Bandaka watched the campsite, illuminated by the flickering firelight, and listened intently to every sound in the forest. When nothing unusual appeared, he began to wonder if the old man had made a mistake, then he saw a faint glow gliding between the trees far beyond the camp. It grew steadily in brightness as it approached, although Bandaka heard no footsteps. The silence of the night was shattered by the crack of a branch as the approaching form smashed through a low hanging limb, and by the rustle of leaves as densely packed undergrowth was crushed. When the glow neared the camp, Bandaka saw there was not a single light, but several spinning rapidly around a dark central mass.
Bandaka suppressed a gasp as it moved into the fire light. It was a machine, jet black in color and taller than a man, shaped like a spinning top. Two small spheres orbited the sharp bottom end, their lower halves glowing a brilliant white. The two spheres raced in a circle around the downward pointing base of the machine so fast they blurred. Most confusing of all, there was no physical connection between the machine’s body and the spheres or between the machine and the ground. It just floated silently in the air. Above the spheres, extending from the upper curve of the spinning top were four snaking arms, each ending in three double jointed digits. Above the arms, a column rose from the machine’s flat upper surface, passing through a glassy black metal sensor disk to a sphere. Extending horizontally from the sphere was a short tubular shape, which Bandaka’s refined survival instincts told him was a weapon.
The machine halted beside the fire, then thousands of points of light shone from the edge of its sensor disk, simultaneously scanning its surrounds in every direction. One of the snaking arms speared into the campfire sending embers and burning pieces of wood flying. It lifted the half cooked kangaroo out of the fire and brought it up to the sensor disk for analysis. When it was finished, it flicked the half burned carcass away. No blood or flesh remained on its arm, which was composed of an alloy no particle could adhere to without molecular bonding.
Bandaka shuddered when he saw the ease with which the floating machine had discarded the heavy kangaroo carcass. An instinctive chill ran down his spine as he sensed the danger, reassured only by the knowledge that his family had fled into the safety of the forest. Fear was rapidly overwhelming his curiosity, so he began to crawl on his belly down the slope, away from the camp, careful to keep rock outcrops and trees between himself and the black menace.
Bandaka didn’t know the machine was equipped with a dazzling array of tracking technologies that could sense heat, motion, metallurgical composition, and emissions from more than a dozen energy sources not yet in use on Earth. What it lacked was the ability to track a near naked native armed with a wooden spear.
Earlier in the day, the tracker had examined the crash site where the RAAF fighter had come down. It had detected Bandaka’s tracks, a single hair follicle and several microscopic skin fragments. From those few clues, it had mapped his DNA and constructed an anatomically perfect, three dimensional representation of him. What it had failed to do was match his species with any of the tens of thousands it had on record. The tracker had determined from the limited size of Bandaka’s human brain that it was tracking a creature that existed on the threshold between animal instinct and sentient intellect. It was clearly of the same species as the pilot of the crashed aircraft, a flimsy vehicle that relied on air pressure rather than propulsion fields to remain airborne. The tracker suspected that the air pressure vehicle, and the low level primate piloting it, were part of a feeble deception which required investigation.
The tracker balanced the sensitivity of thousands of receptors in its sensor disk, magnifying star and moon light until the depths of the forest became visible, while scaling down the receptivity of those receptors affected by the campfire’s glow. It was the campfire that saved Bandaka. It stood between him and the tracker, blinding it to his presence. All around the campsite, the tracker sensed motion and heat signatures from thousands of insects and many small and large creatures. The tracker knew it was mapping an environment so teeming with life, that this world belonged to the very rarest category of habitable worlds, one super abundant with life. The difficulty it faced was in separating the biometric clutter created by the myriad unknown life forms inhabiting the forest from its target. It was rapidly cataloguing the forest’s millions of species, from the most innocuous microbe, through every type of insect and animal, up to and including the primitive mammalian bipeds it was tracking. A complete mapping of the biosphere was essential, and would be achieved, but it would take time.
The tracker’s long snaking arms collected more DNA samples from the campsite, while its sensor disk mapped the environment at the speed of light. Its capacity to identify every cellular trace meant no clue went undiscovered. It used the genetic information to build profiles of Bandaka’s group, quickly coming to realize five primates had been gathered around the fire only minutes before. From their tracks, and the distinctive DNA residue patterns it detected, the tracker determined they’d all moved off to the south. Based on its understanding of their genetic codes, it calculated their various physical speeds and computed it could catch them in a matter of minutes. Its thermal sensors searched for them, but boulders that had soaked up hot sun all day now radiated a heat that, when mixed with the thousands of creatures slithering, hopping and flying through the forest, created a signal clutter that camouflaged the group’s distant thermal signatures. It tried to compensate, but it was a tracker, not a planetary exploration drone. It wasn’t designed to survey new worlds, and was only doing so now out of a desperate need.
The tracker decided to flush out any of the primates that might be hiding nearby. The barrel of its energy cannon swiveled toward the south and fired five low intensity blasts, striking tree trunks in a fifty meter wide arc. Each shot flashed brilliant orange light through the forest. The energy pulses vaporized half meter high segments of the tree trunks, sending shattered branches crashing to the forest floor.
Bandaka lay flat on his stomach, shielding his head with his hands as burning branches crashed down around him. He suppressed his urge to run, forcing himself to lie very still, fearing if the machine saw him it would fire again. He remembered an old lesson he’d been taught long ago, a lesson he’d drilled into his daughter until it was second nature to her.
Courage hides, fear runs.
Up the slope, the tracker watched patiently as terrified birds took to the air, startled creatures hopped for their lives and snakes slithered away into the darkness, but none of the primitive bipeds it sought appeared. The tracker concluded the creatures were out of range, and was about to start after them when it received a new mission from the Command Nexus. It changed direction instantly and without question, turning east towards its new target.
From his hiding place, Bandaka watched the glow of the tracker’s anti-g pods move away to the right. He knew the black monster was connected to the crashed plane, and to the soldiers who were coming up the valley. He remembered old Mulmulpa’s warning that the soldiers didn’t understand the danger they faced. Of that, Bandaka now had no doubt, as forty thousand years of tradition screamed in his ears.
An evil spirit had indeed entered the land.
* * * *
Bill McKenna flipped the steaks on the portable barbeque, then took a swig of beer. His three mates idly watched the sizzling beef with growing hunger as they lounged in camp chairs in front of their tents. Slab sat with his feet up on the ice and beer filled esky while Wal angled a small satellite dish in different directions in search of a signal for his radio.
“Give it a rest, mate,” Cracker said. “It’s buggered.”
“No way! This thing’s as tough as nails,” he said, puzzled that he couldn’t find a signal.
“Batteries could be flat,” Cracker suggested.
“I checked them before we left.” Wal looked perplexed. “I should be picking up something.”
Cracker leaned back and stretched, staring up at the night sky
. It was filled with many more stars than could ever be seen from the polluted, urban light filled skies of the big cities. “We could be the last men on Earth out here.”
The battery powered mozzie zapper popped again, signaling the sudden end of another mosquito for the umpteenth time since sunset.
Cracker glanced at the glowing blue light beside Slab with disgust. “What the hell did you bring that for? We’re supposed to be roughing it!”
Slab yawned, eyeing the electrified insect trap with satisfaction. “I hate bugs.” He knew the camp lights would be a beacon summoning every insect in sight, so he’d brought the battery powered trap along for protection. “I don’t want the little bastards landing on me. They eat me alive.”
“What do you think we brought you along for?” Wal demanded. “You’re the bug bait! If they land on you, they don’t land on us!”
Slab stretched muscles sore from a day of hiking. “You’re just jealous of my tasty blood.”
“It’s not the taste that attracts them,” Cracker said, wincing as if he’d bitten into a lemon, “It’s the smell!”
Laughter rippled around the camp.
Slab shrugged carelessly. “I’ll wash … next month.”
“At least the smell keeps the crocs away,” Bill added.
Slab glanced toward the river a couple of hundred meters away, where Bill’s fishing boat was pulled up onto the bank and tied to a tree. It would have been convenient to camp close to the boat, but that would have been too close to the giant reptilian rulers of the river. “I’ll remember that when the crocs come up here tonight and eat you! Just keep your screaming down, I need my beauty sleep.”
Bill shook his head sadly, “Sleep won’t fix your ugly mug, mate. Try surgery.”
Cracker pulled a stick of dynamite from his pocket and waved it at the big ex-footballer. “Any croc comes near me, and I’ll blow its bloody head off!”
Wal’s eyes bulged. “You’re not keeping that stuff in our tent!”
The old miner laughed, holding the dynamite with practiced familiarity. “Don’t worry, Wal, it’s been at least . . . two years since I blew anyone up!”
Bill’s eyes narrowed in dismay. “Why’d you bring that?”
Cracker smiled wickedly. “In case we get hungry. A few sticks of this in the river, we’ll have fish for a month.”
“A few sticks?” Bill exclaimed. “How many did you bring?”
“A dozen.” Cracker waved away his friend’s concerns. “It’s perfectly safe.” He pulled a small timer out of his pocket. “Needs a detonator to go off.”
Bill shook his head. “You can’t set that stuff off out here. The aborigines will go nuts!”
“What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
“There’s nothing out here they don’t know about.” Bill sighed. “We’ve got a permit to shoot buffalo, not blow the bloody river up!”
Cracker relented. “OK mate, no fishing. But if a croc comes up here, I’ll be sticking this in its gob, permit or not.”
“In that case, I’m moving my tent way over there,” Bill said as he pushed onions around the hot plate.
Slab watched Wal tweaking his radio. “Why are you so keen on getting the radio working?”
Wal made one last attempt to find a channel, then put the satellite receiver down, defeated. “I wanted to see if there was any news about that machine we shot today.”
Bill looked dubious. “If someone’s poking around out here without permission, it won’t be on the radio.”
“I bet it was looking for uranium,” Slab said, looking at the ground through drooping eyes. “Doing it sneaky, so the aborigines don’t know what’s going on.”
Cracker looked doubtful. “Nah, the mining companies wouldn’t take a crap out here without approval from the locals. It was something else.”
“It was digging for something,” Wal said.
“I’m telling you, . . . they want . . . radi-a-shun,” Slab slurred as his head lolled forward as he fell into a drunken stupor.
Bill scratched his head. “Do you think he’s going to want his steak?”
“He’ll be out ’till morning,” Wal said. “We’ll split it, and tell him he ate it. He’s so drunk, he won’t have a clue!”
Cracker lifted his beer to take a sip. As the can approached his lips he caught a flash of movement out of the side of his eye, then the can was ripped from his hand. For a moment he looked at his empty hand, confused, then glanced at his friends thinking they’d played a trick on him. “What the hell?”
Bill’s eyes widened incredulously, as he stared at something behind Cracker. Wal jumped to his feet and backed away, eyes locked in the same direction.
Cracker looked at his friends as if they’d gone mad. “What?”
He turned to see the black, spinning top shaped tracker floating a meter behind his chair. It towered over him while his skin prickled at the proximity of an invisible electromagnetic force. Cracker stumbled out of his chair, almost tripping as he turned to face the machine. One of the tracker’s four semi-snaking arms held the yellow beer can in front of its sensor disk. It turned the can slowly, recognizing the lettering as a language of sorts, although one it had no record of. It tested the strength of the can by squeezing it with its metal fingers causing it to collapse easily. Amber liquid shot out through bursting seams and poured onto the ground, then the tracker flicked the can away.
“What the hell is it?” Bill asked.
“Stuffed if I know,” Cracker declared, backing away.
The tracker floated silently into the camp on its two contra rotating anti-g pods. When it neared Cracker’s vacated camp chair, an invisible force knocked the chair sideways. Two meters away, Slab remained in a drunken coma, oblivious to the tracker’s presence. Thousands of laser-thin blue beams flicked out from its glassy black sensor disk, illuminating an invisible bubble that surrounded the tracker. The vertically flickering beams scanned and analyzed every object in the campsite while the men shielded their eyes with their hands.
Bill motioned to the metal box on the other side of the camp, where the hunting rifles were stored. “Get the guns, Wal!”
Wal glanced at the locker uncomfortably, certain he’d draw attention to himself if he tried to reach it. “You get the guns.”
“You’re closest, mate.”
Wal cursed silently, then edged toward the gun locker, trying to peek through his fingers at the machine, but finding the blue beams too bright to bear. He reached down to release the gun locker’s catches, but one of the tracker’s arms shot out and speared the metal case. The finger-like digits spread apart inside the metal locker like a grapple, then the arm whipped it away from Wal. A second metal arm punctured the locker while it was in mid air, holding it steady in front of the sensor disk for close analysis. A third arm deftly released the two metal catches and opened the box while its fourth arm pulled Bill’s hunting rifle out.
“Got any other bright ideas?” Wal muttered as he backed away.
The tracker took only seconds to evaluate the weapon’s primitive design and complete a metallurgical analysis. It concluded the crude device was a variation of the primitive kinetic weapon a seeker had discovered earlier. Its lack of a power source led it to conclude the weapon fired chemically propelled projectiles of limited accuracy and range. The tracker turned the gun locker upside down, letting the other rifles clatter to the ground, scanning them as they fell. When it had exhausted its investigation, it tossed the locker and Bill’s gun away.
The light beams streaming from the tracker’s sensor disk vanished, as did the ghostly bubble enveloping it. Having detected a significant thermal irregularity, one of its arms speared the esky beneath Slab’s feet. Suspecting the rectangular container may store cryogenic weapons, it ripped the esky away. Too drunk to wake, Slab snorted when his feet hit the ground, and continued snoring, while a second of the tracker’s arms caught the esky in mid air.
“I knew that bastard could sleep throug
h a train wreck when he was drunk!” Cracker declared.
“Stuff him,” Wal growled desperately, “That bloody thing’s got our beers!”
The tracker tore open the sealed lid to discover several dozen cans floating in ice and water. A sea of blue sensor beams scanned the contents of the esky, increasing the tracker’s confusion. It could not understand why these primitive bipeds would go to the trouble of storing metal cylinders containing a liquid of negligible nutritional value in a near freezing environment. After several fruitless seconds, unable to resolve the mystery, it decided to log the data for later analysis. It dropped the esky, spilling beer cans and precious ice onto the ground, then turned its attention to the barbecue, still sizzling in front of Bill. It floated past Slab, across the camp toward the three legged gas cooker. Spectroscopic analysis told it the flames resulted from combusting a carbon based gas, a process which inefficiently generated heat and released a range of toxic byproducts into the atmosphere. One of its semi-snaking arms picked up the barbecue and raised it for closer inspection. Bill backed away as he saw another arm touch the gas cylinder. The tracker studied the burnt pieces of animal flesh on the hotplate, and cross referenced the data with the burnt kangaroo it had discovered earlier at the aboriginal camp. It noticed the onions sizzling on the hot plate, and correctly identified them as charred vegetable matter. Its massive artificial intelligence immediately reclassified the biped species from carnivore to omnivore, while it squeezed the gas cylinder experimentally, testing its tensile strength.
“Look out!” Bill yelled, diving for cover as the cylinder buckled.
Gas jetted through the rupture, catching the cooker’s naked flame, causing the gas bottle to explode. A wall of fire blasted against the invisible bubble protecting the tracker, then when the flames dissipated, its metal arms and torso appeared undamaged.
The Mothership Page 11
