“There are animals. I found them. Or at least, I found some dead ones. Now I’m across the stream and standing on a road. No buildings, but I see something else sitting on the road itself. It’s within walking distance. I thought I might take a look at it.”
“Might as well. There’s nothing for you to do back here. I fixed up Ben as best I can, but he’s still asleep. One thing, though. We don’t know how long the day is here, but it’s my impression that the sun is lower in the sky. Don’t stay away too long.”
Darya stared off to her left. The sun seemed to her to be in about the same position, though it was certainly darker. Rain clouds, maybe? If nothing else, the stream guaranteed a supply of drinking water.
She opened her faceplate. Even if the sun was going down, the air felt as hot as ever. She headed off in the opposite direction, away from the sun. Progress was much faster now that she was on a solid level surface. The dark object on the road grew steadily, transforming from a shapeless blob to a definite oval outline. It was a huge humpbacked body, supported on six thick limbs.
Could that be another dead animal, somehow frozen and mummified in the very act of walking?
As Darya came closer yet, she revised her idea of what she was seeing. Legs, yes, each one solid and thick, but this was no animal. It was a walking vehicle. The great “head” facing Darya contained a transparent window where you might expect eyes to be, allowing her to look through to the interior. Two shapes, pale-yellow and motionless, sat within. The still forms had a disturbing familiarity.
Darya kept walking. The whole front of the vehicle formed a single door. She located the handle, reached out, and swung it open.
A gust of warm air touched her face. It carried the smell of something old and rancid, but that was not what made her shiver. She recognized the creatures sitting lifeless on the two broad seats. She had seen them, or their relatives before—although never in life.
She slammed the door closed.
“Hans?” She could hear the tremble in her voice. “Hans?”
“Darya? Are you all right?”
“I’m not right at all. Hans, you won’t believe this, but we’re on Marglot. I’ve just seen some of the Marglotta. They are here in front of me. They are dead. I think they are all dead. We arrived here too late.”
Darya wanted Hans Rebka to see the walking vehicle and confirm her suspicions as to what she was seeing inside it. But there were two problems. Hans should not leave Ben Blesh alone until it was safe to do so; and Darya doubted her ability to navigate the six-legged walking vehicle off the road and up the hillside—even assuming that she overcame her squeamishness at pushing the mummified body out of the driver’s seat.
While she tried to decided what to do next, another factor entered. It started to rain. Great spherical drops as big as marbles drifted down from the warm and clouded sky. When one of them burst on the nose of Darya’s upturned face, she slammed shut her suit’s visor, jerked open the door of the car, and scrambled inside closing it behind her.
Her inspection of the Marglotta, made without touching the bodies, was suggestive but not conclusive. They seemed to have died instantly, and without any warning. The clawed paws of one of them rested on pedals and control bars. The other sat with a rounded dark-brown ball—food, perhaps?—raised halfway to its open mouth.
She said into her radio, “Hans, I don’t know what happened here. But whatever it was, it was quick. If it’s like this all over the planet, the Marglotta died fast and without any idea what was coming.”
“There’s no danger now, is there?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“I’m wondering where we are going to spend the night. The sun is lower, I’m sure of it, and the rain is coming down harder. It would be a major effort, but if I could carry Ben down there we could spend the night in comfort, inside the car and out of the rain.”
Darya decided she had to put her feelings about the dead Marglotta behind her. Even if Hans could carry Ben, what would that do to the other man’s injured body?
“Let me try something, Hans. Maybe I can work the car’s controls and get it walking.”
The hardest act was the first one. She had to lift one body out of the driver’s seat and place it in the rear of the car. The Marglotta were small, no more than a meter or so in height, so weight was no problem. But as she raised the driver’s body, the arms reaching for the controls snapped off. They were as brittle as long-dried twigs. Darya gritted her teeth, hoisted the body over the seat back, and laid it on the flat area behind. She squeezed into the driver’s place, trying to ignore the shrivelled corpse by her side.
The controls were simple enough, assuming that Marglotta thought processes in any way resembled those of humans. The condition of the vehicle’s power source was another matter. She had no idea how long it might have been sitting on the stony road unused, or even what the source of power might be. The technology level of the road and the vehicle suggested fossil fuel or a stored energy flywheel, rather than solar power, a fusion plant, or superconducting rings.
Had the vehicle been smart enough to switch itself off after it sat for a while without moving? Darya searched for a general power switch and located two candidates. The first operated the six articulated legs, lengthening them until Darya sat uncomfortably high above the road. She reversed that, restoring the car body to its original height. The second switch led to a hum and bone-rattling vibrations. It did not trouble Darya, but flakes of dried skin shook loose from the creature by her side and rustled down to coat the floor of the car.
Darya did not relish the prospect of driving while dead bodies disintegrated around her, but Hans Rebka had to see these things—or what was left of them by the time she got there.
Her hands and feet were on the same pedals and levers that the Marglotta had used. She experimented with them cautiously. They seemed simple enough. One for speed control, two of them for turning right or left, and one for reversing direction. She “walked” the car along the stony road, getting a feel for pace and movement. The rolling up-and-down gait of the vehicle was not unpleasant. Once you were used to it, the feeling was even soothing. Maximum speed was hardly more than a walk, though Darya knew she was ignorant of such things as gears and faster drive modes.
She continued along the stony road until she was level with the suited figures of Hans Rebka and Ben Blesh, then made a right-angle turn toward the hill.
Now came the tricky part. She had to guide the car across the fast-flowing stream, then negotiate the slope ahead of her.
It proved easier than expected. The car contained some kind of stabilizing device, which automatically shortened or lengthened the front and back legs so as to keep the inside always level.
The limited speed of the vehicle made her progress irritatingly slow, but within ten minutes Darya brought the car to a halt ten meters from where Hans and Ben were sitting. The faceplates of their suits were closed to keep out the rain, now pouring down torrentially.
They walked toward her. She was pleased to see that Ben was awake and moving almost normally, though he was holding his right arm close in to favor his broken ribs.
She opened the car’s wide front door and the two men scrambled in. Hans Rebka apparently experienced none of Darya’s reverence for the dead. He examined the Marglotta sitting in the passenger seat for a few seconds, and nodded. “You’re right. Just the way I remember the dead ones, back at Upside Miranda Port. Died the same way, I’d guess, though I don’t know how that could be. Well, there’s nothing we can do for them now.”
He unceremoniously lifted the second body and dumped it over the seat into the back of the car.