Майкл Крайтон - The Andromeda Evolution

“I risked everything— gave everything—to destroy the barriers that face our species. I never let this broken body beat me, and I won’t let you either.”

Holding to a wall grip with one hand, Vedala spoke steadily and calmly. “Last time. Can you stop it?” she asked, softly.

Kline blinked. Tears separated from her eyes and floated into the darkness like small, delicate planets. She reached up with a gloved hand and pulled the head-mounted display over her eyes.

As the visor came down, her eyes rolled backward and her lips and fingertips began to twitch.

“She’s passed out,” said Vedala, turning. “We need more information. We’re going to have to wake her up.”

“No,” replied Stone, a hand latched over Vedala’s shoulder. “No, I don’t think so.”

Stone was frantically scanning the walls of the module. He could find no danger. Even so, he began trying to pull Vedala up toward the open hatchway and back to the Unity node. Not understanding, Vedala pushed him away.

“I think she may be seizing,” said Vedala. “Look how the status light on her neural implant is blinking—”

“Something’s wrong,” Stone said, turning away. “We’ve got to get—”

Loud as a gunshot, a mangled metal fist punched into the express rack beside Stone’s head. The blow shattered a set of gauges and sprayed cubes of safety glass across the module. By reflex, Stone shoved off the wall and floated haphazardly toward the other side of the module.

The smooth metal face of the Robonaut R3A4 met his gaze.

Kline had activated the machine and piloted it through the hatchway with predatory stealth. It must have been on board all along, hiding. Stone watched as it leaped gracefully between blue handrails, gripping them with insectile, multijointed legs. Unlike the astronauts, this machine was designed expressly for locomotion in a microgravity environment—it was perfectly at home here.

The R3A4 advanced mutely and without hesitation.

“Stone!” shouted Vedala.

The robot launched itself at the off-balance man, one mutilated hand snarled with bits of jagged metal and the other with fingers outstretched. Each digit of the robot’s hand was designed to apply five pounds of force—altogether it could apply over a hundred Newtons, twice the strongest grip of an adult male, and more than enough to crush human bone.

Flailing in microgravity, Stone almost managed to dodge the attack.

The robot caught hold of Stone’s boot with its good hand. Stone shouted in pain as the machine crushed his heel in its grip. Kicking hard, he managed to escape with his boot intact and undamaged, crashing against the opposite wall. Farther down into the module, the walls were pulsing with dark wrinkles of infection. Above him, the face of the robot was silhouetted against dull red emergency lights. Stone was cornered.

Until Dr. Vedala grabbed the Robonaut from behind.

Although the R3A4 roughly occupied a human form factor, its center of gravity was wildly different. With vision equipment located in its relatively light head, processors in its stomach, and a slim backpack full of heavy batteries, the robot occupied an unevenly distributed mass of 330 pounds.

This unexpected difference surprised Vedala as she tried to take hold of the robot’s shoulders. Designed to efficiently maneuver heavy cargo, and under the control of an experienced pilot, the R3A4 had no trouble flipping the scientist and launching her violently across the module.

Vedala’s helmet smacked into the open metal hatchway. Her body instantly went limp, floating halfway into the Unity node.

Moving with a freakish, arachnid-like dexterity, the R3A4 began climbing the wall toward Vedala’s body. Stone noticed how the machine continuously kept an eye on the motionless form of its controller. Kline still lay partially embedded in the depths of the module, her fingertips twitching in their instrumented gloves.

Stone pushed himself up toward Vedala. As he floated closer, he scanned the smoky room for a weapon.

His gaze settled on a long metal tube with bright orange fabric wrapped around its base: a fire extinguisher. Grasping it in both hands, he planted a foot against the wall and swung it as hard as he could into the side of the Robonaut’s head.

It hit with a satisfying crunch.

There was no pause, no need to shake off the blow: the machine was made of rigid carbon fiber, stainless steel, and aluminum alloy. The impact had slightly damaged the neck struts, permanently cocking the head to one side. But it had caused no serious damage.

The robot turned to face Stone.

Sophie Kline had felt the attack as a jarring of the cameras and a newly limited range of motion in her neck. She easily directed the R3A4 to snatch the extinguisher from Stone. He threw himself backward, turning away just as Kline’s robotic puppet pitched the extinguisher back at him like a fastball.

The metal cylinder glanced against the bubble visor of his helmet, shattering the faceplate. A shard sliced open his forehead. The dented fire extinguisher pinwheeled away.

Blinking away tears, Stone choked and gagged on the smoke now flooding into his open helmet.

Blood was sprouting in pendulous beads across the gash in his forehead. As he swiveled his head to get his bearings, the droplets detached and hovered before him like a handful of dark rubies.

On the far end of the module, more tendrils of the Andromeda infection were surrounding Kline. The jelly-like surface seemed molten now, quivering, giving Stone the gruesome feeling of being inside some kind of alien organ.

A few yards away, Vedala had just come to.

“Stone?” she said, her voice still projected from his collar microphone. “Where . . . what’s happening?”

Turning at the sound of Vedala’s voice, the robot continued to skitter along the wall of the module back toward the scientist. Kline seemed to know the location of every grip, moving the robot faster than Stone thought possible. The machine was too far away, too strong, and too fast to stop. And it was headed straight for Vedala.

Stone turned to Kline’s trembling body.

“Sophie!” he shouted. “Stop this! I’m warning you!”

Sophie Kline had no intention of stopping, of course. Alone and dying and fueled by an iron will, she had engineered an unprecedented scientific achievement. Stone knew even as he spoke that she would never, ever stop.

Stone ripped open a Velcro pouch on the chest of his suit and retrieved a small case. Coughing, ears ringing, he could barely see through the blood and smoke.

At the hatchway, the R3A4 had closed in on Vedala.

Still disoriented, the scientist was trying in vain to pull herself into the dark mouth of the Unity node. But she was too slow. The machine caught her neatly by the ankle, gears purring as it twisted her leg in a sharp motion. The ligaments inside Vedala’s right knee snapped.

Vedala screamed in pain and surprise. The sheer brute strength of the machine was impossible to fight against.

On hearing Vedala’s cry, Stone’s face went blank.

In his gloved hands, he was holding a small black case. Inside was a glass vial etched with the word OMEGA. After Peng had found it on the body of Eduardo Brink, she had given it to Vedala for safekeeping. The poison was among the items Vedala had wanted to leave behind. Stone had taken it partially to make sure no harm came to Tupa, but also in case of a darker outcome he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge to himself.

Stone ripped open the case to reveal the vial. He did not issue another warning. Like the machine, he did not hesitate.

Prying off the cap with a smooth flick of his wrist, Stone launched it toward the grotesque remains of Dr. Sophie Kline. The tiny vial sailed across empty space, rotating slightly, venomous liquid escaping the lip of the glass cylinder in a spatter of tiny yellow droplets. For an instant, they formed a miniature meteor shower, all speeding together across the expanse of the module.