‘Yes, I do.’
‘He’s been going on about Verednyev again. Claims we’ve got him in a Faraday cage!’ She sounded annoyed.
‘We have got him in a Faraday cage,’ Estru said resignedly. ‘If you think we’re in danger I’ll call Captain Wilce.’
She seemed not to have heard him. ‘There’s something going on,’ she said excitedly. ‘I think he’s talking to someone a long way off. See if you can pick it up, Estru.’
Obediently he tuned his receiver, more elaborate than hers, up and down the scale, trying to find the wavelength Sarkisov was using. Whistlings and hummings, together with momentary babbles of Sovyan Russian, the living background of the rings, assailed his ears. Finally he pin-pointed a transmission which appeared to be beamed directly this way. Several voices were speaking on it, but from the rapid talk he picked out one repeated word.
Kiborg – Kiborg – Kiborg.
Cyborg!
Abruptly the voices stopped. Sarkisov’s head section rotated slightly, as though searching the sky.
Amara spoke up brightly in Sovyan. ‘Well then, we’d be interested in seeing some more public utility installations. What about—’ But Sarkisov cut her off.
‘Instead I would like to see the inside of your installations, the Callan,’ he said brusquely.
‘Well, it’s difficult…’ she said slowly.
‘Where is the difficulty? Our comrade Alexei Verednyev is already there – as a prisoner!’
‘No, no, not a prisoner,’ objected Amara. ‘He is with us by choice. You have spoken to him!’
‘He speaks only when you take him out of the Faraday cage. The rest of the time you keep him in the cage so we cannot hear him. What would you tell us if he could speak freely?’
‘He is not in a Faraday cage,’ Amara lied.
‘I will tell you what I think,’ the Sovyan said calmly. ‘You have told us you are our cousins, creatures like us from a far star. We have accepted your word and answered your questions, expecting to learn of your people in return. But perhaps you have deceived us. It is possible you are cyborgs wearing body-masks, seeking to trick information on Domashnabaza out of us.’
‘Your surmise is completely unjustified,’ she told him. Then she made an aside to Estru. ‘Better call Captain Wilce.’
But before he could do anything Wilce’s own voice came through his earphones. ‘Is anything happening out there? We are being surrounded by Sovyan militia. They have some heavy equipment.’
Sarkisov spoke again. ‘Well, in any case we must take you to a place of safety. There has been a large cyborg attack and there is fighting nearby.’
‘We are sorry to hear it. But we would prefer to withdraw to our ship,’ Amara said coldly.
‘Out of the question. Follow me, please.’
Estru replied to Wilce, ‘We have trouble too, Captain. I think we are being arrested on suspicion of being cyborg spies. We need a rescue party.’
‘Very well.’ Wilce’s tone was clipped and efficient. ‘We’ll pull you out.’
With astonishing speed, four more Sovyans now jetted in to assist Sarkisov. It was useless to try to escape the towering metalloids; compliantly Amara and Estru obeyed Sarkisov’s order and rose from the surface of the asteroid, to be escorted at high velocity on a winding path through the shining rubble.
The journey lasted several minutes, until finally there loomed ahead of them one of the few wholly artificial structures Estru had seen in the rings. It was a huge metal dodecahedron, drifting among the rocks like a giant shimmering diatom, all of two hundred yards in diameter. Suit-men flitted through a single huge portal, reminding Estru of the entrance to a beehive.
He heard Captain Wilce again. ‘I’m sorry, but we’re having trouble getting a party to you. We are under attack ourselves. What’s your situation?’
‘We are approaching a big artificial asteroid,’ Estru told him. ‘Can you see it?’
‘Yes, we have been tracking you. Are you in any immediate danger?’
‘It’s hard to say how decided the Sovyans’ conclusions about us are. It seems the rings have just come under cyborg attack, which has made them edgy.’
‘Understandable. Keep me informed.’
They passed into the dodecahedron. Estru examined the interior with some interest. It was constructed on some complicated open-plan system. From the peripheral walls jutted a maze of metal screens, but the central space, across which Sovyans soared to and fro, was left undivided apart from being criss-crossed by slender retaining girders. Estru found the place impressive.
Now their guards were herding them through the peripheral maze until they arrived at a meshed and gridded cage. For a moment Estru heard Captain Wilce beginning to speak to him again, then he and Amara were both pushed roughly into the cage and the gate closed behind.
He became aware of a sudden deadness in his transceiver.
They were in a Faraday cage, blocking them off from all radio communication.
Up until now Estru had not really been able to think of the Sovyans as anything more than truncated, rather pathetic human beings huddling inside their protective metal encasements. When he had coined the word ‘metalloid’ it had been as a disparaging joke. But the suit-men’s swift and unhesitating actions had changed all that. Suddenly they seemed more capable and intelligent than his prejudices had formerly allowed him to admit. They had become what Amara had always said they were: a new species, wholly at harmony with their own nature.
One small detail during the journey to the dodecahedron had struck him with particular force – the way the antennae arrays surrounding the suit-men’s heads and shoulders automatically shifted and turned as they darted unerringly through the rock fields. It was such a natural movement, yet completely non-human. The Sovyans really had adopted a new form of physical existence.
Yet in a purely technical sense the suits were not even particularly sophisticated. Ziodean technicians could have produced a version half the size and twice as efficient. Still, for their purpose they were fully effective. The biological and the technical parts of the new entity functioned as a unit. Oxygen was required to be imbibed only once every thirty hours, and then only to top up the reserve tank since the suit was able to split exhaled carbon dioxide. ‘Biofood’, a thick fluid whose waste content was minimal, was taken once in ten hours. ‘Technofood’ consisted of a small amount of lubricating oil and energy for the electrical systems, which came from an isotope battery replaced every fifty days and a solar cell back-up.
For the next half-hour Estru and Amara kept themselves busy, adding notes to their running commentaries on everything they saw. The scene put Estru more and more in mind of a beehive – and the Sovyans reminded him particularly of the bullet-bees found on his home planet of Migrat.
He could not deduce the purpose of the dodecahedral building. It contained a great deal of machinery which was being evacuated through the exit as time went on, and the numbers of suit-men in it also decreased. It could, he thought, be a military centre. He reflected that the Sovyans had suffered these attacks for centuries, and presumably knew how to deal with them. The assault would no doubt be followed by a retaliatory raid on Shoji – though the suit-men, being unable to land on the enemy planet, could do little more than bombard its surface.
At length Estru and Amara ran out of remarks to put on record, and still no rescue party arrived from the Callan. They looked at one another. Estru knew that, though she tried not to show it, Amara was even more scared than he was.