“QED,” Surgenor commented drily. “There you are, Mike. Captain Aesop firmly believes in pursuing the greatest good of the greatest number. And in this case you’re the smallest number.”
“I cannot risk the ship,” Aesop said.
“He can’t risk the ship, Mike. Now that you know the score, you are entitled to refuse to chance going near those objects until a team arrives with full probe instrumentation.”
“I don’t think there’s any risk worth mentioning,” Targett said steadily. “Besides, everything Aesop said makes sense to me—it’s only reasonable to play the odds. I’m going ahead.”
The Y-slots in the screws holding the mid-section plates did not provide a good purchase for his knife, but the crews proved to be spring-loaded and turned easily when depressed. He lifted the first plate off carefully, exposing a mass of components and circuitry, much of which appeared to be duplicated and arranged symmetrically about a flat central spine. The wires and conduits were drab and without colour coding, but looked fresh enough to have been installed weeks and not millennia earlier.
Targett, who had no engineering background beyond what he had picked up in the CS course, suddenly felt a profound respect for the long-departed beings who had created the cylinders. Within five minutes he had stripped off all the curved plates and laid them in a row beside the cylinder body. An inspection of the complex interior told him nothing about the object’s function, but the mechanism in the sharper end had the hard uncompromising lines he associated with machine guns.
“Again hold the camera one metre from the object and move along its entire length,” Aesop instructed. “Then return with the camera held in such a way as to give me close-ups of the interior compartments.”
Targett did as he had been told, pausing at what he had come to regard as the rear end. “How’s that? This looks like an engine section, but the metal looks queer—a bit crumbly.”
“That would be caused by nitrogen absorption associated with…’ Aesop stopped speaking in mid-sentence, a strangely human mannerism which caused Targett to prick his ears.
“Aesop?”
“Here is an instruction you must obey instantly.” Aesop’s voice was preternaturally sharp. “Scan your surroundings. If you see a rock formation that would give protection against machine rifle fire—go to it immediately!”
“But what’s the matter?” Targett glanced around the shimmering plateau.
“Don’t ask questions,” Surgenor’s voice cut in. “Do as Aesop says, Mike—run for cover!”
“But…’
Targett’s voice faded as his peripheral vision picked up a sudden movement. He turned towards it and saw that—in the centre of the plateau—one of the hundreds of cylinders had reared its sharp end at an angle into the air and was swaying, slowly, menacingly, like a cobra hypnotizing its intended victim.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Targett gaped at the cylinder for a moment, his face contorted with shock, then he ran north towards the nearest barricade of rock. Hampered by the suit and the extra gravity, he found it impossible to pick up any real speed. On his right the cylinder spiralled lazily into the air like a mythological creature awakening from millennia of slumber. It drifted in his direction.
Two others stirred in their dusty cradles.
Targett tried to move faster, but felt as if he was waist-deep in molasses. Ahead he saw a black triangular hole formed by tilted slabs of rock, and he swerved towards it.
The sky to his right was clear again, giving him the impression the airborne cylinder had vanished. Then he saw it moving around behind him, foreshortening, aiming itself. His thighs pumped harder in nightmarish slow motion and the dark opening swung crazily ahead, but too far away. He knew he was going to be too late.
He threw himself at the opening—just as a massive hammer-blow sledged ferociously into his back. The television camera spun from his hand as he was lifted off his feet and flung into the space between the rocks. Astounded at finding himself still alive, Targett burrowed desperately for cover. The triangular space proved long enough to take his whole body. He squirmed into it, sobbing with panic at the thought of another bullet finding him at any instant.
I’m alive, he thought numbly. But how?
He slid a gloved hand around to the lower part of his back where the bullet had struck, and felt an unfamiliar jagged edge of metal. His probing fingers explored a crumpled, box-like object, and a few more seconds passed before he identified it as the ruins of his oxygen generator unit.
He started to reach for the backpack containing the spare generator, then remembered the pack was lying out on the plateau where he had set it down before going to work on the cylinder. Clawing feverishly at the confining rock until he had reversed his position, he peered outside. The small segment of open sky he could see was being crossed and re-crossed by the black silhouettes of torpedoes in flight.
Targett inched forward a little for a better view. His eyes widened as he saw that the torpedoes had taken to the air in hundreds, swarming silently upwards, their shadows rippling over the brownish dust and rocks. Even as he watched, a few laggards angled their noses into the air, swung groggily for a moment and drifted up to join their fellows in the circulating cloud. A slight fold in the ground made it impossible for him to see where the backpack lay, or if the cylinder on which he had worked had also taken flight. He raised his head slightly and fell back amid a blasting shower of rock splinters and dust. The banshee howl of ricochets left no doubt in his mind that several of the torpedoes had noted his movements and had reacted in the only way they could, according to the lethal dictates of their ancient designers.
“Report on your position, Michael,” Aesop’s voice seemed to come from another existence.
“My position isn’t so good,” Targett said hoarsely, trying to control his breathing. “These things seem to be robot hunters fitted out with machine rifles. The lot of them are airborne right now—it might be that the radiation from my camera or suit radio triggered them off—and they’re swarming about like mosquitoes. I’m hiding out under some rocks, but…’
“Stay where you are. I will have the Sarafand there in less than an hour.”
“That’s no good, Aesop. One of the torpedoes took a shot at me as I was getting in here. The suit isn’t punctured, but my oxygenerator is wrecked.”
“Use the spare from your pack,” Surgenor put in before Aesop could reply.
“I can’t.” Targett made the strange discovery that he felt embarrassed rather than afraid. “The pack’s lying out in the open and I can’t get at it. There’s no way for me to get it.”
“But that gives you only…’ Surgenor paused. “You’ll have to reach the pack, Mike.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Look, perhaps the torpedoes respond only to sudden movement. If you crawled out very slowly…’
“Hypothesis incorrect,” Aesop interrupted. “My analysis of the sensor circuitry in the torpedo which Michael opened indicates that it was a duplex system, both channels of which use movement and heat for target identification. Any exposure of his body would be certain to draw more fire.”
“It already has—I tried to poke my head out of this hole a minute ago,” Targett said. “I almost got it blown off.”