Lair of the Sentinels

by Geoff Palmer

  He stuffed as much as he could into the pockets of his jacket, then made a pouch from the front of his T-shirt and scooped more into that. He hurried back, scattering handfuls ahead of him like a farmer sowing seeds. The Sentinel puckered and edged away, deflecting what it could while shrinking from the tunnel walls and elongating itself to reduce its area of exposure. It started moving backwards, but slowly, and would no doubt recapture lost ground as soon as Tim went back to replenish his supplies. He’d need a mountain of rock salt to make any real progress.

  The smaller stuff was running low, so he took out a large lump intending to break to it up. Then he had an idea. Instead of pounding it against the wall, he dropped it into the channel, ground it under his heel and sloshed the water forward with his foot. The reaction was immediate. The creature chittered shrilly and flailed furiously away, leaving long slimy tendrils in the salty water behind it.

  Tim pursued it, but the Sentinel was in full retreat and moving fast. He had to run to keep up with it. All pretence at defence had vanished. The antennae disappeared as the creature focussed solely on escape. Now and then, at particularly tight curves in the passage, Tim was able to add to its distress by peppering its unprotected rear with handfuls of dust.

  They passed the Y-junction, the passage straightened, and suddenly Tim knew where he was. There was alarm and confusion ahead as the second Sentinel fought to overtake the first, and the pair of them struggled to ooze back through the iron bars at the far end. Tim gave them an incentive, dumping the last of his hoard, grinding it up and sloshing it ahead.

  Their high-pitched screeches faded as they fled. Silence returned. The agitated water in the bottom of the tunnel stilled and Tim moved on towards the darker section, bracing himself for what he would find there.

  36 : Stink

  ‘That’s weird. What’s that?’ Coral pointed to a solidified puddle on the rock floor. The ground around it was grey and rough. This patch looked shiny and new. Norman bent to examine it.

  ‘Looks like volcanic lava. Like it’s melted from somewhere.’

  He traced a line of dribbles back up the wall. ‘It’s run down from somewhere. Here!’

  He pressed his torch flat against the wall.

  ‘Another opening! See it? But circular this time.’

  ‘Looks like the entrance to another tunnel.’ Coral ran a hand over the surface. ‘Closed off, like the aperture in a camera lens.’

  ‘It’s better disguised than the other one,’ Norman said, rapping a knuckle against it. ‘But it’s still metal.’

  ‘More dishwash?’ Ludokrus said.

  * * *

  Alkemy was propped in a corner of the trough resting on her elbows, her eyes shut tight, breathing in short gasps. She’d tried to drag herself free of the goo, but that was as far as she’d got. Her lower body was still submerged and Tim could see ripples of activity around her as it bubbled and seethed.

  ‘Alkemy! Alkemy!’

  He ran towards her, calling her name. Her eyelids flickered and she whimpered like an injured puppy, then screwed them tight against a stab of pain. Although her arms and face were free of the substance, there were deep black burns where she’d been caught by splashes. He shuddered to think what the rest of her must be like.

  He got his hands beneath her shoulders and braced himself. He wasn’t weedy, but he was no muscle-man either. He might only get one go at this.

  He let his mind dwell on the Sentinels and what they’d done to her, let the rage boil up inside him, then channelled every ounce of it into his arms and legs. He moved smoothly, remembering how the goo seemed to lock hard at sudden shocks, and straightened his legs, drawing her up and out.

  There was a slurping, sucking sound, as if it was unwilling to let her go.

  He sat her on the edge, gasping, then he pushed up his sleeve, reached a hand beneath her still submerged legs and lifted them free.

  The stinging from the goo began immediately. He half-carried, half-dragged her to the water channel and sat her in it, scooping and sloshing water over her.

  She shuddered with relief. He could feel it cooling his arm too. But it wasn’t anywhere near enough.

  The goo had leached the colour from her jeans and, though it had eaten through in places, they had at least provided a layer of protection. But in the thinner, worn patches where it had got through, the wounds were awful. Deep blue-black pits fringed with fiery red. If she was conscious at all, Tim thought, she must be in agony.

  ‘I’ll get you out of here. I promise,’ he said, but as soon as the words were out he realised how powerless he was. He didn’t know what to do. His hands were shaking with helplessness and rage. But if water was good, more water must be better.

  He couldn’t carry her, but he could drag her. He took off his jacket, looped it underneath her arms, and used the sleeves like a tow rope. She groaned as he took the weight, but they were soon moving steadily through the smooth-walled passage. As they went, water banked up behind her hips then flowed down around her sides, flushing over her legs, cleaning out the last vestiges of goo.

  He plodded on, moving steadily, checking her from time to time. The water was soothing her wounds, but she looked very pale. Back past the Y-junction, through the cathedral-like cave with its glorious ribbon of light, all the way back to where they’d first entered the maze of pink passages.

  In the back of his mind he was hoping the Sentinels had triggered the door release. Perhaps by accident in their desperation to escape the salty water, or perhaps just to get rid of them, but as he rounded the last bend he saw his hopes were dashed. The door was still shut tight.

  * * *

  ‘Oh man, what is that stink?’ Coral said as the first streaky holes appeared in the circular hatch.

  ‘Not fresh air, that’s for sure,’ Norman said. ‘Which means it’s probably not a way out.’

  ‘There you go, being cheerful again.’

  The holes grew larger and the drift of nanodust kept Ludokrus busy, scraping it to one side, adding it to a pile where other nanomachines were busy reconstituting the metal.

  Norman peeled off one of the strips between the dribbles. ‘It doesn’t smell that bad. Just rotten meat.’

  ‘At least we won’t starve then.’

  The last shards came away, still bubbling with nanomachines. They dragged them aside and stood studying the smooth wall of the circular passage.

  ‘How did they cut this?’ Norman ran a hand over the surface. ‘It’s like it’s been melted.’

  ‘High-energy laser,’ Ludokrus said.

  ‘That’s what we need.’

  ‘Yeah, I wish.’

  Norman scrambled in.

  ‘Hey, who said you were first?’ Coral said.

  ‘I discovered it, didn’t I? Anyway, you keep complaining about the smell. If you go first and woof your cookies, we’ll have to crawl through it.’

  She turned to Ludokrus for support but found him smiling. ‘Yeah, is right. You last!’ Then his manner became serious. ‘But careful, yes? Go slow. One by one.’

  Norman disappeared. A minute later his voice came back up the shaft. ‘All clear. Another dead-end, but come and look at this.’

  Ludokrus made his way up the passage. Coral held her nose and followed.

  ‘Is that one of those killer robots?’ Norman said, keeping his distance from the object on the ground. He’d heard about the damage they could do.

  ‘No. The eyes are wrong. Not enough.’ Ludokrus said. ‘The Emissary have eyes all round the head.’

  He moved closer. Coral leaned back into the passage they’d just come through and took a gulp of air. The stench in the closed space made her feel sick.

  A machine of some sort lay crushed beneath a mountain of rock. It was clearly robotic — the head and shoulder and extended arm showed that — but the revolting part was the lumpy puddle in which it lay, a soup of what looked like half-digested meat.

  ‘Also, looks like it once have skin to cover,’ Ludokr
us added. ‘That is smell. Something make decay.’

  Norman edged closer. ‘What happened to its head?’

  Whatever corrosive fluid had attacked it, it had focussed on the head. In other places, shiny metal parts shone through, but the skull was dull and deeply pitted. Norman nudged it with his foot. It had been lying side-on. Now it rolled back and stared straight up at them. Ludokrus gasped and drew away.

  ‘What is it?’

  They stared at him. His face was pale in the torchlight.

  ‘Albert,’ he said in a choking whisper. ‘Is Albert.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Norman got down on his hands and knees.

  Ludokrus shrunk back, slumped against a rock and nodded.

  Norman, who hardly knew the syntho, was fascinated. He studied the intricate connections of the metal skeleton, awestruck by the complexity and the finely made parts. He was surprised he could identify many of them. Servos, actuators, hydraulic linkages, dampers ...

  Coral moved to comfort Ludokrus, but he seemed more dazed than anything.

  ‘I do not mean for this,’ he said. ‘He make me mad sometime. Always with the secret. So annoy. But this. This he does not deserve.’

  ‘It’s all right, it’s not your fault.’

  He looked down at the remains. Coral put an arm around him, but he didn’t respond. Still in shock, she guessed.

  Norman raised a skeletal arm from the meaty soup. Fibres and strands still stuck in places, tearing and dropping off with soft plops.

  ‘Do you have to be so gross?’ she said, but he ignored her, lifting the arm higher, excavating some of the loose stones around the shoulder with his free hand and directing his torch into the gap.

  ‘This might sound a bit insensitive, but there’s a lot of raw material here, you know.’

  ‘Insensitive? Insensitive? Ludokrus has just discovered his guardian’s dead and you’re already dissecting him!’

  Norman ignored her and asked quietly, ‘How was he powered?’

  Ludokrus blinked and disengaged himself from Coral. ‘The biologic part is like us. By eat and drink. But core machine power come from micro-fusion generator.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like it could produce a lot of energy.’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  Norman pointed to the side passage. ‘Enough to cut a hole like that?’

  37 : Beating Heart

  Norman dug away as much of the loose rubble around Albert as he could, but the skeletal frame was still pinned by a boulder the size of a shopping trolley.

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been flattened anyway?’ Coral’s voice was muffled by the handkerchief she was holding over her mouth and nose.

  ‘The frame is strong there. Special, to protect,’ Ludokrus said. ‘The generator work by nuclear. Dangerous to break.’

  Norman stretched full length on the cold stone floor and angled his torch under the boulder. ‘I can see it. A bluish-coloured box, right? That boulder’s right on top of it. Can you make something to dissolve it?’

  ‘Yeah, but the by-product will be gas.’

  ‘Who’ll notice?’ Coral said.

  ‘Not smelly. Poison.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What about making a sledgehammer from those raw materials?’ Norman said.

  ‘Have idea for something better.’

  Ludokrus dived down the passage to the main shaft and returned with the lumps of metal from the dissolved doors. He lined the ingots up, end to end, added blobs of nanomachines to each gap and within a minute the seething machines left behind a long steel pole.

  ‘Remember your uncle say how to move the world?’ he said to Coral, slipping one end of it under the boulder and using a smaller rock as a fulcrum. ‘Now we try.’

  He swung down on the metal bar and was rewarded by a fall of stones from the back of the boulder.

  ‘Wait. Hold it there!’ Norman wedged some rocks in the growing gap. Ludokrus released the lever, adjusted the position of the bar, and swung on it again.

  The front of the boulder rose higher. More dust and stones fell off the back. Coral abandoned her handkerchief and added her weight to the lever while Norman scrambled for larger and larger rocks to wedge in the growing gap.

  ‘A little more. Keep going. Yes!’

  He rammed home the last supporting rock. Ludokrus and Coral released their grip.

  ‘We’re set. I can get my whole arm in there now.’

  Norman held out a cupped hand. Ludokrus tapped a blob of his dish-washing formula into it, and Norman reached in, positioning it as far down the spine as he could. Then he jammed his torch in behind and switched it on to activate the tiny machines.

  A minute later there was a snap and the boulder shifted slightly as Albert’s torso separated from his imprisoned legs. Norman withdrew the torch, waited a few seconds to make sure the nanomachines died in the dark, then together he and Ludokrus dragged Albert’s upper body free.

  Coral told herself it was just scrap metal, but she still gasped at the sight of the skeletal frame. One arm was missing, the spine had been dissolved below the ribcage, but there was still something recognisable, almost human, in the form.

  The ribs on one side were flattened while on the other total collapse had been prevented by strong bracing around a kidney-shaped blue-metal device that sat a little to the left of where a human heart would be. It was as thick as a dictionary and covered in a tracery of fine, copper-coloured filaments.

  ‘That’s it, right?’ Norman said.

  Ludokrus nodded, crouching over it.

  ‘Still working?’

  ‘Feel.’

  He touched it uncertainly. The metal casing was warm. Then he jerked his hand away in surprise. ‘It’s beating, like a real heart!’

  ‘Ugh!’ Coral said.

  ‘No, is good,’ Ludokrus told her. ‘Albert would want this. To be still useful.’ He looked down at the battered frame. ‘And so much use. Many raw material. Optic from the eye to make the laser. Part for circuit. Dielectric for capacitor. And power,’ he touched the micro-fusion generator. ‘Much, much power.’

  * * *

  Alkemy was cold. Tim saw her shiver and touched her cheek. No wonder. The water she was sitting in was icy. At least he could do something about that.

  He half-lifted, half-dragged her into the fungus chamber. She groaned as one of her damaged ankles clipped a rocky outcrop, and he winced at the sight of her wizened flesh, but once past the entrance, the soft spongy floor made things easier.

  He dug up a mat of fungus and swaddled her in it up to her chin. She sighed and smiled and her shivering stopped.

  He slumped beside her catching his breath, almost succumbing to the sleep-inducing fumes. Leaning on his injured arm, he noticed how the warmth of the fungus seemed to drain away the pain. It clearly had anaesthetic qualities, which was good news for Alkemy.

  He considered their position. He’d driven off the Sentinels — for now — but they’d almost certainly regroup and stage a counter-attack, so he had to move fast. After a quick check that Alkemy was comfortable, he made his way back out.

  * * *

  They dragged Albert’s remains through to the start of the cave-in. Ludokrus set to work with the calculator and the other raw materials while Norman wandered off, playing his torch over the nearby walls.

  ‘Where you go?’

  ‘We’ve found two hidden doors. There must be at least one more. Where they took Tim and Alkemy.’

  ‘OK, but build first, search later. Yes? The nanomachine need much light.’

  Norman returned and added his torch beam to the pool formed by the other two. He watched as three solid struts took shape, anchored to the ground. They formed the legs of a tripod, slowly growing up towards each other before fusing together in the middle. Nearby, a complicated box-like device was forming around the micro-fusion generator. Circuits, optics, electronics. It was fascinating to watch, but Norman grew restless.

  ‘Do you need th
is?’ He picked up an unused part. The upper half of Albert’s little finger.

  Ludokrus shook his head.

  ‘I’ll head back down.’

  ‘What, in the dark?’ Coral said.

  ‘I can feel my way along the side.’

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘Keep looking.’ He tapped the finger against the rock wall ‘The other doors were metal, so I should be able to hear the difference.’

  They watched as he edged away into darkness. Tap-tap-tap ... tap-tap-tap ...

  ‘You do not tell me you have the boyfriend,’ Ludokrus said quietly.

  ‘Had,’ Coral said. ‘Past tense.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Didn’t you hear that bit?’

  ‘I ... go back to work.’

  ‘Well it seems that my so-called boyfriend took up with my so-called best friend about ten seconds after I left to come down here.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Bad way to find out.’

  ‘Yeah, well, at least I know now.’

  Tap-tap-tap ... tap-tap-tap ...

  Ludokrus reached out and covered the back of her hand with his. Coral looked at him sadly but didn’t draw away.

  * * *

  ‘Oooohh!’

  ‘Stop moaning. Let me think.’

  ‘Look what that wretched monkey boy has done to me. It will take decades to grow these slime fronds back.’

  ‘They needed trimming anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you were always slurping about with your curly frills. Very unsentinel-like.’

  ‘I thought you liked the way I could juggle snot with them.’

  ‘Yes, yes, very clever. But who do you think you are? You’re not a movie slug, you know.’

  ‘I might be. One day.’

  ‘Might have been, you mean. Not now. Look at those puckered fronds.’

  ‘Oooohh!’

  ‘Shut up and let me think!’

  ‘What is there to think about? The wretched creature escaped the dissolving tank and we can’t take live monkeys on our ship.’