The Engines of God

by Jack McDevitt

  Fifteen minutes later, they had re-entered the valley of the wall, and were headed uphill in single file. Janet had drifted to the rear. She was thinking that she would not live long enough to see this place yield all its secrets, when she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye, just beyond the beaten grass. She looked, saw nothing, and dismissed it.

  Her thoughts switched back to the ruin underfoot—

  Almost simultaneously, Hutch shouted Look out! and a hot, sharp needle drove into her ankle. She screamed with pain and went down. Something clung to, scratched at, her boot. She thought she glimpsed a spider and rolled over and tried to get at it. The thing was grass-colored and now it looked like a crab. Maggie ran toward her. Pulsers flared. Around her, the rest of the party were struggling. The agony filled the world.

  Carson’s reflexes were still good. Janet’s scream had scarcely begun before he’d sighted and killed one of their attackers: it was a brachyid, a crablike creature not unlike the one they’d seen earlier in the day. But pandemonium was breaking out around him.

  Janet was on the ground. Maggie bent over her, hammering at the thick grass with a rock.

  Carson’s left ankle exploded with pain. He crashed into a tree and went down.

  Hutch dropped to a kneeling position beside him, pulser in hand.

  Crabs.

  He heard shouts and cries for help.

  Maggie reached back and called Pulser! and Hutch slapped one into her hand. The brachyid was clamped to Janet’s boot. Carson watched it rock madly back and forth in a sawing motion. Blood ran off into the grass. Maggie shoved the weapon against the shell and pulled the trigger. The thing shrieked.

  “Stay out of the grass!” cried George. “They’re in the deep grass!”

  A black spot appeared on the carapace, and began to smoke. Short legs thrust out from under the shell and scratched furiously against Janet’s boot. Then it spasmed, shuddered, and let go. Maggie drew it out.

  Hutch spotted another brachyid. It was in front of them, watching with stalked eyes. A thin, curved claw scissored rhythmically. She bathed it in the hot white light from her pulser. Legs and eyes blackened and shriveled, and it wheeled off to one side, and set the grass afire. Hutch, taking no chances, sprayed the entire area, burning trees, rocks, bushes, whatever was nearby.

  It occurred to her that they might be venomous.

  “More coming,” said George. “Ahead of us.”

  Hutch moved out in front, saw several of them ranged across the path. More moved in the grass to either side. “Maybe we should go back,” she said.

  “No,” said Carson. “That might be the whole point of the maneuver.”

  “Maneuver?” George said anxiously. “You don’t think they’re trying to box us in?”

  The brachyids charged, churning forward with a frantic sidewise motion that was simultaneously comic and revolting. Their shells reminded Hutch of old-time army helmets. Something like a scalpel flashed and quivered from an organ in the carapace situated near the mouth. Claws twitched as they approached, and the scalpels came erect.

  Hutch and Maggie burned them. They hissed, crustacean legs scrabbled wildly, and they turned black and died.

  Suddenly they stopped coming and the forest went quiet. They were left with the smell of smoldering meat and burning leaves. Maggie helped Janet up and placed her arm around her shoulder. George lifted Carson. “This way,” he said.

  Hutch played her lamplight across the path ahead. Nothing moved.

  They limped uphill. When they felt it was reasonably safe, they stopped, and Hutch got out the medikit and dispensed painkillers. Then she cut Janet’s boot away. The wound was just above the anklebone. It was jagged, bleeding freely, and it had begun to swell. “You’ll need stitches,” she said. “Be grateful for the boot.” She gave her an analgesic, applied a local antiseptic, and dressed it with plastex foam. “How do you feel?”

  “Okay. It hurts.”

  “Yeah. It will. Stay off it.” She turned to Carson. “Your turn.”

  “I hope the thing didn’t have rabies,” he said. This time, Hutch had a little more trouble: part of his boot had been driven into the ankle. She cut it out, while Carson paled and tried to make light conversation. “It’ll be fine,” she said.

  He nodded. “Thanks,” he said.

  When she’d finished, Maggie held up her left hand. “Me too,” she said.

  Hutch was horrified to discover she’d lost the little finger of her right hand. “How’d that happen?”

  “Not sure,” she said. “I think it got me when I pulled it loose from Janet.”

  She closed off the wound as best she could. Son of a bitch. If they’d been able to recover it, it could have been grafted back by the ship’s surgeons. But they weren’t going to go back looking.

  “Finished?” asked George nervously. “I think they’re still around.” Hutch could hear them out there, tiny legs scratching against stone, claws clicking. But they seemed to be in the rear now.

  Neither Carson nor Janet would be able to walk without help. “We need to make a travois,” said Hutch, looking around for suitable dead limbs.

  George frowned. “We don’t have time for construction work.” He found a couple of dead branches and fashioned walking sticks. “Best we can do,” he said, distributing them. “Let’s go.” He directed Maggie to help Janet. And provided a shoulder for Carson. “Hutch, you bring up the rear,” he said. “Be careful.”

  They moved out.

  It was slow going. Frank was no lightweight, and George was too tall. He had to bend to support Carson’s weight, and Hutch knew they would not make it all the way back to the shuttle. Not like this. Maybe they could find an open spot somewhere. Get Jake to come for them. Use the shuttle to crash through the trees and get them out. If they provided a signal for him to home in on—

  George fired his weapon. They heard the familiar crab-shriek. “Damned things are almost invisible,” he said. “That one was ahead of us.”

  Where the hell was Jake? Hutch tried again to raise him. But there was still no response. That silence now suggested an ominous possibility.

  Hutch looked with frustration at the trees, which could provide no sanctuary since the branches were far beyond their reach.

  “This isn’t working,” said Carson finally, disengaging himself from George and sitting down. “If you didn’t have to worry about me, you could carry Janet, and you could move a lot faster. Give me a pulser, and come get me tomorrow.”

  “Sure,” George said. “I’ll hold the pass, boys. You go on ahead.” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  They were leaving a trail of blood. Hutch traded places with Maggie. Then they started again. Occasionally, Maggie fired her weapon. And it seemed to have gotten personal. “Little bastard,” she’d say, “take that.” And: “Right between the eyes, you son of a bitch.”

  She exhausted another pulser. They had three left.

  Hutch reluctantly gave Maggie her weapon. “What do you think?” asked Carson.

  “We need to get off the ground,” said Janet. “We need a tree.”

  “Find one our size,” said Maggie. And then: “How about a wall?”

  “Yeah,” said George. “That should work. The upper level might be safe. If the bastards can’t climb.” He looked at Hutch. “Can we contact the Perth?”

  “Not directly. Somebody would need to activate the shuttle relay.”

  “Wouldn’t matter anyhow,” said Carson. “They couldn’t help. Their shuttle’s down here.”

  His dressing was soaked with blood. Hutch added more foam.

  They’d stopped in a small clearing to do repairs, when George held up a hand. “Heads up,” he said. “They’re here.”

  Hutch had to fight down an urge to break and run. “Where?” she said.

  They came out of the high grass from all directions, and they came in overwhelming numbers. They moved forward with near-military precision. Hutch, Maggie, and George f
ormed a circle around the others and killed with a will. White beams bathed the advancing horde. The brachyids died. They died in rows, but if the lines wavered, they did not stop. Scorched carapaces littered the area, and the grass and bushes caught fire. Carson and Janet, without weapons, squeezed back and tried to keep out of the way. The air filled with the smell of charred meat. A crab trailing smoke caromed off Hutch’s foot.

  George fought with coolness and calculation. Standing at his side, Hutch almost felt she didn’t know him. He was smiling, enjoying himself. The gentle innocence was gone.

  Their attackers moved with malice and purpose. Hutch sensed feints and sallies and organization in the attack. Their eyes locked on her and tracked her. No crab on the beaches of her youth had ever seemed so aware of her presence.

  Maggie’s pulser was fading, going red.

  The things came on relentlessly.

  The fear that they were not going to get out was beginning to take hold. Oddly, that suspicion induced a series of conflicting emotions in Hutch, like currents in a quiet lake: she was almost simultaneously calm, terrified, resigned. She joined George in taking pleasure in the killing, wielding her beam with deadly satisfaction. And she began to consider how the end might come, what she should do. She decided she would not allow herself, or anyone else, to be taken down alive. She located Carson and Janet with sidewise glances. Carson was riveted by the battle, but Janet caught her eye and nodded. When the end comes, if it comes, do the right thing.

  The dead, smoking shells continued to pile up. Hutch thought she detected some reluctance in the animals trying to breach the rising barrier, but they were incessantly pushed forward by pressure from behind. She found, increasingly, she could expand her field of fire, and attack the rear ranks. The zone of smoldering meat around them began to act as a shield.

  She took a moment to reduce power.

  Black smoke was getting into her eyes. She killed two more, and spared one that lurched crazily away from her and ran into a tree.

  “We’ve got to run for it,” said George. “Before they regroup.”

  “I’m in favor,” said Hutch. “How do we manage it?”

  “The bushes.” He pointed to the side. He was shouting, to be heard over the din. Most of the creatures were on the trail, front and rear. “Punch a hole through the bushes,” he said.

  Hutch nodded.

  “Everybody hear that?” called George.

  Hutch turned toward Janet and Frank. “Can you guys manage on your own? Until we get clear?”

  Carson looked at Janet.

  “I can hop,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Hutch wasted no time. She swung her pulser toward the shrubbery George had indicated and burned the hole. Several crabs were moving back there, and she killed one while George held the rear. The bushes were thick, and she feared they might bog down in them. Protecting her eyes, she tried to ease the path for Janet. Once, twice, she stopped and drove off attackers.

  But by God they were moving again.

  Minutes later, they came out on a grassy hillside.

  “Where’s George?” said Maggie, looking behind them.

  Hutch opened a channel. “George, where are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be right along.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hutch,” he said, in a tone she had never heard him use before, “keep going. Get to the wall. I’ll meet you there.”

  “No!” she howled. “No heroes. We need you here.”

  “I’ll be there, dammit. Frank, will you talk to her?” And he signed off.

  “He’s right,” Carson said.

  “I’m going back for him—”

  “If you do, we’re all dead. His only chance is for us to get to high ground. Now, come on—”

  Charred grass and crab-parts crunched underfoot. George followed Maggie, but the crabs came too quickly. He turned and fired. There was no point in his hurrying, because he could go no faster than the people in front of him.

  The attack slowed. A few individuals charged, but for the most part, they seemed to understand where the limits of his field of effective fire lay, and they remained outside that range. He backed through the bushes.

  They kept pace. And he could hear them on both sides.

  He fought down an urge to break and run. He listened for pulsers ahead, and was encouraged to hear only the sounds of people clumping through forest.

  In whatever dim perceptions they had, the brachyids understood and avoided the pulser. They did not charge him, at least not in large numbers. They had learned. He needed to use that fact to buy time.

  He didn’t dare move too quickly. Didn’t want to come up on his companions before they’d gained the safety of the wall. So he stopped occasionally, and, when the creatures approached, sometimes singly, sometimes several abreast in their pseudo-military formations, he turned back on them, and drove them off.

  Hutch’s frantic call unnerved him. He’d been able to hear her both on the link and on the wind. They were still very close. Damn—

  The possibilities for ambush were everywhere. But no sudden rush came, no charge from the flank, no surprises. They merely stayed with him. And that was okay. If they were targeting him, they weren’t chasing the others. And fast as they were, he was quicker. As long as he didn’t have to carry anyone.

  He plunged into high grass, too high for him to see them directly, but he could see the stalks moving. He kept going until he came out onto rocky terrain. Where he could see. Where they’d make easy targets.

  Let Hutch and the others get as far away as they could.

  “Where’s the wall?” asked Carson.

  They’d reached the top of the slope. Maybe another half klick. “Ten minutes,” Hutch said. And, to Janet: “You okay?”

  Janet and Carson were limping along as best they could, supported by Hutch and Maggie. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  Hutch would have kept George on the circuit, but she had her hands full with her injured comrades, and she didn’t want to distract him. But it was hard to keep back the tears.

  Carson was quiet. His forehead was cool, and his eyes looked clear. When she tried to talk to him, he only urged her not to stop moving. “I can keep up with you,” he said.

  They followed their own trail through cut thickets, watching for the foliage to open on their left and give them a view of the wall. They had to be close now.

  Without warning, Janet collapsed. Hutch caught her, lowered her gently to the ground. “Break,” Hutch said. “Take a minute.”

  Carson did not sit. He hobbled to a tree, and leaned against it.

  Janet was pale and feverish. Drenched with sweat. Hutch activated her commlink. “George?”

  “Here, Hutch.”

  “Please come. We need you.”

  George signed off and committed the misjudgment that cost him his life. He had succeeded in buying adequate time, and might have disengaged and rejoined his friends within a few minutes. But the crustacean army lined up behind him was too tempting a target. He returned to the tactic that had been working so successfully. Thinking to thin out his pursuers, he turned on them, and walked the pulser beam through their ranks. It was red now, failing quickly. But it was enough.

  They scattered, making no effort to come after him. And they burned and died as they scuttled away. He pursued with singleminded thoroughness, killing everything that moved. Fires ignited, and the shrieks of the brachyids filled the twilight.

  But when he turned back, the ground before him was moving. He played his beam across the new targets. It did not stop them, and he had to concentrate its power on a single animal to kill it.

  They advanced deliberately in that sidewise gait, and the scalpels were erect. To his rear, the fire was building. No escape that way.

  High on the dark hill, he glimpsed his comrades’ lamp.

  It looked very far away.

  He plunged through an opening in the shrubbery. And they were waitin
g for him.

  24.

  Beta Pacifica III. Tuesday, April 12; one hour after sunset.

  They saw the flames below, in the dark.

  “He’ll be okay,” said Carson.

  Hutch hesitated, looking back. The entire world squeezed down to the flickering light. She wanted to talk to him again, reassure herself. But she remembered Henry’s anger: Where were you when we were trying to get a few answers? All you could contribute was to hang on the other end of that damned commlink and try to panic everybody.

  Miserably, supporting Janet, she set off again. How different everything looked now. The beam from her lamp fell across a tree that had been split by lightning. “I remember this,” said Maggie. “We’re close—”

  Moments later, a scream ripped through the night. It rang across the trees, vibrated in the still air, erupted into a series of short cries. Hutch called out to him and turned back.

  But Janet anticipated the move. “No! You can’t help him.” She grabbed her and held on. “My God, you can’t help him, Hutch—”

  Janet was considerably stronger, but she could not have restrained her more than a few seconds had Carson not gotten there quickly. They fell in a pile.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he said.

  She screamed.

  “You’ll make it for nothing.” It was Maggie, looking down at her.

  “Easy for you,” said Hutch, hating the woman. “When other people die, you’re always safely away!”

  And the tears came.

  The wall looked bright and safe in the glow of the lamp.

  Get to the upper level. Hutch’s vision had blurred, and she was close to hysteria. “Hold on,” Janet told her. “We need you.”

  The lower strip, the portion they had thought of as resembling a roadway, emerged from the hillside to their right. Halfway across the glade, it rose vertically almost two meters. Not much under ordinary circumstances. But tonight was another matter.