Part 7 (1/2)
”Hrm. Maybe,” Telisa said. ”If a blob of protoplasm can hold a sword. They fit through the grilles, of course. You know what? It must have been hard to carry anything large around in those dwellings.”
”Oh yeah, major limitation. That shows how important those grilles are to them. If your theory about predators is the explanation, there must have been a constant threat from them.”
”Yet the Trilisks come here and add the tunnels below. We need to figure out why the Trilisks came here. What are they doing on these planets? Research on alien life? Conquest?”
Cilreth smiled. It would be nice to know, but they're gone now. I'm more interested in their toys and how they can improve our lives. ”So how many more grilles to get to the nearest tunnel?”
”Probably four or five more,” Telisa said.
”If the grilles are for predators, you'd expect them to be sufficient on outside-facing entrances only.”
Telisa turned back toward the entrance. ”Ah. The scout has come back.” Cilreth followed her gaze. Another scout scrambled into the room. Telisa plucked a tool from its back.
The device was a long stack of red cubes held in a silver frame. One end was broad and flat.
”That thing looks so weird! I guess given how odd s.h.i.+ny looks, I shouldn't be surprised his tools look radical, too.”
Telisa pointed the flat end of the machine at the wall beside a grille and activated it. It made a gentle humming noise. Cilreth felt air moving through the room. ”Whoa.” She looked around.
”It's this thing,” Telisa said. ”Sorry, I should have mentioned it makes a whirring sound and the air moves around a lot when I use it.”
Telisa started again. Cilreth watched the stone around the side of the grille disappear. Then she saw a pile of gray liquid forming under the device.
”Yech,” she said. ”It's digging so fast!”
Telisa smiled. ”We need one of these on every scout,” she said. ”Magnus will be happy. I bet s.h.i.+ny can make us more of these.”
”If we can get a hold of him again. I know, he's probably working on it.”
The grille was removed in record time. A scout machine slipped into the next room. Bright reflections of silvery metal shone in the machine's lights.
”Wow, something interesting in there,” Telisa said.
Cilreth took a peek. She thought it looked like a giant spider's web of silver fibers. ”Is it safe?”
”What makes you ask now?”
If I say it looks like a spider web, it'll sound dumb. ”Sorry, just an instinctual reaction to what looks like a giant spider web. But maybe we should know what's up before going in there?”
Telisa didn't say anything. But she walked a second scout machine in and had it look around with the other one.
”The web things are modular,” Telisa noted. ”Each one is a network of filaments, roughly two meters square, with twelve little silver discs woven into it.”
Cilreth watched the scout machine feeds as one of the scouts touched a web with the tip of a leg. Nothing seemed to happen. The network was bright like new, but it wasn't sticky. Nothing moved.
”Okay, I'm heading in there. I'd like to take one of these back for further study,” she said.
Telisa went in and started to collect one of the webs. Cilreth knelt down and waddled through after her.
Cilreth got a closer look at the room. Each s.h.i.+ny webbing had been made from filaments of silver metal. Dispersed along the web every ten centimeters or so, thick discs the size of a palm were woven into the network. The webs hung from old metal hangers built into the walls and ceiling. A few lay on the floor.
”They've been arranged in here,” Cilreth said. ”It's just a storage room.”
”Seems like it, doesn't it? The webs could easily fit through the grilles, so they weren't necessarily made in here.” Telisa finished folding it up and put it into a black sample bag.
”I don't have a lot of theories about these things,” Cilreth said. ”But next door there were weapons. So I'm thinking these could be weapons, too.”
”One thing is odd...these discs here are batteries. Advanced batteries. They're beyond anything we've seen in the Konuan ruins so far.”
”Trilisk, then?” asked Cilreth.
”No. Too primitive.”
”Then maybe the outlying Konuan were primitive slaves to the high-tech city Konuan.”
”I'm thinking the Trilisks were advancing them, showing them how to improve themselves,” Telisa said.
”Really? Interesting. I can easily pose a more sinister theory: the Trilisks took over, and the few traitor Konuan who served them got cool toys to keep the other Konuan in line.”
”You are so cynical. It's possible, though,” Telisa said.
Cynical is my middle name. ”Didn't you experience a Trilisk memory? I take it you saw into the mind of one, and it was a nice creature? You felt it wanted to help?”
”Well, not really. It was angry at other aliens that had attacked its world at the time and wanted revenge. Not exactly a loving moment. I think it was ruthless to its enemies.”
”Well, sounds like they may have been mean creatures,” Cilreth said.
”Maybe, but like I said...the aliens had just killed a bunch of Trilisks, I think. I would be angry, too. The memory is just at a bad moment for measuring their overall disposition.”
I bet I could tell if I had experienced it, Cilreth thought. If you could be in someone else's head for just thirty seconds, couldn't you tell?
The more Cilreth thought it over, the less certain she became of her initial reaction. If you read the mind of a murderer when she was thinking about her favorite restaurant, could you really pick up the killer vibe? Probably not.
They checked the grilles in each direction, looking for something interesting. Cilreth checked the grille on her left. A complicated shape lay in the darkness.
”Over here,” she said.
Telisa lit the scene with her powerful flashlight. A scout added to the illumination with its own lights.
”Whoa, that's no primitive anything,” Cilreth said.
The shape was a robot. It had an upright, rocket-shaped body with a tripedal base. Its three legs were staggered at sixty degrees from its three arms. The base of the body rested against the floor. Its smooth sapphire exterior glittered in the light. From beyond the grille the upright body looked thicker than a Terran.
Almost as an afterthought, Telisa broke out of her fascinated stare and grabbed the breaker claw from her belt. Cilreth saw the move and followed her lead, drawing her stunner. Then she frowned, replaced the stunner, and took out her machete. Telisa gave her a questioning look. Cilreth shrugged.
”Maybe it's an alien death machine so advanced the designers never thought *what if someone tries to hack its legs off?'” she said defensively. Then she asked, ”What kind of robot is it?”