Viktor Koman - The Microbotic Menace

“Hell, boy,” Tex rumbled, “if your rear end were covered with grass, I could send a herd of twenty longhorns there on a winter graze.”

“And if your brains were petrol,” Rock growled, “you could not fill cigarette lighter.”

“Overpaid plumber!”

“Unindicted quack!”

They both grinned at Johnny, who had stumbled upon their exchange on the way to the back of the plane. He stared at the two warily, fully expecting for them to come to blows. Rock waved his thick hand dismissively.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Cowboy is too much afraid to call me out to showdown. Knows I would beat him to draw.”

The young man nodded, unsure about the burly rocket scientist’s degree of seriousness. “Captain Anger asked me to tell you that we’re about to descend toward Escollos Alijos.”

Rock and Tex exchanged glances. Both knew that they were about to face mortal danger. Both grinned.

Tex rolled one spur against the aircraft deck. “Well, pardner, let’s get ready to whump Dandridge’s donkey!”

Jonathan Madsen wondered what he was getting himself into.

Escollos Alijos comprised two small islands separated by a few miles of water. At least, that’s what they looked like on the Seamaster’s computerized map. From the air, though, something appeared terribly different.

In the glittering Pacific waters, the northern island revealed the summer colors of golden brown and dark green. The southern island, though, looked nothing like an ordinary island. It shimmered in the sunlight with the silvery glow of lifeless metal. Cap steered clear of the island, so they could not get close enough for a good view.

Cap brought the plane down in placid water off the shore of the northern island. The Seamaster gently approached the ocean as he reduced power to idle, lowered the flaps, and bled off airspeed until the smooth hull lightly skimmed the surface. Quickly the aircraft slowed, descending into the warm waters. The graceful wingtips touched simultaneously and the airplane coasted swiftly to a standstill. Only the rise and fall of the sea gave any motion to the jet now.

Rock immediately opened the side cargo door and wrangled a large black bundle out into the water. On contact, it inflated with a loud thwump, turning into an arrowhead-shaped boat.

Cap went through the water-landing shutdown routine for the Seamaster, then climbed to the cargo area, leaving Weir in charge of the airplane. He opened cabinets and secreted a few items in the hidden recesses of his vest and added a largish cylinder to his left cargo pocket. Strapping on his autopistol and several waterproof ammo pouches, he nodded to Rock, Sun Ra, and Tex. Rock and Sun Ra toted similar arms, though they wore khaki jumpsuits similar to Cap’s black one. Rock’s broad chest bore a crisscrossed pair of nylon-web straps, bandoliers securing a dozen handball-sized spheres. The hexagonal and pentagonal shapes on their surfaces made them look like miniature soccer balls. The traditional pin-and-spoon grenade fuses, however, made their function perfectly clear.

Tex removed his spurs in preparation for jumping into the inflatable raft. He tightened the straps on the camouflaged backpack he wore. It contained his medical kit, along with electronic equipment Cap had requested him to bring. Instead of a jumpsuit, he wore beige jeans and cavalry shirt made of the same bullet-resistant cloth as the rest of their wardrobe.

Sun Ra patted a walnut-hued hand on his own piece of equipment—a portable missile launcher designed by Rock to deliver a one-pound warhead packed with the most powerful chemical explosive he could devise. Only a nuclear warhead could provide more punch per pound.

The four jumped into the boat. Tex attached the jet motor and fired it up.

“What about me?” Jonathan shouted.

“Guard the plane,” Cap answered over the roar of the engine. “Leila will show you how the rail gun works.”

The reply failed to satisfy Madsen, who feared that he would miss not only all of the action, but also his chance to avenge his grandfather’s death.

The boat sped across the channel between the two islands with impressive speed. The water slapped and whapped beneath the membrane of high tensile strength aramid fabric and rubber that served as the flexible hull. The twin air cells that formed the sides of the boat merged at the prow. Captain Anger knelt there, binoculars to his eyes, gazing at the approaching southern island. What he saw caused his tanned brow to furrow into a frown.

The island no longer consisted of vegetation and rock. Argent columns rose hundreds of feet about the water, roughly conforming to the former topography of the island. Sunlight reflected off the strange objects with a maddening, actinic brightness.

Wind whipped through Cap’s dark red hair and beard, making it ripple as if it were aflame. He took a deep breath, smelling the salt sea air. There was no place he preferred to be than on a ship of any size, even a ten-foot long souped-up rowboat such as this. The sun shimmered on the ocean, breaking into a million images of itself, each one lasting only an instant before being replaced by another. Off to starboard, a marlin broke water and splashed back beneath the blue.

“Skipper?” Sun Ra’s voice shouted above the roar of the jet engine. “You’re not going to have us go ashore on that stuff, are you? I personally don’t want to turn into a puddle of goo.”

Cap shrugged, handing his binoculars to Sun Ra and pointing. “It doesn’t seem to be affecting the natives.”

Sun Ra gazed through the binoculars. Parallel to the metallic shore, a line of twenty Mexicans in tattered clothing carried crates and bundles.

They walked in a dazed, robotic manner toward a dark cavern gaping amid the shining island like a hole punched by a giant’s fist. Turning his gaze to the left, Sun Ra observed a landing strip constructed of one seamless piece of dark material. On the runway sat a small single-engine airplane and a pair of heavily armed military helicopters. He directed his captain’s attention toward the airstrip.

Cap nodded. “That’s the Cessna Dandridge flew out of Palo Alto.

Judging from the length of the runway, he may have larger aircraft. Keep an eye peeled for jet fighters.”

Cap took over the engine from Rock and navigated toward a smooth part of the mirror-like shoreline, down the coast a few hundred yards from the cave. He led the others in jumping into the waves and touched the metallic surface beneath the churning foam. Instead of slipping, his soles gripped the slope with the squeak of rubber on metal. Pulling the boat ashore above the high water line marked by seaweed and detritus, he motioned to the rest of the team to debark.

Sun Ra stepped out next and bent down for a closer look at the peculiar land on which he stood.

“Look at that weird pattern!” he said in a puzzled tone.

The rest of the crew gazed at their feet. The surface consisted of countless combinations of ridges, each of which formed a four-sided polygon that was shaped like either a fat diamond or a skinny diamond. They connected less like individual bricks and more like molded isogrids. Inside each of these quadrangles lay smaller versions of the same two shapes. Looking up at the artificial mountains rising before them, it was plain that the pattern repeated itself on a larger scale.

“What sort of design is this?” Rock wondered aloud.

“Penrose tiles,” Cap said, pulling videocam headsets from Tex’s pack. “A mathematician’s toy. If they were colored, you’d be able to tell that they make patterns that repeat but never in any regular manner. Dandridge has obviously programmed his microbots to turn this island into a temple for him. Using fractal construction, too. Every Penrose shape is composed of smaller Penrose shapes, probably right down to the molecular level.