Like so many other people of his time, Herb had never heard of sunburn.
The sky was deep blue and cloudless, the sun harsh and yellow, the ground a checkerboard of grey stone and dark shadow. A smell of polished metal filled the air, but there was nothing else to be seen. What had happened to the VNMs? Where had they all gone? If what Robert had said was true, they would be using warp engines to jump to the other planets of the Enemy Domain. Had there been enough exotic material here for them to construct the necessary engines? There was a flicker of movement in the corner of Herb’s eye, and he turned and looked out over the pockmarked grey plain, but there was nothing there. No. He paused as he saw the flicker again. There was something out there, right at the edge of vision, something that flickered into and out of view in the distance. He watched it for some time until the sun beating down on his burning skin forced him to move on.
Herb approached the edge of one of the huge sockets sunk deep into the plain. Standing near the edge he could see a ruler-straight line running over three hundred meters in each direction. He could just about see the far walclass="underline" a grey expanse that faded into darkness as it plunged deep into the planet. Herb got onto his hands and knees and edged forward to peer down. There were holes and tunnels in the sheer walls of the socket, but they were too far down for Herb to reach. One large round opening lay about twenty meters down, just before the edge of the deep shadow cast by the lip of the socket. It looked like the remains of an underground transportation tunnel, and Herb longed to climb down there into its dark, cool depths.
He stood up, inadvertently knocking a few pieces of abraded gravel into the depths of the socket. They fell down and down and down, swallowed up by the shadow that filled the bottom of the hole.
Herb looked back to the flickering shape in the distance. It had now resolved itself into a tiny speck. Herb wasn’t sure whether or not it was heading in his direction. He didn’t care either way.
He felt so thirsty.
The sun rose to the top of the sky and began to descend again. Herb’s thirst grew. Surely Robert Johnston hadn’t brought him all this way just to leave him to die in the middle of this wilderness? The thought was ridiculous, but it did beg a second question. Why had Robert brought him along, anyway? All this way, just to press a button?
In a flash of uncharacteristic self-awareness, Herb realized he had been nothing more than baggage on this trip. When Robert had first appeared on his ship, he had claimed that he needed Herb’s help to fight the Enemy Domain. Since then, he had led him around the galaxy, using regular humiliation to keep him off balance, and all apparently to abandon him on this forgotten planet.
Why? It didn’t sound much like the behavior of an agent of the EA.
So maybe Robert wasn’t an agent of the EA. But who else would have access to such resources? And what would their motive be?
It was at that point that Herb remembered something Robert had said, something he had mentioned just before they jumped.
Something about other young men he had captured.
He had named one: Sean Simons. Missing. No one knew where he was except Robert, and Robert wasn’t telling. Had Sean been abandoned, just as Herb had been? Did his corpse now lie on a lost planet somewhere? Were his bones currently bleaching under an alien sun at the edge of the galaxy? Despite the heat, Herb shivered to think of it. What reason would Robert have to do that? Why do that to anyone?
The object in the distance was growing larger. It appeared to be moving toward him, flickering in the heat haze like a dark candle flame.
Maybe it was Robert coming to save him.
But Robert had been eaten by the VNMs. Herb had watched it happen.
But what about the other ship? Robert had caused Herb’s ship to reproduce before they had made the jump to this planet. Maybe that other ship had come back to rescue him. He hoped so.
Night came, and with it the cold. Herb was shivering violently, unknowingly suffering from the effects of heatstroke. His mouth and lips were so dry he was having trouble thinking straight. He crouched on the flat rock surface, arms wrapped around himself for warmth, drifting into half sleep and then jerking awake. The cold stars shone down on him. Somewhere out on the plain, something was still moving toward him.
Halfway through the night, Herb drifted from a half sleep into half awakening, following the course of a dream that had spilled over into reality. High above in the sky, there was a sudden glittering. A silver thread stretched and expanded itself to reveal a crescent of moon that slowly widened from new moon to full moon in a matter of minutes, as if someone was peeling away a piece of black paper from the lunar surface. He shook his head and wondered if he was hallucinating. What could cause that? he wondered. Dizzy with the effects of heatstroke, it was nearly an hour before the answer occurred to him.
VNMs, he thought. They were up there too, eating away at whatever dark material covered the surface of that moon.
Morning came, and with it the chance to spend just a few hours sleeping untroubled on the bare rock.
Again, he was woken by the pain in his joints. He sat up and looked toward the approaching object. It was much closer now, and it had resolved itself into a human figure. Herb could make out the bobbing movement of someone walking. Someone grey, or wearing grey, picking its way carefully around all the great holes in the surface as it moved toward him.
Herb thought about going to meet the figure, but he felt too tired, too dizzy, and too thirsty. He crouched down and watched as it came closer. Herb had no perception of any distances greater than a hundred meters or so; modern ranging devices had robbed him of the skill or the need. He had no idea how far away the figure was, or how long it would take it to walk to him. He sat and watched it. He had nothing else to do.
The figure appeared to wave to him. Herb waved back.
As the figure came closer, Herb could see it wasn’t human. It was a robot, but there was something strange about its shape. It was fuzzy, hard to see properly, like the half-tuned pictures on Robert’s television set. The robot looked like a half-tuned picture that had just stepped into his world.
It wore a black bag slung carelessly over its shoulder.
Herb rose to his feet, but the robot waved to him to sit down. Now it was only a hundred meters away. Now fifty.
Step by step it approached Herb, closer and closer until finally it reached him. It stopped right in front of Herb and looked him up and down, then turned and scanned the horizon. Finally, it sat down opposite him. Close to, it didn’t seem so much a shape as a smudge in the air. The robot wasn’t quite there.
Herb swallowed with some difficulty. Speaking was going to be difficult with his dry mouth, but he forced himself to anyway.
“Who are you?” he croaked.
“My name is Constantine Storey,” said the robot. “You must be Herb Kirkham. Your great-great-grandmother says ‘hi.’”
Two days ago
This far from the sun, the coma of Comet 2305 FQOO was so insubstantial as to barely register on the ship’s senses. The enhanced visual feed had filtered the coma completely from its picture and then painted the nucleus as a dirty-white ball of frozen gasses cementing together silvery chunks of rock. The mirrored silver lozenge of the stealth ship was a tiny speck slowly closing on the irregular lump of matter.
Constantine Storey came back to life at the flick of a switch. From his perspective, one moment the world of Stonebreak was fading into nothingness, the next he was gazing at the steadily approaching dirty mass of Comet 2305 FQOO.