“I’m all right now,” he said. “And once we’ve got some nourishment inside us I’ll race you back to the Seeker. Okay?”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Petra said as she opened the supplies pouch attached to her belt. Making herself as comfortable as she could, she brought out a bar of the food concentrate and began to chew it.
“This stuff isn’t all that bad, you know.” Jan made some appreciative noises. “The taste isn’t too exciting, I admit, but what we have here is a scientifically proportioned blend of essential ingredients—just what we need to keep us going.”
“Yes, but it shouldn’t be beyond the powers of 22nd Century science to make it taste half-way edible,” Petra replied. Her eyes were adapting themselves to the dimness, picking out more and more detail in the surroundings, and it was when starting on the second bite of her food bar that she turned her head to the right and made an unnerving discovery.
They were sharing the tiny chamber with a human skeleton.
Petra stopped chewing, instinctively flinching away from the grisly object which was slumped against the wall not far from her, on the side farthest from Jan.
“What’s wrong?” Jan whispered, aware of her reaction.
She made her voice calm. “There’s nothing to worry about—we’re in no danger—but there’s a skeleton of a man over to my right.”
“Christ!” Jan began to scramble away towards the entrance of the chamber, but Petra gripped his arm and held it until he relaxed again.
“Take it easy,” she said. “Skeletons are the least of our worries.”
“Sorry—my nerves are still on edge.” Jan settled down again, unable to move his gaze away from the barely-seen figure, and in an effort to compensate for his jumpiness fixed his eyes on a glint of metal near the skeleton’s neck. “I can see his identification tag—perhaps we should bring it back with us.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I’ll do it.” In spite of all the carnage and destruction he had witnessed during the course of the day, Jan was far from inured to death, and he had difficulty in overcoming his natural revulsion as he moved closer to the skeleton. He studied the crumpled form and made out the tattered remains of an SEF officer’s uniform. It appeared that the man had taken refuge in the ruin when the machines went on their deadly rampage, and perhaps had died of starvation.
Verdia’s teeming insect life would have done the rest. Feeling like an intruder in a tomb, Jan abandoned the idea of collecting identification. He turned to crawl away, and as he did so the tip of his sword brushed against the bony remains.
“My name is Major Dorey Haines,” the skeleton said, “and I am a senior science officer with the…”
The rest of the sentence was lost to Jan as he began a feverish scramble towards the entrance of the chamber, to get away from the terrifying apparition. Then his common-sense reasserted itself. There had been a hissing sharpness to the voice which indicated that it was coming from a microrecorder. Shamefaced, he turned back to the skeleton, and this time he noticed the microrecorder bracelet on one of the fleshless wrists. The dead officer must have made a recording for the benefit of posterity and set the machine to play automatically at the slightest touch.
“That scared the hell out of me,” Jan confessed to Petra, who had not moved. “I didn’t expect a voice to come out of a…”
“Listen to what it’s saying,” Petra cut in. “It might be important.”
“…have been here at this landing site for only two hours,” the recorded voice went on, an echo from two years in the past, “but already there are signs that something very strange is taking place. There is a huge build-up of electrical potential in the area. One can see the Saint Elmo’s fire shining around the tips of antennae and masts, and I have noticed glowing fingers of it reaching down from the clouds in many places. The signs are that we are going to have a very severe electrical storm.
“My instruments show that there is a powerful flow of electromagnetic force streaming into the camp. It seems to originate at the planet’s north pole, which is only about two kilometres from here. Visibility is poor, but the radarscope shows that there is a peculiarly shaped tower at the precise position of the pole and it appears to have, somehow, escaped the destruction which laid low the city which once occupied the rest of this area.
“That is something I plan to investigate at the earliest possible moment, but my main priority at present is to contact Colonel Tout and persuade him that we should disperse our people and equipment as quickly as…”
At that point the recorded voice was lost in a fierce crackling sound which was followed by a period of silence.
“That was probably the beginning of the attack,” Jan said, stirring out of his chilled fascination.
“It sounded that way.” Petra felt a pang of sadness. “I wonder if…” She stopped speaking as another burst of crackling came from the recorder and the voice from the past was heard again. This time it was weak and barely recognisable, the well-constructed sentences having given way to disjointed phrases.
“…terrible…;terrible…never seen anything like it…machines have a life of their own…missiles firing by themselves…everybody dead…bodies crushed…”
There was another silence, and when the voice resumed it was calmer than before but very faint, as if the speaker was being overcome by a deadly weariness.
“I hoped I would have been safe once I had crossed the bridge to this old temple, but I took a bullet or a piece of shrapnel in the back. It’s all quiet out there now. Oddly enough, I can’t feel any pain. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad one.
“I don’t know how much time I have left…and I don’t even know if this recording will ever be heard by another human being…but in the hours I have been lying here I have reached some conclusions about what happened out there…
“It may sound as though I’m delirious, but I believe there is a malign intelligence at work on this planet, one which orchestrated the destruction of our expeditions.
“I also believe it is an alien intelligence. Alien to this world, that is. The ancient Verdians had a flourishing civilisation here, and it didn’t simply crumble away. It was destroyed suddenly…in the same way that we were destroyed…
“I believe that an alien creature arrived here from space many hundreds of years ago. It has a blind hatred for all other forms of intelligent life. It also has the power to control and direct electromagnetic forces…a power which enables it to take control of any metallic machine and turn it against its operators…
“I believe that the alien being is still alive…in the tower which marks Verdia’s north pole…and it is feeding on…feeding on…
“It’s getting very dark in here. Why is it getting so…?”
Jan and Petra bowed their heads as silence descended on the chamber. There had been a finality about the last whispered words which told them the recording had ended—for ever.
At length Petra said, “Another five minutes or so, Jan—then we should get out of here.”
Jan raised his head and scowled into the darkness, forgetting about his need to eat. “You know, what we just heard sounded crazy. I doubt if anybody back home would ever credit it, but we know that everything Major Haines said was right. The machines don’t simply go wild—they act as though they’re being guided by…how would you put it? Some kind of evil intelligence.”
“That’s right,” Petra agreed. “They were definitely bunting us—that’s why we want to get away from this damned mudball of a world as soon as possible.”
“Yes, but what’s sticking in my gullet is the major’s explanation, this idea about an alien coming down out of space a long time ago. Who’s to say it isn’t true? We’ve only explored a small fraction of the galaxy, and it’s quite possible that out there somewhere are creatures who can control some natural forces and use them to kill anybody they see as an enemy.”