“Grumbler let us get ten miles into zone Red-Red, and then he clobbered us with a magnapult canister.”
“Wasn’t your I.F.F. working?”
“Yes, but Grumbler’s isn’t. After he blasted the wagon, he picked off the other jour that got out alive—He he he he… Did you ever see a Sherman tank chase a mouse, colonel?”
“Cut it out, Sawyer! Another giggle out of you, and I’ll flay you alive.”
“Get me out! My leg! Get me out!”
“If we can. Tell me your present situation.”
“My suit… I got a small puncture—Had to pump the leg full of water and freeze it. Now my leg’s dead. I can’t last much longer.”
“The situation, Sawyer, the situation! Not your aches and pains.”
The vibrations continued, but Grumbler screened them out for a time. There was rumbling fury on an Earthlit hill.
It sat with its engines idling, listening to the distant movements of the enemy to the south. At the foot of the hill lay the pain perimeter; even upon the hilltop, it felt the faint twinges of warning that issued from the lower, thirty kilometers to the rear at the center of the world. It was in communion with the tower. If it ventured beyond the perimeter, the communion would slip out-of-phase, and there would be blinding pain and detonation.
The enemy was moving more slowly now, creeping north across the demiworld. It would be easy to destroy the enemy at once, if only the supply of rocket missiles were not depleted. The range of the magnapult hurler was only twenty-five kilometers. The small spitters would reach, but their accuracy was close to zero at such range. It would have to wait for the enemy to come closer. It nursed a brooding fury on the hill.
“Listen, Sawyer, if Grumbler’s I.F.F. isn’t working, why hasn’t he already fired on this runabout?”
“That’s what sucked us in too, colonel. We came into zone Red and nothing happened. Either he’s out of long-range ammo, or he’s getting cagey, or both. Probably both.”
“Mmmp! Then we’d better park here at id figure something out.”
“Listen… there’s only one thing you can do. Call for a telecontrolled missile from the Base.”
“To destroy Grumbler? You’re out of your heady Sawyer. If Grumbler’s knocked out, the whole area around the excavations gets blown sky high… to keep them out of enemy hands. You know that.”
“You expect me to care?”
“Stop screaming, Sawyer. Those excavations are the most valuable property on the Moon. We can’t afford to lose them. That’s why Grumbler was staked out. If they got blown to rubble, I’d be court-martialed before the debris quit falling.”
The response was snarling and sobbing. “Eight hours oxygen. Eight hours, you hear? You stupid, merciless—”
The enemy to the south stopped moving at a distance of twenty-eight kilometers from Grumbler’s hill—only three thousand meters beyond magnapult range.
A moment of berserk hatred. It lumbered to-and-fro in a frustrated pattern that was like a monstrous dance, crushing small rocks beneath its treads, showering dust into the valley. Once it charged down toward the pain perimeter, and turned back only after the agony became unbearable. It stopped again on the hill, feeling the weariness of lowered energy supplies in the storage units.
It paused to analyze. It derived a plan.
Gunning its engines, it wheeled slowly around on the hilltop, and glided down the northern slope at a stately pace. It sped northward for half a mile across the flatland, then slowed to a crawl and maneuvered its massive bulk into a fissure, where it had cached an emergency store of energy. The battery-trailer had been freshly charged before the previous sundown. It backed into feeding position and attached the supply cables without hitching itself to the trailer.
It listened occasionally to the enemy while it drank hungrily from the energy-store, but the enemy remained motionless. It would need every erg of available energy in order to accomplish its plan. It drained the cache. Tomorrow, when the enemy was gone, it would drag the trailer back to the main feeders for recharging, when the sun rose to drive the generators once again. It kept several caches of energy at strategic positions throughout its domain, that it might never be driven into starved inability to act during the long lunar night. It kept its own house in order, dragging the trailers back to be recharged at regular intervals.
“I don’t know what I can do for you, Sawyer,” came the noise of the enemy. “We don’t dare destroy Grumbler, and there’s not another autocyber crew on the Moon. I’ll have to call Terra for replacements. I can’t send men into zone Red-Red if Grumbler’s running berserk. It’d be murder.”
“For the love of God, colonel—!”
“Listen, Sawyer, you’re the autocyber man. You helped train Grumbler. Can’t you think of some way to stop him without detonating the mined area?”
A protracted silence. Grumbler finished feeding and came out of the fissure. It moved westward a few yards, so that a clear stretch of flat land lay between itself and the hill at the edge of the pain perimeter, half a mile away. There it paused, and awoke several emissary ears, so that it might derive the most accurate possible fix of the enemy’s position. One by one, the emissary ears reported.
“Well, Sawyer?”
“My leg’s killing me.”
“Can’t you think of anything?”
“Yeah—but it won’t do me any good. I won’t live that long.”
“Well, let’s hear it.”
“Knock out his remote energy storage units, and then run him ragged at night.”
“How long would it take?”
“Hours—after you found all his remote supply units and blasted them.”
It analyzed the reports of the emissary ears, and calculated a precise position. The enemy runabout was 2.7 kilometers beyond the maximum range of the magnapult—as creation had envisioned the maximum. But creation was imperfect, even inside.
It loaded a canister onto the magnapult’s spindle. Contrary to the intentions of creation, it left the canister locked to the loader. This would cause pain. But it would prevent the canister from moving during the first few microseconds after the switch was closed, while the magnetic field was still building toward full strength. It would not release the canister until the field clutched it fiercely and with full effect, thus imparting slightly greater energy to the canister. This procedure it had invented for itself, thus transcending creation.
“Well, Sawyer, if you can’t think of anything else—”
“I DID THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE!” the answering vibrations screamed. “Call for a telecontrolled missile! Can’t you understand Aubrey? Grumbler murdered eight men from your command.”