The Deathworms of Kratos [The Expendables 1]

by Richard Avery

  “Suppose Kratos has people?” said Kurt Kwango, emerging from the fascinating problems of a centre cube knight move. “What do we do—hoist the U.N. flag and tell them that we have come to liberate them?” He gazed at Conrad quizzically.

  “A good question, Kurt. How do you define people?”

  “As animals capable of conceptual thought, social organisation and the use of tools.”

  “Well, if we find any such animals, we will have to refer back to Terra. If they are an intelligent race, we will not be allowed to exploit them or modify their environment or interfere with their social structure.”

  Kurt laughed. “Commander, when the slavers came to Africa, a lot of people voiced the same fine sentiments. But the slavers won.”

  “They lost in the end, Kurt. Because of that, we have learned something.”

  “I hope so, Commander Conrad, I truly hope so.”

  “There is one disturbing fact about Kratos,” went on Conrad. “The planetary surface, particularly in the tropical regions, is marred by deep ruts. They present a strange pattern, looking almost like pathways gouged out of the ground. The robot probes were unable to obtain data that would explain this phenomenon. Our priority assignment is to discover how and why the ruts were made.”

  “What do the people think who analysed the probe data?” It was Fidel Batista asking. Apart from Conrad, Batista was the only one standing in the rocket’s tiny conference room. He was standing because he could not yet comfortably sit…

  Conrad smiled. “As usual the scientists are divided. Some of the wild ones are thinking in terms of an abandoned and elaborate system of irrigation or transport canals. Some of the less wild ones suggest continuous minor planet quakes. Others have dreamed up volcanic eruption, some form of natural radioactive leakage, and even animal migration routes.”

  “What’s your best, Commander?” asked Liz James.

  “I place no bets. We are going to find out.”

  The flat voice of the robot pilot came over the intercom:

  “Minus twenty minutes to touch-down, ladies and gentlemen. Please go to your contour-berths and prepare to accept one point five G for eleven minutes, two point two five G thereafter. Weather in Mexico City is fine, hot and humid.”

  Fidel Batista winced. Two point two five G was going to be excruciating.

  EVENT SIX

  Base One

  The robot that disappeared was Paul. In the four seconds before his destruction—‘being programmed only to obtain and transmit data, and not being programmed to experience fear—he relayed what information he could.

  “I am falling down a circular shaft which was concealed by a thin surface layer. The shaft appears to be machine—”

  Transmission ended. Presumably Paul had hit the bottom and was destroyed on impact.

  All transmissions from the two robots assigned to preliminary investigations were taped. Conrad had timed the playback. Knowing the G-force of Kratos, it was possible to assign a fall rate of ten metres per second. Therefore Conrad was able to calculate that the shaft was about one hundred metres deep.

  While the rest of the team continued their assigned tasks, he went out to investigate. Although the atmosphere of Kratos was acceptable to human beings, he took no chances, not yet having had the lab report on micro-organisms. He wore an armoured space suit and took with him the robot Luke, who carried one hundred and fifty metres of nylon rope.

  The hole was seven hundred metres from the Santa Maria. Peter stood close by it. Before Conrad and Luke arrived, Peter had already discovered another circular patch of apparently firm ground on which no grass grew. Upon his own initiative, he had found and thrown a ten-kilo rock on to the bare patch. The crust had disintegrated, revealing yet another circular shaft.

  Conrad inspected both. Then he came back to the hole down which Paul had fallen.

  He tied the rope round the waist of his space suit. “I’m going down; Peter, Luke, you will both hold the rope, standing two metres from the brink. You will pay out the rope so that I descend at the rate of one metre per second. Execute.”

  Luke said: “Commander, would it not be more efficient to send one of us down the shaft?”

  Conrad realised with some amusement that the robot was being subtle. What he would have said—if his inhibiting circuits had allowed it—would have been something like: “Commander, don’t be a bloody fool. Don’t hazard a human being, send a machine.”

  “I want to see for myself,” said Conrad. “Execute.”

  He saw for himself. The robots lowered him at precisely one metre per second down one hundred and ten metres of vertical and perfectly cylindrical shaft.

  Conrad had his headlamp on. He noted that the wall of the shaft seemed fused, almost glassy—as if it had been subjected to intense heat or, possibly, some powerful chemical. One hundred and ten metres down, he found the wreckage of Paul. One glance told him that the robot could not be salvaged. Leading off from the shaft was a horizontal tunnel, also circular, also two metres in diameter. He did not investigate further. He signalled to be hauled up.

  Back aboard the Santa Maria, he received the lab reports on samples of soil, vegetation and air. The most important information was that there were no organisms inimical to human beings.

  “O.K. then,” he said. “We can establish a surface base. The robots will erect a perimeter defence/alarm system at a radius of one hundred metres from the ship. Within this area, we have established that there are none of the concealed shafts which took the starch out of Paul.”

  “Commander,” said Lou Andreas, “you’ve been outside and survived. I feel in pretty good shape right now; Maybe I could help the robots to—”

  “Not a chance, Mr. Andreas,” cut in Conrad firmly. “Your services are required on board. There is a lot of hardware to be tested and made ready. Ill get the manifest and give you a list of priorities. Lieutenant Smith still has to look after Kwango and, when she has the time, assist James and Le Gros in the lab. That leaves Batista to continue monitoring the screens. I shall be pretty busy myself. But when any of us have free time we will give Batista a break from getting square eyes. O.K. Fidel?”

  “O.K. Commander.”

  “I anticipate that we will do our eating and sleeping in the ship for several days,” went on Conrad. “But after the mandatory three days aboard—by which time Base One should be reasonably proved as a safe area— we will all take acclimatisation spells.”

  “Aren’t you being unnecessarily cautious?” enquired Liz James. “The air samples are O.K. The immediate flora and fauna present no problems.”

  “James, at all tunes you will address me as Commander or sir,” snapped Conrad irritably.

  “Yes, Commander, sir.” She stood up and thrust out her breasts with studied insolence.

  “As to your question, I am not being unnecessarily cautious. I have just lost one robot. I cannot afford to lose people. You have your assignments. Go see to them. I want detailed analysis of the bio-function of every specimen brought to you.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” Liz James gave a parody of a salute and marched from the nav deck, her face red.

  “Do you find it necessary to alienate people?” asked Indira Smith softly.

  “I find it necessary to establish discipline,” he said coldly. “Clearly, there was not enough of it in the Terran Disaster Corps.”

  Conrad was angry. Experience had taught him that anger—like love and hate—was a dangerous emotion. It clouded a man’s judgment. Experience had also taught him that the best remedy was work. He went to his cabin to bring the log up to date and to work out a programme of exploration.

  As he settled down to the paper work, he began to grow calmer. He realised that his anger had been triggered not so much by the attitudes of James and Smith as by the loss of one valuable robot so soon after touch-down. He blamed himself. His instructions should have been more precise. The loss was unnecessary. There was plenty of sophisticated electronic equipment aboard the
Santa Maria. He should have had the robots checking ground support with every step they took…

  During the next three days, everyone worked hard at their assignments and at getting themselves into good physical condition. With some satisfaction, Conrad noted that they worked harder than he required—particularly the three women. It was as if they were going flat out to prove to him that they were talented and responsible people who didn’t need a commander with a Napoleon complex. All of which suited Conrad fine. In this kind of operation, he thought, it didn’t matter whether or not they liked him. All that mattered was that they should give their best.

  Liz James and Chantana Le Gros established beyond all possible doubt that the bio-specimens they had examined functioned on an Earth-norm carbon cycle. Which meant simply that the life-forms of Kratos discovered so far—though they were structured differently from Terran life forms—operated on the same principle. The plants used CO2 and built it into organic compounds, and the animals released CO2 in their oxygenation process. The robots had brought in five small animals for analysis. Two were similar to terrestrial rats, one was strikingly like a grey squirrel, one was similar to a rabbit or hare, and one had most of the characteristics of a common grass snake. They were all relatively harmless.

  Towards dusk on the second day, Fidel Batista, still doing most of the monitoring, thought he saw on the screen something massive in the middle distance. Unfortunately, video-recording had been suspended at the end of the first day to conserve tape for visual record of the team’s progress; so no playback was possible. And, as luck would have it, no robots were working outside the vessel at the time. So Conrad had to rely only on Batista’s impressions, which were not too helpful.

  He claimed he had seen something very long that moved with a rippling motion. But, within a second or two, it had passed out of sight, probably moving on to low ground. If darkness had not been imminent, Conrad would have sent a couple of robots to investigate. But he did not wish to risk any more losses.

  Looking at Batista’s tired eyes, red-rimmed from staring, he decided that quite possibly the man had seen something that simply was not there. He remembered the time when he himself had had to take a long spell of duty on watch when two senior officers were sick during a shoot to Mars. He had been gazing through the observation panel—not because he needed to but because he wanted to—for about a couple of hours, when he thought he saw the sun-side of another vessel on collision course with his own.

  He had been a one-stripe lieutenant at the time and was only on his fifth shoot. He had hit the Emergency button and got the master, groggy with flu, on the nav deck before he thought to check with radar. Radar showed nothing on the screens. And sub-lieutenant Conrad earned himself a severe reprimand. But the vessel had seemed real enough at the time…

  “O.K. Fidel, I’ll buy it. You saw something. How long had you been on duty?”

  “Three hours, maybe. I can’t remember.”

  “Then how the hell can you remember what you saw?” demanded Conrad. “No. Scrub that. I’ll take your word. But the light was poor and you were tired. There’s a margin for error, isn’t there?”

  “If you say so, Commander.”

  “I do say so. At first light tomorrow, I’ll send a couple of robots out. What did you say the range was?”

  “About two thousand metres, roughly north-west.”

  “Well, then, let’s put it on ice till tomorrow.”

  But when daylight came and the robots went out no trace could be found in the area indicated by Fidel Batista. But about five hundred metres farther away there was a long deep rut in the ground. It was impossible to determine whether or not the rut was of recent origin.

  The morning was warm and fine—like a spring morning in southern Europe, thought Conrad, maybe Italy or Spain. Despite the loss of Paul, Conrad was feeling vaguely optimistic. He decided that he had been driving his team too hard, both in terms of work and in terms of discipline. Perhaps now was the time for a little relaxation. According to his earlier decree, they were not to venture forth on the surface of Kratos until day four. But Base One was virtually ready for occupation. The robots had completed the erection of the perimeter fence, which consisted of steel net, now wired via a step-up transformer to the Santa Maria’s generator. The electrified fence carried one thousand volts at low amperage—enough to discourage any would-be intruder without killing it stone dead. And, of course, the power could be immediately increased if any of the indigenous life-forms decided to get aggressive.

  After an early breakfast, consisting of genuine coffee and genuine toast and marmalade, taken in his own cabin, Conrad went to the nav deck. He found Lieutenant Smith monitoring the screens.

  “Anything to report?” he asked.

  “Yes, Commander. The sun is above the horizon, the grass is green, the day is warm. Birds are on the wing, and the butterflies of Kratos don’t care a shit about the sinister Terran invasion.”

  He chose to ignore the hostility in her voice. “So go out and enjoy it all,” he said evenly. “You and James and Le Gros have been working pretty hard in the lab. Go get some sunshine.”

  She looked at him incredulously. “According to the master plan, I thought we weren’t to face the great unknown until tomorrow.”

  He grinned. “The master plan has been slightly modified. Commander’s privilege. But don’t go outside the perimeter, not yet. O.K.?”

  “Thank you.” Her voice had softened. She turned to go—

  “Oh, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “How’s Kwango?”

  “No rejection symptoms. No infection. He’s picking up strength.”

  “Fine. Do I still have to go through sterility procedure when I visit him?”

  She thought for a moment or two. “Probably not. But I would prefer another six or seven days. He’s my patient, and I would rather be over-cautious than sorry.”

  “You’re the boss… In a sense, you and the rest of the team are my patients, too, Lieutenant. I also would rather be over-cautious than sorry.”

  She turned back and faced him. “I’m afraid I’ve been difficult. You are right about discipline, of course.”

  “Cancel statement,” he said lightly. “I regret I had to play the heavy. Cancel that statement also… Lieutenant Smith, fresh out of S.A. you disobeyed orders and earned a reprimand. You also coped brilliantly with an emergency and earned a citation. Both are entered in the log, and that is all there is to it.”

  Indira smiled at him. It was the first time she had smiled at him for days. “James Conrad, you are a very difficult man.”

  He grinned. “That seems to be a majority verdict. Now get the hell out of this tin can. There are flowers out there that look like the dog-daisies I knew as a boy. I would not greatly object if somebody picked a bunch for my cabin. O.K.?”

  “O.K., Commander.”

  FLASH SIX Departure

  At Kennedy, they saw the ground-to-orbit vessel that would take them up to the F.T.L. ship already inserted in the two-hour orbit, one thousand and forty miles above the surface of the Earth.

  The ferry vessel was a slender metal column three hundred metres high. It could lift one hundred and fifty tons of payload. It would have to. Besides taking the Expendables to a rendezvous in the two-hour orbit, it would have to take seven exo-skeletons, six robots, fourteen space suits, seven suspended animation units, two one-man choppers, an armoured hovercar, seismic survey equipment, ten tons of conventional explosives, fifty tons of water, one ton of assorted weapons, seven tons of tools, equipment and spares, twelve tons of conventional food, food concentrates and medical supplies, one ton of personal effects, and the components for one incredibly small matter receiver.

  Conrad surveyed the ship professionally. The rest of the team gazed at it in awe. It was the first time any of them had seen a space-ship at close quarters.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Liz James. “I had no idea that spaceships were so beautiful. Y
ou see them on the vid, but somehow the beauty is lost.”

  “This one is an old hulk,” said Conrad professionally. “Its days are numbered. But, I agree, it’s still beautiful. It is called The Golden Hind. I commanded it once… But that is a long time ago…” His voice trailed off, and he gazed at the ship with a bemused expression.

  “I have read your file, too,” said Lieutenant Smith softly. “You took The Golden Hind to Mercury, overloaded with emergency equipment because the colony’s recycling systems had begun to fail. Legend has it that you hit the auto-pilot with a hammer, assumed manual control and clipped almost one hundred hours off the projected voyage time, thereby saving many lives. Wasn’t that when they gave you the D.S.S;C?”

  “Lieutenant, you read too much. It’s a bad habit.” He laughed. “Legend is wrong. Being paranoid, I suspected a malfunction in the nav-computer and short-circuited it with a spanner. I was lucky. It was a hunch that paid off. Now let’s hurry. We have to get processed by the medics, sign claim waivers, dispose of unwanted personal effects, empty our bowels and sweat all the surplus fluid out of our bodies in the sauna. It all takes longer than you think.”

  “Boss, when do we get chilled?” asked Kurt Kwango.

  “Foreknowledge will improve your state of mind?” enquired Conrad.

  “I’m a Buddhist. I need time for meditation.”

  Conrad glanced at his watch. “Meditate while you are sweating in the sauna, Kurt. We have a strict schedule. About six hours from now we will all be in suspended animation.”