There were still noises coming from the other side of the fire door.
“If I didn’t know better I’d swear that somebody who knew what they were doing was laying out tools to try and open that door,” Jerry muttered.
She nodded. “Too much we don’t know yet. I’m better. Let’s get going!”
She really did feel a little better, more clear-headed, less in pain right at that moment. Adrenaline and shock, most likely, but she’d take them while they were there and gladly accept the consequences when they wore off. It would mean she was still around to suffer.
They got most of the way to the next interconnect when they heard a major metallic racket at the other end and the sound of something big beginning to move.
“Oh, my god! Those damned things can think!” she shouted, and started running with an energy reserve she would never figure out the source of. Jerry was right behind, and they got into the next greenhouse and he once again triggered the door.
“Now let’s go outside,” he told her. “I think the odds will be a lot more even there.”
An Li couldn’t believe her instruments. “Jesus! Whatever those are, they peeled back the door! How come they couldn’t do that when they ravaged the colony?”
“Maybe it learns,” Randi Queson responded. “Maybe it’s been digesting not only their material selves but also whatever information or skills they might have had. I don’t know. That’s why we call alien lifeforms alien. I only know I want out of here!”
Jerry was at the door. “Ready?” he asked her. “Keep the gun handy and kick yours to high. If they’re that bright they might well have figured out this move!”
He pulled on the bar and the door half opened, letting in the fury of shrieking wind and blowing sand and pebbles. He drew his pistol again and stepped out, then she followed.
They weren’t outside yet, or at least they weren’t in the four- or five-meter range of visibility the blowing crud allowed them.
“Here’s the ladder!” Nagel called, pointing.
“You go up first and I’ll watch your back,” she told him. “Then you watch while I come up slower.” She sensed his hesitation. “Go ahead! I have no intention of being a martyr, and I intend to be around to razz you for years about the time you turned into Sir Galahad.”
“Just for that, I am going up,” he told her. “Don’t watch me, though. Watch those doors!”
She waited, gun in hand, until she heard him call, “On the roof! Easy climb up, but watch it once you’re here. There’s a pitch and the small rails here are pretty damned short.”
She could hear noises inside even through the storm and the helmet insulation, and she needed no further urging to get the hell up on top.
It would have been easy in a lesser wind and without the bulk of the e-suit, but it really wasn’t that hard, it just took longer than she thought. Everything’s longer than I think now, it seems, she reflected, but she soon had his hand to help her the rest of the way up.
“Slow and steady down the catwalk,” he told her. “Can’t see much or hear much, but what’s inside has to come out here to get us, and I don’t think they like that idea very much.”
She sighed, but decided to walk sideways so she could see both out and back while keeping her balance. Speed wasn’t the overriding factor here now, just keeping from falling off while making forward progress.
“If I could be absolutely sure that they couldn’t get to me, I’d sure love to see what was chasing us, though,” she told him. “This place is getting creepier and creepier and we still don’t know a damned thing!”
“I know it’s dangerous, it’s smart, and it’s not alone, somehow,” Nagel said. “That’s more than enough for me. Li, what’s the plan?”
“It’s tricky, but on manual Cross thinks she can hover the shuttle off the back end of the unit you’re on and hold it steady long enough for you to at least get a handhold if not aboard. If you can only get a hold, hang on, she’ll fly you back a ways from all this, then you can get in from the ground. Best we can do. Clear?”
“Clear,” Nagel responded. “Keep the weapons armed on that thing, too! Our company’s not that far away and it’s suddenly grown a whole set of smarts.”
“Cross, you got that?” An Li called.
“Got it,” the pilot responded.
Gail “Lucky” Cross was a very good pilot in an era when human beings didn’t have to be any such thing. She enjoyed it, practiced it, played with it, and that ability had paid off more than once. How could you figure out just how to tell a robotic pilot what they were proposing to do here? Or trust it to do it right?
Cross was actually a robotic engineer, the chief of salvage operations for the Stanley, and the one who would do the instructions and supervise the salvage operation once it was crunched and the method determined. She had hair so short she sometimes seemed bald, was twenty kilos overweight and had a voice that was almost dead even between a very low soprano and a foghorn, and swore like a sailor. She was a Character with a capital “C” and she loved it.
Still, this would be as close and exacting a job of piloting as she’d ever done, and nothing for which she or anyone could have practiced. With the wind and minimal clearances it would be a job nobody else would consider doing, too.
Which was, of course, why she was clearly having the time of her life.
“Move on back, you mothers!” she shouted, taking over com control. “Ease back! I’m totally manual here and it’s bucking like two dogs in heat!”
“Moving back towards you,” Nagel told her. “Sounds like our friends are right below us inside the greenhouse, so we’ve got to do this on one pass.”
“You got it. I won’t be there when you arrive, but you tell me when you pass the last ladder and hold up there. I’ll have two hooks out and it’s gotta be fast and dirty!”
There were noises below, as if something was pacing them and pushing things out of the way to make sure they kept up. They couldn’t be part of the slug or whatever it was; too small and too independent, Randi reasoned as they made their way back along the roof catwalk. And they had some use of tools. Whatever had consumed the others here couldn’t have imagined tools; otherwise they would have had no problems penetrating the full body suits of those others. A third player? Something else as well? Something that survived, perhaps, or was working with the slug? It made no sense, but this job had gone sour from the start and all she wanted now was out of it. Later, in safety, she’d worry about the questions and look for answers. The crew wasn’t about to abandon this mother lode of salvage unless they were forced to; they would address the questions when circumstances allowed. Most jobs had to be financed with mortgages on the ship and ground-based prior salvage in the yards left back home. Come home empty, and you lost both.
“We’ve passed the last ladder,” Nagel reported. “Now, come and get us!”
“Stay close, arms up!” Cross ordered. “We may not get two passes! If anything, this damned wind is kicking up more! Just listen to my count! I have you on my scope. Five… Four… Three… Two… One… Now!”
Out of the swirling dust cloud came a dark but familiar shape, an egglike oval with a ring around its center and an aircraftlike tail rising seamlessly out of its back. It was going to and fro so much it almost disoriented the two stranded on the roof; even with the help of the entire system, Lucky Cross was having a really rough time, now even rougher as she came in low enough to the greenhouses that a severe downdraft might well bring the shuttle crashing into one of the roofs.