Part 10 (1/2)

Paul Warden was thinking the same thing. He gave orders. Sage Bryson had moved her camera crew to within ten yards of the excavation and was seated high on the saddle of an extended boom, shootingdown into the excavation.

”Sage, move back about five yards,” Warden ordered, and when Sage did not comply immediately, he yelled, ”That's an order, Ms. Bryson!” The boom rolled slowly backward. The coned snout of the beast was very distinct on the screens now.

”You move back, too,” Max told Grace. ”I'll join you as soon as I get a sample of the substance on the wall of the basin.”

The admiral was obviously in communication with Mopro on their private frequency, because the big robot rolled up to stand at the edge of the excavation. The admiral was positioning the noose around the opening of the tunnel.

”Everyone stand by!” Max yelled.

Mopro's fingers opened at the tips, exposing his deadly, rapid-fire guns. His chest plate became an outlet for a laser cannon. The admiral was half-crouched, tense, ready.

”Here it comes,” Max said.

Grace cried out as the beast below put on a surge of incredible speed, and on the screen, she saw its powerful maw begin to open.

It all seemed to happen at once. The backside of the pipeline crawler shot up out of the tunnel and the cargo crawler flew backward as Max and Grace abandoned their equipment and ran. Paul Warden and his men crouched, weapons ready. The admiral and the powerful head and neck of the beast seemed to shoot up from the excavation at the same time. The small antelope was catapulted about twenty feet, and the admiral, using all the more-than-human power of his legs, flew through the air, with the gaping maw of the beast within inches of his body.

Mopro caught the powerful, tubular neck with the full blast of a stun gun, and with a hissing bellow the head of the beast reached its greatest extension, the teeth snapping shut with a crash to miss the admiral by a margin so fine that Grace's heart was in her mouth. Then the dead-white flesh of the powerful neck was squeezed by the flexisteel collar, and even as he landed lightly on his feet, the admiral was operating the winches, snapping the high-tensile cable into tautness.

The convulsions of the beast shook the ground, causing the edges of the excavation to begin to cave in.

The cables sang with tension.

”We've got him!” Paul Warden yelled.

Suddenly the beast was still. Only the head and neck were visible. The flexisteel collar had closed tightly just behind the fold in the neck.

”Shall I bring him out?” the admiral asked.

For a moment Paul Warden didn't answer. He was awed by the sheer malevolence of the thing, and he, like the others, was getting the smell of it, the sickening stench of rotting flesh. Evil, tiny, red eyes darted back and forth. The exposed neck, dead-flesh white, pulsed. The mouth opened, exposing the huge, back-tilted front teeth and the broad, flat, crus.h.i.+ng back teeth. A hiss, which was mixed with a nauseous gurgle, made Grace back up a few more steps. ”Bring him out,” Warden ordered.

The admiral shortened two of the cables, let the other two out as the winch motors whined and began to smoke with the resistance being put up by the beast. And then the ground seemed to explode upward from the excavation and the twenty-foot length of the monster was yanked from the tunnel.

It looked like a huge grub. The tubular body writhed, and Grace saw immediately how the thing moved itself along its runnels. The midportion of the body seemed to lengthen and contract. When underground, the thing would, by that movement, push the head forward as the midbody lengthened. The sc.r.a.ping sound was created as the beast slid over rock. Then the midbody would contract and sc.r.a.pe, as the rear portion was drawn forward. There was not a great deal of flexibility in the body, however, for the creature's struggles moved the rear end of the body only in a small arc.

”Capture cage!” yelled Paul Warden. The four men of his squad put away their weapons and ran to offload the cage, made of the strongest metals ever alloyed, big enough for two elephants in tandem.

The creature closed its mouth. The hissing roar ceased. The red eyes seemed to calm. The admiral was standing ten feet away from the creature's suspended head when it turned its neck and clipped one of the high tensile cables in two as if it had been made of string and, with lightning swiftness, faster than the fastest strike of the quickest Earth snake, lashed the powerful neck to catch the admiral just as he reacted and began to leap backward. The teeth closed on the admiral's thighs, the mouth covering his legs from knee to groin, and as Grace Monroe screamed a belated warning, she heard the crunch of metals and plastics followed by the clatter of Mopro's automatic weapons.

Paul Warden watched in astonishment as high-velocity, metal-jacketed rounds chipped small fragments off the lead-white skin of the slug. Mopro was giving the creature eight barrels of automatic fire, and the bullets sang off the thing as if striking solid stone, causing a bit of excitement as people dived for cover, with whining ricochets zinging off into the distance.

Before Warden could react past drawing his laser, Mopro was falling into a kneeling squat and the joints of his knees were opening, and two armor-piercing, high-caliber rounds blew the slug apart in the middle in a roar of explosive sound.

The back portion of the separated slug jerked and writhed. The front part was stunned for a moment, falling to thud onto the ground, the admiral still in its jaws. Mopro rolled rapidly, and the searing beam of a laser began to smoke and cut the stonelike skin just behind the creature's head. As the band was severed from the body, the jaws relaxed and the admiral dragged himself out, a puzzled look on his handsome face, his legs totally useless. He drew himself away from the gaping mouth by digging his fingers into the dirt, halted at a distance of five feet, and turned to look in wonderment at the dead beast.

Mopro spun his treads, sped to the admiral's side, and bent ponderously to pick him up on his thick, powerful arms.

”My G.o.d,” Max breathed.

Grace recovered from her shock and ran toward Mopro and the admiral.

”I'm sorry, Grace,” the admiral said, smiling at her from Mopro's arms.

”Damage report, quickly,” Grace snapped. The admiral looked at her, a smile on his face. His reply wa.s.slow in coming. ”No... damage, Grace,” he said. His voice was weak.

”Your electrical system, Admiral. Check it, please.” ”I... no... fine,” the admiral said. ”Max!” Grace shouted. ”My toolbox!” Max, seeing the seriousness of her face, went toward the crawler at a dead run.

”Put him down, Mopro,” Grace said gently to the big robot. Mopro laid the admiral tenderly at her feet.

She knelt quickly and began to tear at the admiral's shredded trousers, unable to remove them over the mangled legs. Max was back with her kit. She grabbed power shears and began to talk at the same instant. ”Max, use the laser scapel. Vertical incision just below his left ear, one-eighth-inch depth, three inches long.”

Max went to work. Grace cut away the obscuring trousers and used the power shears to tear and rip at the tough material of the torn skin.

Paul and Stoner stood at a respectful distance. ”If that had been a man,” Stoner said, ”he'd be dead.”

”I'm through the skin,” Max said. ”There's an RD 33 atomic power pack exposed.”

”Good,” Grace said, still ripping and cutting, into circuitry now, pulling out and tossing aside tiny a.s.semblies of microchips. ”We're all shorted out down here, draining all the power away. Splice in an RD 33. There are several in the kit.”

Max looked inside the neatly arranged kit, stabbed for a power pack and tool, and began to work, his big, blunt fingers surprisingly quick.

”Can he die, or something?” Paul Warden asked.

”We can lose him,” Grace replied, still working frantically. ”The redundant power packs are in his legs.

The ma.s.sive short circuits are draining all power from his brain.”

”Ready to splice,” Max said.

”Nuclear bond for good contact,” Grace said, and Max plunged into the kit for a tiny bonder. There was a sharp spark of power and then another, and the admiral said, ”Very good work, Chief Rosen. Thank you.”

”Can you help me now, Admiral?” Grace asked.

”Certainly, Grace,” the admiral said calmly. ”I have power restored to my brain.”

It had been very, very close. A few seconds longer and all that was the admiral-that unexplainable, unexpected personality that made him what he was-would have been gone. Now the race was to save all the data that had been so laboriously stored in the memory chambers built into his chest.

”So far no data has been lost, Grace,” the admiral said. ”If Chief Rosen would lift my head so that I can see... My sensors are dead below the waist.”

Rosen propped up the admirals head and shoulders. ”I would say, Grace,” the admiral said, ”that the drain is at the main junction in the left hip joint. ”

Grace used the power shears relentlessly. ”You're not being very neat, Grace,” the admiral said.

”Look who's being a critic,” she snapped. ”I wasn't the one who thrust a pair of perfectly good legs into that d.a.m.ned thing's mouth.”