“Any thoughts?” Zack said. “Is this the Keanu version of a tumbleweed? No means of locomotion.” The rolling bubble seemed to be blowing in the wind.
“What if it’s alive?” Pogo said.
“Then get ready for First Contact,” Lucas said.
“We are not prepared for anything like that!” Natalia said. She was on the verge of panic.
“Everybody hold position. Act like professionals.”
The rolling bubble turned toward them. Now Zack could see that it was opaque with dark shapes, like curdled milk. Pogo backed away, out of Zack’s limited peripheral vision, saying, “It’s fighting the wind, Zack!”
“So it is.” All he could think to do was raise the camera. Running wasn’t an option.
Another astronaut rule was, when in doubt, do nothing. You’ll only make it worse.
Closer and closer . . . “It is coming right at us,” Lucas said.
“Give it room! Everybody back away!” Zack said. Commanders got the goodies on missions—the first steps. They should also get first shot at the bad stuff. “Let me be the target.”
Natalia and Lucas scuttled off to the right, putting a crumbling coral tower between them and the rolling bubble.
Which was now less than fifty meters away.
“I sure hope this thing is friendly,” Pogo said.
“Let’s make the assumption for now. . . .”
The argument ceased, because the bubble sloshed to a halt . . . ejected an object almost the same size. The bubble then dissolved into a whitish puddle on the ground.
The ejected item looked like a sow bug, but only for a moment, as it came to a stop, then unfolded itself.
And stood up. Zack tried to remain calm and scientific. Bilateral symmetry, check. It had two legs and two arms as well as two sets of different types of appendages around its middle. It looked heavier and thicker where the middle pairs attached.
A head of sorts, check. But nothing resembling a face or a nose or eyes . . . just various openings, one of them ringed with cilia that seemed to flex rhythmically . . . breathing?
But was it animal or machine? At this distance, in this light, it was difficult to tell . . . the creature’s skin was shiny, but was it wet metal, or slime? It appeared to be a harness of some kind, dripping with fluid the same color as the dissolved bubble.
“Looks like it’s standing guard,” Natalia said. Which was true: As soon as it unfolded to full height—half again as tall as any human—the creature seemed to freeze in position.
“Maybe it’s a sentry,” Zack said. He hated having to anthropomorphize his Keanu experience, but it was the only way to make sense of things. Besides, the builders, owners, or inhabitants might have stationed someone to check passports here at the entry to the NEO’s interior.
For a moment Zack was face-to-face with the creature. Twenty-five meters of distance, and at least one of height separated them, not to mention however many eons of evolution. But it seemed to Zack that the Sentry was taking his measure—
“Rain seems to be stopping,” Lucas said. Zack had been concentrating so totally on the Sentry that he’d stopped paying attention. But yes, the windblown gusts had stopped . . . the entire chamber glowed with a sheen of moisture that reflected the golden light from the glowworms.
Then the Sentry moved.
Its major left-side appendages rose suddenly to its head. Zack had begun to form an image of the Sentry as the Tin Man from Oz . . . stolid, rusted to immobility . . . now trying to salute.
Look at what’s here, not what you remember!
Then the creature took a step . . . and staggered.
“It looks like it’s hurt!” Natalia said.
“Everybody stay back!” Zack said. The Sentry began to flail, like a man in extreme pain.
He could see its chest heave. Okay, it’s organic, not a machine.
Then the Sentry abruptly turned toward Pogo Downey, who, inexplicably, was walking forward.
The being snapped out a hand, as if trying to reach Pogo—
Swaddled in his suit, Zack could not feel what happened next, but he saw a flash. Lucas had taken an image with that damned Zeiss unit! And in the low light, the autoflash had triggered!
With frightening speed, the Sentry turned toward Pogo, and swung one of its middle arms out and across, like a samurai swordsman.
Pogo’s helmet detached, and with it Pogo’s head, blood spurting from the neck ring of the EVA suit. With three swift moves, the Sentry clove the torso from top to bottom, separating one arm and leg, then the other, finishing its disassembly of Col. Patrick “Pogo” Downey, USAF, with a reverse horizontal slash.
Natalia screamed. Lucas shouted.
Zack was frozen, confused, horrified. All he saw was Pogo’s body, a quartered bloody mess on the ground.
Then he breathed again. He grabbed Lucas and Natalia and herded them back toward the membrane. “Go, go, go!” He wanted as much space between them and the Sentry as he could get, as quickly as it could be gotten.
But Natalia’s visor fogged over, obscuring her view forward. She fell twice in her first ten steps, with Zack and Lucas frantically trying to right her again.
The falls allowed Zack a glance back at the Sentry, who was in pursuit, but more deliberately. “It looks stunned,” he said.
It seemed to Zack that the giant being was losing mobility . . . its arms and hands were roaming over its torso, as if suffering from either heat or pain.
The third time she fell, Natalia was the one who looked back. “I think it’s dying. . . .”
The impulse to flight was momentarily suspended. Zack and Lucas turned. The three watched as the Sentry began to jerk and heave, as if racked by seizures. Vapor rose from its body, as if the creature were burning up from within.
Then, abruptly, the Sentry collapsed . . . and within seconds ceased to spasm.
“What the hell?” Lucas said, clumsily crossing himself.
“I saw an animal being gassed in Leningrad once,” Natalia said. “That’s what it looked like.”
A thought occurred to Zack: “Do you suppose the environment killed it?”
“Wasn’t it designed for this environment?” Lucas said, sounding almost offended at the idea. “Didn’t it live here?”
“We don’t know anything,” Natalia said. She was collapsed, almost immobile. Zack wondered what it was like inside her suit.
He barely had time to curse Lucas—and mourn Pogo.
It was clear that Natalia would not be able to move with any speed. Zack realized he would have to help her with every step . . . and every moment they remained in the Beehive they were vulnerable.
“Lucas, get to the rover. Tell Houston and Bangalore what’s happened. Recharge your suit, get food and water, then come back. We’ll be following!”
He wished he could have given the Brazilian astronaut better orders, but he had nothing left, just a firm idea that information on today’s events needed to get out—someone needed to survive.
If he and Natalia managed to survive as well, there might be time then to think about Pogo . . . recovering his remains.
Lucas didn’t argue, which meant that the seriousness of the situation was apparent even to him. Zack watched him go back up the slope, into the heart of the Beehive.
“Come on, we’ve got to move, too,” he told Natalia.
Gamely, she got to her feet. “I’m stable,” she said.
“Fine,” he said, “but take my arm, too.” And so they set off, like lovers strolling through a park . . . and about as fast.
And not very far. Within a few meters, Natalia essentially sat down. “I can’t.”
“No problem,” Zack told her, lying only slightly. “We’ll just wait until Lucas returns.” He checked his own consumables: still two hours, plenty of time to observe, if not act.
The environment in the chamber continued to change. The “weather” had grown calmer; the rain had stopped, even though a gentle wind continued to blow now . . . detectable in the cloud of particles that wafted past Zack’s faceplate.
The corals had completely collapsed everywhere. If Zack’s eyes could be trusted—and what could be trusted at a time like this?—they were being transformed somehow. Zack focused on one area where an older pile of pinkish debris was being replaced by greenish shapes that expanded and stretched.