“Let’s keep it simple,” Marcia said. “This ledge we’re on seems to lead clear to the end of this cavity. No one else seems to be using it, and it might keep us out of view. I say we walk down it as far as we can, then out onto the surface. We make our move out there. Those carrier robots don’t look like they’re made for open-field running, and maybe we can get some help from our own people. Jansen, have you got enough pictures?”
“From this angle, yes. Let’s go.”
Not quite willing to believe he was going along with this, McGillicutty followed the other two as they made their awkward way along the ledge. It was hard to focus on the simple job of moving forward. There were too many strange and inexplicable things all about them. Odd machine-creatures scuttled about the chamber, rushing about here and there. Weird shadows and flares of light cast themselves on the walls as the machines used their cutting torches and walked in front of them.
McGillicutty realized the stone was vibrating beneath his feet. He switched on his exterior mikes and listened to the sounds of the place.
Cluttering noises, the grinding of huge gears, the crash of falling rock and the roar of machinery all echoed in the huge chamber, weirdly faint and distant in the thin Martian air, even through the special sound boosters in his helmet. Shrieks and whispers that might have been machines and might have been some unseen and ghastly monster lurking, lying in wait for them just out of sight. He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know. For the first time in his life, Hiram McGillicutty was confronted by mysteries he had not the slightest desire to solve. He was afraid, and saw the grave yawning wide before him.
The ledge ran on for most of the length of the chamber, but their luck ran out about thirty meters from the cavern entrance. A wall of shattered rock blocked the way, and they were forced to climb out into the open.
Their geology hammers were the closest any of them had to a weapon. Brandishing hers didn’t exactly fill Jansen with confidence, but it was all she had. The open end of the chamber was even more chaotic than the central floor. The scorpion robots were everywhere. “Stick together, everyone,” Jansen said. “Let’s not get separated here.”
She moved forward toward the open end of the asteroid, toward the beckoning daylight beyond, trying to keep them as far as possible from the busy crews of robots. It wasn’t easy. Some of the broken rocks were the size of houses, blocking the way—and the view. Jansen found herself backtracking constantly when a path proved impassable. The going was rough, with smashed piles of loose rock everywhere. They were forced to climb and clamber, slipping and sliding over the heaps of stone. At least there was nothing to block their view up. Without the inviting signpost of the clean Martian sky to guide them forward, they never could have kept their bearings. As it was, the three of them were having trouble keeping each other in view.
In fact they were having more than trouble. McGillicutty. Jansen spun around and looked behind herself. There was MacDougal, making her way down an unsteady boulder. But she was the only one there. McGillicutty was lost to view.
“McGillicutty!” she called into her radio, hoping the signal would get bounced off the rock walls so he could hear it out of line of sight. “Where are you?”
“Be… behind you, I think,” his voice answered, thin and weak. “Backtrack a bit, but come slowly. One of them is… looking at me.”
“Sweet Jesus in heaven. Hang on.” Jansen headed back the way they had come, up and over the rock MacDougal had just come down. MacDougal reversed course and followed her up.
The two women reached the top of the boulder at about the same moment, looked down—and froze.
McGillicutty was standing there, facing them, holding himself perfectly still. A scorpion was standing straight in front of him, towering over him. For a brief moment, Jansen was impressed that McGillicutty had the courage to stand his ground that way—until she realized that the little man was simply too terrified to move.
The scorpion moved a step closer to McGillicutty and Jansen drew in her breath. The thing was larger than she had thought. It stood on five pairs of segmented, claw-footed legs, holding its flat body a good two meters off the ground. At its forward end was a complex set of what Jansen assumed to be sensors, but nothing that she could recognize as a camera lens or an eye. It was at least three meters long, a gleaming dull silver in color, all hard corners and mechanical brawn. Up close, it didn’t resemble a scorpion—or any living thing—at all. It was cold, alien. Its two massive arms reached toward McGillicutty. Jaw clamps at the ends of the arms opened, moved carefully forward, and the robot prodded the strange object it had found.
Jansen started to move forward, but MacDougal held her back. “This is the first time that one of these— things—has even noticed a human being. We don’t know how it will react—but if we get closer, we might make it feel threatened. Stay back. Don’t confuse the issue. McGillicutty—are you okay?”
They could see his face, albeit dimly, through his helmet, could see his jaw work, the fear sweat popping out on his round face. For a long moment he had trouble forming words. “Sc-sc-scared,” he said at last. And that was the last of McGillicutty. One of the two jaw-clamp arms moved forward and neatly snipped his head off, helmet and all. His corpse stood there for a moment, and then tottered forward, his blood’s crimson splashing over the killer robot.
Jansen screamed, and Marcia grabbed her, pulled her back down the rock slab, away. Jansen resisted at first, insisting for a split second on looking, seeing the horror. But then no more. She turned and scrambled away, with no further thought than out, escape, far away. She hurried forward, unthinking, toward the cavern entrance. She barreled into a line of the carrier robots, knocking two of them over, and neither knew nor cared. Terror, anger, horror coursed through her. There. There was the very lip of the cavern. There. She rushed forward, dimly aware that Marcia was behind her, calling to her, trying to calm her. But she ignored the voice in her headphones as she ignored everything but the last heap of rubble to get over. She scrabbled up the last bulwark in the jungle of stone, and found herself teetering on the brink of a straight fall. Without a moment’s hesitation she heaved herself out, down onto the clean sands of Mars.
Whump. She landed on her stomach with a stunning jolt that served to clear her head for a moment. She looked up to see Marcia a good ten meters up, on the lip of the cavern, setting herself for a more cautious leap down.
Even in Mars’s fairly gentle gravity, it was a long fall, and Marcia landed badly, sprawling out on her back for a moment before she got to her feet.
“Jesus. Sweet Jesus God in Heaven,” Marcia said, and the words were a prayer. “He’s dead in there. Dead.”
Jansen got to her feet and looked around, the chittering whispers of panic still flitting about her mind. “We’re not safe,” she announced. The wide plain was literally crawling with the enemy. The scorpions, the carriers, other types were moving about. In the middle distance, a blue-gray something the size of a mountain was undulating across the surface. Further away, much too far away, off to one side, were pressure tents, half-tracks, people. There. That was the way to go.
“He’s dead,” Marcia repeated again. “That thing killed him.”
Jansen turned and looked back the way they had come. The massive bulk of the ruined asteroid towered over them. A line of those damned carrier drones was carefully picking its way down the loose scree about thirty meters away, then moving off across the sands in the wake of the monstrous creature that ruled this nightmare realm. They seemed to have a bit of trouble moving over the powdery, rock-strewn sands. Now and again one would flounder a bit. She looked around for one of the scorpion models. They, too, seemed to be slowed more than a little by the sands.