Saturn 3

by Steve Gallagher

  The rover bucketed down the slope much faster than safety allowed, but somehow it managed not to turn over. Hector was gone from his place by the spacecraft, and a suspicion began to form in Adam’s mind; a suspicion accompanied by a deep-seated horror at his own lack of anticipation.

  The automatic door release failed to respond, and Adam levered himself out of the buggy to lumber over and see if there was any reason. Nothing was visible. But without access through this outer door he was effectively barred from the station.

  He felt a growing panic at being held back, but he concentrated and tried to channel it into productive energy. One of the red quarry grenades would easily take out the entire door, but these were all in the rack on the upper nucleus. All he had with him were blues, effective enough in their own way but not sufficient to make a hole in metal.

  He thought for a moment, keenly aware that valuable seconds were slipping away. Then he returned to the buggy and heaved out a filled sample case, the only one that he had loaded before seeing the alarm signal. He carried it over and set it down by the deep seam that marked the door’s side channel before returning to the buggy. This time he came back with three of the blue grenades, setting them down by the case before turning to it and breaking open the pressure seal on its lid.

  The ice crystals in the case were like black salt, ammonia and methane locked at low temperature with a rocky shrapnel. Adam took two of the blue grenades and laid them in the seam, bedding them into place with handfuls of inky snow. When he was satisfied with their placing he packed chunks and crystals from the sample case all around the cylinders, and then picked up the remaining grenade and moved back to the buggy.

  The grenade was mainly a close-work tool, not intended to be aimed with accuracy over any distance. Adam rested it on the chassis of the buggy and tried without much confidence to sight along its length.

  Grey steam erupted from the nozzle in a concentrated slug, arcing through vacuum and expending itself in a wispy cloud against the door, a couple of feet in from the edge.

  The gases in the crack began to boil off as the heat of the metal spread to them. Adam quickly re-sighted and fired again.

  The grenades caught and erupted, gases bellying out in a widening cloud of silence. Adam could feel through his suit as fist-sized rocks battered the frame of the buggy as he crouched behind it, and only when the vehicle stopped shaking and juddering did he raise his faceplate to take a look.

  The sidewall had been partially excavated, and the edge of the door had been bent outwards. There was just sufficient room to pass through.

  “I know what it is,” James said, advancing a couple of steps but not daring to go any closer. “I think I know what’s wrong.”

  “Don’t keep it to yourself,” Alex said, unable to take her eyes away from Hector’s hovering sensor.

  “He won’t listen to me, but he might to you. Try him.”

  “What . . . what should I say?”

  “Ask him to put you down.”

  Her toes were barely on the floor, and the agony in her wrists was intense. “Please, Hector,” she said, “put me down.”

  There was a pause, and then the pain began to ease. She was slowly being lowered, the strain on her arms diminishing as she found her footing again.

  “Why is he doing this?” she asked helplessly. “What’s wrong with him?”

  James was holding back, not wishing to antagonise Hector. “He learned too much from me. I wanted you, he wants you—but he doesn’t know why or how.”

  The pincerlike hands opened, and Alex dropped free. Her legs refused to support her and James moved in quickly to catch her before she fell, pulling her back out of Hector’s reach and half-carrying her towards the lab doors. The robot’s eye turret followed him.

  “It’s all right,” James said soothingly as he stroked Alex’s hair. “We’ll just back up slowly and get out of the lab. He doesn’t really want to hurt you.”

  “He’s got a damn funny way of showing it.”

  The crane arm smashed down on to the lab bench, metal screaming in protest at the sudden strain. The foamed plastic top split across the middle as all the equipment on it sprang into the air; cabling to the power points jerked free and the massive concrete blocks that formed its base began to totter and fall as the crane itself overbalanced and leaned into the wreckage.

  James barely had time to push Alex clear before he was overtaken by the tide of heavy debris. The upper girder of the crane swung free as it dropped, sweeping across James’s leg and upending him as the tabletop crashed on to the floor. At the far end of the lab Hector’s arm was raised, fingers closed in a grotesque skeletal parody of a fist.

  “I’m trapped,” James said wonderingly. There was no feeling in his leg, but it wouldn’t pull out of the ruin of the crane. Alex was pushing herself into a sitting position on the floor a few yards away, dazed and confused.

  “Get me out,” James pleaded. “You must get me out! I can’t stay in here with him!”

  James, Alex, Hector—all three swung around in surprise as the lab doors flew open. Adam stood, his helmet gone but otherwise still dressed for the surface, breathless and panting from his run through the nucleus. Behind him the corridor lights still pulsed their alarm, and the distant whine of the com room siren added its keen edge in the hiss and crackle of severed wiring within the lab.

  He saw Alex on the floor and Hector, immobile, some distance beyond. Without hesitation he moved to her and pulled her up on to her feet, half-carrying her to the doorway and propelling her through.

  “Leave him,” she said as he turned back for James.

  “I’ll be all right,” Adam assured her.

  As he moved towards the wreckage of the crane, Hector started forward. James began to scream for help, terrified that Adam would back off and desert him, but Adam started to clear the various lab benches on to the floor in the robot’s path. Wire, cable, delicate instruments, heavy apparatus—all were heaped into an improvised barricade to slow Hector down. A couple of the lab robots came for him but he sidestepped and upended them, adding their mass to the debris.

  Hector hit the low obstruction and started to wade through. He was immensely strong but his steps were short and he was able to make little clearance from the ground, so that after the first couple of paces his feet became tangled and his balance was threatened.

  Adam pulled at one of the bracing struts from the shattered bench. It came free with difficulty, and he inserted it under the crane arm that was pinning James’s leg and tried to lever it upward. Hector was shuffling on, making slow progress but managing to shake himself loose to some extent. The arm lifted a couple of inches and James began to drag himself free.

  Hector kicked hard, ripping his way through several loose coils of cable and heaving a great weight of junk with him as he brought the other leg over to follow. Adam let the crane arm drop as James’s foot slid from under, grabbing a double handful of the collar of his jumpsuit and lifting him bodily. James made for the door with Adam supporting him as Hector rid himself of the last of the detritus with another savage kick and stepped out to cover the short distance remaining.

  Alex was holding the doors, her hand over the biosensor. James was pushed roughly through the opening as Adam turned and grasped the makeshift servo box that James had installed for Hector, dragging it loose and flinging it into the corridor so that the Demigod would have no chance to reconnect it.

  Hector was upon them as the doors slammed together. There was a thump from within the lab as he hit the panelling and then, after a pause, an angry drumming.

  James was where he had fallen, hunched in the angle between wall and floor on the far side of the corridor.

  “How long will the door hold?” he asked.

  The drumming slowed, became a regular, hard pounding.

  “Depends how strong that maniac machine is,” Adam replied. “Let’s get to the com room where we can see what he’s doing.”

  Nobody offe
red to help James, but he was able to limp along on his own a few yards behind. “It’s not just the strength we have to worry about,” he said, “he’s got a mind, as well.”

  “Yes,” Alex said coldly. “Your mind.”

  Alex killed the com room siren as Adam activated the monitor screens, punching a view of the lab through the vision mixing panel to appear on the main screen. The doors came into view, concave and dented but as yet unbreached. Hector was nowhere to be seen. Then he came into shot, holding something shapeless and difficult to identify which he pressed up against the biosensor.

  “Sally,” Alex said.

  The sensor gave no response, and Hector dropped the piece of dog to one side. It left a bloody mark on the wall. He lumbered closer to the sensor, seemed to be trying to push himself close to it.

  “Trying to use his brain mass to trigger the doors,” Adam said.

  “Can he do that?”

  Adam shrugged. The doors did not move. The robot’s bodyshell was too much of a shield. He moved away, and within moments was back with the strut that Adam had used to free James—or, at least, something very like it. He inserted it into the edge of the left-hand door and hauled on it, but the strut bent easily in the middle and this too was thrown aside.

  “What kind of emergency procedure have we got to fall back on?” Adam demanded of James.

  “I don’t know.” James seemed to be drained of all arrogance and self-assertion, his eyes locked to the monitor screen. “If we weren’t in eclipse, we could call up the Survey.”

  “But we’ve got another six days of shadowlock to look forward to. Think of something else.”

  Hector was back again, this time carrying the laser saw.

  “He can’t be stopped,” James said. “He goes on and on. He’s one of the Demigods.”

  The laser burned for some time before Hector cut the power and moved in to check his progress. The seam where the doors met was blackened and scorched, and as the camera iris opened up after its initial reaction to the brilliance of the laser it was possible to make out a definite irregular gap.

  Hector dropped the laser and reached out with both claws, gripping the tortured metal and exerting a steady pull. Nothing happened for a few moments and then, slowly, the panel began to bend inwards. The robot braced himself and pulled again; the panel bent further, a little less this time.

  “Is it my imagination,” Adam said, “or is he getting tired?”

  James took a renewed interest. “I think he’s getting low on charge,” he said. “Kill the power and we might have him.”

  “Kill the power and we kill ourselves. This is Tethys, not Earth.”

  Hector’s latest effort on the door had got him almost nowhere. He took a few paces back, and his turret scanned around the lab. Then his claw came up and removed the cover from his power receptor as he moved over to the assembly bench.

  “We’ve got to stop him,” said Alex.

  “No.” Adam was starting to get an idea. “Let him go ahead.”

  “But you could cut the power from here.”

  “He’d find a way. We’ve no control over the power supply to the hydroponics or the bacterial tanks—he could drain off one of them.”

  “But we can’t let him recharge,” James cut in. “He’ll be out of the lab within minutes if we do.”

  “We can’t stop him, but we can overload him.” Adam moved to the racks at the back of the com room. The power routings of all the free sockets in Saturn Three were here, connected and set by a cross-patching of cables and u-links. “I’ll give him a headache he won’t forget. Just tell me which socket he goes for.”

  Hector had moved out of shot, and Alex operated the rocker control to track him. He came into frame with his back towards the camera, unravelling the single feed wire for the recharge.

  “He’s blocking the view,” Alex said. “He’s going for one of the sockets in the assembly area, but I can’t tell which.”

  Hector bent forward, claw outstretched.

  “I’ll play safe and boost them all,” Adam said, busily re-routing. “Just tell me when.”

  “But I don’t know! I can’t see!”

  “Now!” James said urgently as Hector began to straighten, and Adam threw the handle to complete the routing.

  Hector reared up, arms straight down and the jointed bearings of his spine bent into a backward arc, sparks dancing around his chest as the unfused wire began to smoke and burn. Other equipment in the lab was blowing as well at the indiscriminate overload; then the wire burned completely through and Hector fell.

  There was a bitter odour of electrical fire easing through the gaps in the shattered door. Adam placed a cautious hand over the sensor. The undamaged half of the door slid open whilst the other lurched a couple of times before jamming completely.

  Hector lay where he had fallen. The lab was in semi-darkness—most of the auxiliary lighting had been run through free sockets to be placed where it was most needed. Even so, it was possible to see that Hector was totally inert and unmoving.

  “He’s out,” James said, somewhat unnecessarily. He balanced on his bruised leg and aimed a kick at Hector’s side with the other. “You’ll get no more trouble from him.”

  “Or from you. As soon as we’re out of eclipse I’m making a report on this. Before that I want you off the base.”

  James glanced involuntarily at Alex, and Adam noted the action. “You can’t do that. Not before I’ve completed.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve completed.”

  “You think that’s how Demigods are supposed to be? There was a fault, a mistake somewhere, that’s all . . .”

  “That’s all?”

  “There’s a procedure for anything like this. Survey will send us a new braincase and we’ll start all over again.”

  “Like hell we will. Get Hector broken down and get off my base.”

  “It’s alive!” Alex said in sudden alarm, and both men looked towards Hector as she pointed.

  The pincer twitched, the arm moved an inch or so, the sensory eye quivered a little on its stalk.

  Adam’s foot came down hard on Hector’s claw as James fell heavily on to the robot’s chest, reaching for the lens turret and forcing it aside as he sought the release lever between the shoulders. Hector began to move with a little more strength, jerking his claw free and reaching blindly for James; Adam fell to his knees and caught hold of the metallic forearm, trying to wrestle it back to the ground as it powered against him. James had unlocked the turret mechanism but was having trouble with the airtight seal on the braincase access, his fingers scrabbling without purchase on the recessed lock which would need a full half-turn before it would open.

  James and Adam both hit the floor and rolled as Hector came bolt upright, limbs threshing to fight off unseen enemies. His eye turret swung freely as he groped behind him to find some means of levering his bulk off the floor. He found the assembly bench, grasping its edge and using his slowly increasing energy to pull himself up, legs rigid and outspread to act as pivots; but then James hurled all his weight against Hector’s right leg and the metal heel skidded and lost grip on the lab floor. The claw was pulled free and Hector fell backwards, floor panels shaking at the impact.

  Again Adam tried to contain the robot as James crawled around to get a better angle on the braincase. Adam found he was being lifted without much difficulty as he tried to pin down both of Hector’s arms.

  “Hold him for a couple of seconds,” James said breathlessly, “that’s all I need.”

  Adam started to reply but then thought better of it. Hector’s control was improving as he shook off the effects of the overload and began to make use of the power he’d absorbed. His claws were snapping like those of some vicious crab, except that these closed with the force of a hydraulic clamp.

  Adam lost the robot’s right arm, felt it sliding from under him. There was nothing he could do about it, and he tried to shout a warning to James but it was too late;
the pincers reached for him, closed on empty air only inches before his face, reached again.

  James fell back with the braincase plate in his hands, and Hector stiffened. His claw stopped in mid-air and then slowly began to subside, settling with the rest of the body as all systems became undirected and slack.

  Now that an approach had no danger, James reached into the open neck shaft and lifted out the braincase. Adam allowed himself to slide off the bloodied golden curve of Hector’s body shell.

  “That’s right,” he said as soon as he was able, looking to where James sat on his haunches with the Demigod’s braincase cradled in his hands, “and don’t think you have to stop there. I want this thing dismantled piece by piece. Put everything back in the crates and go back where you came from.”

  “Survey orders say . . .”

  “I’m not interested in what Survey orders say.”

  “That’s it,” James said, holding the braincase close to his chest as if to protect it from threat or damage, “whatever you don’t like, run away from it.”

  Alex had come forward to help Adam to his feet, but he waved her back. “What I like or don’t like has nothing to do with this,” he said. “If your Demigod had got his way there would have been three people dead here instead of a dog.”

  Not three, thought James, and then said, “You can’t go on running your own private world here forever. You turned your back on Earth and now you’ll turn your back on progress.”

  “If progress is men like you and machines like Hector . . . well, yes, Captain, you’re getting the message at last.”

  The lab lights were low as the burnt-out units awaited replacement. The blood had been cleaned away and most of the damage had been, if not repaired, at least tidied up. James had done his share in silence, and neither Adam nor Alex had seen any reason to speak to him other than to give brief directions over the placing of some unfamiliar item.