“Right now we’ve got other problems,” Marcia said. “We’re not going to know a damn thing more until we go down that tunnel and see what there is to see.”
“But the tremor!” McGillicutty protested. “If there’s another of those while we’re down there—”
“Then we’ll be glad we’re wearing armored suits,” Jansen said grimly. “MacDougal’s right. There’s nothing up here to find. Let’s go. Mercer, we’ll be spooling a fiber cable behind us, back to a radio transponder here on the surface. We should be able to stay in touch.”
“You do that, Jan,” Mercer’s voice whispered in the earphones. “You do that.”
Jansen walked over the crumpled surface of the asteroid, up to the entrance pit of the tunnel. She set down the transponder, unspooled a cable from it, and hooked her comm unit up to the cable. With practiced skill, she drove a spike into the rock next to the tunnel, and clipped a climbing spooler to it. Clipping the other end of the spooler to her belt, she turned and faced the pit. Determined not to hesitate, she hopped down into the pit and immediately started down the steep tunnel itself. Marcia followed behind her, with McGillicutty a distant third.
They learned two things first off: one, that the way was very steep, and two, that Coyote Westlake was a good tunnel borer. The tunnel was cut straight and true, smooth walled and perfect. But the going was not easy. The tunnel had been cut for use in zero gee, and the asteroid’s landing had placed the tunnel at an awkward angle. Jansen soon found the best way to move was a bit silly looking—sitting on her rear, scooting forward and downward, peering forward into the darkness by the light of her headlamp. Behind her, Sondra and McGillicutty followed in the same posture. Jansen was glad of the undignified descent—in an odd way, it served to take all their minds off the dangers, real and imagined, that awaited below.
After about five minutes’ awkward travel, they arrived at Coyote’s inflatable airlock, still securely in place, though a certain amount of tunnel debris had slid downward and piled up against the inner door.
Jansen drove another rockspike into the tunnel wall and clipped the end of her climbing rope to it. You couldn’t feed a rope through an airlock. Nor a fiber cable. She unplugged the cable from her suit’s comm set and into another transponder. The plastic lock ought to be transparent to radio. With any luck, Mercer would be able to hear them. Jansen shoveled most of the fallen debris out of the way, matched pressure with the first chamber of the lock, and swung the door open.
The lock was only large enough to cycle one person at a time. Jansen, Marcia and then McGillicutty moved through it, into a small chamber filled with a filmy green gas. At the far end of the chamber, the smooth tunnel stopped abruptly, stuttering out into a rough rock wall. A miner’s zero-gee jackhammer lay abandoned, half-covered by rock chips.
And at the exact center of the end wall, there was a hole large enough to stick a pressure-suited helmet through.
“Everyone, cut your helmet lamps for a minute,” Marcia said. The lights died, and Marcia looked toward the jagged edges of the hole.
There was a faint green luminescence coming from it. Marcia switched on her suit’s external mikes and listened.
There was sound from the hole as well. A faint scrabbling that might be metal legs scurrying over stone—and a wet, tearing sound that might be the sound of flesh being torn from a body.
Marcia was moving forward to take a look through that hole at what lay beyond when the second tremor hit and the pressure dropped.
Now was the time. The Worldeater was satisfied with the results of its systems checks. Its energy reserves were satisfactory, its biological components were in good health, and its mechanical portions were in excellent repair. The follow-on Worldeaters were homing in on its signals.
It was time to move out of the chamber it had slept in for so long and begin its proper work. It moved its main body forward across the chamber, toward the thinnest section of the chamber’s wall. Even there, the rock between chamber and the asteroid’s outer surface was many meters thick.
But that was no barrier at all to a being like the World-eater. Feeling its still-awakening power, reveling in it, it heaved itself at the yielding stone.
The second Lander was setting down a few kilometers away, but Mercer paid it no mind. Let the other chase teams, the skim jets and dragonflies amuse themselves by going after it.
The first Lander, this Lander, was the key. Of that she had no doubt. She stood on the desert floor a bare quarter kilometer away and stared at it as it towered over her, blotting out the sky, gleaming in the first light of the new-rising Sun.
Jansen was in this one, her voice brought to Mercer’s ear by a tenuous link of radio waves and cables and radio-repeating transponders.
Suddenly, the ground bucked and swayed, knocking her off her feet. A massive cloud of debris shook itself off the Lander, and a huge wave of shattered stone slumped down from one end of the asteroid. A jet of greenish smoke spewed out from the Lander’s interior.
The asteroid shuddered again. More stone slumped over, revealing a hollow space inside. And something was moving in there.
Suddenly, Mercer knew what her subconscious had been trying to recall. She knew what this nightmare reminded her of.
The War of the Worlds. The goddamn War of the Worlds. The ancient stories, always immensely popular on Mars, because loving them annoyed arrogant ground-hogs, if for no other reason. The H. G. Wells book, the Orson Welles audio play and the George Pal two-dee movie—all quaint, old-fashioned, creaky and much-loved parts of Martian popular heritage.
The old images swept over her. The mysterious invaders landing in their cylinders—just outside London, in Graver’s Mill, New Jersey, in rural California—lurking, ominous shapes that finally opened, unleashing the Martian invaders inside upon an unsuspecting Earth.
A third tremor hit as the thing inside slammed aside the last of the rock wall that blocked its way. It seemed to hesitate for a moment before moving out from its stone cocoon.
Mercer got cautiously to her feet and watched as the first of the invaders emerged.
At first she could see nothing but a vague blue-gray shape. She could not tell if there were one or many things moving forth, could not tell whether she was watching machines or life.
Jansen. Was she okay? “Jansen, you three still there?” she asked, speaking into her helmet mike.
The signal was scratchy, and the voice was faint, distorted, but at least it was there. Mercer breathed a sigh of relief even before she heard the words. “We’re— kay.—utty got rattled aro— p —ood, but he’s in one —iece. What —hell was —at?”
“You’re cutting in and out, Janse. Bet you snapped your antenna. It looks like whatever is inside there just decided to come on out.”
“—and by.” Suddenly the carrier wave cleared and Jansen came back on, her signal far stronger. “Okay, patching through MacDougal’s radio. The tremor rattled us pretty good, and there was a hell of a pressure drop at the same time. Something is busting out of here?”
“Affirmative. It’s got to be a hundred meters long at least, whatever it is.”