Stanislaw Lem - Mortal Engines

“I don’t see him. Doctor, what the Setaur said, did it have any meaning?”

“I doubt it. Combinations of words—something in the nature of schizophrenia…”

“That wreck is going out,” said Pirx.

“Why did you shoot?” asked McCork. “There might have been people.”

“There wasn’t anyone.”

Pirx moved the binoculars a millimeter at a time, scrutinizing every crease and crevice of the sunlit area.

“They didn’t have time to jump.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he cut the machine in half. You can still see it. They must have practically run into him. He hit from a few dozen meters. And besides, both hatches are closed. No,” he added after a couple of seconds, “he’s not in the sun. And probably hasn’t had a chance to sneak away… We’ll try drawing him out.”

Bending over, he lifted a heavy cylinder to the top of the boulder and, shoving it into position before him, muttered between his teeth:

“A real live cowboys-and-Indians situation, the kind I always dreamed of…”

The cylinder slipped; he held it by the valves and, flattening himself out on the stones, said:

“If you see a blue flash, shoot at once—that’s his laser eye…”

With all his might he pushed the cylinder, which at first slowly but then with increasing speed began to roll down the slope. All three of them took aim, the cylinder had now gone about two hundred meters and was rolling more slowly, for the slope lessened. A few times it seemed that protruding rocks would bring it to a stop, but it tumbled past them and, growing smaller and smaller, now a dully shining spot, approached the bottom of the basin.

“Nothing?” said Pirx, disappointed. “Either he’s smarter than I thought, or just isn’t interested in it, or else…”

He didn’t finish. On the slope below them there was a blinding flash. The flame almost instantly changed into a heavy, brownish yellow cloud, at the center of which still glowed a sullen fire, and the edges spread out between the spurs of rock.

“The chlorine…” said Pirx. “Why didn’t you shoot? Couldn’t you see anything?”

“No,” replied the cadet and McCork in unison.

“The bastard! He’s hid himself in some crevice or is firing from the flank. I really doubt now that this will do any good, but let’s try…”

He picked up a second cylinder and sent it after the first.

At first it rolled the same, but somewhere halfway down the incline it turned aside and came to rest. Pirx wasn’t looking at it—all his attention was concentrated on the triangular section of darkness in which the Setaur somewhere lurked. The seconds went by slowly. All at once a branching explosion ripped the slope. Pirx was unable to locate the place where the automaton had concealed itself, but he saw the line of fire, or more precisely a part of it, for it materialized as a burning, sun-bright thread when it passed through what was left of the first cloud of gas. Immediately he sighted along that gleaming trajectory, which was already fading, and as soon as he had the edge of the darkness in his cross hairs, he pulled the trigger. Apparently McCork had done the same thing simultaneously, and in an instant the cadet joined them. Three blades of sun plowed the black floor of the basin and at that very moment it was as if some gigantic, fiery lid slammed down directly in front of them—the entire boulder that protected them shook, from its rim showered a myriad searing rainbows, their suits and helmets were sprayed with burning quartz, which instantly congealed to microscopic teardrops. They lay now flattened in the shadow of the rock, while above their heads whipped, like a white-hot sword, a second and a third discharge, grazing the surface of the boulder, which immediately was covered with cooling glass bubbles.

“Everyone all right?” asked Pirx, not lifting his head.

“Yes!”—“Here too!”—came the answers.

“Go down to the machine and tell the radio operator to call everyone, because we have him here and will try to keep him pinned as long as possible,” Pirx said to the cadet, who then crawled backwards and ran, stooping, in the direction of the rocks where the tractor was standing.

“We have two cylinders left, one apiece. Doctor, let’s switch positions now. And please be careful and keep low, he’s already hit right on our top…”

With these words Pirx picked up one cylinder and, taking advantage of the shadows thrown by some large stone slabs, moved forward as quickly as he could. About two hundred steps farther on they rested in the deft of a magma embankment. The cadet, returning from the transporter, wasn’t able to find them at first. He was breathing hard, as if he had run at least a mile.

“Easy, take your time!” said Pirx. “Well, what’s up?”

“Contact has been resumed…” The cadet squatted by Pirx, who could see the youth’s eyes blinking behind the viewplate of the helmet. “In that machine, the one that was destroyed … there were four people from Construction. The second must have withdrawn, because it had a defective laser … and the rest went by, off to the side, and didn’t see anything…” Pirx nodded as if to say: “I thought as much.”

“What else? Where’s our group?”

“Practically all of them—twenty miles from here, there was a false alarm there, some rocket patrol said it saw the Setaur and pulled everyone to the spot. And three machines don’t answer.”

“When will they get here?”

“At the moment we’re only receiving…” said the cadet, embarrassed.

“Only receiving? What do you mean?!”

“The radio operator says that either something’s happened to the transmitter, or else in this place his emission is damping out. He asks if he might change the parking location, so he can test…”

“He tan change his location if he has to,” Pirx replied. “And please stop running like that! Watch where you put your feet!”

But the other must not have heard, for he was racing back.

“At best they’ll be here in half an hour, if we succeed in making contact,” observed Pirx. McCork said nothing. Pirx pondered the next move. Should they wait or not? Storming the basin with transporters would probably ensure success, but not without losses. Compared with the Setaur their machines made large targets, were slow and would have to strike together, for a duel would end as it had with that tractor from Construction. He tried to come up with some stratagem to lure the Setaur out into the lighted area. If it were possible to send in one unmanned, remote-control transporter as a decoy, then hit the automaton from elsewhere, say, from above…

It occurred to him that he really didn’t have to wait for anyone, he already had one transporter. But somehow the plan didn’t jell. To send a machine out blindly like that wouldn’t be any good. He would just blow the thing to bits, and wouldn’t have to move to do it. Could he have possibly realized that the zone of shadow in which he stood was giving him so much of an advantage? But then this was not a machine created for battle with all its tactics… There was method in his madness, yes, but what method? They sat, bent over, at the foot of a rocky scarp, in its dense, cold shadow. Suddenly it struck Pirx that he was acting like a complete idiot. What would he do, after all, if he were the Setaur? Immediately he felt alarm, for he was certain that he—in his place—would attack. Passively waiting for things to happen gained nothing. So then, could he be advancing towards them? Even now? One could surely reach the western cliff, moving under cover of darkness the whole time, and farther on there were so many huge boulders, so much fissured lava, that in that labyrinth one could hide for God knows how long…