Barrington Bayley - Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus - The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

Pushing aside yet more panicking robots, Jasperodus made his way back to the primary service area into which the main hatch gave access. There he found four robots, including the ganger, huddled closely together.

The slotman, however, had adopted a surprisingly different posture. He stood upright in the hatchway, fully exposed to the starlight. Cautiously Jasperodus approached the opening and peered over the rim. Glinting darkly against the starry background was the lobed, bulbous form of a foreign spaceship. It gyrated slowly and he could see the crescent of Rendare, one of the chief states of the Alliance, painted on its flank. Clearly it was contemplating attack and perhaps had not quite realised that the guard post was defenceless.

The slotman was staring at the cruiser, eyebrows raised in an expression of melancholy. Jasperodus could guess at his state of mind: imminent death came as an unexampled opportunity for sad self-pity and, at the same time, was something of a relief.

But he ignored the human and returned to the robots, pressing his head against the ganger’s. ‘Can weapons be made functional?’ he grated.

‘Not in time! Nothing to do but wait for extinction!’

The ganger, like all the others, was in the grip of despair. Jasperodus turned and launched himself back towards the hatch. As he did so a shell from the Borgor cruiser shot through the opening, passed over Jasperodus’ shoulder – though he didn’t see it – and through the ganger’s chest. Not until it had also penetrated the bulkhead behind him did it explode. The bulkhead bulged, spat itself into fragments, and the robots crouching with the ganger caught the whole barrage. The metal pieces tore into their bodies, leaving them moving feebly.

Their bulk largely protected Jasperodus and the slotman from the effects of the blast. Shrapnel and jagged metal hurtled silently past Jasperodus, one or two pieces scoring his limbs.

Instinctively the slotman clung to the side of the hatchway, paralysed, his mouth open with fright. Jasperodus sailed past him, steadied himself in the opening, then gained the outside and planted his feet on the exterior of the guard post. One powerful spring with his legs and he was soaring towards the open hatch of the shuttle which still floated a few yards away, tethered by guidelines.

In seconds he was alone in the empty crew chamber of the shuttle. It seemed odd that no one else had sought this refuge, which on the face of it offered the only possibility of escape. But then, perhaps the others had a more realistic appraisal of how much ground control would be prepared to help them. Robots, slotman and the battered shuttle were all expendable, practically throw-away items, and in the prospect of losing the important guard post – if ground control was even aware of what was going on yet – they would simply be forgotten.

He glanced at the ceiling, judging the position the chamber occupied in the length of the rocket. It was almost certain that originally the shuttle had been built with a cockpit, which probably was still there.

He flicked himself to the ceiling and activated the nozzle of the cutting torch which was part of his welding kit… The thin metal sheeting curled apart in the heat of the torch. While it was still hot Jasperodus tore it open further with his hands and then attacked a second layer of sheeting separated by a gap of a few inches.

Moments later he was levering himself into a small darkened cabin in the nose of the shuttle. Using the light of the cutting torch he took stock of it. There was a pilot’s seat, padded and harnessed, a large bank of instruments, several screens including a large one with cross hairs directly in front of the seat.

He leaned close, half-guessing, half-reading the function of the various controls by their markings. Never had his mind worked so fast… There had to be some point at which the controls were overridden by the signals transmitted from the ground… He ripped open a panel. Behind it he saw a junction box with a cutout switch, paralleled by a similar arrangement leading in the direction of the radio receiver. He immediately moved both switches.

The lights came on.

The big television screen sprang into life also. It showed the view from the nose of the shuttle. In the upper right-hand corner hovered the bow of the Borgor cruiser.

Jasperodus strapped himself into the pilot’s seat. Gyros… here they were. As he experimented with the levers the picture on the screen shifted with the rotation of the vessel, until he brought the intersection of the cross hairs into line with the Borgor cruiser. It appeared to be taking no further action, but was still waiting for some response to its opening shot.

By his knee Jasperodus noticed that a speaker was just perceptibly vibrating in the vacuum created by his rupturing the floor of the cabin. He placed his hand against it, but had to tune up his hearing to make out the words that were conducted up his arm.

‘You there! Put that craft back on remote and get out of that cockpit!’

Ignoring the command, Jasperodus fumbled for the ignition switch, first opening the throttle to full.

The rocket motor blasted out at full power. On the screen the enemy cruiser ballooned briefly – and then was blotted out.

Although it travelled only a few hundred yards the shuttle attained a velocity of several hundred miles per hour by the time of impact. It ploughed into the belly of the cruiser. The structure of neither vessel was rigid enough to hold together under such a shock: both broke up, but even as the shuttle disintegrated its nose retained enough momentum to carry it right through to the opposite wall of the Rendare ship.

The harness kept Jasperodus in his seat. The seat itself, however, tore loose from its moorings and took him cartwheeling. Several times he ricochetted off writhing wreckage. Then he found himself in space, spinning end over end, though at a speed sedate enough for him to observe what was happening.

The smashed cruiser was receding. Suddenly there was a bright flash as fuel and liquid oxygen from the ruptured tanks mixed and exploded. The explosion raged through the wreckage in rivers and rivulets. Gouts of flame shot out in all directions. Shortly the wreck was completely burned out.

Jasperodus released his harness and pushed the chair away, contriving thereby to counteract his slow spin and also to lose most of his relative velocity. The guard post receded only very slowly now. He relaxed, spread his limbs, and simply floated, unexpectedly overcome by a strange feeling of peace and calm.

Unresistingly he fell into a serene reverie. The apparent endlessness of sable space was soaking into his perception; he felt as though he had penetrated to the very centre of existence. His senses, moreover, had become incongruously sharp; all around him was universal majesty… The Earth, a great, silent goddess hanging hugely below him. The small, brilliant Moon. He turned, and the flashing sun seared his eyes.

He did not know how long he floated there. It seemed like a long time. But eventually he again took thought for practical affairs and noticed that the guard post was now very small. He activated one of the nozzles of his welding kit. The thrust it produced was extremely low, but accumulative. First imperceptibly, and then slowly, he coasted back to the realm of men.

By the time an investigating spacecraft arrived from Tansiann several hours later Jasperodus had taken matters well in hand. Gathering together the survivors among the repair crew, he had shaken them out of their demoralised condition and set them to work. Under his supervision the guard post was now functioning again. The guardsmen from the imperial craft – a sleek near-orbit patrol boat – entered the hatchway to find him welding in place a new bulkhead to replace the one shattered by the Borgor shell.