David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

Smiling grimly, he reached forward and turned up the magnification.

“Okay, buster. You’ve got me curious. I want to find out all about you. If we’re going to have to fight, I want to know just what makes you tick.”

He put the Tokyo String Quartet on the vid wall, recorded by cameras and pickups only feet away from the famous chamber group. They played Bartok for him as he twisted dials, spoke into a recorder, smiled grimly, and occasionally sneezed.

See the mechs dance, see the mechs play, Virginia thought moodily, halfway through a reprogramming. God, I wish they’d go away.

It had been hours on hours now and the jobs were getting harder. She lay stretched out, physically comfortable but vexed and irritated by the unending demands. She tried out a new subroutine on a mech filling her center screen. It turned, approached a phosphor panel. Careful, careful , she thought—but she did not interfere. A mistake of a mere centimeter would send the mech’s arm poking through the phosphor paint, breaking the conductivity path in that thin film, dimming the panel. The virtue of phosphors lay in the ease of setup—just slap on a coat of the stuff, attach low-voltage leads at the corners. and you had a cheap source of cold light. The disadvantages were that they had little mechanical strength and tended to develop spotty dim patches where the current flowed unevenly. A mech could bang one up with a casual brush.

Which this one proceeded to do, as she watched. It tried to spot the growing green gunk and wipe it away with a suction sponge. Partway across the panel, though, the arm swiveled in its socket and dug into the phosphor with a crisp crunch. The radiance flickered, dimmed.

Damn . Virginia backed the mech away and froze it. Then she plunged back into the subroutine she had just written, trying to find the bug that made the mech arm screw up at that crucial step.

—Virginia ! I need five more in Shaft Four, pronto! —Carl’s voice broke in.

She grimaced. “Can’t have them! All full up.” She kept moving logic units around in a 3D array, not wanting to let the structure of the subprogram slip away. Just a touch here, a minor adjustment there, and—

—Hey, I need them now! —

“Shove off, Carl. I’m busy.”

—And I’m not? Come on, the gunk is eating us alive out here.—

“We’re overextended already.”

—I’ve got to have them. Now!—

It was hopeless. She punched in a last alteration and triggered the editing sequence. On a separate channel she sent, “JonVon, take a look at this. What’s the problem? I’m too dumb to see it.”

PERMISSION TO INTERROGATE MECH AND ADJUST ONBOARD SOFTWARE?

That was a little risky; JonVon was great at analysis, but had not had much experience working directly with mechs. What the hell, this is a crisis . “Sure.”

—Virginia ? Don’t duck out on me.—

“I’m here. I feel like a short-order cook, trying to switch these mechs around. Between you and Lani and Jim, there’s no time to reprogram these surface mechs for tunnel work.”

Carl’s voice muted slightly. —Well, sorry, but I’m facing a bad situation here. This stuff is spreading fast—must be more moisture in the air here. We may have to clean them out in vac. That’s tougher.—

“I know, I know” Carl always patiently explained why he needed help, as if she simply didn’t understand.

She switched to another channel, surveyed the situation near Lock 3, and issued a quick burst of override orders directly through her neural tap to stop an overheating valve from melting a hole in the vac-wall. Then back to Carl: “Look, I can’t do it right now.”

—How come?—Was that a petulant, irritated tone? Well, the hell with him.

“Because I’m up to my ass in alligators!” she shouted, and broke the connection.

It felt good.

It began with a high, thin whistling.

Carl was working at a pipe fitting—cursing the green gunk that made it slippery—when he heard the sound, at first just a distant, reedy whine. He was far out along Shaft 3, near the surface lock, and assumed that the single, persistent note came from somebody working further in, toward Central.

He was alone because they were so low on manpower. Carl had been working with one of Virginia ’s reprogrammed mechs, but avoided that if possible. It got in the way of the job when the machine spoke with her distinctive lilt.

The first awakenings were due to “thaw out” next Tuesday, and he hoped that would help with the chores. The gunk was slimy, foul, and persistent; he hated it.

And those damned threads that get caught in the air vents. Maybe Jim Vidor’s right, I should let Saul out of quarantine, have him study this stuff up close.

If he had been with a partner he might have been less meditative, and heard it sooner. The sound kept on while he tightened up the joint with his lug wrench, the rrrrrttttt rrrrrttttt rrrrrttttt sending vibrations up into his shoulders.

Carl lifted his head. He felt a breeze.

There was always circulation of air in space, driven by booster fans if temperature differences didn’t give enough convection. But not this far from Central, not a steady feather-light brush past his ears.

He stopped, listened. The same steady note. It came from below, downshaft, toward Central.

Then his ears popped.

He reeled in his tools and pushed off, all in one smooth uncoiling motion. A burst from his jets and he plunged inward. Phosphors dotted the shaft with pools of yellow-green light every hundred meters; automatically he used them to judge his speed, to keep from picking up momentum he wouldn’t be able to brake. Smears of green gunk covered some of the phosphors, growing on the wan energy they put out.

He passed tunnels that ran horizontal, 3B, 3C, and 3D, but the sound wasn’t coming from them. Coming toward 3E, he slowed because the whistling was getting louder and a steady suction was trying to draw him downward. Carl had always hated high-pitched noise and this was now shrill, grating. He was searching for a split seam in the insulation but wasn’t at all ready for what he found.

Worms! He blinked, stunned.

Purple snake-like things oozing, wriggling. Moist, slick, waving slowly, ringing 3E’s entrance. It was like a living mouth calling with a cutting siren wail, the wind moaning and tugging and sucking him toward the beckoning purple cilia that eagerly flexed and yearned and stretched out toward him—

He fumbled at his jets and pulsed them hard, backward. Wind swirled by him, sending his tool lines streaming away, tearing the wool cap from his head, ruffling his hair. He twisted and caught a handhold in the shaft wall. The noise was deafening now and he knew he was getting rattled by it.

What the hell—!

He ripped open his emergency pocket and fished out a plastisheet helmet. It took a long moment to tuck it into the O-ring seal in his skinsuit. I haven’t practiced this drill in a long time.

It caught. He pulled the FLOOD bottle tab. The bubble expanded with a reassuring whoosh of air. That provided some sound insulation, but not much. Not enough.

“It’s at Shaft Three, Tunnel E,” he sent over the emergency channel. “Three E, Three E, Three E. Bad. Whole area around the collar is ruptured.”

A faint voice called in his bonephone, —… can patch with spray foam? Got some on its way.

“I doubt it. Something… something’s broken through. This sure isn’t just a rip.”

Carl bit his lip. He didn’t know how to describe it. The team would take only a few minutes to get here, but the shaft was losing torrents of air.