"That's it," Doc Chimp called over his shoulder, pointing as he flew through the sultry air. Real fear was in his voice as he added, "We'd better get there fast—looks like they're waking up again."
Babylon realized that something had changed. The structures which had been only hazy outlines in the gloom were sharper and clearer now. His eyes had not become dark- adapted; the shapes really were brighter, with a glow from inside. As the chimp and Babylon caught up with the others, the Scorpian robot rattled peremptorily, and Babylon's Pmal translated: "Caution! I sense a powerful electrostatic potential building up!"
"Get down!" Pertin yelled, gesturing toward the ragged shape at the center of the structures. The robot spurted steam and arrowed toward the ground, Doc Chimp and Pertin following quickly. Swearing, Babylon struggled to direct his thruster and join them. He made it—barely. As he touched ground and was caught by the skinny arms of the chimpanzee the brightest flash he had ever seen crackled through the air above them, followed by the grandfather of all thunderclaps.
In the blinding blackness that followed, Babylon lay sprawled on the cold, dry sand, his ears ringing. He felt a tingle over his head and arms, and the air had a biting tang of ozone.
"Close," Ben Line grunted, pushing himself erect. "Thank God they're slow. It'll be four or five minutes before the next one." He peered at the great irregular black shape before them, then gestured off to the side. "See that gouge?"
The diamond sand was plowed into a furrow so huge that Babylon had not seen it at first. It stretched as far as the eye could see, and in it structures like the ones all around them had grown. "That's what this ship dug out when it crashed," Pertin said, "and that's the way we came last time. There's not as much shelter there; maybe that's why Doc and I got aced." He said it so easily! Babylon thought. But he was talking about the death of his own self—or one of his selves—a self as real and aware as the one that was speaking. "There wasn't any entrance on that side," he continued, "and that's probably why we got it. But tachyar surveillance shows one over here somewhere." He was peering around the bleak, shattered face of the huge object before them. "Wish I could see it," he grumbled.
The Scorpion robot, hovering just above them on the lazy wisps of its steam jets, rattled out: "Possible entrance structure detected. Ferronickel alloy. Surface oxidized as if from great heat and long exposure. Structure intact" A lance of red laser light sprang from one of the faces of the cube to indicate the spot.
Cautiously Babylon activated his jet, rising a bit to get a better look. "I think we can get in there," he decided. "We'll probably have to cut—"
"Get back down here, man!" cried Doc Chimp, clawing at his ankle; and the Scorpian reinforced him:
"Electrostatic potential building again," it rapped out "Nearing maximum—"
Flash and thundercrack struck at the same instant, well over their heads, and at once Ben Line Pertin leaped up. "Now!" he cried. "Let's see if we can get inside before the next one!" And he was already arrowing toward the spot the Scorpian had pointed out with the robot close behind. Doc Chimp grasped Babylon by the nape of the neck, activated his own thruster, and dragged him through the air.
"Sorry to be rude," he panted. "But I don't want to be airborne when that goes off again—"
"But there was plenty of time between shots before," Babylon choked out.
"Oh, Dr. Babylon, never think that," cried the ape. "They speed up, you see. That's how we got killed before. Now!" And he dragged Babylon down to the shelter of the - huge, ancient artifact.
A third bolt raged through the air they had just left. Babylon felt an electric sting in his teeth; it was that close.
Amazingly, Ben Line Pertin was jubilant. "Made it this far," he cried, "and I never thought we would! Now all we have to do is get inside!"
Something, very long ago, had plunged through the shallow gravity well of Cuckoo to wind up in this strange, black place. According to the tachyar observations, it was irregularly shaped metal with a gross mass in the tens of millions of tons—very similar to the orbiting objects they had detected high above the body, but had never been able to reach to study. Pertin's conjecture was that one of the orbiters, ages ago, had crashed there. The reason was anyone's guess; but the fact was their hope. Every other installation on Cuckoo or around it had defenses of such might that it was impossible to get close. But this one was a wreck. Its defenses still existed, all these unimaginable ages after its crash, but they had been weakened, had become less sure and deadly.
"Deadly" was an appropriate word, Babylon thought, peering up at the irregular wall of metal that was the shell ' of the spacecraft. Black, rugged, shrouded in mystery, it seemed to emanate an aura of menace and immense age. Doc Chimp, peering up along with Babylon, whimpered faintly and shook his furry head. "Oh, Dr. Babylon," he mourned, "what are us civilized primates doing here? That thing doesn't want us!"
"Grab your tools and shut up," Ben Pertin ordered. "We're safe here for a little while—I think. But I don't want to be hanging around out here if this thing gets the range and decides to blow us into atoms!"
"What can I do?" Babylon asked, as Pertin and the chimpanzee began pulling tools out of their backpacks.
"Stay out of the way," Ben Line panted. "When we get inside you'll have plenty to do, but this is specialist work. I got a Watcher to show me how the seals on their fortresses work—I think this is the same plan."
"Keep an eye on that robot for us, won't you?" asked Doc Chimp, extending a metal construction like a pair of dividers.
Babylon nodded, and turned away. The Scorpian, ignoring what the humans were doing, was thrusting away along the bottom of the derelict. So close, Babylon was able to get an idea of the object's real size. It bulged out over their heads, roughly a globe a thousand meters through, but misshapen by design and by chance. Great wedges and crevasses had been torn out of it as it plunged through the air and along the ground; others seemed to have been designed into it by its builders—whoever they might have been. Or whatever. It had piled up a scarp of debris and soil at one end as it struck, so that one side was buried under dozens of meters, while the other, the one they were on, lay nearly bare. Twisted and fused stumps of mysterious instruments jutted from it.
"Babylon!" Ben Pertin panted. "Now give us a hand!"
He and Doc Chimp had deployed the most complex of their tools, an affair of suction cups mounted on long pipe- stems. One set was affixed to a dimly outlined circular area that they had decided was an entrance port, the other to the scarred old hull itself. There was a crank that was meant to turn the inner circle; but in the fragile gravity of Cuckoo there was nothing for either man or chimp to brace himself against. Babylon grabbed the handle, overlapping the grips of the other two; but all three combined had not enough weight to move it.
As they struggled a drumroll from behind told them that the Scorpian had returned. "Desist!" their Pmal translators barked. "I will move that!" Panting, they backed away as the robot moved in. Metal grapples on its fore end locked around the handle of the crank. It positioned itself carefully, and then erupted a shrieking blast of steam. The crank quivered and began to turn, and slowly the inset disk shuddered free. "Get back," the chimpanzee chattered, as the Scorpian began to revolve with the crank. It looked like a hissing, white-plumed pinwheel as it spun faster and faster around the narrow circumference of the crank arm; and then it stopped, and the disk slid free.