He pointed to the glistening fragments of vitreous lava. The rocks were always eroding, rounded segments falling away to reveal sharp fresh surfaces. Very nasty terrain. The soles of our boots could handle the edges, but if we fell…
We agreed on the direction and began walking.
Time stretched, nothing but staring at glittering scalpel-sharp edges and fan-shaped flakes dusted with flopsand; lifting feet, staring for a place to put them down without tripping, pausing to regain our bearings.
Two hours, and we stood on the twisted trail, free of the lava field.
Dandy took my shoulder and guided me due north. He followed the stars with a sparrow’s eye. Another hour on the trail, however, and he shook his head, paused, examined our oxygen supply, and pulled out his slate to consult a map.
I looked up to see a large meteor glowing low in the western sky. No, I told myself; no trail. It wasn’t a meteor, not a large fireball. It was where Phobos should be about now, just past rising. I tapped Dandy’s arm and pointed.
He stared for a moment, brow pulled low in an intense frown, then glanced at me with eyes wide. “What is it?” he mouthed.
“Phobos.”
“Yeah.” He lifted his finger and drew it across his throat.
Danny Pincher and his crew, their tweaker… The Mercury. Earth was using all of its new-found power.
One thing at a time, take care of the immediate problems before considering apocalypse. Dandy pushed his slate back into a belt pouch and made as if to lick his finger and hold it up to the breeze. “That way.” He pointed slightly east of north. “I think the trail curves west of the outermost buildings. Back across lava.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
We picked our way over an even rougher field now. Gullies several meters deep crossed our path. We climbed down slowly, then back up again, removing our equipment belts and wrapping them around our skinsealed hands to protect against the broken-glass edges.
“We’ll cross the emergency exit for the bunkhouse wing. It’ll look a lot like a rock, so stay alert.”
My eyes hurt from dryness under the mask and from staring so hard at the sharp rocks and ground beneath my feet. My ribs hurt despite the pain control of the nano; I would need better attention soon.
The exertion was wearing me down, finally, and the air from our tanks smelled foul. Recirculation and scrubbing was beginning to fail. We were pushing the skinseal suits and masks to their limits.
Dandy held out an arm and I bumped into it, nearly losing my balance. He grabbed my shoulder to steady me, then made a hush gesture with his finger near his mask. I squinted to see whatever he had seen. The landscape was still, orange flopsand crust and scattered black boulders, sunlight glinting from glassy surfaces. I followed his gaze and saw something that was not still, something moving slowly a few dozen meters away. A skeletal metallic arm rose above the rocks, flexed cautiously, then straightened. A round black and orange striped body broke loose from the ground and erected on stubby black legs. A translucent sac fell away, and the thing stood on Kaibab’s rocky plain, as big as a human, surveying its surroundings through tiny glittering eyes on a bulbous head. Its two arms undulated with a spooky, deliberate rhythm, as if tasting the air.
Dandy drew me down slowly as the locust turned away from us, and we tried to hide in the boulders. He raised his head high enough to keep track of the machine, then crawled slowly out of my sight.
I lay in the crotch of two boulders, buttocks pressed uncomfortably against rugged pebbly flop, too tired and in pain to feel any fear or even to wonder what Dandy was up to. After ten or fifteen minutes, he returned and switched on power to my suit again. He pantomimed and mouthed that the locust was stalking away from the station, and away from us, but that he had seen evidence of many others — factory cases, trenches where material had been mined and converted. And he had found the entrance. I followed him on hands and knees, my stomach churning with the added pain.
A large black boulder blocked our way through a narrow gully filled with powdery smear. I crawled past him, bringing up my slate. An optical port glittered within a dimple in the boulder. I programmed my slate for my key codes and ported it. The boulder quickly split in half, revealing a hatch. The hatch swung inward, and Dandy helped me through.
A guard waited for us in the narrow tunnel beyond, down on one knee with electron gun poised. He raised his head from the sight, opened one slitted eye, and blinked in disbelief. “You crashed,” he said. Our hearing was beginning to return, though harsh and uneven; loud noises hurt.
“Yeah, and where was the goddamned rescue team?” Dandy demanded in a rasp.
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” the guard said, hefting his gun and standing. “We posted defenses on all outer corridors. We’ve had two locust attacks — ”
“I have to get to the main lab,” I said.
The station had been breached in two areas, both near the southern tunnel through which we had entered. The head of station defense, a broad-faced woman named Eccles, passed us in a side corridor, followed by a train of maintenance and defense arbeiters. She raised her eyebrows at Dandy, who shook his head with a fierce scowclass="underline" no time to explain.
The entire station was on first stage alert. Leander met us at the junction with the main corridor. Water a foot deep coursed along the floor from a pipe rupture. We slogged through the stream beside Leander.
“We’ve put Charles and Tamara on alert,” he explained. “They’re in the main labs, testing the QLs and preparing for whatever you order.”
Having positioned troops and arbeiters, Eccles splashed into the corridor and joined us. “Madam Vice President, we haven’t been able to reach Many Hills. We’ve seen locusts south of the station. There have been two skirmishes, and we anticipate full-scale attacks any time.”
We climbed three steps up into a dry corridor.
“We’ll need better med, and soon, and I want to see everything,” I said. Two distant thumps brought everybody to a halt. We glanced around warily, waiting.
“Our defense arbeiters have begun shelling,” Eccles said.
Dandy shook his head bitterly. “They’ll come in here like cockroaches. We can’t keep them away by shelling.”
“I’ll do whatever I damn well can,” Eccles said defiantly, eyes flashing.
Leander pulled me aside while Dandy and Eccles argued strategy. “Locusts won’t be our biggest worry. Phobos has been taken out.”
“We saw it,” I said.
“And Deimos as well. We don’t have any big guns.”
“Phobos looked like it was torched,” I said.
Leander’s face fell. “We’re picking up high levels of gamma radiation.”
“What, then?”
“Remote conversion,” Leander said. “They seem to be using the Ice Pit to target us.”
“Did the teams get away?” I asked.
Leander shook his head. “I’ve got a medical coming, and some transportation.”
The pain in my ribs had subsided to a brutal throb.
In the annex outside the main lab,, as an officious, humming arbeiter injected more nano and watched my vital signs, Eccles and Lieh worked with the original of Aelita to show me what little they knew. A map of the Kaibab Plateau displayed hundreds of blinking yellow crosses: suspected locust sign, spotted by emergency balloons and gliders circling the station. Red dots indicated positive locust identification. I counted thirty.
Dandy described the locust that had invaded our shuttle and brought us down. Lieh listened attentively.
“We only have the sketchiest ideas what shapes they can take, and what they can do,” she said. “So far, all we’ve seen have been scouts and simple sappers.”
More deep thumps vibrated the walls and floor.