It was there, somewhere beneath him that he had brought the boat down in the first place, with Duncan dying at his side.
We’ll find a better place later, Duncan. Now all I want is to land and get you fixed up. Duncan? You awake?
Sure, Trace.
What happened to Duncan’s voice? It was as if he was speaking through a foot of gauze. Trace headed straight down, braking sharply, to land at the foot of a black cliff that rose over two hundred feet above them. He turned to Duncan who was the colour of wet putty.
Okay, boy. Now we see what we can do about…
Don’t touch me, Trace. I’m broken inside…
Blood on his lips, frothy, mixed with air… His lungs?
I’ll rig up an oxygen tent, Dune. Breathe easier then until the ship gets here. Matter of only a few days. We’re in the shade, plenty of food, water. You’re going to be all right, Dune. Take it easy, okay?
Forget it, Trace. Fix the boat… Make sure the thing died…
I will, Duncan. Later, after I finish the tent.
He used the plastic, fitting it tightly with a strap around Duncan’s waist, securing it under the foam seat, with the oxygen hose entering from underneath near Duncan’s shoulder. Duncan didn’t move; his eyes were bright with pain, the whispering voice thick, almost unrecognisable.
The sun heated the rocks, and they radiated. The sand threw heat from itself. The interior of the dinghy became hotter, and the air conditioner failed to relieve it. Trace bathed Duncan in cool water, injected him with pain controllers. Duncan’s laboured breathing eased after the injection and his eyes stopped their restless roving. Trace left him and repaired the hole in the dinghy, six inches in diameter, with neat edges. He mended the hole with the sun on his back, and when he re-entered the dinghy his suit was drenched, as if he had been swimming. Duncan was hot and dry, and asleep. He bathed him again, leaning low to catch the whispered voice:
Save it, Trace. You’ll need it. The oxygen too.
Duncan hadn’t opened his eyes. His face was different.
He appeared to be younger; lines were easing out of his face, the relaxing effects of the drug. He looked almost happy.
Make sure it died, Trace. Please!
Sure, Dunc, sure. Sleep now, pal.
Outside again, Duncan asleep inside. The black cliff over his head, the sun low, making the shadows grow along the ground. He walked around the cliff and found that he could clamber up it to a ledge that would afford him a good view of the surrounding land. He had to stop to rest many times, and the shadows continued to grow, striping the land now. Black, white, black… On the ledge he rested once more, and then began studying the land, sorry that he hadn’t waited until the following day when there would be no shadows, knowing also that he wouldn’t have been able to climb the cliff under the hot sun. He stared until his eyes ached, and then he saw it.
It was impossible that it could have survived the landing, but it was there. The boat was badly damaged. Trace was several miles away from the robot at work on the craft, but he could see dents and a long gash in the side of the lifeboat. He could see the tools in the robot’s waldoes.
Had he signalled to it? He didn’t think so. But somehow it sensed his watching presence, from the three or four miles distance. It turned the dome of its head. The lowering sun reflected on the metal as it turned, flashed green from one of the slits. The robot and the man faced one another for several seconds, too far apart for either to hurt the other, and the robot flicked off. Then the dinghy vanished. Trace remained for another moment, too stunned to move, and he felt the icy touch of fear. He slipped, slid, and fell back down the cliff the way he had gone up it, and raced back to the dinghy.
It’s there, Dunc! It knows we are here! It blinked out, Duncan! Just like that, it blinked out. The dinghy too. There, and then gone. It’s got something new, a shield to hide behind. We have to get out of here, Dunc, before it comes.
He took off, straight up, and headed north, the start of his long flight. He flew less than a hundred miles, afraid for Duncan’s sake to continue longer. When he landed the wind was high, getting higher.
It’s a hellhole, Duncan. Sand and heat and now wind storms. And the robot. We’ll have to keep out of its path, try to find a way to get close enough to it to finish it off. Damn, I wish we had some artillery…
Duncan didn’t answer him, and he bathed the unconscious man again. This time Duncan didn’t rouse at the touch of the cool water. The wind increased and the air inside the craft chilled with the coming of night. Duncan didn’t stir.
It’s a logic box, that’s all. A logic box. But we don’t know what’s been programmed into it. We’ll have to take it for granted that its first order of business will be to kill us. It has strong self-preservation goals, and we are a threat to its being. So we’ll have to assume that we’ve become the hunted now. How about that, Duncan? After hunting it for three months, now we’ve found it, and it’s the hunter. Duncan?
Only the wind answered him. The wind died and the night was eerily quiet, then the wind was born again, and with its next interlude of quiet the sun was there. Trace continued to talk to Duncan throughout the night. Several times, when the fever rose, he bathed him. Duncan died when the sun was directly overhead and there were no shadows on the ground.
Numbly Trace carried him from the ship to the edge of the desert, half a mile away, and there he scooped out a shallow grave and placed Duncan in it. He covered him with sand and built a cairn of rocks over the grave, and as he made his way back to the dinghy, a laser touched the grave, melted the rocks, glazed the sand around the rocks, found Duncan and played over his body until it no longer existed. Trace was turning for a last look before stepping around a granite slab, when he saw the rising puff of steam and smoke, and the cherry glow of rocks. The cherry trail followed his path, reddening rocks and sand as it passed over them. Trace darted behind the granite and raced to his lifeboat. His fingers touched the controls in flashing movements, and his eyes saw the indicators and dials without conscious thought. He kept the boat low, close to the ground, dodging in and out of the bases of the cliffs and chimneys of rock, and after a mile, he raised the nose of the craft and headed north again.
The robot had taken eighteen hours to cross the ninety miles he had put between them. Its laser had reached out two miles to disintegrate Duncan. It had registered on his radiation detector at a distance of four miles. It had turned from its purpose of repairing the dinghy to that of destroying the men who had followed it to the planet.
I’ll learn it, Duncan. I know it can’t get close enough to fire at me before the alarm will be triggered. I’ll find out what makes it tick, and I’ll beat it yet. It’ll pay, Dunc. I promise you, it’ll pay…
But that had been three weeks ago, and there had been too many cliffs and basalt ledges since then. They all looked alike: dark, defiant, braving the wind and the sands that blasted and crumbled them inch by inch into oblivion. That one? Or that? This end of the mountain range was mostly basalt and grey granite, the very core of the mountains. There was a pattern below him, and he made a turn, studying it closer. A drop-off, deeper than the surrounding land, several hundred feet deeper, encircled by cliffs. It might afford more protection from the flying rocks when the wind came. He studied it, lower yet, and saw that there were ways in and out of the sheltered valley, among the rocks that ringed it. The other dinghy had to be within an area with a ten-mile diameter. Later when the shadows stretched out the other way, from west to east, he would look for the basalt cliff again. The morning shadows changed it, throwing into relief different parts of it, parts that he hadn’t been able to see the other time, hiding those places that he might have been able to recognise. A circle with a ten-mile diameter… He would find the dinghy. He landed in the sheltered valley after one last look at the land above the depression.