“Uh-huh. Maybe they were experimenting with pest control. Goodness knows they need it."
“So we take the horsies, leave the mousies?” Lucas asked.
“Not so simple,” Joshua said. He stabbed at the hard copy of the purchase order, which he had carried from Scarborough. “The Equus number isn't listed. The Rodentia number is."
“Their inventory data base is probably confused,” Lucas said. “If you'll let me hack their system—"
“No. The easiest solution is to take both. We'll return parcel-post whichever Hamilton doesn't want."
They wrapped the embryo packs in insulation and stuffed their carrybags to overflowing.
“Lot of baby unicorns here,” Lucas said. “Is our friendly and trustworthy client planning to raise a cavalry regiment?"
“All Belters are crazy,” Ann said. “Look at us."
Joshua frowned at the serial numbers on the packs, then slung his carrybag's strap over his shoulder, staggered to the door, and motioned outward.
“We've got what we came for. Let's go see stars again."
“About time,” Ann said. “All this talk about mazes has me scared we'll run into a minotaur."
“That could happen in a genetic engineering facility,” Lucas said.
“Lucas, honey—please shut up!"
Joshua crowded out fears of minotaurs with a daydream of their traditional post-mission espressos-and-cookies in the coziness of Raven's control room. He was halfway to the lab exit when Ann cried out. She was staring through the window toward the clearing.
Not more than a few meters distant inside the ecosystem module, a snow-white horse munched on the sparse grass.
The horse had a mane tangled with elflocks. Its eyes were wide and liquid. Upon its head projected a golden-hued horn like a jousting lance in quarter-scale.
It happened too fast for Joshua to stop her.
Shedding her carrybag, Ann descended the stairwell, flung open the door, and entered the ecosystem module. With more caution, the men followed.
The unicorn perked, neighed, and trotted to the clearing edge, as far as it could go without entering the woods. It surveyed the three of them, swishing its tail and grunting. Its head bobbed and the horn flicked like a swordsman's parry.
“She's so pretty!” Ann said, after briefly stooping to determine sex.
“A little on the thin side,” Lucas said. “Little ragged, too."
“Dehydration.” Ann sighed. “This whole place is run down. There's hardly any grazing. Poor thing!"
“Ann,” Joshua said. “It's an untamed creature, we have no ability to capture it. Didn't you say you wanted to leave?"
The unicorn made a noise like, “Ruh-uhhhhh!"
Ann grabbed Lucas's carrybag. She extracted a fistful of red-and-white wrappers.
“Hey!” Lucas cried. “My stash!"
Peeling off a wrapper, Ann held out a chocolate bar and approached the unicorn, step and halt, step and halt. The creature grunted and stamped, like a bull preparing to charge. Watching the horn tip's circles, Joshua slowly reached into his carrybag.
“Don't you dare, Joshua!” Ann said. “My suit will protect me from the horn."
Joshua curled his finger around the trigger just the same.
Midway across the clearing, Ann stopped. The unicorn examined the candy with both eyes and flaring nostrils. It trotted forward and its teeth pried the bar from Ann's fingers. With a gulp, the bar vanished. Ann unwrapped a second bar.
As the unicorn munched, Ann delicately slipped alongside, whispering gently. The creature grunted and bobbed its head, as if in comprehension. The horn stayed pointed away from Ann.
“'Constance,'” Ann said lightly. “My daughter Reena has a stuffed unicorn named Constance. That's a good name for you.” She stroked the mane. “Your hair is so soft, Constance! And you're so well-behaved!"
“She's a moocher, that's what she is,” Lucas said, as Constance the unicorn nibbled on the chunks of a third bar. Lucas turned to Joshua. “Perhaps we should discuss who'll clean up after this charming beast, assuming we take her aboard Raven."
“I'll do it,” Ann said. “Horse lovers run in my family. Besides, handling a horse will be no trouble after cleaning up after you two!"
Lucas placed his hands on his hips. “Ann, you are being unfair. Accurate, irrefutable—but also unfair."
Suddenly, the unicorn's ears twitched. Her eyes widened still more. She bolted into the woods, a streak of white swallowed into the gloom.
“Something spooked her,” Lucas said. “But I don't see or hear any—"
Ann stared at the swaying branches—then plunged after.
“Ann!” Lucas shouted.
Joshua raced after Lucas, who chased after Ann. Overhead, the branches blocked the faltering illumination. Around Joshua, shadows merged into thickets of black. Animated stickers whipped his space suit and snapped at his helmet.
In the murk of the forest he thought he glimpsed a spider web large as a man, a spider big as a bowling ball. He saw the bones of a half-eaten pterodactyl carcass. He saw hulking silhouettes that had to be his imagination.
He came to a fork in the trail. On the left, a branch swayed. He went left. Then he broke into a clearing. Ann and Lucas were frozen, gaping at the gully below. Since it took him a moment to accept what he was seeing, he froze too.
Row upon row of huts ran parallel to the dried stream bed at the bottom. The huts had walls of sticks and stones, roofs of straw, and bare apertures for windows and doors.
The tallest roof towered no higher than Joshua's knee cap.
“Does this mean what I think it does?” Lucas asked.
“Back to the lab,” Joshua said. “Now."
Through the windows, furry heads peeped beady eyes.
* * * *
Joshua swung open the lab door and ushered the others in. He sprang after them and slammed the door. Breathless, he clambered up the steps.
Beyond the window, on the far side of the clearing, the tall grass shook. Joshua expected a wave of brown fur to wash out. Instead, he saw a flood of leaves.
The rats wore caps of leaves, and around their waists, cinched by strands of grass, were jackets of leaves. Their mock uniforms blended with the dead leaves matting the ground.
Maneuvering into the clearing, the rats formed into squares of hundreds. At the forefront of each square pranced a larger-than-average rat attempting to lumber upright while waving a sharp stick. Joshua saw petals of marigold gracing the shoulders of the uniforms of the leader rats. Next to each leader, a pair of smaller rats held ceilingward a long branch with three leaves skewered. Joshua thought of epaulettes and regimental colors.
“It's like a miniature army,” Lucas said. “How do they know to do that?"
“It's taken decades to program their instincts into imitating human military tactics,” Ann said. “But that's all it is. Instinct and imitation."
“Like bees and their hive behavior coupled with monkey-see-monkey-do?"
“Yes. Instinct and imitation. That's all it is. Despite the name, intellirats are more clever than intelligent."
“You can only genetically engineer so much strategy into brains the size of walnuts,” Joshua said. He wondered how much military strategy that was. Likely, he thought, he had only a peanut's worth himself.
The squealing rattled the lab window. The multitude of cries were regular and synchronized, chants led by the officer rats and directed toward the humans.
“Why are they so furious?” Lucas asked.
“We violated their territory,” Ann said.
“Let's stay out of sight,” Joshua said. He headed for the exit. “We have what we need, let's—"
Ann stood by the window, glaring. “We're abandoning Constance? In there, with them?"
“We—we can't—we have to—” Joshua couldn't form a complete sentence under her scrutiny. Then he noticed Lucas.
Lucas stared at the flashing screen of his computer tablet, clutched
in both hands with far more of a grip than required in a point five geefield.
“Something wrong, Lucas?” Joshua asked.
“Radiation detector,” Lucas said. “A significant increase in iodine-131."
Joshua and Ann traded glances.
“How much is the gamma?” Ann asked.
“Point three millirem per hour. Is that harmful?"
“Not if we're leaving right away."
“It shouldn't be anything at all,” Joshua said.
He examined the history graphs for counter-and-average-MeV.
After a period of time, Ann said: “The reactor is running high, isn't it?"
“At fever—since about forty-five minutes ago,” Joshua said. “Maybe Hermes can tell us what's happening.” Hefting the fiber optics cable spool, Joshua flipped the transmitter switch. “Hermes, you there?"
Hermes wasn't. After a few calls of wasted breath, Joshua glanced at the ceiling grids.
“Keeper,” he shouted through his helmet glass. “Can you hear me?"
“Yes, Joshua,” said the voice from a circular grid.
Joshua adjusted his helmet external-microphone volume.
“What's the status of your reactor plant?"
“I have placed my primary reactor at maximum power and am disengaging all safety features,” the keeper said, in a voice whose dispassion matched that of a human describing how to bleach stains from laundry. “I am preparing to pump ice-cold water into the core. This will result in a rapid and extreme temperature transient that will stimulate a high flux of thermal neutrons, leading to explosive meltdown. The meltdown event will fulfill my directive to self-destruct upon intruder penetration of the main laboratory."
There was a long silence.
“It's the intellirats, isn't it?” Ann said. “We found out about the intellirats."
“Yeah, Daedalus Genetics has to destroy the evidence now.” Lucas shook his head. “If there's anything that'll summon the navies of a dozen asterie alliances to your doorstep, it's breeding intellirats."
“Keeper!” Joshua shouted. “Return your reactor to normal operation!"
“I am sorry, Joshua,” the keeper replied. “You do not have countermand authorization."
Joshua opened his mouth to shout again, but Lucas interrupted: “Keeper, when will meltdown occur?"
“There is a point nine nine confidence interval between seventy-five and eighty-one minutes,” the keeper replied. “I regret that unknown reactor tolerances prevent a more specific answer."
Joshua adjusted his watch. “Lucas, does that give us enough time to leave?"
Lucas skimmed the video log of their inward journey. “If we don't delay.” He looked at Ann.
Ann turned from the woods. Her face had no tears, just a hollow glaze.
“Let's go,” she snapped.
* * * *
Exiting the lab, they followed the cable through portals, past pallets. Joshua's legs increased speed unconsciously. And so, head bowed, he almost slammed into a wall.
He picked up the frayed cable end. “Blunt cut. Like the other one!"
Lucas compared his computer tablet screen to the wall. “According to the video, there should be a door—a portal—here!"
They slapped the bare surface. It didn't make a portal appear, not even a crack.
With his boot, Lucas nudged another disconnected electrical plug. “Who's doing this? An energy-conscious minotaur?"
“The keeper may have lied about not having robots,” Joshua said.
“Joshua, I told you, the keeper can't lie!"
“Lucas, there's the cable and there's the wall. Either we walked through the wall or this cable has been rerouted."
“Well, is the keeper editing my video log, too?"
“It's got to be the right place, Joshua,” Ann said. She pointed to the lipstick mark on the portal frame.
Joshua sighed. “We don't have time for this.” Conscious of his flushed cheeks, he tucked his irritation away. He keyed in his laser gyro, determining the direction of the hangar. “We need to go through this wall."
Lucas blinked. “You mean, blast through it?"
“I, for one, am not worried about lawsuits anymore,” Ann said.
Lucas taped the explosive charge in place. They hid in the adjoining room. Lucas tapped his computer tablet screen. The portal flashed and the boom shook the walls. Debris flew past. They poured back into the other room. A hole smoldered in the center of the wall.
Joshua strode toward it, but not fast enough.
The wall moved back. The ceiling parted. Down came a new wall, joining with the floor and adjacent walls. The ceiling closed up.
They faced a bare, smooth wall. If they had delayed reentry into the room, it would have seemed as if the detonation had been without effect.
Gingerly approaching, Lucas examined the new wall, rapping his knuckles on the edges and corners.
“Electromagnetic induction coils,” he murmured. “That's how it moves so fast."
“But why?” Ann demanded. “I mean, why would an asterie have walls that move?"
Being mesmerized, Joshua took a moment before he could speak.
“Ann, you agreed Daedalus was like a flying warehouse, drifting from one customer—and supplier-asterie to another as it orbits through the Belt. Well, to maximize storage efficiency, it has to reconfigure itself to cargo allocation requirements, which are constantly changing."
Lucas nodded. “You're saying the keeper automatically remodels its interior to adapt to its cargo?"
Ann sighed heavily. “Only in the Belt!"
“Not just here,” Joshua said. “I've heard about this on Earth, too. Commercial airlines have been doing it for over a century. In the daytime, a jet will fly with passenger seats. At night, the seats are removed and pallet tracks are installed, to haul freight. It's so routine, they don't even use robots anymore. The jet reconfigures itself."
“A dynamic maze!” Lucas said, his eyes lighting. “That must be the key, how the keeper rationalizes its actions! It always provides a way of escape, so it can justify to itself that it's not actually trapping us. But the escape route constantly shifts in response to our movements, so that—"
“So that we're always going the wrong way.” Joshua raised his eyes to the ceiling bubble. “Keeper! Can you take us to the room that is next to the hangar?"
The keeper's voice was prompt and smooth: “I'm sorry, Joshua. That would facilitate your escape."
“It's learned that trick,” Lucas said.
“Keeper,” Joshua said. “Do you realize that the meltdown will kill us if we cannot escape in time?"
“In regard to the meltdown event,” the keeper replied, “while normally my ethical parameters would require me to release you in the face of imminent danger, my self-destruct directives are an exception and must exclude any consideration on my part with regard to your personal safety."
“Keeper, that's not logical!"
“I believe you are incorrect, Joshua. My programming instructions are explicit. Human Life Protection overrides all priorities except Self-Destruct. Self-Destruct is independent of Human Life Protection."
Joshua felt his face grow red, his stomach churn. He also felt a need to punch something.
“Keeper—"
“Joshua,” Lucas said quietly. “Don't argue with the computer."
Joshua unballed his fists and slowed his breathing. “All right. Lucas, can we blast our way back to the hangar?"
“Not if the keeper throws a hundred walls in our way. Even just ten. I only have nine more charges."
For an instant, it got to be too much. Swirling into a maelstrom of worries, Joshua bowed his head and closed his eyes.
“I'm sorry,” he said, covering his temples with his hand. “I worked on freighters, I should have thought of reconfigurable compartmenting before this."
Feeling a palm on each shoulder, he opened his eyes. Lucas and Ann smiled at him. Small smiles ... but enough.
And by then, he remembered ... the rust.
“Let's go back to the ecosystem module,” he said.
“The rat's nest?” Lucas asked.
“I hope you can think of a better idea on the way. Mine isn't that good."
* * * *
Inside the lab, Joshua pointed through the window at the orange bottom of the dried lake bed near the right-side wall, about a hundred and fifty meters distant. There were no rats in the foreground, no unicorn anywhere.
“Because of the heaviness of its biomass,” Joshua said, “the ecosystem module is built right on top of the inner surface of the asterie's outer shell, with no levels underneath. Right?"
“Gotcha,” Lucas said. “You want to blast a hole through the shell."
“The lake bed's rust must be from the steel shell. That's where we'll do it."
“Then we jump through the hole?” Ann said. “That's your plan?"
“The rim rotation is fifty meters per second,” Joshua said. “That'll throw us clear of the meltdown. Hermes will have the skiff pick us up."
“Joshua,” Lucas said. “I once saw this documentary on World War II battleships. Their plating was two feet thick. The average asterie's shell is three times that."
“I'm not optimistic, either."
Joshua descended the steps and opened the door. His earphones filled with the shush of a breeze from distant, hidden ventilator fans. With suit external microphones at maximum sensitivity, he listened toward the woods. He heard something like the caw of a crow on steroids. There were no squeaks or squeals.
They gripped their rifles and flicked the safeties. Joshua crossed the clearing. Lucas and Ann tagged closely.
From ground level, Joshua could not see the lake, but above the trees he could see the wall that he knew was adjacent to the lake. He entered the woods and at the fork took the trail on the right this time, heading toward that wall.
A herd of scarab beetles with luminescent racing stripes scattered from the path. Stickers blocked, waving like octopus tentacles. Joshua thrashed with his rifle barrel. The stickers fought back. He slashed with his knife. Hissing, the stickers parted, revealing the lakeside clearing.
Bounding with half-gee leaps, Joshua reached the dry lake's shore.
Pack by pack, Lucas tossed a pile of explosive charges onto the corroded bottom. Then he backed from the shoreline and crouched. Joshua and Ann got behind him.
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