggs?"

McGillicutty protested.

"We don't," Marcia replied in a voice that was firm and determined. Even so, her expression, as seen through her bubble helmet, betrayed heruncertainty and fear. "But it seems to me those things must at least be important. Whatever they are, they should be able to tell us a lot about our new friends."

Jansen nodded. "I agree," she said. "I think it's worth trying."

McGillicutty swallowed hard. This wasn't the way he lived life. This was no laboratory where he could shut the experiment down and walk away from it.

He had always known that he wasn't very good with people. He had always believed that his intelligence would compensate for that flaw. But intellect alone was not enough to cope with this situation. These two women were willing to walk even further into danger, in pursuit of some hypothetical advantage.

The three of them had no means of escape without confronting these monstrosities directly. He didn't even dare consider staying here to make his own attempt. He did not want to be alone. Or die alone, if it came to that. "Very well," he whispered. His voice sounded tense, high and reedy, even to himself. "How do you propose we do it?"

"Let's keep it simple," Marcia said. "This ledge we're on seems to lead clear to the end of this cavity. No one else seems to be using it, and it might keep us out of view. I say we walk down it as far as we can, then out onto the surface. We make our move out there. Those carrier robots don't look like they're made for open-field running, and maybe we can get some help from our own people. Jansen, have you got enough pictures?"

"From this angle, yes. Let's go."

Not quite willing to believe he was going along with this, McGillicutty followed the other two as they made their awkward way along the ledge. It was hard to focus on the simple job of moving forward. There were too many strange and inexplicable things all about them. Odd machine-creatures scuttled about the chamber, rushing about here and there. Weird shadows andflares of light cast themselves on the walls as the machines used their cutting torches and walked in front of them.

McGillicutty realized the stone was vibrating beneath his feet. He switched on his exterior mikes and listened to the sounds of the place.

Cluttering noises, the grinding of huge gears, the crash of falling rock and the roar of machinery all echoed in the huge chamber, weirdly faint and distant in the thin Martian air, even through the special sound boosters in his helmet. Shrieks and whispers that might have been machines and might have been some unseen and ghastly monster lurking, lying in wait for them just out of sight. He didn't know, and he didn't want to know. For the first time in his life, Hiram McGillicutty was confronted by mysteries he had not the slightest desire to solve. He was afraid, and saw the grave yawning wide before him.

The ledge ran on for most of the length of the chamber, but their luck ran out about thirty meters from the cavern entrance. A wall of shattered rock blocked the way, and they were forced to climb out into the open.

Their geology hammers were the closest any of them had to a weapon. Brandishing hers didn't exactly fill Jansen with confidence, but it was all she had. The open end of the chamber was even more chaotic than the central floor. The scorpion robots were everywhere. "Stick together, everyone," Jansen said. "Let's not get separated here."

She moved forward toward the open end of the asteroid, toward the beckoning daylight beyond, trying to keep them as far as possible from the busy crews of robots. It wasn't easy. Some of the broken rocks were the size of houses, blocking the way-and the view. Jansen found herself backtracking constantly when a path proved impa.s.sable. The going was rough, with smashed piles of loose rock everywhere. They were forced to climb and clamber,slipping and sliding over the heaps of stone. At least there was nothing to block their view up. Without the inviting signpost of the clean Martian sky to guide them forward, they never could have kept their bearings. As it was, the three of them were having trouble keeping each other in view.

In fact they were having more than trouble.

McGillicutty. Jansen spun around and looked behind herself. There was MacDougal, making her way down an unsteady boulder. But she was the only one there. McGillicutty was lost to view.

"McGillicutty!" she called into her radio, hoping the signal would get bounced off the rock walls so he could hear it out of line of sight. "Where are you?"

"Be... behind you, I think," his voice answered, thin and weak. "Backtrack a bit, but come slowly.

One of them is... looking at me."

"Sweet Jesus in heaven. Hang on." Jansen headed back the way they had come, up and over the rock MacDougal had just come down. MacDougal reversed course and followed her up.

The two women reached the top of the boulder at about the same moment, looked down-and froze.

McGillicutty was standing there, facing them, holding himself perfectly still. A scorpion was standing straight in front of him, towering over him. For a brief moment, Jansen was impressed that McGillicutty had the courage to stand his ground that way-until she realized that the little man was simply too terrified to move.

The scorpion moved a step closer to McGillicutty and Jansen drew in her breath. The thing was larger than she had thought. It stood on five pairs of segmented, claw-footed legs, holding its flat body a good two meters off the ground. At its forward end was a complex set of what Jansen a.s.sumed to be sensors, but nothing that she could recognize as a camera lens or an eye. It was at least three meterslong, a gleaming dull silver in color, all hard corners and mechanical brawn. Up close, it didn't resemble a scorpion-or any living thing-at all. It was cold, alien. Its two ma.s.sive arms reached toward McGillicutty. Jaw clamps at the ends of the arms opened, moved carefully forward, and the robot prodded the strange object it had found.

Jansen started to move forward, but MacDougal held her back. "This is the first time that one of these- things-has even noticed a human being.

We don't know how it will react-but if we get closer, we might make it feel threatened. Stay back.

Don't confuse the issue. McGillicutty-are you okay?"

They could see his face, albeit dimly, through his helmet, could see his jaw work, the fear sweat popping out on his round face. For a long moment he had trouble forming words. "Sc-sc-scared," he said at last. And that was the last of McGillicutty.

One of the two jaw-clamp arms moved forward and neatly snipped his head off, helmet and all. His corpse stood there for a moment, and then tottered forward, his blood's crimson splashing over the killer robot.

Jansen screamed, and Marcia grabbed her, pulled her back down the rock slab, away. Jansen resisted at first, insisting for a split second on looking, seeing the horror. But then no more. She turned and scrambled away, with no further thought than out, escape, far away. She hurried forward, unthinking, toward the cavern entrance.

She barreled into a line of the carrier robots, knocking two of them over, and neither knew nor cared. Terror, anger, horror coursed through her.

There. There was the very lip of the cavern. There.

She rushed forward, dimly aware that Marcia was behind her, calling to her, trying to calm her. But she ignored the voice in her headphones as she ignored everything but the last heap of rubble to get over. She scrabbled up the last bulwark in thejungle of stone, and found herself teetering on the brink of a straight fall. Without a moment's hesitation she heaved herself out, down onto the clean sands of Mars.

Whump. She landed on her stomach with a stunning jolt that served to clear her head for a moment. She looked up to see Marcia a good ten meters up, on the lip of the cavern, setting herself for a more cautious leap down.

Even in Mars's fairly gentle gravity, it was a long fall, and Marcia landed badly, sprawling out on her back for a moment before she got to her feet.

"Jesus. Sweet Jesus G.o.d in Heaven," Marcia said, and the words were a prayer. "He's dead in there.

Dead."

Jansen got to her feet and looked around, the chittering whispers of panic still flitting about her mind. "We're not safe," she announced. The wide plain was literally crawling with the enemy. The scorpions, the carriers, other types were moving about. In the middle distance, a blue-gray something the size of a mountain was undulating across the surface. Further away, much too far away, off to one side, were pressure tents, half-tracks, people. There. That was the way to go.

"He's dead," Marcia repeated again. "That thing killed him."

Jansen turned and looked back the way they had come. The ma.s.sive bulk of the ruined asteroid towered over them. A line of those d.a.m.ned carrier drones was carefully picking its way down the loose scree about thirty meters away, then moving off across the sands in the wake of the monstrous creature that ruled this nightmare realm. They seemed to have a bit of trouble moving over the powdery, rock-strewn sands. Now and again one would flounder a bit. She looked around for one of the scorpion models. They, too, seemed to be slowed more than a little by the sands.We still need samples, Jansen told herself, and a better chance wasn't likely to come their way.

Jansen looked down and realized that her rock hammer was still in her hand. She lifted it up, gave it a practice swing.

"Yeah, they killed him," she said. "Let's go pay them back."

She staggered forward, brandishing the hammer, straight for the closest carrier drone, forcing herself not to think more than a split second ahead. Part of her knew she was running on hysteria, on adrenaline, on anger and fear, but that part also knew that what she was doing needed to be done.

One step forward, another, another. And she was on top of the clumsy little robot carrying its vile burden. She spotted a sensory cl.u.s.ter similar to what she had seen on the scorpion that had killed McGillicutty.

She lifted her hammer and smashed it in.

The little machine dropped its burden, tottered forward a step or two, and collapsed in the sand, its two legs still working feebly. Its fellows ignored it and merely sidestepped the obstruction in their path. Jansen knelt down, wrapped her arms around the machine, and lifted it. It was surprisingly light.

Behind her, Marcia knelt and picked up the thing they were calling an egg, cradling it in her arms like a baby. She caught Jansen's eye, and the two women stared at each other for a long moment. Too much had happened.

They turned without speaking, and moved as quickly as they could toward the distant human camp.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

The Rabbit Hole"Let me try once more to convince you. It's a rock," Mercer Sanchez said unhappily. "Hiram McGillicutty died and you risked your life stealing a rock, and we've wasted a day and a half confirming that fact."

Jansen Alter frowned and stared at the egg-shaped thing sitting in the middle of the left-hand operating table. They were in the same field hospital that was treating Coyote Westlake.

There hadn't been any casualties to speak of, so most of the hospital had been pressed into service as a field lab. "Are you sure?" Jansen asked. It sure as h.e.l.l looked like a rock, sitting inert in the middle of the table. It was a very plain brown ovoid, about the length of Jansen's forearm from end to end, and maybe half that in width.

Mercer shook her head in frustration. "I'm a geologist, for G.o.d's sake, and so are you. Of course I'm sure it's a rock. We've x-rayed it, done sample a.s.says, examined it under an electron microscope, drilled holes in it. It's a perfectly normal sample of undifferentiated asteroidal rock, a lump of high-grade organic material, salted with nonorganic material. If I were a rock miner, I'd love to find a vein of this stuff to sell to Ceres.

High-grade, water-bearing ore. But there's no internal structure at all."

"I don't get it," Jansen said. "The carrier bugs were treating these things like they were the crown jewels."

"Maybe the bugs like rocks," Mercer said.

"Maybe they're planning on building a decorative stone wall."

The doors swung open and Coyote Westlake came in, dressed in pajamas and a loose-fitting robe. She looked wan and pale, but tremendously better than she had the day before."What are you doing out of bed?" Jansen asked.

"You should still be resting."

"I won't argue with that," Coyote said in a voice that was trying to be calmer than it was. "But they're using the other beds in my room as an overflow dorm for some of the night-shift workers.

One of them snores. Woke me up, drove me clear out of the room and I'm wandering the halls." She nodded toward the egg-rock. "Any progress?" she asked.

"Nothing," Jansen said, looking at Coyote carefully. She was obviously still stressed out, on edge. Someone who needed to be handled with care.

"We're just giving up. Mercer has established that our precious egg is a rock. A plain old boring lump of rock. Anything else going on?"

Coyote shook her head. "They finally got that robotics expert Smithers in from Port Viking, and they're in the other operating room, dissecting the carrier-bug robot."

"Dissecting it?" Jansen asked. "Don't you disa.s.semble a robot?"

"Not this one," Coyote said. "Sondra told me it seemed to have a lot of organic components as well."

Coyote shuffled forward a little further into the room. "Any news from the outside world?" she asked.

"Plenty," Jansen said. "We're up to ten landing zones now, and we're probably going to have more soon. So far, all of them precisely on the equator.