Eventually she heard Jon say ‘That’s it! It’s in place!’ with a clear note of triumph. Shev looked pleased too and the duo went their separate ways.
‘What was all that about?’ Shana asked, when she finally got Jon on his own.
He smiled and said: ‘Something very dear to your heart. But I’m not going to say anything out loud. We think that we’re alone in this room but we’re not. If I’m right we’ll all find out when the time comes.’
Days passed as the ship flew silently on through the indifferent darkness. The terrible heat drained away until the time came when with great satisfaction they were able to put their clothes back on – though only after both clothes and bodies had undergone an extremely thorough wash.
The scene on the great viewer did not change to any significant degree: they were still months away from their first encounter with a giant planet.
Then Jon called them all together.
To their surprise, he gave them all small writing pads made of paper.
He wrote something down on his pad and passed it to the nearest member of the group.
Each member in turn read the following message: ‘It is time to destroy the Regeneration Chamber.’
The others stared at him in surprise and not a little trepidation.
This was the long-expected move against Korok: this would be the final test that they would face. If they lost it would be all over for them.
How? Jarm wrote.
We need weapons, was Jon’s written reply.
The group sat silently for a while. Weapons? Where could they find weapons?
Then Jorl laughed and spent some time writing. He passed the result straight to Jon.
Jon are you sure you want to be our leader? We were meant to conquer a world. There must be weapons on the ship!
Jon gave a smile which was twisted with embarrassment. Of course! he thought, I must be slipping.
He nodded to Shev and they both left the group but continued to communicate by writing on the pads.
We must locate them without alerting Korok, he wrote.
Yes, she wrote, we’ll have to search using machine code only.
And when we find them – we move fast.
Of course was the reply.
They returned to the group and Jon wrote a detailed description of what they would do when they had weapons. They nodded in silent acquiescence.
They stood up, burned all the papers.
And waited.
The location and password were displayed on Jon’s viewer. Instantly he memorised it and deleted it.
He stood up. What were the resources of the creature he was up against? he asked himself for the thousandth time.
A biological brain was being emulated on superbly constructed software. Korok had been a soldier – could he see that the software of which he was himself a part was being used against him?
There was no point in speculating. They would find out soon enough.
Now they must move – and fast.
They formed into a tight group with Jon at their head and left the Control Room.
The interstellar ramjet hurtled onwards; oblivious of their departure, staying true to its preordained path.
Down they went; one level down; two levels down.
Then a great door made of case-hardened steel. And a pad by its side.
The pad was pressed.
The password was given.
The door opened.
Inside were row after row of automatic weapons, stretching deep into the interior of the ship. There were revolver types, rifle types, machine guns. In the dim distance could be seen wheeled and tracked vehicles. It was an arsenal of every type of projectile throwing armament known to the Protectorate!
The nearest rows held automatic rifles and magazine clips; devices of death that had been put there half a millennium earlier in the sure and certain hope that they would be used in anger!
And so they would.
They took them; they took grenades; they took plastic explosives.
They climbed back up the levels they had descended, up seemingly endless metal stairs. There were elevators but Jon did not want to find that a door which had closed behind him would no longer open. Even now Korok must be aware that something not in the plan was happening.
They found the High Official Generator Room and to Jon’s surprise he found that the password had not been changed. He had been prepared to blast his way in with explosive charges.
The outer door and the inner door opened before them.
It was as Jon and Shana remembered, row after row of transparent cylinders filled with a milky, slowly stirring liquid; tall tubes stretching into gloomy obscurity, with four standing out in a separate row.
Jon felt that there was no longer any need for silence.
‘Shoot them!’ he yelled, ‘Now!’
It was then that the bulkhead next to them, weakened by the endless flexing and bending that it had endured in the stellar encounter, decided to give way. With a terrible blast of screams of tortured metal tearing, a great, jagged hole appeared within which electrical arcs crackled and danced, striking this way and that like blazing serpents.
The intruders were flung to the floor, the weapons falling from their grasp.
As they lay there stunned and dazed they saw mechanical legs approaching and, sitting up, found themselves surrounded by the arachnoid guardians of the Room. They stared at disc-shaped bodies supported by spindly legs and found ruby-coloured eyes staring back at them. And they also saw various unpleasant jointed appendages being extended towards them.
‘You are too close to the Generation Tubes,’ a thin voice intoned, ‘You may not approach within two metres.’
Jon stared at the creature standing over him. It was illuminated by leaping arcs of electrical death that were darting and flashing in all directions. Sooner or later one of them would strike either him or the creature.
But he could not wait.
He rolled over and grasped the automatic rifle which had fallen from his fingers, lifted it with trembling hands and fired.
The creature disintegrated into little flying pieces of metal accompanied by blinding electrical shorts that added to the hellish mayhem into which the Generation Room had descended. The flashes of the bolts of electricity seeking to ground themselves produced a dizzying, stroboscopic effect as the others staggered to their feet and unleashed a salvo of bullets on the guardian arachnoids. One by one they approached, uttering the same warning and one by one they were blown apart. Choking smoke and metallic dust filled the room, stinging eyes already half-blinded by the hissing electric arcs.
Jon tried to gather his forces again and raised his voice as high as he could so the others could hear him above the electrical hurricane.
‘Shoot the cylinders! The cylinders!’
But they did not.
They stood motionless in grotesque rigidity as horror seized their muscles, their volition.
A section of wall had slid open and something had emerged.
Something that looked like an arachnoid but one designed and built by a crazed sadist.
It stood nearly three metres tall topped by an elliptical head with two large crimson eyes. And coming from its torso were four arms giving it the impression of a mechanical imagining of a Hindu god.
But if it was a god, it was a god of death for each arm terminated in some kind of blade. Blades that were whirling; blades that were cutting across each other like those of huge scissors. Blades that would inflict sudden death or endless pain.