With perfect ease the Callan swept through millions of miles of void to a meeting with the space object. At a distance of a few hundred yards the bridge crew nullified the ship’s motion. The object now showed itself to be a rectangular raft moving directly outward from the sun, propelling itself by means of two nozzles which emitted a bright blue discharge and looked like electrostatic impellers.
Clinging to the raft were about fifty passengers. Amara turned up the magnification and gasped. She had expected to see more examples like their captured specimen: men who had fitted themselves for life in space by burying their organic bodies in giant suits. But the people on the raft wore no spacesuits at all. Neither did they wear any kind of clothing, protective or decorative.
They were naked to the void.
But that was not all. So bizarre were the space travellers in appearance that it was some moments before Amara could confirm that they were in fact human. She focused the screen on one specimen to examine it closely. Like its brethren, it had been extensively modified by deep surgery and the incorporation of artificial organs. Embedded in its skull was a turret-like device which she guessed was connected directly to the brain. The eyes were hidden by the black goggles which seemed to be riveted into the eye-sockets. The nose had been removed.
She moved the screen’s cursor down to the torso. The chest had been replaced entirely by a metal box-like structure. Likewise the abdominal wall was substituted for by a flexible corrugated shield, making it resemble the abdomen of some type of grub. Amara could imagine the problems of pressure and temperature involved in adapting people to an interplanetary environment. Below the abdomen, however, hung an incongruous indication that the creature was fundamentally human, and male. The genitals had been left intact and floated flaccid and loose.
The mixing of man and machine continued. From limbs, backs and sides projected an assortment of devices and turrets. Amara swung the cursor to other parts of the raft. The modified men were far from being identical to one another. The machine-organs they incorporated varied from individual to individual, as though a division of function existed among them. Some torsos were transfixed by lateral shafts in an eerie travesty of crucifixion. Other specimens were made to seem even less human than their fellows by the elaboration of their cuirasses and metal pipes. As the raft jetted through space the modified men clung to handholds so as to avoid being thrown off by the weak gravity the acceleration generated.
And all were naked – all but one. The exception, a burly figure wrapped in a voluminous brown habit or gown, his head hidden by a deep cowl, stood in the centre of the vehicle while those around him kept a respectful distance.
On the raft, too, was additional equipment that might have been primitive artillery, radar and the like.
Finally Estru took a deep breath and let it out in a loud sigh. ‘Wow. How do you relate this?’
‘It’s fairly obvious, isn’t it?’ Amara responded excitedly. ‘What we have here is a space culture in the real meaning of the term. People adapted to living in space, just as you and I live in an atmospheric medium. The giant suit was one answer. This is another. We’ll call it Type Two,’ she added, for the benefit of the recorder. ‘Modified men, rather than ensheathed, protected men.’
‘Evidently they’ve solved the breathing problem,’ Estru said sardonically, focusing on one of the modified men again. ‘They’ve fixed it so that they don’t have to breathe.’
‘To live in space biologically must require an entire systematic overhaul,’ Amara supplied. ‘Almost certainly the blood is replaced by a more suitable fluid that won’t form bubbles under zero pressure. Just where their tissues get their oxygen from I can’t fathom at the moment. As you can see the lungs have been excised in every case. Probably those chest boxes carry a store of oxygen, possibly in a solid state or locked in a compound, which they release into the bloodstream – or pseudo-bloodstream – at a regulated rate. I’ll ask the medics to write up a report on it. The idea seems strange to us, of course, but technically there’s nothing difficult in any of it. It’s just that – well, who would want to do that to themselves?’ She shuddered.
‘I’ll second that,’ Estru said fervidly. ‘I don’t know which is worse, the man in the suit or these fellows.’
Amara had been searching for a word. Now she found it. ‘Cyborgs,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Cyborgs. That’s what these are. I knew I’d heard of the phenomenon somewhere before. The word occurs in several dead languages – it stands for “cybernated organism” – but more as a legend than a fact. This is the first time I knew for certain that any had actually been made.’
From Amara’s board came the voice of Aspar, in sensor section. ‘I’m picking up transmitted speech, Amara. Want to listen to it?’
She smiled. ‘Yes. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say.’
But when the voices followed Aspar’s, several voices speaking at a time, her smile changed to a frown which deepened by the second. The voices were high-pitched, with odd, alien-sounding inflections. The language, as far as she could tell through the gabble, bore no relation either to Russian or to any known to her.
Estru looked at her with concern. ‘Well? What do they say?’
She shook her head. ‘It isn’t Russian. I don’t know what it is.’
There was a sudden quickening of activity on the raft. Several cyborgs leaped to a large device mounted on the nearside periphery. In their hands the machine swivelled and emitted a bright flash.
A muted buzz from Amara’s table informed her that the Callan was under attack. On the screen she was unable to see what kind of weapon the device on the raft was, but three more flashes followed in rapid succession.
Captain Wilce’s voice came through to her. ‘We have a decision to make, Amara,’ he said firmly. ‘They’re firing rocket missiles at us. The electrostatic deflectors have prevented any hits so far, but we can’t rely on that. I must insist that we either retaliate or withdraw.’
Amara bit her lip. She knew that Captain Wilce felt he had been given a slightly unfair brief for this mission. The Callan was only lightly armed, in recognition of the fact that they would be intruding into Caeanic space. Some attempt had been made to compensate for this with a purely defensive, non-aggressive measure in the form of electrostatic focusing, said to be able to lock on to and deflect any solid missile or non-radiant energy beam. The Captain did not believe in its efficacy, however, and exhibited some nervousness where the security of his ship was concerned.
‘I want to take one of those specimens alive,’ she said suddenly. ‘Do whatever’s necessary, Captain.’
‘Fair enough.’
The cyborgs appeared to be infuriated by their gun’s failure to damage the Callan. They began to quit the raft; about half their number surged towards the ship in an angry swarm, propelling themselves by means of cylinders with small, flaring nozzles. They carried a variety of hand weapons: ray-guns, recoilless rifles, big spiked hammers. One cyborg, a launching tube mounted on its back, lobbed a mortar bomb. Automatically the electrostatic deflector seized it and hurled it away into space.
At the same time the Callan was bearing down on the space raft. Narrow energy beams seethed harmlessly against the hull. Bullets, unnoticed by the electrostatic deflector, bounced off it.
The ship’s bulk scattered the cyborgs like chaff. Their cacophonous yelling swelled, almost deafening Amara and Estru; high-pitched, ranting sounds full of hatred. A whiplash tentacle snaked out from the ship and wound itself round one of the modified men, dragging him inboard.