Squirming through another gap between wall and floor, Adam raised his head into the corridor and looked around, ready to pull back at the first sign of danger. The fog was still pumping from the side-tunnel a few yards down, but here it was no more than a light mist that threw haloes around the corridor lights.
The ramp was ahead, but Alex was nowhere around. Adam hoped that she’d had a better sense of direction than he, and that she was making towards it. He eased himself out through the irregular crevice with as little noise as possible, although the loud gush of the steam around the corner seemed likely to cover everything. The floor and the walls were wet, and the air was uncomfortably cold against his skin after the stifling confinement of the cableway.
He moved towards the ramp, staying well back from the steaming tunnel mouth. No claw erupted out to grab him, and so he moved on, turning and backing away to keep it in his sight, ready to run if Hector should appear.
No Hector, but Alex stepped uncertainly from a side-branch about a hundred yards back in the direction of the Central Nucleus. She looked around and then saw Adam; her relief was obvious, and she started to move towards him.
Adam touched his finger to his lips in an exaggerated motion of silence. Her run slowed to a walk as she glanced around, and Adam pointed to the nearer side branch that was still pumping steam.
The Demigod emerged from the dense cloud, his timing perfect. The smooth metal of his body shell was glistening and wet, and droplets flew as he shook his eye turret hard from one side to the other. Then he seemed to do a double-take, looking first at Alex and then at Adam as if unable to believe his good luck.
They were far apart, the robot between them. Adam took a step forward, and Hector moved to intercept him.
“Get to the ship,” Adam called, hoping that, given a choice, Hector would want first to ensure his elimination. Alex hesitated. “Do it! I’ll keep him busy!”
Hector’s turret swivelled, looked towards Alex. She turned and ran into the tunnel from which she’d emerged, and Adam waited until Hector had wheeled around to look at him again before he turned and started off. Even then, he hesitated before moving out of the line of the robot’s sight, wanting to be sure that the Demigod was following.
Hector was advancing steadily, claws raised and half-ready. Adam ran on, made a sharp turn, ducked around the corner and waited. He didn’t want Hector to lose him; he had to stay just out of reach, leading the robot on and buying time for Alex. Then he would have to think of some strategy for himself, but at the moment he considered this to be of lesser importance.
He seemed to have been waiting for an uncomfortably long time. He leaned out, ready to pull back at the first sign of danger, wary at first and then, as the wide empty corridor stretched before him, confused.
“Hector!” he shouted. “Where are you? Come and get me.”
No response. He called again, starting to feel faintly ridiculous. “Here I am, Hector. Why don’t you come and get me?”
The corridors echoed, but no Demigod came stalking. Adam began to move towards the nucleus, bitter at himself for his continuous underestimation of Hector, angry and afraid of the consequences of his own folly.
He came upon Alex by chance, surprising her in a tunnel just off the nucleus.
“Where is he?” she said, her voice lowered to no more than a whisper.
“I don’t know. He was following me, and then he vanished.”
“He’s planning something.”
Adam couldn’t disagree. “I only wish I knew what.”
They moved out into the nucleus. Adam said, “I’ve had an idea about how we might be able to trap him, put him out of action. But first we have to know where . . .”
Alex’s hand was on his arm. He glanced at her, and then followed her eyes to the far side of the nucleus. “Keep moving,” she breathed.
The TV camera mounted high on the curving wall opposite was motoring slowly, keeping them in shot.
Hector was in the communications room. He was tracking them.
“Couldn’t be better,” Adam said, hope beginning to emerge through desperation. “Come on. We’re going to the lab.”
THIRTEEN
The lab camera motored gamely, but Adam knew that the tube was ruined and Hector would see nothing. If the robot decided to come down from the communications room they would have three minutes, four at the most.
Alex followed as Adam led the way over to the hydroponics tanks, stopping short in the open area before them.
“Give me a hand with this,” he said, and bent to lift the floor covering. Alex took the far corner and helped roll back the semi-permeable vinyl sheet that sealed over the grating of the lab floor; it was designed to permit gases through in one direction only, aided by the slightly lower air pressure in the underfloor waste pits where the hydroponics overflow was processed. The pits were overfilled and active, a result of Adam’s neglect. Their condition couldn’t have been better.
“Okay, stand back. Stand near the tanks.” Alex backed off, uncertain but aware of the need for fast, decisive action. Adam thrust his fingers through the grating of the first floor panel and lifted, trying to ignore the pain as the metal squeezed the soft flesh against the bone. The panel was heavy, and as it lifted he was unable to balance it. He transferred his grip from the mesh to the edge as the panel started to tilt and slide away from him, angling to fall into the pit beneath; but as it fell halfway it jammed, wedged between the two adjacent squares.
Adam lifted the next square, and the panel fell free. It hit the dark bubbling wastes edge-on and was immediately swallowed, the warm mud closing and healing behind it. The next panel fell easily into the widened gap, landing flat and floating for a moment before several hundred tiny jets fountained through its mesh and bore it down.
Two more panels and there was a sizeable hole in the lab floor, one which an active man would find difficulty in jumping across. Adam rolled back the vinyl sheet, pulling it tight at the edges in an attempt to smooth out the sag where it was unsupported.
Hector’s tread could be heard as he turned into the lab corridor. It was unhurried, irresistible.
“Elephant trap,” Adam explained.
“What’s an elephant?”
“Never mind. Just stay that side of the hole and get him to come towards you.” Hector was almost at the door. “I’ll get behind him in case he has second thoughts. Good luck.”
He dropped behind a lab bench as Hector appeared in the shattered doorway. The robot hesitated for a moment; he had seen Alex, and he was looking around for Adam.
Alex wanted to shout, to urge him on, but her mouth was dry and her breath was short. Hector started to move slowly, scanning around him as he went down the centre of the lab and turned to face her. Then he stepped forward, almost to the edge of the concealed pit, and stopped.
Could he have seen the tell-tale indentation of the sheet around its rim? His single eye seemed to be trained on her alone, and she didn’t dare look down to reassure herself in case he followed her gaze; but still he hesitated, only inches from the illusion of security.
There was a raw metal sound from somewhere in the darkness of the lab, and the spider-robot rounded one of the benches and came trundling down. Its frame was bent and its wheels were damaged from the savage backward kick it had received from Hector, but still it obeyed him, lurching and clanking on its misshaped chassis as it rolled past the Demigod and on to the vinyl.
The sheet gave abruptly, collapsing in around the robot’s weight and funnelling down to hit the mud. The spider struggled weakly as it turned over, supported for a moment by the outspread flooring, but then the thick waste took a firmer hold and it was pulled down, the sheet being drawn in after it.
Hector raised his eye, again brought it to bear on Alex. Then he began to move around the narrow rim of the exposed pit.
Adam hit him squarely between the shoulders, jumping high at the end of his run in an attempt to rock the Demigod far enough to tip his
centre of gravity. Adam’s breath was knocked from him at the impact of man on metal and as he dropped to the floor it was all he could do to roll to safety.
Hector had bent forward with the blow, and he was holding the attitude. Adam began to think with horror that he had failed, until he heard the click and whine of Hector’s servos; Hector was struggling desperately to keep upright, pouring in the power to maintain the angle and prevent it from decaying any further. He couldn’t step forward and, try as he might, he couldn’t fall back; little by little, he was leaning closer to the edge.
Adam wanted to get to his feet and move in, give another, decisive push, but he feared the sweep of Hector’s claws. The robot might catch hold of him and use him as the lever for balance that he so urgently needed.
Then the critical point was passed, and Hector began a slow tumble. He turned as he fell and landed flat, sending up a geyser of waste as it spread to receive and enfold him. He thrashed with all his limbs, reaching blindly for support or rescue in the murky soup.
“Come on, we’ve got time to get to the airlock.” Adam stretched out his hand to Alex, and she edged her way along the narrow strip around the pit. Hector was throwing up mud in great spurts, swimming frantically to keep his eye turret aloft and barely succeeding.
“Will the pit hold him?” she asked.
“Maybe not for long. We can only hope it’s for long enough.”
James’s helmet was still in the crewroom. At least he hadn’t limped one-handed to his ship and made a solo escape; Hector had undoubtedly killed him after bearing him off towards the lab, but in their long flight neither Adam or Alex had seen any sign of the Captain’s body. It was almost as if he’d been dismantled and packed away in the robot’s transport crates—but that, of course, was a ridiculous idea.
They were suited and moving into the airlock when Adam remembered something, returning to the crewroom as fast as he could manage and going over to James’s suit helmet. He lifted it anxiously, turning it to look at the radio apparatus that was moulded into the back of the shell.
There was a small box, clamped on by magnet. This was the key to the spacecraft, a sonic emitter which pulsed a coded tone through the suit radio and permitted access only to the carrier. Without it, the hatchway wouldn’t open and they would be trapped on Tethys’s surface, easy targets for Hector or, at best, for slow oxygen starvation.
He lifted the magnet and transferred it to his own suit radio, muttering a silent thanks that James had not thought to remove it and carry it around with him. Then, after a nervous glance down the ramp (empty) he rejoined Alex and started the lock’s cycle.
Various unpleasant thoughts haunted him as they waited for the lock to complete, thoughts of Hector finding some handhold around the rim of the pit and levering himself out, or else getting a footing on the sunken panels and using them to boost himself up. A man might well be destroyed by such a trap, but Hector was more than a man. He didn’t breathe, so he couldn’t drown; and as long as he had power, he could scheme and devise with an ingenuity that was fully human and pursue his plans with a body that had all the advantages of the machine.
Adam glanced at Alex, reading her with difficulty through the dark faceplate of her pressure suit helmet. She was nervous, but at no time had she lost her self-possession; Alex was far more than the fragile child he had always imagined her to be.
A light glowed by the outer door and there was a ping on their radio circuit which told them that the cycle was complete. They moved through into the hangar where the buggy and the spare sample cases were stored, crossing to the rent in the door where Adam had blown his way in during Hector’s first spate of misbehaviour. Alex went through first, and then Adam stepped after on to Tethys’s cold surface.
Their suit units cut in, producing heat to replace that lost by contact with the frozen ground.
“There she is,” Adam said, raising his voice to compensate for what he knew would be a poor-quality signal on Alex’s receiver, “first stage of our ticket to Earth.”
“You don’t think they’ll send us back here?”
“Will you want to come back here?”
She turned slightly as she walked, a token look at the exposed upper structure of Saturn Three. “No,” she said decisively, “I don’t think I will.”
They walked on, the spacecraft only a couple of hundred yards ahead. Hector could never reach them now.
“Are you sure you can fly this?” Alex said.
“Of course I can. It’s probably locked on automatic return, anyway. Don’t forget, I’m a spacer by training and a poor man’s biochemist by accident.”
She laughed, hesitantly and for the first time in many hours. He reached for the box on the outside of his helmet and activated the emitter.
The panels began to move first, lifting outwards with an ease of movement that betrayed their looseness. They drifted out in silence, carried on an expanding wave of burning fuel which split and ruptured into a number of smaller clouds and bubbles of black fire, swamping the legs of the small craft and causing it to fall into a slow tilt.
Adam pulled Alex down, tried to get them both as close to the ground as possible. Their suit units stepped up their activity as Tethys drew more heat from this closer contact. A series of smaller explosions were now ringing the craft, forcing their way out through bolted panels and weaker seams, dismantling its structure with harsh pressure from within. After no more than a fraction of a second of this internal punishment the main body of the craft hit the ground, and this additional blow ended the tenacious integrity of the hull.
The spacecraft exploded, bright fire blossoming on the snowball moon, several tons of instant debris streaking in all directions in a cometary shower. With his head half-turned Adam could see part of a complete landing-leg passing overhead, and even as this registered the ground vibrated as something ploughed into the surface close by.
Some of the wreckage was recaptured and began to fall, whilst some had been blasted so hard that it reached escape velocity and moved out to join the ice and gravel of the ring system. Adam pushed himself up to his knees, and saw that there was no trace of what had been their promise of salvation. Hope was gone, to be replaced by nothing; no fear, no desperation, no angry complaining against fate. He put his gloved hand under Alex’s arm, and helped her to her feet. Saturn Three was a short walk away, and there was nowhere else to go.
They shrugged out of their pressure suits in the empty crewroom, mechanically going through basic safety and care procedures as they straightened the flexible joints and pulled out the creases in the outer layers.
“We can’t run,” Alex said quietly, “and we can’t fight. What does he want from us?”
“I don’t know. He’s supposed to be something approaching human inside—maybe all he wants is company.” He avoided looking at Alex as he said it.
“We’ve been lousy hosts.”
“He’s been a lousy guest. But I don’t think he wants to kill us.”
“I wish I could believe that. You didn’t see what he did to the Captain.”
“That was different. There was something strange between those two, ever since James started with the brain link, Everything that Hector’s done since then has been to prevent us leaving, that’s all.”
“That isn’t how it looks to me.”
They moved down the ramp towards the nucleus. “If he wanted to kill us, he didn’t have to chase us and put us at risk. He knows the station inside out—he could have blown all the valves and decompressed us. He wouldn’t have suffered, and we’d have been dead within a minute.”
“The safety doors would drop,” objected Alex.
“He could override them—but he didn’t do it. He rigged the ship instead.”
The nucleus was empty. “Where is he?” Alex whispered.
“I don’t know.” Adam looked around uneasily. The open tunnels that led into the nucleus gaped with quiet and dangerous invitation. “We’ll go to the com room. We can tr
ack him from there.”
The communications room was shut down and deserted. There was evidence of Hector’s presence in that the swivel chairs had been kicked aside from the console, overturning in a disordered heap against the wall to make room for the Demigod’s oversized body.
Adam preselected a source for the main monitor, and hit the switch to transfer it from the mixer’s memory to the monitor display. The screen came alive, but instead of showing the lab corridor as expected the scene was of the communications room itself, an infinity of Adams and Alexes looking at endless replicated images of themselves.
“Must have made a mistake,” Adam said, and punched up another source. The picture flickered momentarily, but the scene did not change. Moving aside from the main monitor controls Adam activated the smaller roving preview monitors that were grouped around it, but as each brightened it re-presented the same scene, regardless of source.
It couldn’t be a simple mixer lock-up. Hector had jinxed the selectors somehow, re-routed them to deprive the com room operator of control. Adam turned to look towards the back of the room where, surely enough, the racks panels had been removed and then laid back in place without proper fixing. He started to move over for a closer look, but the reflected light of the monitors suddenly changed. Alex gave a small gasp of surprise, but when Adam turned back the screens showed nothing but flickering noise.
“What was it?” he said.
“I’m not sure. The picture changed for a moment, and then it all went off.”
“What was the picture?”
“It looked like the captain. I’m sure it was.”
“The Captain?” Adam’s interest began to awaken. “If he’s still alive, then we’ve got a chance against Hector. As long as we can hold on until we’re out of shadowlock, we can call Survey and get help.”
The intercom speaker of the station’s public address system suddenly crackled and began to hum. Adam looked in surprise at the row of talkback keys that were supposedly the only trigger for this system, but they were all in the closed position.
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