Petra looked awe-struck as her eyes took in the extent of the destruction. “I hadn’t realised it would be as bad as that,” she whispered. “Something really awful must have happened here.”
Jan nodded, his face grim. “I think we’d better prepare ourselves for some ugly sights when we get closer.”
As they went farther into the cleared space around the ship they saw that the area was littered with derelict earth-moving equipment—bulldozers, diggers, trucks, dumpers. All of the machines were streaked with the corrosion which spread so rapidly in Verdia’s warm, moisture-laden atmosphere, and many were overgrown with moss and grass.
“They look like they’ve been here for ages,” Petra said, unconsciously lowering her voice. “Can it only have been two years?”
“Two years is a hell of a long time in a place like this,” Jan replied, wondering what state of health his brother and other survivors would be in after existing for so long in such unfavourable conditions.
He and Petra continued to advance cautiously, side by side, and had covered only a short distance when they discovered the first of the skeletons.
The remains of the development engineers had been picked clean, reduced to pallid bones by the jungle’s voracious scavenger animals and insects. They lay everywhere—the skulls grinning, the shadowy eye sockets seeming to reproach the pair for having arrived too late to render assistance in their hour of need.
Controlling her natural revulsion, Petra studied the skeletal figures like a forensic scientist, looking for any kind of a clue about what had happened to them on the fatal day of the landing.
“Look,” she said, touching Jan’s arm, “some of the skeletons are broken up…crushed right into the ground…
It’s as if somebody had deliberately driven right over them with the bulldozers. It’s ghastly!”
“You’re right—nothing else could have done that to them.” Numbed with horror though he was by the grisly finds, Jan’s mind seized on the sinister new element of the mystery of Verdia. Was it possible that some kind of terrible madness, perhaps induced by alien microbes, had afflicted the machines’ operators, prompting them to hunt down and crush their fellow workers? What other reason could there have been for workers turning their machines against their colleagues in such an orgy of death and destruction?
Jan and Petra stood in silence for a moment and, in spite of the oppressive heat, they both shuddered as they took in the vistas of dread.
Only two years earlier this spot had been bustling with life and activity—now it was a nightmarish graveyard, where the only movement was the furtive skulking of rat-like alien creatures and spiders nesting in skulls. Some terrible and unknown evil force had been at work here, and now it seemed that the two young people from Earth had been incredibly brash and presumptuous in pitting themselves against it…
Clank! Clank-clank!
The mechanical sound came from close behind, causing them to spin round to face it.
“What the hell’s that?” Jan exclaimed, features rigid with shock as he scanned the dimly lit surroundings.
“Over there!” Petra cried, pointing at one of the grass-shrouded metal hulks. “One of the bulldozers is moving!”
“But that’s imposs…” Jan’s voice faded as he saw that one of the mechanical monsters had indeed begun to stir. It was rolling directly towards them, and as it burst out of its covering of grass and creepers they saw that there was a skeleton leaning over the controls.
For one pounding instant they were paralysed with fear, then they instinctively linked hands and backed away, shaking their heads in appalled disbelief.
This was impossible!
There was no sound of engines—and yet the bulldozer was on the move; the skeletal figure in the control cabin could see nothing with its eyeless sockets—and yet the bulldozer was coming straight at the two young people. And it was obviously filled with deadly purpose!
Still holding hands, they ran to one side—and the bulldozer promptly changed course and came after them. They veered in the opposite direction, and again the clanking machine turned and came in pursuit.
The weapons in their limited arsenal were obviously useless against the armoured juggernaut, so the only thing to do was to flee to the comparative safety of the jungle.
Jan pointed at the nearest line of trees and Petra nodded. Separating a little in order to achieve maximum speed, they ran for the trees, leaping wildly over mounds of earth, bursting through thickets of brush and grass. Petra easily kept pace with Jan, her booted feet scarcely seeming to touch the ground.
They had covered about fifty metres when they made a fresh horrifying discovery—the lumbering machine was travelling faster than they could!
In normal circumstances they would have been able to outrun that kind of track-laying vehicle, but the bulldozer seemed to have been possessed by a demonic force which was driving it forward with supernatural speed. With an horrendous shrieking of rusted components, gloating skeleton at the controls, the bulldozer was gaining on them with every second. It was becoming quite obvious that they had no hope of winning a straight-line dash to the jungle.
“We’re not going to make it this way,” Jan gasped.
Petra’s strained expression showed that she had already reached the same conclusion. “Start zigzagging again! The dozer is so heavy and clumsy that it’s bound to lose speed when it corners.”
They immediately swerved to the left and heard the juggernaut’s tracks screech as it slewed around in pursuit. They changed direction several times in quick succession, each time with the bulldozer nearly on their heels, before they could accept that the new technique was not proving successful.
The machine’s preternatural speed and powers were enabling it to keep pace with them—and they were rapidly becoming exhausted. At this rate they probably had only a few tens of seconds left to them before the massive steel blade at the front of the bulldozer brought them down and pulped them into the ground.
Knuckling the sweat from their eyes, they cast about desperately for a means of escape. Ahead and slightly to the left was a shallow, dish-like depression in the pavement. It was reminiscent of the place where they had seen the ancient machinery in the collapsed tunnel section, and the thought came to Petra that underground rooms and workings might be commonplace in the ancient city.
“That might be…a weak spot,” she called out, pointing at the area of sagging pavement, her words blurred by the thick saltiness of exhaustion which was gathering in her mouth. “There might be…another tunnel.”
“It’s worth a try,” Jan panted.
As if responding to a silent command, they suddenly bore to the left and sprinted across the sagging masonry. They felt the paving slabs vibrate beneath their feet, and for a moment it seemed that the whole area might collapse into the depths and take both of them with it.
With one desperate effort they threw themselves at the far rim of the depression—just as the ancient stonework gave way beneath them.
The howling, screeching bulldozer—which had been within a few paces of them—tilted and plunged down into the freshly opened cavity with a deafening crash, sending clouds of dust and pulverised rock billowing into the air. They heard and felt it butting at subterranean walls, like some kind of blind animal struggling to escape from a cage. “That was a near one,” Jan said as they got to their feet at the rim of the cavernous hole which had appeared in the ground. “I thought we were finished.”