Part 10 (2/2)
She exposed the metallic bone of the hip joint, probed, and yelled, ”Ouch,” as sparks flew and she jerked her hand back. Then she ripped out a ma.s.s of wiring and tiny electronic objects. ”How's that?”
”Separate the leads to that area, and we've got it,” the admiral said.
She closed off and insulated the bare leads.
”Very good,” the admiral said. ”Now, Grace, would you please cover me? I feel quite exposed.”
”What have we got here, a modest robot?” Max asked.
The look that came over the admiral's face caused Max to clear his throat in embarra.s.sment. Robots were not supposed to have feelings, but, by G.o.d, this one did. He patted the admiral amiably on the shoulder.
The admiral was transported back to the s.h.i.+p on a litter carried by Max and Stoner. A small crowd had gathered near the main hatch. As Max and Stoner lifted the admiral down from the crawler, Tina Sells rushed out. She seized the admirals hand.
”Oh, Admiral,” Tina cried, ”I told you to be careful. Are you hurt badly?”
”It isn't all that bad,” the admiral said with a stiff upper lip. Grace, walking beside him, almost giggled when he actually bit his lower lip, as if to keep from crying out in pain. He had superb sensors to a.s.sess damage, but he could not feel pain.
”I'll stay with you,” Tina said. ”I'll help you get well.”
Grace's urge to giggle left her. There was a sincerity in the teenage girl's voice that alerted her. When Tina turned her face toward her the girl's eyes were wet. ”Grace, is-is-”
”He's fine,” Grace said. ”The damage is in nonvital parts. We'll install a set of new legs, and he'll be like new.” But she was thinking,Good Lord, we have a modest robot who seems to be developing human emotions and a girl in love with him .
NINE.
Max Rosen was beginning to believe that he was destined never to have a moment alone with the woman he loved. Since the admiral was an important part of the colony's defenses, Grace worked night and day to repair the damage. When she was not in her lab working on and with the admiral, she was in some other lab a.s.sisting in the tests and biopsies of the giant slug. With the admiral out of action, Mopro was attached to Paul Warden's team, and working together, they killed three more of the underground beasts within five miles of Hamilton. There would be no further attempts to capture one of the things-they were far too powerful, far too deadly. But after three fairly quick kills-with the beasts lured to the surface not by sacrificing one of the pretty little antelopes but by having the pipeline crawler invade the beasts burrows-all further attempts were fruitless.
Random checks with listening devices showed a surprisingly dense underground population, and the densest concentration of the slugs was in the hidden valley of the dead city.
”Maybe the d.a.m.ned things ate everybody,” Stoner grouched, unhappy because he was not free to go roaming in search of minerals.
The information that poured out of the s.h.i.+p's labs regarding the slugs was intimidating and astounding: For the first time humans had encountered a life form not based on the complex, oxygen-burning carbon molecules. The rocklike skin of the slugs was just that, rock. Its compound was based on silicon dioxide, the basic ingredient of common sand, which was elasticized by a binding enzyme that had the chemists shaking their heads. An a.n.a.lysis of stomach content-if the interior of the slug could be called a stomach, being mainly a rock-hard tube that exuded acids so virulent that an entire new chemistry could be founded on them-showed that the slugs drew sustenance from the very rocks of the planet.
”The d.a.m.ned thingsare miners,” Stoner said. ”They crush rock with those ma.s.sive back teeth, using the forward, pointed teeth much as we would use a pickax.”
That was how the underground beasts were named, ”miners,” for the name began with Stoner and spread to the scientists in the labs and then to others.
Stoner was vitally interested when the a.n.a.lysis of stomach contents revealed minute amounts of iron, zinc, copper, and, in the last miner to be killed, a slightly radioactive acid soup, which indicated the presence of uranium somewhere down there along the beast's burrow.
It was Grace Monroe who uncovered the last secret about the miners. She had the admiral up on his feet on a pair of slightly improved legs, ready to join Mopro and Paul Warden in their hunt for more miners.
”Grace,” the admiral commented, ”it would be very helpful if we had at least one more of the pipeline crawlers.”
She'd been so busy that she'd forgotten all about the sample that Max, sitting in the crawler, had taken from the wall of the tunnel. She sent the admiral to the site of the latest stakeout, where he retrieved the sealed tube containing the sample. When Grace opened it in the lab, the stench was overwhelming, and it took her only a few minutes to know why. She called Duncan Rodrick and Max to her lab.
”Whew, what stinks?” Max asked in his blunt way-Then he saw that Grace had been crying. ”What's the matter, honey?” he asked, and the tenderness in his voice caused Rodrick to smile to himself.
”You're smelling the decay of animal fat,” Grace answered.
”Knowing what it is doesn't make it smell any better,” Max said.
”Human fat,” Grace added quietly, and had to wipe her eyes quickly. Max sobered and reached for her hand. Rodrick cleared his throat.
”Crudely rendered,” Grace said. ”Remnants of hair, small bone chips, blood, but mainly congealed fat.”
”They don't eat-?” Max paused. He felt a little queasy.
”Apparently not,” Grace said. ”I estimated the amount of the... fat in that basin.” She had to swallow hard. ”It's almost all there, about all you'd expect to be able to render from a... woman of Lynn's size.”
”I don't understand,” Max said. ”We had a.s.sumed they needed flesh for nourishment.”
Grace turned to face Rodrick. ”I've written a report on this creature's brain. It's a complex organ. The ratio between brain and body size is comparable to that of the dolphins of Earth.”
”Are you saying that miners might have a relatively high level of intelligence?” Rodrick asked.
Grace shrugged. ”Any conclusions would be premature, but Stoner has been doing charts of the tunnels.
Their complexity is impressive. They never come near to or cross any other tunnel. How can the miner dig a tunnel that runs absolutely straight and level for, in one case Stoner has found, ten miles? And I'm sure you've noticed that since we've killed four of them, they can no longer be lured to the surface. In fact, not one miner has been heard within ten miles of Hamilton since the last one was killed.”
”You're thinking that they have some way to communicate a warning?” Rodrick asked.
Grace shrugged again. ”I don't think we should continue a policy of extermination until we've done further study.”
Rodrick nodded thoughtfully. ”Since we can spot their traps so easily, I think we can get the teams back to work.” He paused, considering. ”All right. We won't go after them if they don't come after us. We'll keep our defenses up, and if they leave us alone, we'll leave them alone. ”
Following the b.l.o.o.d.y mutiny on board theKarl Marx , the experienced personnel pulled long duty hours until others were trained to replace those who had died. Theresita Pulaski, with her marshal's stars back on her uniform, was in command, although she insisted that she be called comrade marshal rather than captain. She was out of her depth when it came to operational technicalities of a complicated mechanism like theKarl Marx , and she designated young Ilya Salkov to be her second in command and to be at her side constantly.
When a smooth routine had been established, the overworked survivors were able to relax a bit. It was then, in a new spirit of freedom, that the discussion groups began to form. The main topic was the destination of the s.h.i.+p. There were adventurers who wanted to pick a star at random and lightstep to it.
With the huge supply of the metal rhenium aboard, theKarl Marx had the ability to lightstep through time and s.p.a.ce at least a dozen times- all they had to do was bombard a small amount of the metal with antimatter molecules to propel themselves instantly across mind-boggling distances. Surely, the adventurous ones insisted, a dozen planets would yield at least one that conformed to the narrow range of living conditions necessary for man.
Most of those aboard, however, were conservative and resistant to change. They distrusted any departure from the plan that had been pounded out mainly by the dead Premier Yuri Kolchak: In theevent that the three probes sent out by the Soviet Union did not find a suitable solar system, the expedition would proceed to the one planet known to have free water and an oxygen atmosphere. To Yuri Kolchak and his advisers and spies, who had infiltrated the American work crews and learned the information, the obvious solution was to simply take the planet of the 61 Cygni system away from the Americans.
”That would mean that we have not left war behind us,” said the bearlike Anton Emin.
There were others who were sick of war and blood, and they spoke up vociferously. Killing, they said, should not become a part of the new civilization among the stars.
But as the long months pa.s.sed and the feeling of s.p.a.ce seeped into the consciousness of those aboard the s.h.i.+p, they began to appreciate the enormous distances involved, and the thought of roaming for a long, long time through those vast, hostile stretches of nothingness became a gnawing dread.
”Perhaps we wouldn't have to fight,” Anton Emin said. ”Perhaps we could work with the Americans.”
”For how long?” asked Denis Ivanov. Denis was a physician who came from a proud heritage. His ancestors had been among the original Bolsheviks who first went to battle against the czar's oppression.
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