A swarm of attackers were between them and the aircraft shed; and the shadowed shape of a flyer, just inside, was spotted with them too. As Glenna gunned the engine, she turned the tractor at the same time, heading back toward the main building and the sea beyond. In the rear seat, Jenny held Ino. He bled on everything, and his eyes were fixed on the sky while his mouth worked in terror. In the front, Glaus fought to protect the driver and himself.
A brown plate scuttled onto the cowling, moving for Glenna’s hands on the controls. Glaus swung, a baseball batter, bright metal blurring at the end of his extended arms. There was a hard, satisfying crunch, as of hard plastic or ceramic cracking through. The brown thing fell to the floor, and he caught a glimpse of dull limbs still in motion before he caught it with a foot and kicked it out onto the flying ground.
Another of the enemy popped out from somewhere onto the dash. He pounded at it, missed when it seemed to dodge his blows. He cracked its body finally; but still it clung on under the steering column, hard to get at, inching toward Glenna’s fingers. Glaus grabbed it with his left hand, felt a lance. Not until he had thrown the thing clear of the tractor did he look at his hand and see two fingers nearly severed.
At the same moment, the tractor engine died, and they were rolling to a silent stop, with the sea and the small dock Glenna had been steering for only a few meters ahead. Under the edge of the engine cowling another of the enemy appeared, thrusting forward a limb that looked like a pair of ceramic pliers, shredded electrical connectors dangling in its grip.
The humans abandoned the tractor in a wordless rush. Glaus, one hand helpless and dripping blood, aided the women with Ino as best he could. Together they half-dragged, half-carried him across the dock and rolled him into a small, open boat, the only craft at once available. In moments Glenna had freed them from the dock and started the motor, and they were headed out away from shore.
Away from shore, but not into the sea. They were separated from deep-blue and choppy ocean by a barrier reef or causeway, one of the features that had made this coast desirable for life-seeding base. The reef, a basically natural structure of sand and rock deposited by waves and currents, was about a hundred meters from the shore, and stretched in either direction as far as vision carried. Running from beach to reef, artificial walls or low causeways of fused rock separated ponds of various sizes.
“We’re in a kind of square lagoon here,” Glenna told Jenny, motioning for her to take over the job of steering. “Head for that far corner. If we can get there ahead of them, we may be able to lift the boat over the reef and get out.”
Jen nodded, taking the controls. Glenna slid back to a place beside her husband, snapped open the boat’s small first-aid kit, and began applying pressure bandages.
Glaus started to try to help, saw the world beginning to turn gray around him, and slumped back against the gunwale; no use to anyone if he passed out. Ino looked as if he had been attacked, not by teeth or claws or knives, but by several sets of nail-pullers and wire-cutters. His chest still rose and fell, but his eyes were closed now and he was gray with shock. Glenna draped a thermal blanket over him.
Jen was steering around the rounded structure, not much bigger than a phone booth, protruding above the water in the middle of the pond. Most of the ponds and bays had similar observation stations. Glaus had looked into one or two and he thought now that there was nothing in them likely to be of any help. More first-aid kits, perhaps—but what Ino needed was the big medirobot back at the house.
And he was not going to get it. By now the building complex must be overrun by the attackers. Berserkers …
“Where can we find weapons?” Glaus croaked at Glenna.
“Let’s see that hand. I can’t do any more for Ino now…I’ll bandage this. If you mean guns, there are a couple at the house, somewhere in storage. We can’t go back there now.”
“I know.”
Glenna had just let go his hand when from the front seat there came a scream. Claws and a brown saucer-shape were climbing in over the gunwale at Jenny’s side. Had the damned thing come aboard somehow with them, from the tractor? Or was this pond infested with them too?
In his effort to help drag Ino to the boat, Glaus had abandoned his trusty wrench beside the tractor. He grabbed now for the best substitute at hand, a small anchor at the end of a chain. His overhand swing missed Jenny’s head by less than he had planned, but struck the monster like a mace. It fell into the bottom of the boat, vibrating its limbs, as Glaus thought, uselessly; then he realized that it was making a neat hole.
His second desperation-swing came down upon it squarely. One sharp prong of the anchor broke a segment of the brown casing clean away, and something sparked and sizzled when the sea came rushing in —
— seawater rushing —
— into the bottom of the boat —
The striking anchor had enlarged the hole that the enemy had begun. The bottom was split, the boat was taking water fast.
Someone grabbed up the sparking berserker, inert now save for internal fireworks, and hurled it over the side. Glenna threw herself forward, taking back the wheel, and Jenny scrambled aft, to help one-handed Glaus with bailing.
The boat limped, staggered, gulped water and wallowed on toward the landbar. It might-get them that far, but forget the tantalizing freedom of blue surf beyond . . .
Jenny started to say something to her husband,
then almost shrieked again, as Ino’s hand, resurgently alive, came up to catch her wrist. The old man’s eyes were fixed on hers with a tremendous purpose. He gasped out words, and then fell back unable to do more.
The words first registered with Jenny as: “… need them … do the splashers …” It made no sense.
Glenna looked back briefly, then had to concentrate on boat handling. In another moment the fractured bottom was grating over rock. Glaus scrambled out and held the prow against the above-water portion of the reef. The women followed, got their footing established outside the boat, then turned to lift at Ino’s inert form.
Jenny paused. “Glenna, I’m afraid he’s gone.”
“No!” Denial was fierce and absolute. “Help me!”
Jen almost started to argue, then gave in. They got Ino up into a fireman’s-carry position on Claus’s shoulders; even with a bad hand he was considerably stronger than either of the women. Then the three began to walk east along the reef. At high tide, as now, it was a strip of land no more than three or four meters wide, its low crest half a meter above the water. Waves of any size broke over it. Fortunately today the surf was almost calm.
Glaus could feel the back of his coverall and neck wetting with Ino’s blood. He shifted the dead weight on his shoulders. All right, so far. But his free hand, mutilated, throbbed.
He asked: “How far are we going, Glenna?”
“I don’t know.” The woman paced ahead— afraid to look at her husband now? — staring into the distance. “There isn’t any place. Keep going.”
Jenny and Glaus exchanged looks. For want of any better plan at the moment, they kept going. Jen took a look back. “They’re on the reef, and on the shore too, following us. A good distance back.”
Glaus looked, and looked again a minute later. Brown speckles by the dozen followed, but were not catching up. Not yet.
Now they were passing the barrier of fused rock separating the pond in which they had abandoned the boat from its neighbor. The enemy moving along the shore would intercept them, or very nearly, if they tried to walk the barrier back to land.
Ahead, the reef still stretched interminably into a sun-dazzled nothingness.
“What’s in this next pond, Glenna?” Glaus asked, and knew a measure of relief when the gray-haired woman gave a little shake of her head and answered sensibly.
“Grouper. Some other fish as food stock for them. Why?”
“Just wondering. What’ll we run into if we keep on going in this direction?”
“This just goes on. Kilometer afte
r kilometer. Ponds, and bays, and observation stations — I say keep going because otherwise they’ll catch us. What do you think we ought to do?”
Glaus abruptly stopped walking, startling the women. He let the dead man slide down gently from his shoulders. Jen looked at her husband, examined Ino, shook her head.
Glaus said: “I think we’ve got to leave him.”
Glenna looked down at Ino’s body once, could not keep looking at him. She nodded fiercely, and once more led the way.
A time of silent walking passed before Jenny at Claus’s side began: “If they’re berserkers …”
“What else?”
“Well, why aren’t we all dead already? They don’t seem very … efficiently designed for killing.”
“They must be specialists,” Glaus mused. “Only a small part of a large force, a part Brass Trumpet missed when the rest moved on or was destroyed. Remember, we were wondering if Atlantis was their real target? These are special machines, built for… underwater work, maybe. Their ship must have been wrecked in the fighting and had to come down. When they found themselves on this planet they must have come down to the sea for a reconnaissance, and then decided to attack first by land. Probably they saw the lights of the base before they crash-landed. They know which life-form they have to deal with first, on any planet. Not very efficient, as you say. But they’ll keep coming at us till they’re all smashed or we’re all dead.”
Glenna had slowed her pace a little and was looking toward the small observation post rising in the midst of the pond that they were passing. “I don’t think there’s anything in any of these stations that can help us. But I can’t think of anywhere else to turn.”
Glaus asked: “What’s in the next pond after this?”
“Sharks … ah. That might be worth a try. Sometimes they’ll snap at anything that moves.
They’re small ones, so I think our risk will be relatively small if we wade out to the middle.”
Glaus thought to himself that he would rather end in the belly of a live shark than be torn to pieces by an impersonal device. Jen was willing also to take the chance.
They did not pause again till they were on the brink of-the shark pond. Then Glenna said: “The water will be no more than three or four feet deep the way we’re going. Stay together and keep splashing as we go. Glaus, hold that bad hand up; mustn’t drip a taste of blood into the water.”
And in they went. Only when they were already splashing waist-deep did Glaus recall Ino’s blood wetting the back of his coverall. But he was not going to stop just now to take it off.
The pond was not very large; a minute of industrious wading, and they were climbing unmolested over the low, solid railing of the observation post rising near its middle. Here was space for two people to sit comfortably, sheltered from weather by a transparent dome and movable side panels. In the central console were instruments that continually monitored the life in the surrounding pond. Usually, of course, the readings from all ponds would be monitored in the more convenient central station attached to the house.
The three of them squeezed in, and Glenna promptly opened a small storage locker. It contained a writing instrument that looked broken, a cap perhaps left behind by some construction worker, and a small spider — another immigrant from Earth, of course — who might have been blown out here by the wind. That was all.
She slammed the locker shut again. “No help. So now it’s a matter of waiting. They’ll obviously come after us through the water. The sharks may snap up some of them before they reach us. Then we must be ready to move on before we are surrounded. It’s doubtful, and risky, but I can’t think of anything else to try.”
Glaus frowned. “Eventually we’ll have to circle around, get back to the buildings.”
Jen frowned at him. “The berserkers are there, too.”
“I don’t think they will be, now. You see—“
Glenna broke in: “Here they come.”
The sun had climbed, and was starting to get noticeably hot. It came to Claus’s mind, not for the first time since then* flight had started, that there was no water for them to drink. He held his left arm up with his right, trying to ease the throbbing.
Along the reef where they had walked, along the parallel shore—and coming now over the barrier from the grouper pond — plate-sized specks of brown death were flowing. There were several dozen of them, moving more slowly than hurried humans could move, almost invisible in the shimmer of sun and sea. Some plopped into the water of the shark pond as Glaus watched.
“I can’t pick them up underwater,” Glenna announced. She was twiddling the controls of the station’s instruments, trying to catch the enemy on one of the screens meant for observing marine life. “Sonar… motion detectors…water’s too murky for simple video.”
Understanding dawned for Glaus. “That’s why they’re not metal! Why they’re comparatively fragile. They’re designed for avoiding detection by underwater defenses, on Atlantis I suppose, for infiltrating and disabling them.”
Jen was standing. “We’d better get moving before we’re cut off.”
“In another minute.” Glenna was still switching from one video pickup to another around the pond. “I’m sure we have at least that much to spare … ah.”
One of the enemy had appeared on screen, sculling toward the camera at a modest pace. It looked less lifelike than it had in earlier moments of arm’s-length combat.
Now, entering the picture from the rear, a shark.
Glaus was not especially good on distinguishing marine species. But this portentous and somehow familiar shape was identifiable at once, not to be confused even by the non-expert, it seemed, with that of any other kind of fish.
Glaus started to say, He’s going right past. But the shark was not. Giving the impression of afterthought, the torpedo-shape swerved back. Its mouth opened and the berserker device was gone.
The people watching made wordless sounds. But Jen took the others by an arm apiece. “We can’t bet all of them will be eaten—let’s get moving.”
Glaus already had one leg over the station’s low railing when the still surface of the pond west of the observation post exploded. Leaping clear of the water, the premiere killer of Earth’s oceans twisted in mid-air, as if trying to snap at its own belly. It fell back, vanishing in a hill of lashed-up foam. A moment later it jumped again, still thrashing.
In the fraction of a second when the animal was clearly visible, Glaus watched the dark line come into being across its white belly as if traced there by an invisible pen. It was a short line that a moment later broadened and evolved in blood. As the fish rolled on its back something dark and pointed came into sight, spreading the edges of the hole. Then the convulsing body of the shark had vanished, in an eruption of water turned opaque with its blood.
The women were wading quickly away from the platform in the opposite direction, calling him to follow, hoping aloud that the remaining sharks would be drawn to the dying one. But for one moment longer Glaus lingered, staring at the screen. It showed the roiling bloody turmoil of killer fish converging, and out of this cloud the little berserker emerged, unfazed by shark’s teeth or digestion, resuming its methodical progress toward the humans, the life-units that could be really dangerous to the cause of death.
Jen tugged at her husband, got him moving with them. In her exhausted brain a nonsense-rhyme was being generated: Bloody water hides the slasher, seed them, heed them, sue the splashers …
No!
As the three completed their water-plowing dash to the east edge of the pond, and climbed out, Jenny took Glenna by the arm. “Something just came to me. When I was tending Ino — he said something before he died.”
They were walking east along the barrier reef again. “He said smashers,” Jen continued. “That was it. Lead them or feed them, to the smashers. But I still don’t understand —“
Glenna stared at her for a moment, an almost frightening gaze. Then she stepped between the you
ng couple and pulled them forward.
Two ponds down she turned aside, wading through water that splashed no higher than their calves, directly toward another observation post that looked just like the last.
“We won’t be bothered in here,” she assured them. “We’re too big. Of course, of course. Oh, Ino. I should have thought of this myself. Unless we should happen to step right on one, but there’s very little chance of that. They wait in ambush most of the time, in holes or under rocks.”
“They?” Injury and effort were taking toll on Glaus. He leaned on Jenny’s shoulder now.
Glenna glanced back impatiently. “Mantis shrimp is the common name. They’re stomato-pods, actually.”
“Shrimp?” The dazed query was so soft that she may not have heard it.
A minute later they were squeezed aboard the station and could rest again. Above, clean morning clouds were building to enormous height, clouds that might have formed in the unbreathed air of Earth five hundred million years before.
“Glaus,” Jen asked, when both of them had caught their breath a little, “what were you saying a while ago, about circling back to the house?”
“It’s this way,” he said, and paused to organize his thoughts. “We’ve been running to nowhere, because there’s nowhere on this world we can get help. But the berserkers can’t know that. I’m assuming they haven’t scouted the whole planet, but just crash-landed on it. For all they know, there’s another colony of humans just down the coast. Maybe a town, with lots of people, aircraft, weapons … so for them it’s an absolute priority to cut us off before we can give a warning. Therefore every one of their units must be committed to the chase. And if we can once get through them or around them, we can outrun them home, to vehicles and guns and food and water. How we get through them or around them I haven’t figured out yet. But I don’t see any other way.”
“We’ll see,” said Glenna. Jen held his hand, and looked at him as if his idea might be reasonable. A distracting raindrop hit him on the face, and suddenly a shower was spattering the pond. With open mouths the three survivors caught what drops they could. They tried spreading Jenny’s robe out to catch more, but the rain stopped before the cloth was wet.
The Ultimate Enemy Page 15
