I knew what concerned him. Having once held the sword of Damocles, he did not want to see it raised again.
“They’ll have some defense against Phobos ready if we send it back,” I said.
“The Ice Pit,” Charles said. “Our spyhole has been closed.”
“What?” I asked, startled.
“We can’t tune in on their activities,” Charles said. “They must have complete control of the Pierce region. They could use the Ice Pit against anything we send… If they’ve mastered it.“
Leander joined in the conversation. “Better than ninety percent chance they know more than we do now,” he said gloomily. “Maybe they’ll drop the Earth’s moon on us.”
I wasn’t going to dismiss any possibility yet.
“I’ll be near the large tweaker full time now,” Charles said. “We can be ready within an hour. You have to read the signs and give us the order. If Earth decides to blow Mars to pieces… We may not be fast enough to get it out of the way.”
“Charles is being a little evasive,” Leander said. “I don’t want to speak out of turn, but — ”
“It’s nothing,” Charles said, voice tense.
“We’ve run into some difficulties,” Leander persisted. “Handling a mass as big as Mars presents special problems. First, it puts a huge drain on Charles or Tamara, whoever watches over the QL thinker.”
“It’s manageable,” Charles said.
“Yes, but at a cost. The QL becomes particularly intractable when dealing with so many large variables. I know Charles can handle it, but there’s also a physical problem. Our tweaker may show instability when moving so much mass across so great a distance.”
Charles sighed. “Stephen’s been working over some anomalies in our test results.”
“What kind of instability?” I asked.
“The mesoscopic sample at absolute zero asserts its own identity. It’s a kind of perverse dataflow problem. So many descriptors being channeled through so small a volume. It may reduce the effectiveness of the Pierce region.”
Charles said, “We’ve encountered the problem before. We can control it.”
Leander said, “I think our masters should be informed, just in case.”
“Can we do it?” I asked, far too tired to argue physics now.
“Yes,” Charles said.
Stephen hesitated. “I think so.”
“Then stay on alert.”
We signed off and I slumped in my seat, anxious to be on the ground working direct and not puppeteering from a hundred kilometers.
Minutes later, Dandy unhitched and stood, stretching, to use the wasteroom at the rear of the shuttle. He passed Meissner and D’Monte and they exchanged brief whispered comments. Falling into a reverie, I jerked to full alertness on hearing a few scraping sounds, and a sharp expletive.
“Ma’am,” Dandy called from the rear. I leaned over the arm of my seat and looked aft. He stood with the two other guards near the wasteroom door. I unhitched and joined them.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, pointing to a series of pits and holes in the rear bulkhead. A section of floor had been unprettily removed as well, edges appearing eaten or chewed. I followed Dandy’s probing fingers; something had termited much of the rear of the passenger compartment.
“It was fine a few minutes ago,” said Jacques D’Monte.
Dandy rose from a crouch and wiped his hands on his pants legs. “Go forward, ma’am,” he said. “Hitch in. Kiri, tell the pilot to get us into Preamble as fast as possible.”
Kiri Meissner went forward, passing me with a breathless apology. I stooped to slide into my seat when I heard a heavy chunk and a cry of surprise at the rear. Face bloody on one side, Dandy staggered forward and collapsed in the aisle.
Kiri swung about and immediately placed herself between me and the rear of the shuttle. “Stay down,” she grunted. She hunkered and pulled out her pistol, then frog-marched aft. Something clicked and hummed and Kiri jerked, clutched the seat arms on each side of the aisle, fell to one knee and rolled over on her back. A pattern of bloody holes on her chest poked through her black shirt. She coughed and convulsed, eyes asking a silent question of nobody in particular, then lay still. Her mouth foamed pink.
Jacques backed up beside me, straddling Kiri’s body, cursing steadily and softly. He pointed his pistol at a dark shape hanging from the ceiling and rear bulkhead. Again the click and hum. Slowly, he twisted on rubbery legs, and the pistol dropped from lax fingers. He leaned over like a man about to be sick and pitched forward on his face.
I remained crouched behind my seat near the front, heart Earth-heavy in my chest. Aelita Two had disengaged her carriage from the mount behind me; my seat flexed as it moved.
The shuttle flew on as if nothing had happened. Had there been time to trigger an alarm? I could not restrain myself any longer; I peered aft around the edge of my seat.
A dark shape extended thin arms and legs, then rose tall from the exposed recesses of the rear compartment. It bumped against the ceiling, dropped slightly, made a high-pitched machine noise and crawled into the glow of an overhead light.
The locust bulked about the size of a man, its body a green twisted ovoid like the pupa of an enormous insect. Its multijointed legs probed at the seats and floor with a gingerly grace that made my blood freeze. A glistening trio of black eyes topped the body, and below the eyes, a flexible snout, thin as the barrel of a gun, swiveled purposefully.
Bioform nanotech, designed to survive on Mars and be deadly.
I stared in fascination. The machine climbed over Dandy, hindmost legs raised as if in effete distaste. My body shivered in expectation of the thin flechettes that had felled at least two of my guards, no doubt peppered from the questing snout.
Decapitation.
The seed of this locust had come aboard the shuttle at Lai Qila — perhaps with the duplicity of Achmed Crown Niger , although I could hardly believe such villainy even of him. More likely he faced a similar assassin even now.
The machine seemed reluctant to push past me. Knowing I was soon to die, a deep calm stole over me, replacing the nausea of seeing my guards so quickly dispatched. I knew I would join them soon.
Still, my mind raced, trying to think of ways to survive.
The pilot thinker would know something was very wrong. It would radio an emergency signal ahead. We were only a few minutes from Preamble.
With a start, I considered the possibility the locust wanted to be taken to Preamble. It would kill me, attach itself to the shuttle’s thinker, take over the controls… And carry itself, and more progeny, into the research site. I could not allow that to happen.
I faced off the machine for more long seconds. I slowly bent down hoping to grab Kiri’s weapon, the closest to me. I didn’t make it. With a slight shudder, as if making a sudden decision, the locust rushed along the aisle, grabbed the gun, and shoved me aside with bone-bruising strength. It moved forward and began to work on the bulkhead door to the pilot thinker’s space.
Quickly, I bent over Jacques and Kiri. They were dead. I ran aft down the aisle and rolled Dandy over. His eyes flickered and opened. He moaned. The machine had hit him hard on the side of his head but had not shot him.
I dragged Dandy forward and hefted him into a seat, clicking his harness. His head lolled and he looked at me.
“Can’t let it get to Preamble,” he murmured.
“I know,” I sad. Facing forward, I shouted at the pilot thinker, “Bring us down, now! Crash the shuttle!”
Dandy shook his head. “Won’t do it. Tell it to land.”
The locust expertly sliced through the forward bulkhead and locked door. Beyond, I saw the shuttle’s cockpit, pilot thinker mounted above the controls. The locust grew a new appendage and poked at the thinker’s box.
“Crash, damn you!” I cried. “Land! Bring us down now!”
The shuttle lurched and rolled. The locust’s body slammed against the luggage bay and released the cases of the dead guards. Behind, Jacques and Kiri seemed to rise off the floor, given new life, limbs flailing. Aelita’s carriage fell past me to the rear of the shuttle, smashing into Jacques’ body.