Gregory Benford - Across the Sea of Suns

There was a long silence on the stark bare plain. Then:

“Probably,” Nigel said. And for some reason, he smiled.

He waited for the Watcher to emerge.

Nigel’s heart still tripped with skittering excitement. Something in him recalled days long ago, when he had boosted up above Earth’s filmy air in transatmospheric craft. There had been the same steady tug of acceleration as the sluggish plane skated up into the thin reaches of atmosphere. Then the rocket part of the hybrid would thunder into life, ramming him at the hard blue-black sky. He had gone up that way on his first deep space mission, to the gas-cloaked asteroid Icarus. But that small world had turned out to be a ruined spaceship, and so had launched him on a long career of flinty risk, of unastronautlike disobedience.

Now his heart recalled those days. It thumped agreeable, happy to be riding a torch up into weightlessness. He felt the pressure of acceleration dwindle. He floated with the sudden buoyancy that for an aging man spelled returning youth. His idiot heart wanted conflict, exploration, zest, the fierce emptiness and the black velocities.

He glided above Pocks, bound with parabolic grace toward the Watcher.

You all right? Nikka called on comm. He turned and waved at her. They rode on makeshift braces, twelve people crammed into the shuttle space meant for five. Carlos was wedged into a cranny halfway between them, his eyes studying the viewscreen anxiously.

Now was the moment. They had boosted off from Pocks and now would come within view of the Watcher within seconds. If it saw them, they were dead.

Nigel peered ahead. Using override command, he called for a closeup of the Watcher as soon as its outline nudged above the tightly curved horizon of Pocks. Then he searched for the missile they had launched against the Watcher. It was their only hope.

There. A dim blob of gray hung against the unyielding black of space.

If they had sent anything metallic against the Watcher it would have quickly sensed it. Metals were the language and substrate of machines. Their textures and electromagnetic glints were as natural to the Watcher as skin and smell were to humans.

And there lay a vulnerability. Or so Nigel guessed. And bet his life upon.

They had spent days gathering the odd, pale gray algae that lived in utter vacuum. Evolution’s persistence had somehow forced waterborne life up, out of the fissures in the ice. There it had adapted to a cold, airless world. It had learned to suck sustenance from ice. The top surface of the lichen was a hard, silicon-rich armor against the piercing ultraviolet of Pocks’s star, Ross. Its underside transferred Ross’s heat, minutely melting the ice and brewing a slow-kindled photosynthesis. The slimy stuff took a tenacious grip on whatever it found.

It could survive for a while in vacuum without clinging to ice. It could withstand the boost into orbit.

Better, it had no metal innards, was transparent to radar.

So the small band of isolated humans had cobbled together some thrusters and made a kind of balloon filled with algae. They had to do this while the Watcher was on the other side of Pocks, so that their activity did not catch the Watcher’s interest.

Nigel had spent long hours scooping up the muck. It clung to its forlorn ice and rock. He had grunted with effort, yanking it free. And been reminded of gardening in far off Pasadena, of the whole warm brush of life that perfumed Earth’s air. The work had put him right again. His limp went away. His pulse steadied. He felt ten years younger—no, twenty.

Then they launched.

Slimeball’s coming up on the Watcher, someone sent.

Nigel braced himself, then relaxed and felt foolish.

On the screen the gray dab coasted toward the curved horizon, a few minutes ahead of them in orbit. And in a moment, as if in answer to the life-filled balloon, the silhouette of the Watcher would poke above the smooth roundness of Pocks.

Seconds were crucial. The Watcher would see them soon. They were defenseless against it. But first …

Tock. Their charge detonated on the leading edge of the balloon. The sound of the balloon splitting came to Nigel over the comm. A faint, still sound.

Go, slimeball!

Ahead of them the gray mass spread outward. An organic shotgun blast into—

The roughened hull of the Watcher loomed above Pocks. Gray groping fingers reached out toward it … touched … and swarmed over the leading surface, smothering the Watcher in a sucking, hungry tide.

Made it!

Dead on!

Eat it, slimeball!

Nigel smiled. He felt strength flooding into him from some buried resource.

It is pleasant enough to be abstractly right. He had had quite enough of that during the years on Lancer, thank you. It was far finer to act and win. He had advanced the algae idea to the others, half expecting them to shrug it off. He was sure that despite all, they would still rather have had Ted leading them. Good old savvy Ted. But they were desperate. The notion had stuck.

Just as the algae itself now stuck and crawled and slithered over the eyes and ears of the Watcher. Eating at the delicate sensors. Blinding them.

So that as the humans in their frail craft glided close, no bolt answered them.

Nikka sent, I’d hate to have some of that ice-eating fuzz on me.

“All life’s an ally,” Nigel murmured. Not all life’s responses were inappropriate.

He was already readying himself for the battle.

The Watcher was a labyrinth. It wasn’t easy to get in, even with the external sensors covered by the thirsty algae. They had to burn it away from the hull to find a way in.

After they had forced an entrance at a bulky lock, the party of twelve found themselves floating through winding spaghetti corridors. Some necked down to scarcely a hand’s width. Others swelled until an elephant could have wallowed through.

A strange humming fled through the lacquered walls Skittering tones shot through the electromagnetic spectrum. Nigel followed Carlos down a tube that seemed to drop away into infinity. Red panels spattered random glows on bulk-heads and complex equipment. Nigel tried to see a pattern to the illumination, but most of it seemed to be wasted on bare, plain metal and stone.

The Watcher was half an asteroid, just as the ancient Icarus craft had been. Into the carbon and raw metal of a minor planet something had fitted elaborate technology. And whatever ran the Watcher lurked somewhere here. Nigel drew Nikka close and followed Carlos. The silence of the place hung like a warning.

They did not have to wait long.

Things long and snakelike scuttled from holes. Bigger machines, tubular and awkward, jetted down side corridors.

There were impossibly many of them. The humans fired at the approaching machines with a grim desperation. Laser bolts and e-beam cutters lanced forth.

They were almost surprised to see their shots fall sure and hard on the machines. Parts blew away. Electrical arcs flared blue-white, then died. The machines tumbled forward, out of control, and smashed into walls.

There are so many! Carlos called. He had a laser projector in each hand and two power packs strapped to him.

Turn sideways, so you’ll be a smaller target, Nikka answered.

Down this way, Nigel called.

They fled the hordes. Nigel rebounded from three walls in quick succession and darted down a narrow tube. Weightlessness gave him back the deft reflexes he had too long missed. As soon as Carlos and Nikka had caught up to him he turned down a side passage. Two slender machines, glossy with glazed ceramic, came at him. He punctured each with a bolt of tightly bound electrons.