Alice realized that Dan had never heard of the Hive. He had no idea that there was any danger.
Dan pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and shined it into the hole. He leaned forward, inserting his head in the opening. “I don’t see anyth…” he began, and then screamed. His whole body lurched forward, and he was pulled through.
The mechanical arms of George’s remote reached for Dan’s feet, but missed. The remote, its work lights beaming forward, its tractor treads spinning, thrust itself into the hole after Dan. A shiny gray cylindrical pseudopod snaked out of the hole, wrapped around the remote, and pulled it inside.
“Dan! George!” Alice shouted, stepping back. It had all happened so fast. She looked around for help. There was a red alarm button on the wall nearby, and she pressed it. In the distance an alarm signal began a slow whooping sound.
She heard a loud electric-motor noise and turned. Behind her another remote was driving in her direction on an electric vehicle containing a large cylindrical gray tank. As the vehicle stopped before the hole, she recognized the face of George on the headscreen.
“I switched to another remote,” he said. “Dan is dead. Cut to pieces and dissolved into the floor, along with my remote.” The remote rolled around the tank and uncoiled a long steel-mesh-covered hose. “Liquid nitrogen,” he said. He rolled to the hole and began to direct a stream of the clear cryogenic liquid inside. Alice had a feeling of deja vu.
Clouds of steamlike condensed water vapor poured out of the opening, obscuring Alice’s view. She held out the Bridge detector. The Bridgehead was still in the place where she had first detected it. “George,” she said, “can you tell me what’s going on?”
“The Hive sent a Bridge through the SDC and planted it behind the cave wall. By manipulating through the Bridge, they’ve put together nanomachine assemblers, and they’ve had several days to build Hive Workers. Iris thinks there’s a good chance that there hasn’t been enough time for the Hive Mind to become conscious. Something grabbed Dan and my remote and disassembled us for molecular spare parts, but perhaps that was an automatic response of the nanomachines. I didn’t get much of a look before the remote link broke, but there are structures in there and what look like folded-up dormant insects.”
“Perhaps those are the Workers,” said Alice.
“I’m hoping this liquid nitrogen will lower the temperature enough to immobilize the nanomachines,” George said. “It’s our only hope of stopping this. Alice, you’ll have to help. I can’t use a Bridge detector through a remote. I want you to go down the cave about fifty meters to the left. When you come to a sign on the wall that says ‘Cryogenics,’ there should be a cabinet with some cryo-protection suits and respirators. Put on a cryo-suit and come back here as quickly as you can.”
Alice raced down the cave. She returned wearing a silvery cryo-suit. The remote, the headscreen now dim, was frozen in a fixed position, still hosing liquid nitrogen into the hole. Another remote bearing George’s image on the headscreen stood near a smaller cryogenic dewar. It was swinging a sledgehammer to enlarge the opening, which now looked like a tunnel.
“Now,” said George’s voice from the remote, “we’re ready to try. I’ll go in first. However, you’ll have to use your Bridge detector. What you have to do is find the Hive’s Bridgehead and tell me where it is, so I can put it into this liquid helium dewar. If we can do that, everything will be okay.”
“Okay,” Alice said doubtfully. The remote turned off the flow of nitrogen, approached the tunnel, and rolled inside, carrying the small liquid helium dewar with it. Alice followed, crawling carefully through the rough opening, her one ungloved hand holding the Bridge detector before her. Once inside she was able to stand. It was hard to see much because of the mist of condensed water vapor left by the liquid nitrogen, and her ungloved hand felt very cold. There was a huge rounded area behind the wall lined with strange organic-looking structures. Along one side Alice could see the huge dormant insectlike creatures George had mentioned. They seemed to be frozen in place. The floor felt yielding, jellylike. Alice touched the floor and Read. She realized that the surface was lined with tiny molecular machines programmed to disassemble whatever they met and reconstruct it into something else. They had been shut down by the low temperature. These things had killed and dissolved Dan. She felt sick at the thought.
Alice crawled forward to a rough stone extrusion that extended up from the floor like a stalagmite. Scanning it with her detector, she sensed the Bridgehead just within its tip. “It’s here,” she said, pointing. “Now what?”
“Okay,” said George, “lock the laser cutting beam in the ‘on’ state and hand me the Bridge detector. Then move back.”
She activated the cutting laser in the Bridge detector, carefully pointing the intense blue beam down the tunnel, and held it out. George’s remote took the device from her and extended its jointed arm to the stalagmite, using its other arm to hold the mouth of the liquid helium-filled dewar just below the point that she had indicated. The bright blue beam began to slice into the limestone, making white sparks. Suddenly a blinding green flash overwhelmed the blue of the laser. Alice was flung back by the shock wave.
“Shit!” said George’s voice. “The thing was booby-trapped.” As her eyes readjusted, she could see that both of the remote’s arms had been burned off, the detector was gone, and the dewar lay broken and steaming some distance away. “It’s a trap!” said George. “The Hive Mind is conscious. Get out, Alice! Run!”
As she backed out of the tunnel, she could see that the insectoid forms along the wall were beginning to move. Outside the opening she grabbed the hose of the liquid nitrogen tank and shoved it into the hole, cranked the valve to full open, then tore off her respirator hood. Should she shed the rest of the suit? Her eyes caught movement from the tunnel. She glanced around for another possible weapon, but saw none. George’s last word finally connected with her legs and she began to run for the elevator.
Halfway there, she turned for a quick look. The scene evoked images from a Hieronymus Bosch painting she’d once seen in Madrid. Emerging from the tunnel were a hellish variety of shapes and forms that walked, flowed, squirmed, flew, rolled, and slithered from the opening. Prominent among them were large black insectoid forms with sharply spiked bodies and large cruel pincer jaws. Somehow she knew that these were Hive Soldiers. They ran toward her on six legs, with two smaller legs extended forward, grasping strange tessellated objects. Another remote with George’s image on the headscreen darted out from a charger bay and tried to intercept them. One insect grasped the machine in its jaws and tossed it sideways. The remote hit the wall with a loud crash and was still.
“I can’t believe this,” Alice she said to herself. “This isn’t happening.” She kicked off the clumsy boots of the cryo-suit and ran barefoot across the painted concrete floor.
She had almost reached the sanctuary of the open elevator door when the Hive Soldiers caught her.
46
WHEN GEORGE HAD RECEIVED ALICE’S MESSAGE, he, Roger, and Iris had rushed to the LEM data analysis room so that he could connect to an SDC remote and they could watch. Now Roger tore off the glasses and stared at the others in horror. “My God! They’ve killed Alice!” he said.
“Yes, she’s dead,” said George. “There was nothing I could do.” He put his hands over his face.
Roger straightened slowly, struggling to calm himself after the grisly spectacle he had just witnessed. He walked across and placed his hand on George’s shoulder. “We understand, George,” he said. “We were watching. There was nothing more you could do.”