Roger Allen - The Ring of Charon

“Jesus, yes,” Jansen said. “And they have to carry them out to hatch on the surface because they’re taking this whole damn asteroid apart. Slicing up the front and tunneling up the rest of it so that they can chop it to bits the same way.”

Marcia felt her blood racing. “Are either of you carrying a weapon?”

“Not really. Just an assault laser and a grenade launcher,” Jansen said sarcastically. “Are you out of your mind? Why the hell would we be carrying weapons?”

“I didn’t think you would be, I just hoped it. Listen. In case you were forgetting, we have to get through that crowd down there. I don’t know how good our odds are— but how much worse could they get if we grabbed one of the carrier robots and an egg on the way?”

“What? That would be suicidal!” McGillicutty sputtered. “There are thousands of them down there! We’d never get out if we attacked them. They’d be all over us in a flash.”

“I don’t think so,” Marcia said. She knelt down, and looked over the scene more carefully. There wasn’t much she could say about the Lunar Wheel to Jansen. She didn’t have clearance. She chose her words cautiously. “These things are related—somehow—to whatever is sending signals we’ve picked up from the Moon, and I’ve gotten some real data on them. The signals back and forth had more the flavor of computer programs than anything else. And not very flexible programs, at that. As if the systems could only handle certain types of situations. I don’t believe these things are ready to handle the unexpected.”

“So you’re hoping that we qualify as unexpected?” Jansen asked.

“I’d say that was a safe bet,” Marcia agreed. “I’d also say it’d be a safe bet we could learn a helluva lot about these monstrosities if we had a few samples to work with—dissect, or disassemble, or whatever. We need data, and this seems worth the risk.”

“How do you know those things are even eggs?” McGillicutty protested.

“We don’t,” Marcia replied in a voice that was firm and determined. Even so, her expression, as seen through her bubble helmet, betrayed her uncertainty and fear. “But it seems to me those things must at least be important . Whatever they are, they should be able to tell us a lot about our new friends.”

Jansen nodded. “I agree,” she said. “I think it’s worth trying.”

McGillicutty swallowed hard. This wasn’t the way he lived life. This was no laboratory where he could shut the experiment down and walk away from it. He had always known that he wasn’t very good with people. He had always believed that his intelligence would compensate for that flaw. But intellect alone was not enough to cope with this situation. These two women were willing to walk even further into danger, in pursuit of some hypothetical advantage. The three of them had no means of escape without confronting these monstrosities directly. He didn’t even dare consider staying here to make his own attempt. He did not want to be alone. Or die alone, if it came to that. “Very well,” he whispered. His voice sounded tense, high and reedy, even to himself. “How do you propose we do it?”

“Let’s keep it simple,” Marcia said. “This ledge we’re on seems to lead clear to the end of this cavity. No one else seems to be using it, and it might keep us out of view. I say we walk down it as far as we can, then out onto the surface. We make our move out there. Those carrier robots don’t look like they’re made for open-field running, and maybe we can get some help from our own people. Jansen, have you got enough pictures?”

“From this angle, yes. Let’s go.”

Not quite willing to believe he was going along with this, McGillicutty followed the other two as they made their awkward way along the ledge. It was hard to focus on the simple job of moving forward. There were too many strange and inexplicable things all about them. Odd machine-creatures scuttled about the chamber, rushing about here and there. Weird shadows and flares of light cast themselves on the walls as the machines used their cutting torches and walked in front of them.

McGillicutty realized the stone was vibrating beneath his feet. He switched on his exterior mikes and listened to the sounds of the place.

Cluttering noises, the grinding of huge gears, the crash of falling rock and the roar of machinery all echoed in the huge chamber, weirdly faint and distant in the thin Martian air, even through the special sound boosters in his helmet. Shrieks and whispers that might have been machines and might have been some unseen and ghastly monster lurking, lying in wait for them just out of sight. He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know. For the first time in his life, Hiram McGillicutty was confronted by mysteries he had not the slightest desire to solve. He was afraid, and saw the grave yawning wide before him.

The ledge ran on for most of the length of the chamber, but their luck ran out about thirty meters from the cavern entrance. A wall of shattered rock blocked the way, and they were forced to climb out into the open.

Their geology hammers were the closest any of them had to a weapon. Brandishing hers didn’t exactly fill Jansen with confidence, but it was all she had. The open end of the chamber was even more chaotic than the central floor. The scorpion robots were everywhere. “Stick together, everyone,” Jansen said. “Let’s not get separated here.”

She moved forward toward the open end of the asteroid, toward the beckoning daylight beyond, trying to keep them as far as possible from the busy crews of robots. It wasn’t easy. Some of the broken rocks were the size of houses, blocking the way—and the view. Jansen found herself backtracking constantly when a path proved impassable. The going was rough, with smashed piles of loose rock everywhere. They were forced to climb and clamber, slipping and sliding over the heaps of stone. At least there was nothing to block their view up . Without the inviting signpost of the clean Martian sky to guide them forward, they never could have kept their bearings. As it was, the three of them were having trouble keeping each other in view.

In fact they were having more than trouble. McGillicutty. Jansen spun around and looked behind herself. There was MacDougal, making her way down an unsteady boulder. But she was the only one there. McGillicutty was lost to view.

“McGillicutty!” she called into her radio, hoping the signal would get bounced off the rock walls so he could hear it out of line of sight. “Where are you?”

“Be… behind you, I think,” his voice answered, thin and weak. “Backtrack a bit, but come slowly. One of them is… looking at me.”

“Sweet Jesus in heaven. Hang on.” Jansen headed back the way they had come, up and over the rock MacDougal had just come down. MacDougal reversed course and followed her up.

The two women reached the top of the boulder at about the same moment, looked down—and froze.

McGillicutty was standing there, facing them, holding himself perfectly still. A scorpion was standing straight in front of him, towering over him. For a brief moment, Jansen was impressed that McGillicutty had the courage to stand his ground that way—until she realized that the little man was simply too terrified to move.

The scorpion moved a step closer to McGillicutty and Jansen drew in her breath. The thing was larger than she had thought. It stood on five pairs of segmented, claw-footed legs, holding its flat body a good two meters off the ground. At its forward end was a complex set of what Jansen assumed to be sensors, but nothing that she could recognize as a camera lens or an eye. It was at least three meters long, a gleaming dull silver in color, all hard corners and mechanical brawn. Up close, it didn’t resemble a scorpion—or any living thing—at all. It was cold, alien. Its two massive arms reached toward McGillicutty. Jaw clamps at the ends of the arms opened, moved carefully forward, and the robot prodded the strange object it had found.