Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

An hour or two’s walk north brought them directly across from the Family camp. It was all trampled and clear to be seen from their vantage point, which meant it was no more good as a camp anyway. There were some bodies visible over there, but it was impossible at this distance to tell who they were, or even if they were friend or foe. Probably a mixture of both. Hordes of insects were already going to work on the remains.

Far off he could hear the sound of one of the demon machines, but he couldn’t see it. No others were in evidence.

Littlefeet sighed. “Well, I don’t think everybody got killed, ’cause if they had there’d be a lot more bodies over there. Still and all, they’ve scattered all over to be safe and preserve the Family, and I don’t hear any wailing babies or anything like that, so they’re some distance off. The scouts’ll try and round ’em up, but where that’ll be it’s hard to say. Won’t be here, and I don’t think they’ll try this camp again, not this close.”

Spotty didn’t really follow some of this, but Froggy was upset. “You mean we’re cut off?”

He nodded. “Seems like. It’s the three of us on this side and all the other survivors on that side. Well, at least that tells me what we gotta do.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Well, if we came up north to the demon flowers and couldn’t find a crossing, then they’ll come back to the river and head south, figuring maybe that somewhere down there might be enough built-up mud and crud to manage a swamp crossing. That’s my guess as to how they’ll think. So we move south. If we find ’em, maybe we can help get ’em across.”

“What if we can’t find ’em?” Froggy asked him. He sighed. “Then I guess we’re on our own.”

There were spacesuits for everyone aboard, although even Colonel N’Gana’s suit did not have the capabilities of Harker’s experimental model. N’Gana knew it, as did the silent but always attentive Mogutu, but the only thing the colonel could say was, “Look, Mister Harker—no matter what else, let us get one thing straight. I am in charge. I am the commanding officer of this expedition. Although you are a military officer, you are not in a formal military unit and you were not planned for on this one, so Sergeant Mogutu also outranks you. Understand?”

“It’s your party, Colonel,” Harker responded. “Right now I’m just along for the ride.”

The corvette could not risk actually landing on Hector; the thrusting maneuvers would have invited attention from the planet below. Instead, it braked and matched motion with the moon, then glided with minimal energy expenditure to where they wanted to go.

Hector was not large, but it was still almost six hundred kilometers in length, big enough to make an impression, albeit a small one, on the surface of the planet. In fact it usually looked like a small star-sized or planet-sized beacon, blinking in odd patterns because of its wobbly rotation and irregular shape.

Matched now with specific features on the surface, the interior of the corvette depressurized and everyone checked out in their suits. One by one they went out the hatch and, using primarily compressed air, floated to the surface below. The compressed air system was good enough for this purpose, and did not contribute to any energy signatures that could be picked up below. As soon as the last one was down, the corvette slowly moved off and out of sight, keeping its profile behind the tiny moon for the same reason.

The surface was about what Harker had expected. Dark igneous rock for the most part, pockmarked with tiny impact craters. The surface, for all that, seemed almost fluid, the rock bending and twisting, creating a rough and wholly irregular landscape.

Low-level automatic signals kept them pretty well tethered to the leader as if by a long strand of flexible rope. There was very little gravity to keep them on the surface, but the suits were able to compensate. They all learned pretty early, though, to keep their eyes on the ones in front of them and on the surface itself. While you couldn’t feel any movement, the sky when turned away from Helena was in a slow but noticeable motion that could be very disconcerting. N’Gana, Mogutu, and Harker, all old spacehands, had little trouble with it, but it was causing problems for some of the others.

“Put your suits on automatic,” N’Gana suggested. “They won’t let you fall. It won’t be much longer now.”

They walked to some low knobs that formed a very shallow valley and then into the valley. At the far end there was a darkened area that seemed different, although it took even Harker a few moments to figure out why.

No impact or other features at all were apparent. It was smooth as glass.

“Admiral, detach and come forward please,” the colonel instructed, sounding calm and professional. “I believe it is your turn to open our way.”

Krill was fairly unsteady and clearly uncomfortable here, but she was game, Harker gave her that. She took little steps, making her way to the front and then bracing herself against the smooth, streamlined V-shaped end of the valley.

This was where the absorption and analysis of the trans-mission from the surface was so valuable. With her computerlike mind and augmented mental abilities, Krill was able to instantly analyze the system in use here and then interface with the security system on the other side. It could have been done with a robotic system using the same information, but Krill was an acknowledged genius at this sort of thing and much more apt to see any nasty little traps that might have been laid.

She suddenly stopped and took a step back; they could hear the frown in her voice. “That’s odd. It should have cleared.”

She looked around, then up, and added, “Ah. Wait.”

The great disk of Helena was above them, but not for long, as the combination of Hector’s rapid rotation and irregular shape took it in a slow slide out of sight. At almost the instant it faded from view, there was a slight sparkling on the heretofore black obsidianlike rock. Krill turned, nodded to herself, and walked through. “Quickly,” she said. “As soon as any part of Helena is in a direct line, it will instantly power down.”

They all hurried. Once inside, they found themselves in a surprisingly large chamber that had been scooped out of the natural rock by some kind of heat ray. It was like being in an ancient cavern where not even water had touched, but the walls and ceiling were coated with a chemical substance that glowed. It wasn’t as good as full-blown lighting, but it would have allowed anyone there to see around even if they weren’t wearing a special suit, and it gave all of them, appropriately suited up, more than enough light to amplify and use.

“We’re safe in here, even with suit power,” Krill told them. “This is fairly deep and well insulated from outside scans. It’s as close to a perfect natural jammer as I’ve seen. They must have been working here when Helena fell, and possibly after.”

Katarina Socolov looked around nervously at the cold, empty, glowing chamber. “But where did they go?”

“There’s nothing here to sustain a workforce for almost a century,” the colonel pointed out. “I suspect that much of the work was done by machines, probably coupled to a large database, AI unit, and neural net. I’m not getting much in the way of readings on it now, though.”

Krill checked her instrumentation and tried to use her special interfacing abilities. “It’s in complete shutdown,” she told them at last. “I doubt if it has the power to actually operate the device here, or, if it does, just powering up would be enough to bring Titan ships in force to see what was going on.”