“Right. Want me to do it now?”
“If you want… Hey!”
A blinding white fireball erupted from the surface ahead and a few degrees to the right. Sam turned sharply, dodging its expanding edge and bringing us back to our original heading. There was no concussion and the explosion had caused us no damage so far as we could tell.
“That was a warning shot across our bow, I suppose,” Sam said.
“They are herding us,” I said angrily. “Rats.”
“Let me get off a salvo of balloons at ‘em,” Carl suggested eagerly.
“No, Carl. Too many of them, and they’re wise now. You say you don’t have any offensive weapons at all?”
“I do, but I have to be under attack directly for them to work… which I guess makes ‘em defensive, actually. The Tasmanian Devils are offensive, that I know. Trouble is, I only got two left.”
“Save ‘em,” I said. “Are you running out of Green Balloons?”
“No, I can generate an indefinite number of those.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Okay. Let’s continue on this course until we figure out what to do next.”
Ten minutes and no ideas later, something appeared up ahead.
At first it was a thin dark line which grew to become a long notch set into the surface, deepening toward its farther end. We were headed straight for the beginning of the gradually narrowing ramp that descended into it. I could guess where it led.
“Let’s try to turn off again,” Carl said.
“No time,” Sam said.
And there wasn’t. With no visual cues outside there had been little sensation of speed, but a quick check of the instruments told me that Sam was roaring along at a terrific clip. In very short order we entered the mouth of the ramp. Sam braked as we descended. We could see the end of the notch now, a sheer wall into which was set a hemispherical opening.
A tunnel.
“Wonder how much to park down here,” Sam said. “Have any spare change?”
“Where’s the guy who hands out the tickets?” I asked.
“I hope we can get out of here,” Carl said worriedly.
“There’s got to be a way out,” I said. “Actually, this may be a good thing. The Green Balloons will be more effective underground. No way to duck ‘em.”
“I guess we really don’t have a choice.”
“Couldn’t take a chance that they’d stomp us. They could have. Obviously they’re curious—maybe they want to talk.” The tunnel was large, its walls glowing with the same spooky blue light that dimly lit the surface. The passage continued straight for about half a kilometer, still gently descending, then went into a wide banked turn to the right.
“Carl?”
“Yeah.”
“Fire a balloon back up the tunnel.”
“Will do.”
He did. A greenish light came from behind, then faded. “That should slow ‘em down, if they follow,” I said. “Shoot a few more for insurance.”
“Roger.”
The turn became an interminably descending spiral. The turning radius was enough to preclude dizziness, but at about the twelfth circuit I began to get a little disoriented. I thumbed the toggle that gave me back manual control of the rig and slowed down. We descended still farther, about ten more levels, until the tunnel straightened out, ran along for a few hundred meters, then debouched into a huge circular cavern. Spaced evenly along the walls were entrances to passageways radiating outward. I swung the rig sharply to the left and aimed for a tunnel-mouth that took my fancy.
For the next half-hour we wandered aimlessly through a maze of gigantic rooms connected by ramps and passageways. Here and there we passed huge empty bays cut into the walls going back at least a hundred meters. There was nothing at all in them, no equipment or machinery. After finding at least a dozen of them, something occurred to me.
“Everyone on auxiliary motors,” I ordered.
“Good time to test ours under field conditions,” Sean said, referring to the strange new backup engine which Ahgirr technicians had retrofitted Ariadne with. From what I had gathered, it was a thermoelectric motor powered by the controlled burning of oxidized fuel pellets—sort of like a solid-propellant rocket running in slow motion. I didn’t entirely understand how it worked, but Sean reported good numbers on his readouts. It was working, more or less. (Ahgirr technology was odd in that it was highly advanced in some areas, like electronics, and clumsily jury-rigged in others.)
“Good thinking, Jake,” Carl said. “Neutrinos can travel through solid rock like it wasn’t there.”
“Should have thought of it earlier.”
“They probably have other ways of tracking intruders.”
“I’m inclined to think they don’t get many intruders here, or don’t expect to,” I said. “Anyway, we might as well eliminate the obvious method.”
“One problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“This buggy doesn’t have an auxiliary motor.”
“No? Do you have any idea how the power plant works?”
“Not the foggiest. If you look under the hood, you’ll see that it looks like a chrome-plated internal combustion engine. In fact, it’s a ringer for a Chevy 283 with fuel injection.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“That means it has a 283 cubic-inch displacement, and instead of a carburetor it has … Never mind all that. Doesn’t mean a thing, because the engine’s a dummy.”
“Well…” I sighed, resolving once again to get to the bottom of Carl’s mystery somehow, even if I had to beat it out of him. “Hell. Shoot that weird goddamn thing into the trailer and shut it off.”
“Hey, don’t talk about my car that way.” Carl was highly offended.
I squelched the mike and cocked an eyebrow at Roland. “Touchy bastard, isn’t he?”
“I’ve always thought that most Americans have odd neurotic quirks,” Roland said in all seriousness.
I stared at him for a moment. “Roland?”
“What?”
“Go to hell.”
He shrugged it off. “Talk about touchy,” he mumbled. “Simply an observation.”
“Sorry about that, Carl,” I said when I had turned the mike back on. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I should be the one to apologize. I was totally out of line. It’s just that—”
“Forget it. I’ll evac the trailer. Sam?”
When Sam didn’t answer, I reached up to the trailer control panel and did it myself. “Sam?”
No answer.
I tapped Sam’s voice synthesizer module. “Sam? You there?” I withdrew the module, blew lightly on the contacts, and reinserted it.
“Sam? Can you hear me? Blink your function light if you can.”
The tiny red light under his camera-eye on the dash remained steady.
I flipped down the keyboard on the terminal, punched up Sam’s diagnostic display and ran a quick program. The problem wasn’t immediately apparent. The readings were strange, though.
I blew air through my lips and sat back. “We got problems.”
“Serious?” Roland asked.
I shook my head slowly, staring dolefully at the screen. “Don’t know.”
Carl’s signal came a little weakly, bouncing out of the trailer and off the walls. “I’m in.”
“Sean? Get your buggy in there, too.”
“Right you are.”
After Sean had climbed up and in, I lowered the rear door, retracted the ramp, and recycled. When there was enough air in the trailer to carry sound, I switched my feed to the intercom. “Stay in your vehicles a bit. Going to look around for a dark corner to hide in, then we’ll palaver. We gotta decide what we’re going to do.” I flipped off the mike, then flipped it on again. “Besides panic.”
“What about Yuri?” John asked from the back.
“Ah, Yuri,” I said. “Mind’s preoccupied.
” I reached and switched over to the comm circuits. “Yuri?”
“Yes, Jake?”
“Are you using your auxiliary engine?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Good. Just follow me.”
“Affirmative. ”
Our tour of the area continued desultorily. We rolled by several kilometers of empty bays … until we found one occupied.
By a Roadbug.
Rather, one-and-a-half Roadbugs.
“It’s dividing!” Roland gasped in wonder. “Reproducing itself!”
I yelled for everyone to come forward.
The thing in the bay had developed a deep rift down its back and had expanded to half again its normal width. It was a stunningly simple and effective method of parturition.
“Now we know they aren’t machines,” John said in awe.
“Do we?” I asked.
Roland shook his head at the immense bifurcated blob within the enclosure. “But, complex organisms can’t reproduce that way! They just don’t!”
“Maybe they’re all one cell,” Sean suggested.
“Impossible,” Roland answered, sounding less than certain.
“My question is,” Susan said, “are they the Roadbuilders? And is this their home planet?”
“Everything points to it,” John said. “The barrier, the obviously artificial nature of the planet, the dozens, maybe hundreds of portals…”
“I wouldn’t jump to conclusions, John,” Roland cautioned. “They act like bloody machines, though,” Liam said thoughtfully. “And they function like machines. Yet…” He tugged at his untidy beard and pursed his lips.
“Yet there it is,” Darla said. “They’re organisms in the sense that they reproduce. But that doesn’t rule out their being machines.”
“A Von Neumann mechanism,” I said.
Sean squinted one eye and looked at me askance. “I’ve heard of that somewhere. Self-reproducing machines—is that the concept?”
“More or less,” I said. “But I’m inclined to believe that we’re looking at something here that obliterates the borderline between organism and mechanism, between the organic and the inorganic.” I turned to Susan. “As to your question about whether they’re the Roadbuilders, I’d say no. It’s just a hunch. Bugs may be highly intelligent, maybe enough to have constructed the Skyway, but take it from an old starrigger—they’re cops. There’s an air of the bullet-headed civil servant about them. Whoever caused the Skyway to be constructed had some very good reason—sublime or practical, I don’t know which. But it’s all part of a grand scheme. These guys”—I cocked a thumb at the featureless silvery shape within the bay—“don’t know from grand. They’re functionaries. They have a job to do and they do it.”
“Couldn’t they be a specialized class of Roadbuilder?” Darla asked.
“Maybe, but if they are, they’re different enough to occupy a separate species slot within the genus. My guess is that Roadbugs are artificial beings, probably created by the Builders.”
We all continued watching the thing until Roland said, “Aren’t we taking a chance just sitting here? This one seems to be immobilized, but—”
“Not too smart, are we? You’re right,” I said. “Let’s move.”
We wandered about for the next hour or so, encountering neither birthing-bay Roadbugs nor ones that were up and about. The layout of the place changed. We roamed through an expansive multileveled area, a tiered arcade built around a bottomless central well. Spiral ramps connected the levels. We plied these, up and down, trying to find a way out. Giving up, we tried doubling back but took a wrong turn and lucked into a different area, this one an immense circular arena with a domed roof at least 500 meters high at the apex. A short tunnel led out of there into an identical room, from which we took a passageway into yet another vast airless crypt, this one cubical in shape. Like everything else in this subterranean necropolis it was without distinguishable features and without discernible function.
“Hell,” I said, “this is as good a place as any. Let’s stop here.”
“I suppose we should all go into the trailer,” Roland said. “Good idea. Yuri and his friends will have to suit up and come in through the cab—if they have suits.”
They did.
A few minutes later I stood at the aft-cabin control panel and pressed the switch that brought down the air-tight door between the cab and aft-cabin, then hit the evac button. When I had good hard vacuum out there, I opened the cab’s left gullwing hatch. Watching through the viewplate, I saw three utility-suited figures climb in. The two adult-size ones looked around, caught sight of me and waved. The smaller figure didn’t look like a child, but it was humanoid and there was something strangely familiar about it. I closed the hatch and repressurized.
The two humans were doffing their helmets as we filed into the cab. First to reveal himself was a shaggy-haired, bearded man of about my age.
“Jake, I presume,” he said, smiling and extending a gloved hand. His manner was warm and amiable. Deep wrinkle-lines at the corners of his brown eyes gave his face a big-friendlybear look. He was no taller than me, but the tight-fitting utility suit revealed a powerfully built body that lent the impression of height. There were other lines to his face: those of worry, fatigue, and the emotional exhaustion of a long and difficult journey, all now partially smoothed by relief.
“You presume correctly,” I said, shaking his hand. “You look well, but tired.”
“We are.” He looked around at everybody in the crowded cab. “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to see new faces. I am Yuri Voloshin.” He bowed deeply. “Allow me to present my colleague…”
My jaw dropped as the woman took off her helmet and smiled at me across the suddenly narrowed chasm of thirty-odd years.
“Zoya!” I gasped.
“You remembered so quickly!” Zoya said, throwing her arms about me. “I didn’t think you would. I recognized your voice instantly … So many years, Jake, so many. Wonderful to see you!”
I withdrew my face from the curls of her chestnut-brown hair, took hold of her arms and looked at her, my jaw still slack.
“Zoya,” was all I could say.
“Remarkable!” Voloshin said. “Two old friends, I see! Remarkable.” He turned to the crew. “As I said, I would like to present my colleague—and lifecompanion—Doctor Zoya Mikhailovna Voloshin. And this—”
He bent to help the non-human off with its helmet. “This is Georgi, our guide.”
From the rear of the cab came a squeal from Winnie such as I had never heard from her.
Georgi could have been her twin brother.
18
You would have thought that George (as I came to call him) and Winnie were long-separated lovers. I feigned looking around for a crowbar to pry them apart. We learned that they had not known each other back on Hothouse; hadn’t even been neighbors. I guess they were just glad to see a fellow species member. Horny too, probably.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that George had maps, and that Yuri and Zoya’s expedition had been following them. The cartographical knowledge of the native anthropoids of Epsilon Eridani II was one of the Colonial Authority’s most closely guarded secrets. Rather, it had been. Leaks had probably caused the flood of roadmap rumors. George’s maps were almost identical to Winnie’s, but his journey-poem didn’t jibe with hers. Each poem charted an alternative route to the same destination: Red Limit Freeway. Neither of them were of any use to us now.
Almost from the moment of its departure, the Voloshin Expedition had been beset by a series of disasters. Two weeks into the journey, a high-speed head-on collision on the Skyway had killed four out of the nine members who had started out, wiping out two vehicles. Nonetheless, the expedition continued. They had no choice; they were on the never-never side of a potluck portal. Following George’s tour guide, they made their way along the Orion arm of the galaxy and were just about to hit a junction of the Galactic Beltway when a misreading of the journey-poe
m caused them to make a right when they should have done the opposite. Thereafter they wandered blindly, shooting potluck after potluck. A fifth companion died of an unknown viral infection fourteen months into the journey. A sixth was lost when a flash flood had swept through a campsite on an uninhabited planet. George and the Voloshins wearily set out in one vehicle to find a way back home. They traversed maze after maze, encountering every sort of planetary environment and inhabitant. Some races were friendly, some indifferent. A few were openly hostile. They managed to find suitable food, though it was scarce. Despite the catastrophes, the expedition had amassed a great deal of scientific data, and Yuri and Zoya carried on the work. They reported discovering vast mazes of Earthlike planets, all uninhabited. These they observed, recorded, and catalogued. Additionally, data on nonEarthlike planets of interest were dutifully compiled. Zoya, a trained astronomer and astrophysicist, made frequent observations of the local galactic neighborhood, canvassing star population for spectral class and other characteristics. Yuri, a theoretical physicist and expert on the phenomenon of the Skyway and its attendant wonders, took readings on cylinders and noted variations in road structures-bridges, causeways, interchanges, and the like. Doggedly, they kept at it, sometimes going for days without food. In a civilized maze, they could buy suitable protein, synthesized to order-awful stuff if sophisticated flavor additives are unavailable, which they were. In the bush they had to forage for what they could, sometimes nearly poisoning themselves in the process. Serious illness struck the Voloshins several times during the journey, but they survived. Scurvy became a constant problem when supplements ran out.
“My gums bleed every time I brush them,” Zoya complained. “When I brush them,” she added sardonically. “Unfortunately the strains of a long journey can induce neglect of personal hygiene.”
“Have another apple, Doctor Voloshin,” Sean offered, reaching into the barrel. “Good for what ails ye.”
“I’ve had three, thank you. Save them, by all means!” Yuri looked around the crammed trailer, admiring the stacks of crates filled with victuals. “You seem to have everything here.” He turned to his lifecompanion with a look of rue. “We should have taken one of these. A trailer truck! Why didn’t we think of it?”
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