Matti-Jay crouched and picked up the boots. They felt soft, and had the right weight. She peered inside. They looked shaped for her feet.
“Well, look at that,” she said. “Impressive.”
How had it known how to make them? Especially the interior. Did it have a way of looking inside? Very clever.
A sudden loud peeping whistle. Three cats appeared on her dune. Less than ten meters off.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Matti-Jay said. She turned and ran. She’d let Dub distract her.
But then something grabbed her. Lifted her from the ground.
She squirmed.
Soft pads held her. At her upper arms. Just below her shoulders. Hard. Pressing her elbows into her waist.
Matti-Jay turned her head.
It was Dub. Of course. Holding her tight, with two strange robotic arm things sticking from the slot.
The pads on the ends of the arms seemed almost designed to hold her. As if it had planned on this.
Dub strode across the beach. Some of the cats darted out. Behind and beside. They peeped and hissed. Their fur ruffled, with the wind. Their tails flicked and flapped as they ran.
Dub carried her right up to the Blue Defender’s airlock hatchway and passed her inside. Dub let go and stepped back.
A couple of the cats had made it onto the wing. They just stood watching. One sat on its haunches, lifted a paw, licked and wiped its ear.
“All right,” she said. “You’re alien predators. Don’t get all like some Earth house cat there. It’s freaky.”
Freaky but cute.
Matti-Jay looked back up at Dub. “Thanks,” she said. “Saved my bacon.”
Dub didn’t make any sound. It just stepped back.
“And thanks for the boots.”
Which was a whole other thing. She was going to have to figure out what that meant.
And if it meant they might make more stuff for her.
Dub wandered off. The cats stayed on the wing. One of them turned and hissed at the first, who lifted a paw and swatted back.
Matti-Jay had the plant material to test.
She waved to Dub and called out another thanks, then stepped back and closed the airlock hatch.
Chapter Thirty Five
After a strong storm through the night, the next day dawned bright and golden. The sky was clear blue right to the horizon, and the sea was as calm as she’d seen it since she’d crashed. The rains seemed to have blown out. For now.
The microbots continued to make good progress. The antenna was complete and functioning well. She couldn’t make it any better; it gave her a good connection to the satellites any time one was within range. Usually there would a good twenty minutes each day that the system of relays worked so that she could speak with Charlie. It was going to be her highlight, really.
They’d spoken last night. Charlie was doing okay. The others were still alive and making progress. Healing. Charlie was doing what he could. Their own set of microbots were working to build them better shelter and more comfortable furniture. Sounded good to Matti-Jay.
The next window for communication would be later in the afternoon.
Dub and Esgee continued to hang around. Doing whatever it was they were doing.
Matti-Jay sat in the cockpit seat, watching the gentle ocean, and eating a surprisingly tasty breakfast of an oat bar and dried fruit, with a kind blue-purple nutrient drink. She had to enjoy the food supplies while she could.
They would run out far too soon.
While the antenna was complete, the wing strut was less than two-percent finished. After five days. She was going to need to figure out a way to speed that up.
The consoles did show that the little system she’d built to test the plant materials was done with the second round of tests. The first had been inconclusive. The were useful nutrients and minerals and even vitamins present in the plant material, but levels of toxins too. Just that the machine couldn’t tell if the levels were dangerous or not.
Cellulose was a major constituent of the leaves. Which was good. The human body couldn’t break down cellulose usefully–that was cows and sheep–but knowing that it was just a normal kind of chemistry was reassuring.
What she needed was, one, a better machine for determining and-or removing toxic parts, and, two, another machine that could process the rest–cellulose–into something edible.
That was completely possible, but it would take more of the microbots to build something. And she needed the microbots to rebuild the wing strut.
That was kind of her choice. Get the vessel repaired faster, and starve to death, or hold up the repairs and eat like a queen.
Matti-Jay sighed. As she took a bite of her oat bar Esgee strode across in front of the Blue Defender. Esgee had some kind of other attachment sticking from the side of its robotic body. A long pole with a set of stalks at the end. Kind of like a dandelion ready to have its seeds blown off.
The two robots just went about their own thing with purpose and...
Matti-Jay stared at her oat bar. And down at her feet.
She was wearing the boots that Dub had given her. They were very comfortable and fitted well. She hadn’t tried them out with a walk on the beach yet, but she had the feeling that they would be harder-wearing than the boots she’d shown the robot. Longer-lasting, softer and just better all around.
The soil sampler duplicate seemed identical to the first. But Dub had taken the first one inside. With the boots, though, it had only looked.
She glanced back at the locker.
Where the emergency food supplies were.
Maybe Dub or Esgee could help out there.
It might take sacrificing a meal. But the payoff would be spectacular.
Matti-Jay put down her breakfast and retrieved one of the meal packages. A small rectangular plastic tray, five centimeters deep, twenty by ten across the top. Vacuum-sealed with a plastic sheet clinging to the contents. Vegetables and meat.
She stepped out through the airlock.
The air was warmer, especially for this time of morning. The was a strong scent of fish and decay. Farther along a big carcass lay. At the edge of the water. About eighty meters from the Blue Defender. Big and black, with a reddish-white gash in the side.
Dub was standing over it with a similar kind of probe to Esgee. Dub seemed to be tickling at the carcass.
There were a few more father along too. Some pod of sea animals washed up in the overnight storm.
Matti-Jay stood holding the meal. Clearly Dub and Esgee were busy with their task here. Some environmental thing programmed into them. Or ecological or something.
They weren’t her special pets or servants. Even though they were very helpful and seemed to understand her predicament, they still followed their own path.
“Later, then,” she said, standing and heading back for the airlock.
Dub whistled, like the cats again. It stood upright away from the corpse. The robot strode across to her, retracting the dandelion probe into its side.
Dub bent closer to her, bristly head inclined. It seemed to have more antennas now. Odd.
“You’re busy,” Matti-Jay said, but she held up the packaged meal. “But I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask. You know, another few weeks and I’m going to be getting real hungry.” She glanced at the Blue Defender. There was salt grime on some of the joints. Around the airlock hatch and the cockpit window’s seals.
Dub glanced over at Esgee. How could they seem so oddly human? Surely Dub didn’t need to actually look. These were very clever robots. Smart enough to survive long after their makers had gone. Continuing their own work. Patient and meticulous.
Matti-Jay sighed. Better not get attached to these things. But they were the only company she had. Aside from that distant communication with Charlie, she had no one else.
Dub looked back at her. Matti-Jay held the meal higher. Maybe Dub would just eat it. These things had to be fueled by something.
Her
microbots used simple glucose conversion for energy. Their waste fed back into a reconverter powered by a tiny side-channel of the Blue Defender’s ultramagnetic engines. That in turn came from the breakdown reaction of deuterium and the vessel could easily extract deuterium from hydrogen in the air. Even just from water, breaking that down into hydrogen and oxygen.
“Look,” Matti-Jay said, holding the meal close. “Can you do your boots trick on this? Make a copy? Make lots and lots?”
Dub’s head tilted side to side. It made a quiet whistling. From the corner of her eye Matti-Jay saw Esgee approaching, the dandelion probe still sticking out from the side.
Dub’s whistling stopped. Its head moved back.
“Go on,” Matti-Jay said. “Take it. Enjoy the meal. I’ll be on reconstituted rations soon enough.”
The slot opened in the front of Dub’s body. The blade whipped out and the webbing grabbed the meal. All of it vanished back through the slot. And the slot closed up.
“Enjoy,” Matti-Jay said. She wanted to just give up, but she couldn’t help that little part of her that hoped against hope that Dub might be able to duplicate her meal. And more of them.
Dub stood upright, back to its full height. Towering over Matti-Jay. Esgee came in and peered close, first at Dub, then down at Matti-Jay.
“Good morning,” Matti-Jay said. She looked along at the carcasses. “You two have quite a job ahead of you.”
Esgee actually nodded its head. The robot took a step back and headed away across the sand. Dub followed, stopping back at the body it had been investigating when Matti-Jay had first stepped out. Esgee continued on.
Matti-Jay should check them too. Data. She had to gather data. That had been so drilled into them back at training. This was a mission to gather data.
Data about the performance of the Donner and the jump tech and so on, but mostly data about the planet. About Ludelle 8 where the signals had originated.
Matti-Jay darted back inside the Blue Defender and grabbed a jacket. It was warmer, out, but still cool. And she needed some sampling equipment.
Taking the same satchel as she’d used to gather the plant material, she headed back out.
Chapter Thirty Six
A bird cawed at Matti-Jay as she stepped onto the sand from the Blue Defender’s airlock hatch. The bird wheeled, staring at her with its odd eyes. They seemed to be on little stalks.
The bird sped away, still calling.
It had gotten cooler in the couple of minutes since Matti-Jay had gone back into the vessel’s cabin. She was glad of her jacket.
Dub was still working at the nearest of the washed-up animals. Esgee was another hundred meters along the beach, crouched to another one. Matti-Jay stepped away from the runabout and checked back toward the dunes.
No sign of the cats.
It was reassuring having Dub and Esgee close at hand. That moment when Dub had grabbed her and lifted her and carried her back to the vessel had been startling. She hadn’t had time to be scared, but if she’d been alone she might well have been terrified. It was good having protectors.
As she approached Dub and the dead animal, she noticed the bad stink. It was like a real shift in the atmosphere. Like stepping from one room to another.
The sweet, repugnant stench of decay.
The animal was bigger than she’d first thought. About four meters long, tip to tail. Its dark skin was glossy, but losing that in places. Drying out. Peeling, even.
The carcass was fat at one end, the head, probably, and thin at the other. There were patches of rough white in parts, as if the black was just a veneer that had been scrubbed clean. In some places there were tiny mollusks on the skin, like barnacles on a whale. That was probably what had caused the white patches. Scarring where others had torn off.
The animal was partly on its side. It had two tall pectoral fins, standing up from the highest point on the back, like two hands ready to clap.
The sand around the carcass was channeled and grooved where the waves had surged and retreated. A small pool of brightly clear water lay against the animal, left in the deepest of the channels.
Part of the animal’s skin had broken open and peeled away, revealing the fleshy interior. It looked just like Matti-Jay would have expected; reddish and pinkish and lumpy, with features that were part of the skin layers and, perhaps, parts of the circulation system.
Matti-Jay had to turn away. It was both disgusting and sad at the same time. An odd feeling grew in her belly. A mix of nausea and heartache. This must have been quite a beautiful animal while alive. Like an orca back home, sleek and fast and fabulous.
Easy to imagine it darting effortlessly through the water, leaping and splashing back. Chasing down fish and raising infants.
Matti-Jay stared back at the dunes and took a breath. Her eyes watered. Maybe it was just her loneliness making her feel like this. Sad and weepy.
A touch at her side. Gentle pressure and she looked around. It was Dub. With one of the pads it had used to pick her up. Dub had pressed it against her softly and was rubbing. Like a massage.
As if saying cheer up, it will be all right.
Matti-Jay reached out and put her hand on Dub’s body, right by the slot where the arm with the pad stuck out. “Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
Dub made a quiet whistle, almost like a dove cooing. The robot was definitely trying to console her. How could it read her feelings like that?
“It’s not just this,” she said, pointing at the animal’s body. “It’s the whole...” she trailed off, not sure how to express it. She pointed back to the Blue Defender. “My ship. My friends.” She pointed to the sky. “And home is an awful long ways off.”
Fifty three light years.
Dub cooed again, and removed the pad. The arm folded back away and the slot closed up. Dub returned to inspecting the animal.
“Is this normal?” Matti-Jay said. “Do they die and wash up often? Is this your job? Are you and Esgee marine biologists?”
Dub made no sound. The dandelion probe continued to poke at the animals side. Tiny sparkles of light drifted along the dandelion tendrils.
“Or,” Matti-Jay said, “at least the robots for some marine biologists?”
Or was there something wrong with the biosphere or ecosphere here a Ludelle? Was that why everyone had left? Or died out?
Was that why Dub and Esgee were busy gathering data? Had they been left behind to work out what was wrong?
And the dragon? Maybe it was supposed to warn visitors off, but had gotten carried away?
“It would be useful if you and Esgee could talk. Or how about if you could talk to the Blue Defender? That would be handy. You know, machine to machine. Computer to computer.”
Matti-Jay squinted along the beach. Something moving there.
Cats? A few hundred meters away, coming across the sand, heading for some other carcasses.
Huh. Probably a lot of good eating for scavengers in one of those. Brave of the cats to come right out across the beach. Matti-Jay had the impression that they weren’t fond of coming too far from the dunes.
Esgee noticed too. It stood and began striding along toward the cats and other bodies. The cats kept moving. Some of them leapt onto the carcasses and began biting. After a moment those ones ran off, with what looked like strips of meat in their mouths.
So that part of the ecosystem and food chain was working. The cats were opportunists. They would just as soon tear flesh from a dead whale as they would pursue and hunt Matti-Jay herself.
Esgee hurried along. It chased the remaining cats away. Some of the seabirds flew off too. Matti-Jay hadn’t even noticed them.
“Interesting,” Matti-Jay said. “Maybe you and Esgee are guardians too? Keeping those cats from eating your research?”
Dub said nothing.
“So. Do you mind if I get a sample? It would be good if I could eat this too.” Despite her own churning gut, protein was protein. If it was going to help keep her
alive, that had to be a good thing.
Anyway, the food system the microbots would build would process the flesh into something more appetizing. And certainly more appealing than other things she might be forced to feed through that system.
From the dunes came an odd sound. A kind of distant hoot.
Dub jerked around her. Stumbled, falling away from the dead animal. Esgee had turned. Was running back toward her and Dub.
Again the hoot came. Closer. Deeper.
“What is it?” Matti-Jay said. “What’s that sound?”
Dub got to its feet. It grabbed her. Both pads. Lifted her clear of the sand and started moving fast. Running.
“What now?” Matti-Jay said. Was it worse than the cats?
They went past the Blue Defender. Moving fast.
“Hey,” Matti-Jay said. “Hey. That’s my ship.”
Dub kept moving. Esgee ran up alongside them.
Then Matti-Jay saw something off in the distance. Hazy. Another robot? Standing tall, back in the dunes. Four-legged, like Dub and Esgee. With a fat oblong head. But big.
Really big.
Maybe fifty meters tall.
Dub kept running, clasping her tight.
Chapter Thirty Seven
Fifteen minutes after Dub had picked Matti-Jay up, it finally set her down. Matti-Jay stumbled and fell. Exhausted.
They were still on the beach. The sun was hot and the air was dry and salty. Seabirds wheeled, calling harsh, sharp calls.
Blue Defender lay on the sand far behind. They must have come more than four kilometers. Faster than Matti-Jay could run.
She lay, sprawled out on her back staring at the sky. The sand was rough on her back.
Dub bent closer, cooing at her. It smelled of oil, and soot. As if the run had strained its systems.
“What’s going on?” Matti-Jay said. “That was kind of panicky.” She rubbed her sides where Dub had held on. “Lucky you didn’t break my ribs.”
Dub stopped cooing and stood upright. It glanced over at Esgee.
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