‘It does feel different,’ admitted Cavor, trailing Dallas around the next turn in the route.
‘I couldn’t take you with me in the simulation because it wouldn’t, couldn’t have worked there. But here, in reality, it can. It will.’
‘But shouldn’t we at least have tried this technique back in the hotel?’ objected Cavor. ‘I mean, suppose it doesn’t work?’
‘Why? When the research shows that it does?’
‘But suppose I’m different? Suppose it doesn’t work for me?’
‘The theory’s quite sound, I can assure you. All the new work that’s being done in the field of extrasensory perception — telepathy, telekinesis — has concentrated on the parietal lobe. But until only a few months ago no one had ever thought of applying that research to the subject of phantom limbs. People used to think that the brain was a passive thing, merely receiving messages from various body parts. That turns out not to be true. The brain, and in particular, the parietal lobe, generates the experience of the body. An experience that can be raised to an entirely higher level. An extrasensory level. Even when no external inputs occur, the brain is capable of generating not just perceptual experience but real experience. It’s possible we don’t actually need a body to feel a body. And that gives a whole new meaning to the old Cartesian idea of “I think, therefore I am.” But that’s another issue. Here we’re concerned with the fact that you don’t need a hand to feel a hand, and more importantly, to use a hand. Now we turn right here, apparently.’
Feeling Cavor’s hand upon his shoulder, Dallas stopped and looked around. ‘Yes?’
To his surprise, the sensation persisted, although now that he was facing Cavor, it was clear that both the other man’s hands were hanging straight down at his sides. For a second he felt a chill. ‘Jesus,’ he muttered, momentarily alarmed. It was another moment or two before he saw Cavor smiling out of his helmet and realized what was happening.
‘What do you know,’ said Cavor. ‘I’m doing it. You can feel it too, right?’
Dallas laughed, delighted at this very tangible demonstration of a theory he had only read about. ‘Fantastic,’ he said, his eyes still searching the empty space between them. ‘I can feel your hand even though I can’t see it.’
Cavor’s fears about imminent radiation sickness were temporarily forgotten as he stood in front of Dallas and now punched him gently on the breast of his EVA suit with the invisible hand.
‘What else can you feel?’ asked Dallas ‘Besides me?’
Cavor turned the invisible limb in the air and described the sensory experiences as they occurred to him. ‘My arm feels cold, like it’s naked or something. Pins and needles, too, like I’ve been lying on it for a while. But the fingers feel like they’ve been dipped in something hot.’ He rippled his fingers. ‘I reckon I could even play the piano again, if I wanted to. Think of that,’ he said, impressed with the possibility. ‘I could play again. I could get my life back. The way it used to be.’ By now he had forgotten the prosthetic arm still hanging by his side. Forgotten, too, the UHT gun the false hand continued to hold. For another brief moment the prosthetic grip persisted and then, deprived of its higher electrical control, relaxed.
The gun clattered to the floor of the labyrinth, firing a short burst of blue electrons that narrowly missed Dallas’s ankle before zipping down the length of the route ahead of them and impacting against its curving steel wall some thirty to forty feet away, in an explosion of heat and light.
‘Shit,’ said Cavor, recovering the use of his prosthetic arm and then retrieving the gun from the floor.
A large hole in the wall ahead of them glowed bright yellow, lighting up the whole of the labyrinth behind and ahead of them.
‘Come on,’ Dallas said urgently, moving toward the glowing hole. ‘We’ve got to be away from here. Quickly.’
He took off on a slow-motion jog, each step lifting him two to three feet above the ground. Cavor followed suit, bounding past the glowing melted hole in the wall and around the next corner into darkness again. He was surprised to see Dallas going on.
‘If the robot can’t see in darkness, then what’s the problem?’ he asked.
‘Light merely activates the robot to search and destroy. But once it’s been activated, its second detector kicks in — a microwave sensor that generates an electromagnetic wave using the Doppler effect.[124] It picks up anything moving toward or away from the sensor.’
Dallas paused at the next turn, and this time looked carefully around before moving again.
‘Anything else I don’t know about?’
‘No, I think that almost covers it.’
‘Almost?’ And then, as they came to a dead end: ‘Are we lost?’
‘No, we’re not lost,’ Dallas said irritably. He turned and placed his back against the labyrinth wall. ‘Only right now I think it’s better we have a solid wall behind us. That way we only have to pay attention in one direction. Just stand completely still and we might be okay.’
‘Shit,’ panted Cavor, breathing hard from his short exertion. He was beginning to feel tired. ‘I may not have a microwave detector, Dallas, but I can sense there’s something you’re still not telling me.’
‘Okay, here’s the problem. This thing is big. Fills the whole damn corridor. But it’s also fast. You try and shoot it as it’s coming toward you, it’ll beat you to the draw every time. So if we have to shoot it, we shoot it in the back. However, shooting it at all still leaves us with a problem. You can’t shoot it when it’s blocking the corridor ahead of us. Because it’s also heavy. It has to be, to operate at speed in microgravity. With all this gear on, we might never be able to squeeze past the thing. So if we shoot it at all, it will have to be in a place where it can’t block our route. What’s more, we can’t afford to miss. We shoot, and we shoot together on my say, understand?’
‘Understood.’ Cavor waited a second, and then added: ‘Except for one thing. How come the sensors miss out infrared? They get the visible wave band and then they get microwaves. Why not infrared? Infrared wavelength’s in the middle of those two, right?’
‘Nobel prize for physics, Cav. Yes, but microwaves are sensitive to temperature. That necessitates the robot having a dedicated microwave sensor, as opposed to one larger, cruder...’ Dallas stopped talking as, at the junction of the last route they had taken, a large black machine, taller than a man by half and almost twice as wide, appeared and then disappeared in total silence.
‘Was that it?’ asked Cavor. ‘What’s it doing?’
‘First it’s going to the light made by your UHT,’ explained Dallas. ‘Then it will take up the search from there.’
Traveling on hidden wheels, the stealth robot reappeared at the junction ahead of them and paused, as if deciding which way to move. It was as black as the walls of the labyrinth itself, its rectangular shape making it look like a large steel door. Cavor could see how this enormous object might end up blocking their way and breathed a sigh of relief as it turned and began to move in the opposite direction. But after only a few yards, it halted and then started to come back. This time it did not stop at the junction, but kept on coming toward them.
Pressed against the wall at the end of the route the robot had taken, Dallas gritted his teeth and said, ‘Keep perfectly still.’
‘It’s going to crush us.’
‘No, it won’t,’ Dallas insisted. ‘It’ll stop. Doppler effect. It measures distance the same way it measures movement. As far as it’s concerned, we’re just part of the wall.’
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