"They probably have other ways of tracking intruders."
"I'm inclined to think they don't get many intruders here, or don't expect to," I said. "Anyway, we might as well eliminate the obvious method."
"One problem, though."
"What's that?"
"This buggy doesn't have an auxiliary motor."
"No? Do you have any idea how the power plant works?"
"Not the foggiest. If you look under the hood, you'll see that it looks like a chrome-plated internal combustion engine. In fact, it's a ringer for a Chevy 283 with fuel injection."
"Yeah? What's that?"
"That means it has a 283 cubic-inch displacement, and instead of a carburetor it has… Never mind all that. Doesn't mean a thing, because the engine's a dummy."
"Well…" I sighed, resolving once again to get to the bottom of Carl's mystery somehow, even if I had to beat it out of him. "Hell. Shoot that weird goddamn thing into the trailer and shut it off."
"Hey, don't talk about my car that way." Carl was highly offended.
I squelched the mike and cocked an eyebrow at Roland. "Touchy bastard, isn't he?"
"I've always thought that most Americans have odd neurotic quirks," Roland said in all seriousness.
I stared at him for a moment. "Roland?"
"What?"
"Go to hell."
He shrugged it off. "Talk about touchy," he mumbled. "Simply an observation."
"Sorry about that, Carl," I said when I had turned the mike back on. "Didn't mean anything by it."
"I should be the one to apologize. l was totally out of line. It's just that―"
"Forget it. I'll evac the trailer. Sam?"
When Sam didn't answer, I reached up to the trailer control panel and did it myself. "Sam?"
No answer.
I tapped Sam's voice synthesizer module. "Sam? You there?"
I withdrew the module, blew lightly on the contacts, and reinserted it.
"Sam? Can you hear me? Blink your function light if you can."
The tiny red light under his camera-eye on the dash remained steady.
I flipped down the keyboard on the terminal, punched up Sam's diagnostic display and ran a quick program: The problem wasn't immediately apparent. The readings were strange, though. I blew air through my lips and sat back. "We got problems."
"Serious?" Roland asked.
I shook my head slowly, staring dolefully at the screen. "Don't know."
Carl's signal came a little weakly, bouncing out of the trailer and off the walls. "I'm in."
"Sean? Get your buggy in there, too."
"Right you are."
After Sean had climbed up and in, I lowered the rear door, retracted the ramp, and recycled. When there was enough air in the trailer to carry sound, I switched my feed to the intercom. "Stay in your vehicles a bit. Going to look around for a dark comer to hide in, then we'll palaver. We gotta decide what we're going to do." I flipped off the mike, then flipped it on again. "Besides panic."
"What about Yuri?" John asked from the back.
"Ah, Yuri," I said. "Mind's preoccupied." I reached and switched over to the comm circuits. "Yuri?"
"Yes, Jake?"
"Are you using your auxiliary engine?"
"Yes, we are."
"Good. Just follow me."
"Affirmative."
Our tour of the area continued desultorily. We rolled by several kilometers of empty bays… until we found one occupied.
By a Roadbug.
Rather, one-and-a-half Roadbugs.
"It's dividing!" Roland gasped in wonder. "Reproducing itself!"
I yelled for everyone to come forward.
The thing in the bay had developed a deep rift down its back and had expanded to half again its normal width. It was a stunningly simple and effective method of parturition.
"Now we know they aren't machines," John said in awe.
"Do we?" I asked.
Roland shook his head at the immense bifurcated blob within the enclosure. "But complex organisms can't reproduce that way! They just don't!"
"Maybe they're all one cell," Sean suggested.
"Impossible," Roland answered, sounding less than certain.
"My question is," Susan said, "are they the Roadbuilders? And is this their home planet?"
"Everything points to it," John said. "The barrier, the obviously artificial nature of the planet, the dozens, maybe hundreds of portals…"
"I wouldn't jump to conclusions, John," Roland cautioned.
"They act like bloody machines, though," Liam said thoughtfully. "And they function like machines. Yet…" He tugged at his untidy beard and pursed his lips.
"Yet there it is," Darla said. "They're organisms in the sense that they reproduce. But that doesn't rule out their being machines."
"A Von Neumann mechanism," I said.
Sean squinted one eye and looked at me askance. "I've heard of that somewhere. Self-reproducing machines―is that the concept?"
"More or less," I said. "But I'm inclined to believe that we're looking at something here that obliterates the borderline between organism and mechanism, between the organic and the inorganic." I turned to Susan. "As to your question about whether they're the Roadbuilders, I'd say no. It's just a hunch. Bugs may be highly intelligent, maybe enough to have constructed the Skyway, but take it from an old starrigger―they're cops. There's an air of the bullet-headed civil servant about them. Whoever caused the Skyway to be constructed had some very good reason―sublime or practical, I don't know which. But it's all part of a grand scheme. These guys"―I cocked a thumb at the featureless silvery shape within the bay―"don't know from grand. They're functionaries. They have a job to do and they do it."
"Couldn't they be a specialized class of Roadbuilder?" Darla asked.
"Maybe, but if they are, they're different enough to occupy a separate species slot within the genus. My guess is that Roadbugs are artificial beings, probably created by the Builders."
We all continued watching the thing until Roland said, "Aren't we taking a chance just sitting here? This one seems to be immobilized, but―"
"Not too smart, are we? You're right," I said. "Let's move."
We wandered about for the next hour or so, encountering neither birthing-bay Roadbugs nor ones that were up and about. The layout of the place changed. We roamed through an expansive multileveled area, a tiered arcade built around a bottomless central well. Spiral ramps connected the levels. We plied these, up and down, trying to find a way out. Giving up, we tried doubling back but took a wrong turn and lucked into a different area, this one an immense circular arena with a domed roof at least 500 meters high at the apex. A short tunnel led out of there into an identical room, from which we took a passageway into yet another vast airless crypt, this one cubical in shape. Like everything else in this subterranean necropolis it was without distinguishable features and without discernible function.
"Hell," I said, "this is as good a place as any. Let's stop here."
"I suppose we should all go into the trailer," Roland said.
"Good idea. Yuri and his friends will have to suit up and come in through the cab―if they have suits."
They did.
A few minutes later I stood at the aft-cabin control panel and pressed the switch that brought down the air-tight door between the cab and aft-cabin, then hit the evac button. When I had good hard vacuum out there, I opened the cab's left gull-wing hatch. Watching through the viewplate, I saw three utility-suited figures climb in. The two adult-size ones looked around, caught sight of me and waved. The smaller figure didn't look like a child, but it was humanoid and there was something strangely familiar about it. I closed the hatch and repressurized.
The two humans were doffing their helmets as we filed into the cab. First to reveal himself was a shaggy-haired, bearded man of about my age.
"Jake, I presume," he said, smiling and extending a gloved hand. His manner was warm and amiable. Deep wrinkle-lines at the corners of his brown eyes gave his face a big-friendly-bear look. He was no taller than me, but the tight-fitting utility suit revealed a powerfully built body that lent the impression of height. There were other lines to his face: those of worry, fatigue, and the emotional exhaustion of a long and difficult journey, all now partially smoothed by relief.