The Alien Web (Masters of Space Book 2)

by Robert E. Vardeman

  Kinsolving kept the squat, massive rock-melt building between him and the spot where the consul’s vehicle had been destroyed. He set a brisk pace toward the shuttle landing pits, infrequently looking back to see if anyone followed.

  “‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth,’” he quoted. “‘But the righteous are bold as a lion.’” Kinsolving did not feel especially bold, and he was the wronged party and had to flee.

  He stopped and stared into the peculiarly tinted blue sky when he heard the rumble of landing rockets. The arachnoids did not use launching lasers for their shuttles; they depended on what was, to him, a less sophisticated system of rockets. But the spiders showed no lack of commerce across the immense field. Everywhere he looked he saw shuttles being unloaded as they came down from the massive cargo ships in orbit. And almost as many shuttles were being loaded to lift into orbit before starring off for other worlds.

  One shuttle coming down on a pale blue flame caught his attention and held it. As the rocket shuttle turned slowly in descent he saw the Interstellar Materials logo on the side. The shuttle touched down gently less than a kilometre away.

  Kinsolving started toward it, then stopped, indecision freezing him. “Will they be that stupid?” he wondered aloud. With Quixx openly investigating Andrianov’s death, would Humbolt bring down more brain burners?

  “Humbolt wouldn’t, but Cameron would,” he decided. Nothing would be too daring for the roboticist. The man would see it as a challenge, a chance to show his superiority.

  Kinsolving watched as a fleet of heavy equipment converged on the grounded shuttle. Squinting from the sun, he made out the hatches being sprung and work robots beginning their programmed task of unloading. IM brought much to Web. But hidden in there, he felt, would be more.

  As a small vehicle driven by an arachnoid scooted past, Kinsolving reached out and grabbed a convenient handle on the back. He swung himself up and behind the spider being. By the time the arachnoid noticed and shoved him off using four hind legs, Kinsolving was within a hundred metres of the IM shuttle.

  Acutely aware that he exposed himself to unnecessary danger, Kinsolving looked around for a place to spy without being seen. Nothing large enough existed. The crates stacked around were in constant flux, being shifted from one spot to another. Nowhere did he see a human overseer, though. The robots did not mind if he watched — unless they had been ordered to respond to his spying.

  “‘Bold as a lion,”’ Kinsolving said. He walked directly to the opened hatch and peered into the belly of the immense cargo ship. Prepared to run if any human accosted him, Kinsolving tried to make out the action within. Only robots worked inside; they had no need of illumination.

  Kinsolving walked up the conveyor ramp and slipped to one side, back against the outer hull of the shuttle. He took out the data recorder and began photographing what he could in the poor light. The tracked robots lumbered back and forth, dragging crates bearing the IM sigil. A few crates carried markings of other companies, but only a few. If he found the brain burners anywhere, it would be here.

  “Where to begin?” he muttered. Thousands of metric tons of IM cargo moved out of the shuttle and to the distant warehouse. Which of the crates carried the contraband?

  “Robot!” he called out to one painted in yellow-and-green stripes. “What colour is your leader?”

  “Red and blue,” came the immediate response. The yellow-and-green machine never slowed as it pulled at a pair of immense crates floating a few centimetres above the deck. These boxes were so heavy that repulsor units had been installed.

  Kinsolving glanced outside into the warm sunlight, then back into the hold. He felt as if he moved from the realm of the living into some vast and desolate underworld populated only by the souls of the dead. The robots worked tirelessly, their programs solving both simple and complex scheduling problems, their computers interacting to produce the most efficient unloading possible. Kinsolving dodged them as he sought the red-and-blue leader.

  At the back of the cargo deck he found the machine. Pale light shone on the floor around the robot. Puzzled, Kinsolving moved closer. Someone had worked on the robot and had failed to properly secure the access panel. The heart of the robot’s programming had been exposed.

  “Robot, halt,” commanded Kinsolving.

  “I am not authorized to obey you,” came the machine’s immediate response. “Your vocal pattern is not within range of my recognition circuits.”

  “You are a menace to humans and other machines. A panel on your side is dangerously open. Allow me to fasten it securely.”

  The robot said nothing as Kinsolving approached. He knew he had reached it on the most elemental level in its complex computing unit. Danger to its assigned mission could be removed if the human fixed the panel. The robot would temporarily obey as long as the imperilling condition persisted.

  Kinsolving pulled open the panel and looked inside. The pale access light shining inside allowed for easier repairs. The toggles controlling the robot’s functions were scattered throughout the interior.

  He did not recognize all the controls, but the loading robot was not unlike the mining robots he had used to get ore from the stoops and into the refinery storage bins. A few minutes of tinkering had circumvented the machine’s defence programming. Another minute gave him the servile condition he needed.

  “Where are the crates containing the brain burners?” he asked.

  “These are not words in my vocabulary,” the robot responded.

  Kinsolving changed his tack. He had not been thinking. Humbolt would not program a robot by listing the contents of the contraband crates. “Crates were set aside for special handling. Which ones are they?”

  The robot swung on its vertical axis and faced four large plastic crates to one side of the hold. The leader robot had been standing guard — if these were the crates he sought.

  Kinsolving ordered the robot to remain where it stood, then opened the nearest of the large boxes. He let out a low whistle when he saw the contents. Not a hundred or even a thousand of the brain burners rested inside, neatly packed and wrapped against thermal and mechanical shock. If his guess about their number proved accurate, this crate contained no fewer than five thousand of the insidious devices.

  And he had found not one but four crates. Twenty thousand packages of mind death!

  “Robot,” he called as he dug through the crates, making a data recording as he went. “How many other special-handling crates were aboard this shuttle?”

  “Fifty,” came the startling answer.

  Over a quarter of a million of the machines had reached Web in only one trip! How many other shuttle loads had already been sent across the face of the planet? Kinsolving shuddered at the thought. He had seen the arachnoid caught in the throes of his Box of Delights. All volition fled an otherwise sentient being. The only thing of worth in the entire universe came from the electromagnetic radiation from these boxes. Starvation. Loss of will. Physical damage to the higher regions of the brain causing untold suffering, not only for the victim but, for the rest of a society having to support the brain-dead hulk. All those awaiting millions of arachnoids within the operating radius of these infernal machines.

  Kinsolving shook from reaction to the evil the brain burners would create. The entire arachnoid world would be torn apart. And Quixx had hinted at a special social problem caused by the devices that Kinsolving could not fathom.

  “Where,” he asked the leader robot, “have they been taken? To the warehouse?”

  The robot did not respond. Kinsolving fiddled with the toggles and removed even more of the machine’s programming, reducing it to little more than a binary computer.

  “Yes,” it croaked out in a voice that sounded like metal scraping metal.

  Kinsolving studied the robot’s inner workings and began tinkering with the control toggles. In less than ten minutes he had reprogrammed the robot to forget any intrusion by a human into the cargo hold. Kinsolving lifted
a brain burner from the crate he had opened and tucked it under his arm.

  “Seal this crate,” he ordered. “Then continue your assignment.”

  Kinsolving hesitated for a moment, waiting to see if his tampering had been adequate. If a small blue light appeared on the robot’s control panel, it meant that he had failed and an alarm had been sent.

  No light appeared.

  Kinsolving heaved a sigh of relief and hurried from the shuttle hold and back into the bright light of day.

  “Fifty-four crates,” he said aloud. “Enough to destroy an entire city. More!”

  Kinsolving looked at the small brain burner, turning it over and over in his hands. He did not — quite — dare to stick his fingers in the depressions on either side to see if he could activate it. The cerium-crystal resonance might have been chosen to affect only the arachnoids, but he did not want to take the chance. He needed clarity of mind to stop Cameron and the others.

  He walked, aimlessly at first, then with more determination as a plan evolved. Alerting Quixx would not be enough. If the arachnoids had a system of government similar to most of those on Earth, it might take days to get the proper documents through the courts to search the IM premises. Kinsolving did not dare wait that long. Visions of explosions and fire danced in his head, then faded.

  IM was not likely to allow explosives into the warehouse. Sensors would detect anything Kinsolving was likely to find around the landing area to use as a weapon. And fire? He did not remember the equipment inside the warehouse, but he knew that the crates containing the brain burners had been standard shipping plastic. The fire would have to rage at temperatures over five hundred degrees Celsius before the contents would be damaged. Long before that happened, he knew the fire-fighting robots would extinguish his feeble efforts.

  “There’s a way,” he said to himself. “There must be. There always is.” He circled the immense imposing block of windowless warehouse, studying it. Kinsolving came to the same conclusion that he had before. Entering undetected from either the surface or the air was impossible. The nubs of sensor heads poked up everywhere along the roofline. Vibration, sight, scent, heat, Doppler shift, all went to the master security robot for processing. Any slight variation from established norms and hell would break loose.

  He returned to the small shed with the radiation-warning sign on it. Kinsolving knew the risk he took following the same subterranean route into the warehouse that he had used before. Although he had not set off alarms then, the odds were much greater this time that the tunnel had been closed off to his intrusions. Cameron was not the type to leave an entryway unprotected.

  Kinsolving slipped inside the empty shed and carefully studied the dust on the floor. He saw no indication that anyone had been inside since his last entry. His footprints cut sharply into the layer of dust and a fine powder of newly settled dust lay atop the marks. Closer examination showed the talon marks of the arachnoid who had preceded him down the tunnel. Nothing else.

  Kinsolving held his breath as he used Liu’s card-key again. The trapdoor opened again. No alarms. He glanced up at the rice-grain vid camera; the dirt he had smeared on its lens had not been touched. Kinsolving slid into the stairway and descended, testing each step, every sense alive for the slightest hint of danger. His heart almost exploded before he reached the tunnel floor. Kinsolving forced himself to relax. He needed to be keyed up, but too much adrenaline would be worse than none at all.

  Cursing himself for not bringing a flash, he blundered along in the darkness. Occasionally stopping, Kinsolving strained to hear. Hovertrucks that whispered by on the surface produced a bass rumbling in the tunnel. A tiny dripping hinted at more moisture in the tunnel than he might have expected. But no other sound came. The darkness began to affect him. Kinsolving had spent much of his life in mines — but he had usually carried three or four different light sources. Infrared to study ore veins, UV to check for luminescence, white light to see by, sometimes even a polarized light to check for strain in supporting members.

  Now all he had was the sense of touch.

  Kinsolving stopped suddenly, then smiled. He had come to the end of the tunnel. How he had known this lay beyond conscious thought. A foot placed tentatively on the lowest step of the spiralling stairs leading to the warehouse produced no obvious alarms. Kinsolving ascended until he came to the metal door keeping him from his goal. A faint yellow light from above showed the tiny alcove well enough for him to move with more confidence.

  The cold metal door resisted efforts to open it. He found the lock. It had been changed — replaced with one more complex and difficult to open after the arachnoid had tampered with the previous one.

  Cameron obviously had discovered how the arachnoid had entered the warehouse. Had he also detected Kinsolving’s prior entry?

  Kinsolving worked in the twilight, fingers tracing the door’s frame. The door seemed too secure to blow apart, much less knock down. With heavy laser drills and a work robot he might be able to make a dent in the refractory material. Maybe. But the frame fitted into a plastic wall. This seemed more vulnerable.

  He left the door and slid along the plastic, tracing out the small room’s four walls. Nothing seemed promising until Kinsolving stopped moving and simply stood. A faint draft crossed his face — and it came from above, not from the stairwell leading to the tunnel.

  Reaching up, Kinsolving grabbed the small ledge over the doorframe. Straining with effort, grunting and feeling the skin peeling off his fingers, he pulled himself up until he braced one elbow on the tiny ledge. Twice he slipped and almost fell. The third time he secured a better berth by finding a small grate half a meter above the top of the door. It was this grate that let the small amount of light into the alcove.

  Fingers on his right hand locked through the grating, Kinsolving was able to explore with his left hand. He found another tiny grate mounted in the ceiling. Tugging gently on the ceiling grate pulled it free. A steady gust of air met his face as he worked around.

  Brighter light shone through a slowly rotating plastic fan blade. He almost shouted in triumph. The fan and the grate were small; the unit itself was mounted in a meter-square plate. It took Kinsolving another minute to unfasten the wing nuts holding it in place and only a few seconds to push it away.

  The warehouse was his!

  Kinsolving flopped through the opening and onto a ledge overlooking the floor. It took several minutes for him to regain his strength and examine his bloodied fingers. He had not cut himself too badly on the grates, but he left a trail behind that even a poorly designed guard robot could follow. Kinsolving tried to tear strips from his shirt to wrap his hands, then stopped. The fabric did not tear well and he did not want his hands turned into useless clubs. Better to leave blood markings than to lose dexterity.

  He had to find a way of destroying fifty-four crates of brain burners. He was not likely to do it with bandaged hands.

  Strength back, he dropped to the floor. The locking mechanism on the door proved even more complex than he had thought. Although he did not have the time to trace the circuits, Kinsolving guessed that any attempt to open the lock would have set off alarms and brought every guard robot in the warehouse.

  He was lucky to have found the vent fan.

  “Lucky,” he said to himself. “I’m not the lucky kind. That was too easy. Cameron would not overlook an easy way in like a fan unit. Not if he installed this bank-vault lock.”

  A soft sound, a whispering of silk on silk, alerted Kinsolving. He spun.

  Cameron stood next to a mountain of shipping crates, a smile twisting his lips. “I really expected you to have a hand flash. Removing the fan would have been even easier then. You made it harder than it should have been, Supervisor Kinsolving.”

  Kinsolving looked left and right, frantic to find an escape route. Killer robots hovered at knee level wherever he turned. He could not pass them, nor could he hope to elude them.

  “Will your death be equally difficult,
Kinsolving?” Cameron asked in a voice laden with quiet menace. “Or will you make it easy on us all and die quietly?”

  Cameron threw back his cape and gestured dramatically. The killer robots, flailing metal tentacles glowing with blue electrical death, advanced on Barton Kinsolving.

  CHAPTER XV

  “All you have to do is die, Kinsolving,” said Cameron.

  The robots hummed quietly as they advanced. When they got within arm’s reach, Kinsolving heard the crackling of high voltage off the metal antennae whipping about. He yelped in pain when one tentacle lightly brushed his thigh. His entire leg went numb. Kinsolving sank down, clutching the burned spot, trying vainly to regain use of the leg to run.

  But where could he run? The killer robots had him hemmed in. Everywhere he looked, he saw robots. A frantic glance over his shoulder showed that the door leading to the tunnel was too securely locked to open in a hundred years, much less seconds.

  More from reflex than thought, Kinsolving pulled out the brain burner he had taken from the cargo shuttle’s bay and held it in front of his face to block another high-voltage whip aimed at his face.

  The robot’s flexible death probe rebounded harmlessly from the plastic case. Even so, Kinsolving felt the muscles in his arms jerk in response to the nearness of the high-voltage discharge.

  “Isn’t this much more interesting than a simple laser?” asked Cameron. “I have a few guard robots equipped to fire on sight, but there have been problems. Alas, we inadvertently lost two human workers during field tests.”

  “And the supervisor? Rogoff?” Kinsolving asked. He sagged against the wall. The brain burner would not shield him from all the robots. The machines coordinated their attack too well for that. One shot in to touch him while the

  others waited. If he responded to block the attack, the others surged forward. Better to let only one touch him than the entire deadly pack.