‘A spider,’ he said, as if there had been any doubt on the matter. ‘Loading and unloading robots. They receive the full tanks from the beetles, exchange them for empty ones, bring the loot to the station and load them up to be transported on.’
‘I don’t exactly feel welcome here,’ observed Rogachev.
‘They won’t hurt you,’ murmured Amber. ‘They just want to play.’
‘Is the area under surveillance?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘Which means?’
‘The CCTV only switches on if there’s an error message. As I said, the mining is automated. Distributed intelligence in a real-time network. The robots only react to each other; we don’t exist in their internal image.’
‘Pieces of shit!’ snarled Momoka. ‘Your goddamn Moon is starting to really get on my tits.’
‘Maybe it would be worth enriching their internal image with some additional data,’ Evelyn suggested. ‘I mean, if a spider has room in its reality cosmos for something as space-consuming as a beetle, surely it can’t be that complicated to squeeze in Homo sapiens too.’
‘Humans aren’t supposed be in the mining zone,’ said Julian, a little on edge. ‘The zone is a self-enclosed technosphere.’
‘And how big is this technosphere?’
‘At the moment, one hundred square kilometres. On the American side. The Chinese occupy a smaller zone.’
‘And you’re sure that those are American machines?’
‘The Chinese use caterpillar tracks.’
‘Well’ said Evelyn, ‘at least we won’t get trampled by the enemy.’
From that point on, they paid even more attention to what was lurking in the shadows, and – because it was impossible to hear anything in a vacuum – also strained their eyes until they hurt. That’s how Amber noticed the buggy, even from a distance.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Momoka as she saw Julian stop.
‘Carl might be up ahead.’
‘Oh, that’s good.’ She laughed drily. ‘Very good! For me, not for him.’ She tried to overtake Julian but Rogachev put his hand on her forearm.
‘Wait.’
‘What for, for God’s sake?’
‘I said, wait.’
His unusually authoritative tone made Momoka stop. Rogachev pulled himself up. There were no spiders nor beetles as far as the eye could see. The baked regolith was the only indication that the mining machines had already processed this part of the Sinus Iridum. Amidst the bleak landscape, Hanna’s buggy looked like the remains of a long-lost battle.
‘I can’t see him anywhere,’ said Amber after a while.
‘No.’ Rogachev turned his upper body round and back. ‘It really doesn’t look like he’s there.’
‘How could you tell in all this fucking dust?’ growled Momoka. ‘He could be anywhere.’
‘I don’t know, Momoka. All I know is that – so far – we haven’t been shot at.’
There was expectant silence for a while.
‘Okay,’ Julian decided. ‘Let’s go over there.’
Within a few minutes it became clear that Hanna wasn’t lying in wait for them somewhere. His buggy had succumbed to an axle fracture. Bootprints led off in a straight line away from it.
‘He set off on foot,’ commented Amber.
‘Will he be able to make it?’ asked Evelyn.
‘Sure, as long as he has enough air.’ Julian bent over the cargo area. ‘He hasn’t left anything behind in any case, and I know for sure that he took oxygen reserves from the Ganymede with him.’
‘Shouldn’t we be there soon?’ Evelyn stared into the distance. ‘I mean, we’ve been on the go for over an hour now.’
‘According to the rover it’s another fifteen kilometres to the station.’
‘A piece of cake then, really.’
‘For us, but not so much for him.’ Julian straightened up. ‘He’ll need one to two hours from here. That means he’s still out there somewhere. There’s no way he’s already reached the station.’
‘So we’ll run into him.’
‘And soon, I think.’
‘And what will we do with him when we do?’
‘The question’s more what he’ll do with us,’ snorted Amber.
‘Well, I know what I’m going to do with him,’ hissed Momoka. ‘I’m going to—’
‘No, you won’t,’ Julian interrupted her. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Momoka. We’re grieving with you, but—’
‘Oh, spare me that shit!’
‘But we have to find out what Carl is planning. I want to know what this is all about. We need him alive!’
‘That won’t be easy,’ said Rogachev. ‘He’s armed.’
‘Do you have any ideas?’
‘Well.’ Rogachev was silent for a moment. ‘We’ve got the advantage in some ways. We have the rovers. And we’re approaching him from behind. If he doesn’t happen to turn round right at the decisive moment, then we could drive right up without him even realising.’
‘And do you want to risk him shooting at us as soon as he does realise?’ Amber turned round. ‘Driving right up close is all well and good. But what then?’
‘We could surround him,’ Julian mused. ‘Approach from both sides.’
‘Then he’d definitely see us,’ said Rogachev.
‘How about a friendly ramming?’ Evelyn suggested.
‘Hmm, not bad.’ Julian thought for a moment. ‘Let’s say we drive next to one another, nice and slow. Then one of us can run him down from behind, and then, before he has time to react, the ones in the other rover can jump down and grab his weapons, and so on.’
‘And so on. So who’s doing the ramming?’
‘Julian,’ said Rogachev. ‘And we’ll form the attack commando.’
‘And who’s driving?’
‘Well…’ Rogachev turned to Momoka, who was standing there motionless as if waiting for someone to activate her vital functions. ‘Momoka is very emotionally charged right now.’
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ said Momoka tonelessly.
‘But I do,’ said Rogachev coolly. ‘I don’t know whether we can let you drive. You’ll mess things up.’
‘And?’ Momoka broke out of her frozen state and climbed back into the driver’s seat. ‘What’s the alternative, Oleg? If you let me jump on him you’ll be risking much more. For example, the fact that I’ll smash in his visor with the nearest available rock.’
‘We need him alive,’ Julian repeated insistently. ‘Under no circumstances will we—’
‘I got it!’ she snapped.
‘No vigilantes, Momoka!’
‘I’ll play by the rules. We’ll do it the way you just said.’
‘Sure?’
Momoka sighed. When she spoke, her voice trembled as if she was holding back tears. ‘Yes, I’m sure. I promise.’
‘I don’t trust you,’ said Rogachev after a while.
‘You don’t?’
‘No. I think you’ll put us all in danger. But it’s your decision, Julian. If you want to let her drive – then go ahead.’
Hanna saw the mining machine approaching from the left. Dust billowed out around its legs and shovel wheels, while freezing clouds forced their way out of its sides and mixed with the suspended matter to form a hazy camouflage. He tried to estimate whether he could safely cross in front of it. It was pretty close already, but if he stepped up his pace he should be able to manage it.
On Earth, he thought to himself, that thing would create a hell of a racket. Here, it approached with malicious silence. The only thing he could hear was the whoosh of the air-conditioning system in his suit and his own disciplined breathing. He knew that silence nourished foolishness, and that – especially in the glistening haze – correct estimations of distance were hardly possible, but on the other hand he didn’t feel the slightest inclination to wait until the monstrous thing had crawled by. The mining station had to be really close by now. He’d had enough now, he just wanted to get there.