by Jerry
I direct my attention to an effort to orient myself to my uniquely desperate situation. I run through an action-status checklist of thirty thousand items, feel dismay at the extent of power loss. My main cells are almost completely drained, my reserve units at no more than .4 charge. Thus my sluggishness is explained. I review the tactical situation, recall the triumphant announcement from my commander that the Enemy forces were annihilated, that all resistance had ceased. In memory, I review the formal procession; in company with my comrades of the Dinochrome Brigade, many of us deeply scarred by Enemy action, we parade before the Grand Commandant, then assemble on the depot ramp. At command, we bring our music storage cells into phase and display our Battle Anthem. The nearby star radiates over a full spectrum unfiltered by atmospheric haze. It is a moment of glorious triumph. Then the final command is given—
The rest is darkness. But it is apparent that the victory celebration was premature. The Enemy has counterattacked with a force that has come near to immobilizing me. The realization is shocking, but the .1 second of leisurely introspection has clarified my position. At once, I broadcast a call on Brigade Action wave length:
“Unit LNE to Command, requesting permission to file VSR.”
I wait, sense no response, call again, using full power. I sweep the enclosing volume of rock with an emergency alert warning. I tune to the all-units band, await the replies of my comrades of the Brigade. None answer. Now I must face the reality: I alone have survived the assault.
I channel my remaining power to my drive and detect a channel of reduced density. I press for it and the broken rock around me yields reluctantly. Slowly, I move forward and upward. My pain circuitry shocks my awareness center with emergency signals; I am doing irreparable damage to my overloaded neural systems, but my duty is clear: I must seek out and engage the Enemy.
Emerging from behind the blast barrier, Chief Engineer Pete Reynolds of the New Devonshire Port Authority pulled off his rock mask and spat grit from his mouth.
“That’s the last one; we’ve bottomed out at just over two hundred yards. Must have hit a hard stratum down there.”
“It’s almost sundown,” the paunchy man beside him said shortly. “You’re a day and a half behind schedule.”
“We’ll start backfilling now, Mr. Mayor. I’ll have pilings poured by oh-nine hundred tomorrow, and with any luck the first section of pad will be in place in time for the rally.”
“I’m—” The mayor broke off, looked startled. “I thought you told me that was the last charge to be fired . . .”
Reynolds frowned. A small but distinct tremor had shaken the ground underfoot. A few feet away, a small pebble balanced atop another toppled and fell with a faint clatter.
“Probably a big rock fragment falling,” he said. At that moment, a second vibration shook the earth, stronger this time. Reynolds heard a rumble and a distant impact as rock fell from the side of the newly blasted excavation. He whirled to the control shed as the door swung back and Second Engineer Mayfield appeared.
“Take a look at this, Pete!”
Reynolds went across to the hut, stepped inside. Mayfield was bending over the profiling table.
“What do you make of it?” he pointed. Superimposed on the heavy red contour representing the detonation of the shaped charge that had completed the drilling of the final pile core were two other traces, weak but distinct.
“About .1 intensity.” Mayfield looked puzzled. “What—”
The tracking needle dipped suddenly, swept up the screen to peak at .21, dropped back. The hut trembled. A stylus fell from the edge of the table. The red face of Mayor Dougherty burst through the door.
“Reynolds, have you lost your mind? What’s the idea of blasting while I’m standing out in the open? I might have been killed!”
“I’m not blasting,” Reynolds snapped. “Jim, get Eaton on the line, see if they know anything.” He stepped to the door, shouted. A heavyset man in sweat-darkened coveralls swung down from the seat of a cable-lift rig.
“Boss, what goes on?” he called as he came up. “Damn near shook me out of my seat!”
“I don’t know. You haven’t set any trim charges?”
“Jesus, no, boss. I wouldn’t set no charges without your say-so.”
“Come on.” Reynolds started out across the rubble-littered stretch of barren ground selected by the Authority as the site of the new spaceport. Halfway to the open mouth of the newly-blasted pit, the ground under his feet rocked violently enough to make him stumble. A gout of dust rose from the excavation ahead. Loose rock danced on the ground. Beside him the drilling chief grabbed his arm.
“Boss, we better get back!”
Reynolds shook him off, kept going. The drill chief swore and followed. The shaking of the ground went on, a sharp series of thumps interrupting a steady trembling.
“It’s a quake!” Reynolds yelled over the low rumbling sound.
He and the chief were at the rim of the core now.
“It can’t be a quake, boss,” the latter shouted. “Not in these formations!”
“Tell it to the geologists—” The rock slab they were standing on rose a foot, dropped back. Both men fell. The slab bucked like a small boat in choppy water.
“Let’s get out of here!” Reynolds was up and running. Ahead, a fissure opened, gaped a foot wide. He jumped it, caught a glimpse of black depths, a glint of wet clay twenty feet below—
A hoarse scream stopped him in his tracks. He spun, saw the drill chief down, a heavy splinter of rock across his legs. He jumped to him, heaved at the rock. There was blood on the man’s shirt. The chief’s hands beat the dusty rock before him. Then other men were there, grunting, sweaty hands gripping beside Reynolds. The ground rocked. The roar from under the earth had risen to a deep, steady rumble. They lifted the rock aside, picked up the injured man, and stumbled with him to the aid shack.
The mayor was there, white-faced.
“What is it, Reynolds? By God, if you’re responsible—”
“Shut up!” Reynolds brushed him aside, grabbed the phone, punched keys.
“Eaton! What have you got on this temblor?”
“Temblor, hell.” The small face on the four-inch screen looked like a ruffled hen. “What in the name of Order are you doing out there? I’m reading a whole series of displacements originating from that last core of yours! What did you do, leave a pile of trim charges lying around?”
“It’s a quake. Trim charges, hell! This thing’s broken up two hundred yards of surface rock. It seems to be traveling north-northeast—”
“I see that; a traveling earthquake!” Eaton flapped his arms, a tiny and ridiculous figure against a background of wall charts and framed diplomas. “Well—do something, Reynolds! Where’s Mayor Dougherty?”
“Underfoot!” Reynolds snapped, and cut off.
Outside, a layer of sunset-stained dust obscured the sweep of level plain. A rock-dozer rumbled up, ground to a halt by Reynolds. A man jumped down.
“I got the boys moving equipment out,” he panted. “The thing’s cutting a trail straight as a rule for the highway!” He pointed to a raised roadbed a quarter mile away.
“How fast is it moving?”
“She’s done a hundred yards; it hasn’t been ten minutes yet!”
“If it keeps up another twenty minutes, it’ll be into the Intermix!”
“Scratch a few million cees and six months’ work then, Pete!”
“And Southside Mall’s a couple miles farther.”
“Hell, it’ll damp out before then!”
“Maybe. Grab a field car, Dan.”
“Pete!” Mayfield came up at a trot. “This thing’s building! The centroid’s moving on a heading of oh-two-two—”
“How far subsurface?”
“It’s rising; started at two-twenty yards, and it’s up to one-eighty!”
“What the hell have we stirred up?” Reynolds stared at Mayfield as the field car skidded to a stop beside
them.
“Stay with it, Jim. Give me anything new. We’re taking a closer look.” He climbed into the rugged vehicle.
“Take a blast truck—”
“No time!” He waved and the car gunned away into the pall of dust.
The rock car pulled to a stop at the crest of the three-level Intermix on a lay-by designed to permit tourists to enjoy the view of the site of the proposed port, a hundred feet below. Reynolds studied the progress of the quake through field glasses. From this vantage point, the path of the phenomenon was a clearly defined trail of tilted and broken rock, some of the slabs twenty feet across. As he watched, the fissures lengthened.
“It looks like a mole’s trail.” Reynolds handed the glasses to his companion, thumbed the send key on the car radio.
“Jim, get Eaton and tell him to divert all traffic from the Circular south of Zone Nine. Cars are already clogging the right-of-way. The dust is visible from a mile away, and when the word gets out there’s something going on, we’ll be swamped.”
“I’ll tell him, but he won’t like it!”
“This isn’t politics! This thing will be into the outer pad area in another twenty minutes!”
“It won’t last—”
“How deep does it read now?”
“One-five!” There was a moment’s silence. “Pete, if it stays on course, it’ll surface about where you’re parked!”
“Uh-huh. It looks like you can scratch one Intermix. Better tell Eaton to get a story ready for the press.”
“Pete, talking about news hounds—” Dan said beside him. Reynolds switched off, turned to see a man in a gay-colored driving outfit coming across from a battered Monojag sportster which had pulled up behind the rock car. A big camera case was slung across his shoulder.
“Say, what’s going on down there?” he called.
“Rock slide,” Reynolds said shortly. “I’ll have to ask you to drive on. The road’s closed to all traffic—”
“Who’re you?” The man looked belligerent.
“I’m the engineer in charge. Now pull out, brother.” He turned back to the radio. “Jim, get every piece of heavy equipment we own over here, on the double.” He paused, feeling a minute trembling in the car. “The Intermix is beginning to feel it,” he went on. “I’m afraid we’re in for it. Whatever that thing is, it acts like a solid body boring its way through the ground. Maybe we can barricade it.”
“Barricade an earthquake?”
“Yeah, I know how it sounds—but it’s the only idea I’ve got.”
“Hey—what’s that about an earthquake?” The man in the colored suit was still there. “By gosh, I can feel it—the whole damned bridge is shaking!”
“Off, mister—now!” Reynolds jerked a thumb at the traffic lanes where a steady stream of cars were hurtling past. “Dan, take us over to the main track. We’ll have to warn this traffic off—”
“Hold on, fellow.” The man unlimbered his camera. “I represent the New Devon Scope. I have a few questions—”
“I don’t have the answers.” Pete cut him off as the car pulled away.
“Hah!” The man who had questioned Reynolds yelled after him. “Big shot! Think you can . . .” His voice was lost behind them.
In a modest retirees’ apartment block in the coast town of Idlebreeze, forty miles from the scene of the freak quake, an old man sat in a reclining chair, half dozing before a yammering Tri-D tank.
“. . . Grandpa,” a sharp-voice young woman was saying. “It’s time for you to go in to bed.”
“Bed? Why do I want to go to bed? Can’t sleep anyway . . .” He stirred, made a pretense of sitting up, showing an interest in the Tri-D. “I’m watching this show. Don’t bother me.”
“It’s not a show, it’s the news,” a fattish boy said disgustedly. “Ma, can I switch channels—”
“Leave it alone, Bennie,” the old man said. On the screen a panoramic scene spread out, a stretch of barren ground across which a furrow showed. As he watched, it lengthened.
“. . . up here at the Intermix we have a fine view of the whole curious business, lazangemmun,” the announcer chattered. “And in our opinion it’s some sort of publicity stunt staged by the Port Authority to publicize their controversial port project—”
“Ma, can I change channels?”
“Go ahead, Bennie—”
“Don’t touch it,” the old man said. The fattish boy reached for the control, but something in the old man’s eye stopped him . . .
“The traffic’s still piling in here,” Reynolds said into the phone. “Damn it, Jim, we’ll have a major jam on our hands—”
“He won’t do it, Pete! You know the Circular was his baby—the super all-weather pike that nothing could shut down. He says you’ll have to handle this in the field—”
“Handle, hell! I’m talking about preventing a major disaster! And in a matter of minutes, at that!”
“I’ll try again—”
“If he says no, divert a couple of the big ten-yard graders and block it off yourself. Set up field arcs, and keep any cars from getting in from either direction.”
“Pete, that’s outside your authority!”
“You heard me!”
Ten minutes later, back at ground level, Reynolds watched the boom-mounted polyarcs swinging into position at the two roadblocks a quarter of a mile apart, cutting off the threatened section of the raised expressway. A hundred yards from where he stood on the rear cargo deck of a light grader rig, a section of rock fifty feet wide rose slowly, split, fell back with a ponderous impact. One corner of it struck the massive pier supporting the extended shelf of the lay-by above. A twenty-foot splinter fell away, exposing the reinforcing-rod core.
“How deep, Jim?” Reynolds spoke over the roaring sound coming from the disturbed area.
“Just subsurface now, Pete! It ought to break through—” His voice was drowned in a rumble as the damaged pier shivered, rose up, buckled at its midpoint, and collapsed, bringing down with it a large chunk of pavement and guard rail, and a single still-glowing light pole. A small car that had been parked on the doomed section was visible for an instant just before the immense slab struck. Reynolds saw it bounce aside, then disappear under an avalanche of broken concrete.
“My God, Pete—” Dan started. “That damned fool news hound . . .!”
“Look!” As the two men watched, a second pier swayed, fell backward into the shadow of the span above. The roadway sagged, and two more piers snapped. With a bellow like a burst dam, a hundred-foot stretch of the road fell into the roiling dust cloud.
“Pete!” Mayfield’s voice burst from the car radio. “Get out of there! I threw a reader on that thing and it’s chattering off the scale . . .!”
Among the piled fragments something stirred, heaved, rising up, lifting multi-ton pieces of the broken road, thrusting them aside like so many potato chips. A dull blue radiance broke through from the broached earth, threw an eerie light on the shattered structure above. A massive, ponderously irresistible shape thrust forward through the ruins. Reynolds saw a great blue-glowing profile emerge from the rubble like a surfacing submarine, shedding a burden of broken stone, saw immense treads ten feet wide claw for purchase, saw the mighty flank brush a still-standing pier, send it crashing aside.
“Pete, what—what is it . . .?”
“I don’t know.” Reynolds broke the paralysis that had gripped him. “Get us out of here, Dan, fast! Whatever it is, it’s headed straight for the city!”
I emerge at last from the trap into which I had fallen, and at once encounter defensive works of considerable strength. My scanners are dulled from lack of power, but I am able to perceive open ground beyond the barrier, and farther still, at a distance of 5.7 kilometers, massive walls. Once more I transmit the Brigade Rally signal; but as before, there is no reply. I am truly alone.
I scan the surrounding area for the emanations of Enemy drive units, monitor the EM spectrum for their communications. I detec
t nothing; either my circuitry is badly damaged, or their shielding is superb.
I must now make a decision as to possible courses of action. Since all my comrades of the Brigade have fallen, I compute that the fortress before me must be held by Enemy forces. I direct probing signals at them, discover them to be of unfamiliar construction, and less formidable than they appear. I am aware of the possibility that this may be a trick of the Enemy; but my course is clear.
I reengage my driving engines and advance on the Enemy fortress.
“You’re out of your mind, father,” the stout man said. “At your age—”
“At your age, I got my nose smashed in a brawl in a bar on Aldo,” the old man cut him off. “But I won the fight.”
“James, you can’t go out at this time of night . . .” an elderly woman wailed.
“Tell them to go home.” The old man walked painfully toward his bedroom door. “I’ve seen enough of them for today.” He passed out of sight.
“Mother, you won’t let him do anything foolish?”
“He’ll forget about it in a few minutes; but maybe you’d better go now and let him settle down.”
“Mother—I really think a home is the best solution.”
“Yes,” the young woman nodded agreement. “After all, he’s past ninety—and he has his veteran’s retirement . . .”
Inside his room, the old man listened as they departed. He went to the closet, took out clothes, began dressing . . .
City Engineer Eaton’s face was chalk-white on the screen.
“No one can blame me,” he said. “How could I have known—”
“Your office ran the surveys and gave the PA the green light,” Mayor Dougherty yelled.
“All the old survey charts showed was ‘Disposal Area,’ ” Eaton threw out his hands. “I assumed—”
“As City Engineer, you’re not paid to make assumptions! Ten minutes’ research would have told you that was a ‘Y’ category area!”
“What’s ‘Y’ category mean?” Mayfield asked Reynolds. They were standing by the field comm center, listening to the dispute. Nearby, boom-mounted Tri-D cameras hummed, recording the progress of the immense machine, its upper turret rearing forty-five feet into the air, as it ground slowly forward across smooth ground toward the city, dragging behind it a trailing festoon of twisted reinforcing iron crusted with broken concrete.