The screen responded, “N. I thr trblnhyt=”
“No trouble. Your keyboarding is awful. Stick to yes or no.” Clearly Lucky was typing with a finger while trying to check on a dozen other things at once and going off the keys without realizing it.
The smelter was doing its job on the rocks, but it wasn’t at all clear that the solution was working. Magma wasn’t something that could easily be predicted or controlled, and the models were based on standard assumptions. The fact was that, at this point, the whole face of the cliff was melting like some surreal painting, and the base of the complex where it connected to the first row of greenhouses was heavily engulfed in billowing smoke. The four connected directly into the cliff were on fire, even though they were nominally fireproof.
“Ha! Let anything try and get out of there now!” Achmed cried in triumph. “Powering down, still have thirty-one percent, more than enough to get back and mate with the main unit. There is no question that the linkages are sealed!”
The main board in front of Randi started going wild. She looked up at the displays, but so much was going on at once she could barely make sense of it. Small dots, small units or something, were outside the greenhouses but well away from the action. Two—no, three small blips. Yellow… red… green… Why?
Suddenly she realized that the colored blips had numbers in them. They were e-suits, powered up and therefore registering on the universal transponder frequency. Red, yellow, green…
Suddenly the vision of the partially decomposed suits came into her mind. Yellow, red, green… They were using the suits to move about outside and away from the fire!
“Lucky, you’d better cover down there! Three things in powered suits heading out and away from the complex! They could be coming my way!” she warned.
“Huh!” the pilot responded, surprised. She hadn’t really seen these things in action. “I’ll be damned! Think we can shoot ’em?”
“Fire will take them out, or full power disintegration,” Queson told her.
“Yeah, but those suits can take a lot of shit. Stand by! I’m going to swing around and see if I can spot the little buggers.”
“Watch it!” Li cautioned from above. “If they have power in those suits then they have short-term weapons!”
“Ah, c’mon! They’re fuckin’ worms, aren’t they?” Cross came back.
“Worms that can figure out what the suits are for, operate them, and, more important, worms that have figured out how to recharge the batteries in the past day or so!” Queson reminded her. “And if they can do that, then you better damned well figure they can shoot.”
“Well, I’ll keep the hatches closed. Nothing they would have could penetrate the shuttle,” the pilot responded, a bit chastened. “I think we can put a few energy bolts down there where they’ll do the most good!”
Queson looked at the board. Something else was going, too, something that was only readable by a faint yet enormous heat signature.
They’d awakened the big one, the one wrapped around the power core! The sucker had oozed down into that underground sea and was now moving around the molten area. The ground was so thick and the interference from the greenhouses and the smelter operations so prevalent that only the size of the thing made it obvious that it was more than an intermittent anomaly.
“The mother creature is free in the water,” she reported. “I think it’s coming my way. What the hell do I do?”
At almost the same moment, Cross called, “Where the fuck are the little bastards? I don’t have them on visual at all!”
“Try the emergency transponder frequencies! They show up here!”
And, at just about two seconds after she said it, they suddenly vanished from her board.
“What? Where?”
“Damn it! They’re listening to us!” Queson almost screamed.
How was that possible? How could such a creature, however smart, learn enough of their language to understand it? Or to power up and operate all those complex gadgets, including knowing just how to turn the emergency beacon off? Hell, even these colonists hadn’t spoken the language the crew of the Stanley was using!
“Good God!” she swore, almost as if speaking to herself. “I think those things absorb the knowledge, the intellect, of the people they ingest! They’ve got the collective knowledge of every colonist who lived down there!”
“Oh, c’mon! That’s impossible!” Nagel put in. “Anything that adaptable and that smart wouldn’t be sleeping wrapped around a radiation core!”
But that was exactly what it might do, several of them realized at once. All that collective knowledge couldn’t get them out of this hole. All it could do was frustrate a smart entity or entities, now knowing all the wonders of the universe out there but being unable to get to it. It would make sense to put the power on minimum, use it as an alternate energy source, and then just go to sleep, hibernate, dreaming great dreams of potential conquest, waiting, waiting for somebody, from somewhere, to stumble over this outpost of Hell and give it a ride to the stars.
This wasn’t something they were prepared for, nor something they could deal with. There was only one course they could follow, and they all knew it.
“Everybody back! Now!” An Li ordered. “The captain has issued a full abort! Lucky, drop the hunt and cover Achmed. Get that smelter and all of you back to the ground base. Ain’t no way we’re gonna salvage anything except maybe our lives here.”
Randi Queson looked at the heat shadow that came in and out on the board, twisting and turning, sometimes too faint to make out, other times very clear if amorphous in shape, and it was very clear that the thing was trying to figure out how the hell to get to the base and her. Only the fact that they’d feared that the weight of the base would break through the crust and so chosen a solid basalt outcrop for the anchor site, and the fact that the creature couldn’t stand that weather out there unprotected any more than they could, were saving them.
But what if you had the brains of a thousand or more colonists and their collective knowledge of everything from geology to conventional biology to use? It— they— would figure something out. She knew it.
“Screw the smelter!” she yelled. “Pick up Achmed from the cab and get back here now! Otherwise it’s going to be here waiting for you!”
“Belay that!” An Li cut in. “There’s no way we can make up for the loss of the smelter. You come up here without it, we won’t be here. Understood?”
“You mercenary bitch! Next time you’re comin’ down!” Queson said, disgust competing with fear as her dominant emotion.
“It’s all about money, honey,” An Li replied. “Always was.”
“Calm down, ladies!” Achmed called. “I’ll be home as quickly as I can! Nothing’s going to get up here to me, so relax! And I don’t think that the Big Bad Worm can undermine the base. It may be the fastest learner in the universe, but it’s pretty soft and at least as much water as we are. Not to worry! Allah is merciful! He will protect me!”
“Allah pays as much attention to you as you do to Him,” Nagel responded. “Just get your big smelter over there and show us you can mate!”
“Jerry, I think we all ought to switch to a private frequency,” Cross commented. “If this thing can listen, let’s put its ears out! Randi! Li! Achmed! Listen up! Private fourteen, full digicode! Got that?”
“Wait!” Queson called. “How do I do that here?”
“Fourteen full, aye!” Achmed responded, and the whole communications system went very, very dead.
Queson looked around for something, anything, to order a change, and nothing was obvious.
She looked up at the main display. The thing was almost engulfing the plateau, but so far below that it still registered only as a faint shadow. On the other hand, the three dots, no longer color coded, showed up quite close to the base now and proceeding towards it on the ground. They’d minimized their energy signatures to a remarkable degree, but this close in they couldn’t hide from the
scanners any more.
They didn’t have to.
She was all alone, and about five minutes from possibly having the worst kind of visitors.
IV: NEITHER COMMAND NOR CONTROL
Randi Queson was never more frightened in her life than at this moment. At the same point when they’d all switched frequencies without telling her how to do it back at the base, she was getting the distinct impression of being surrounded by what was surely an alien intelligence of tremendous malicious potential.
She frantically tried to figure out the frequency shift. It would be easy to just scan for the active ones if this were a conventional switch, but this was a security switch to an encrypted and secure channel that wouldn’t even show up on any monitors even as gibberish. That required more knowledge of this master control board than she had, simply because she’d never had to do it before and nobody had thought to teach it to her.
She was always “out there” in these operations; Cross or occasionally Sark or Achmed would handle this.
She tried opening all the common frequencies, thinking that surely An Li above would have them scanned, but instead of the silence she expected she got ear-splitting screeches that forced her to cut the audio. For a second she was confused as to what the sounds were, and then it hit her: the standard frequencies were being jammed! Damn! This thing, whatever it was, was one quick learner. Must be nice to eat your education instead of having to work at it.
She looked back up at the area scan visual and saw that all three small dots were now stopped at the bottom of the base, a bit spread out, as if assessing the situation and figuring out how the heck to get in. She knew that the security seals were locked down, but she couldn’t underestimate this new intelligence.
Even as she frantically looked for loopholes in the defense perimeter and decided to check out a couple of hand weapons from the locker outside she also felt a sense of regret that what was possibly the first human contact with an alien mind was in this sort of situation. She would love to have a conversation with it, learn something about it, see if some kind of equilibrium could be reached, but she also knew, deep down, that it would have no percentage in doing that. If it got to her it would simply absorb her and all that she was would become a part of it. If it couldn’t reach her, then there was really no percentage in it talking at all, except, perhaps, to deceive.
It was smart enough to do everything else, she thought. Why not some good old human trickery?
She looked at the board and saw that Achmed and the smelter were almost halfway back, shadowed by the shuttle. Whatever this alien was going to do, it would have to do it in the next fifteen or twenty minutes or it would be too late. The smelter would dock from the top, affording Achmed access through the top hatch that otherwise was sealed, since there was no other use for it, and the shuttle would settle in its cradle and lock down, activating the forward lock. Theoretically, she was sealed in and totally protected.
Theoretically.
She went to the locker in the ward room and pulled a long-burst disintegration rifle and a wide-mode sidearm. Theoretically, either one would be sufficient to vaporize any of these things.
She retreated back into the command and control center and shut the door.
Every door on the base unit was a total seal, so that even the unexpected, fires and floods and who knew what else, could be isolated. The C and C was particularly well protected, since it could control the entire unit if the shuttle wasn’t mated. It even had its own bathroom, food unit, and water supply. The only point now open to the outside, via its own separate channels, was the air supply, and she quickly switched it to self-contained and heard the rebreather apparatus come on. It could recirculate things for weeks if need be, and she only needed a quarter of an hour.
Now she had to wait, rifle in her lap, to see if the rest of the team could get back before the alien or aliens figured out a good move.
In the meantime, the control center suddenly started feeling like a cold, silent, and lonely tomb, an office in the City of the Dead.
Curse you, you bastards! You didn’t all have to go on that junket and leave me here all alone!
The tracking board indicated that the smelter was well on the way, covered by the shuttle, but there was no longer any sign of the three non-company spacesuited figures. That meant that they were somewhere close, probably at the base camp, trying to figure out a way in. They wouldn’t find the cracks or vents that they’d used to ooze into the colony, not here. Anything like that would have meant that the base couldn’t have withstood space and the descent. The air vents would be the only way in, and those were up top and pretty well exposed for the shuttle’s guns to take out. Cross would know to just blow away anything up there, unless, of course, the damned things were already up and inside before Cross was close enough to act.
The board showed that the shuttle had detached from shadowing the smelter and was now circling the base unit.
Good for you, Lucky. So where’s the critters?
The radio suddenly came to life. “Doc? What the hell happened to you?” An Li’s voice came to her. “Why aren’t you over on the security channel?”
She had never felt so relieved in her life. “Li! You bitch! Nobody ever showed me how to switch it!”
There was a sigh on the other end, then, “Well, screw it now. Are you locked down?”
“Yes, yes! I’m just waiting for company!”
“Stay there. No sign of our friends yet, and I’m getting signs of your big, big worm just about surrounding the plateau. Wait until they’re inside and you get an all-clear from them on the internal intercom. The aliens won’t be able to tap that. In the meantime, I’m gonna keep the others on the secure channel so nobody’s hand is tipped. Just stand by. I don’t want to broadcast anything useful.”
It sounded sensible, even reassuring. Why the hell did she have this paranoid feeling in her belly, then?
Maybe it was the absence of a sign of those three colorful suits. That and the extreme intelligence the aliens had shown up to now.
“Li, tell me how to dial up the security channel from here. I want to coordinate with them.”
“That’s kind of moot right now. Just sit tight.”
“Li, tell me the way to dial in! Now!”
“I said—”
“You’re not An Li, are you? That’s an excellent imitation.”
“Don’t go nutty on me now! We’re almost home!” the voice said, sounding exactly right.
“I want you to do it before either of the units docks with this base. If you don’t, then I will know it’s fake. Then I will have to use the panic button and create a near instant vacuum in the rest of the base, which, if it doesn’t finish you off, will at least seal the entry ports so that the others will be protected. You understand me? I’m not going to be absorbed.”
“You’re crazy, Doc! You know who this is!”
“If you can’t tell me the procedure, then, yes, I know exactly who this is.”
There was dead silence, and she could understand why. The creature had never absorbed one of the crew. As smart as it was, by hook or crook, it had never been in this control room before and thus had very little idea what it actually looked like, much less of the commands needed to switch to an unknown proprietary digital frequency.
It wouldn’t even know that there wasn’t any such thing as a panic button creating such a vacuum.
“So long as the truth is out,” she said slowly, sitting down in one of the command chairs, her stomach almost in convulsions, “would you like to talk?”
For another moment there was silence, and then An Li’s voice asked, “To what purpose?”
“You’re highly intelligent. Probably a lot smarter than any of us. Did your kind evolve here or just become stranded here until those unfortunates landed and built their colony and somehow woke you up? Were you this smart before or only after you killed them all and stole their knowledge?”
“Dialogue is irrelevant
. No one is dead. All have become part of us. The many have merely become one. You will know this when you are a part of us, and we will know you, and you will become immortal with us.”
She started to protest, but then realized that, from the thing’s point of view, it probably was right. From its vantage point, it simply incorporated their minds and mass into its own, and this was the proper way of things. To her, the colonists were dead. To it, the colonists were all right there.
The base gave a shudder, then came a series of vibrations that shook the entire control room.
She thought for a moment that the alien was doing something, then she turned and looked at the scanning screen, amazed at her own composure at this point.
The smelter! Achmed was sliding the thing back into its grooves on the base unit and then locking it down. Next he’d be opening the hatch from up top. If they’d managed to ooze in through the air vents, then he’d get a sudden and dramatic welcoming committee!
She didn’t know much about the settings, but the small cameras showing the entire perimeter of the base, so useless in trying to find the suits, now showed the shuttle. It hadn’t docked as yet; Cross seemed wary, and was checking over the entire structure from stem to stern.
Suddenly a heavy bolt of energy shot out from the shuttle to a blind spot between two ground-level cameras and something jerked and then dropped into view on the ground itself under the base, writhing and smoking. A second expertly placed bolt caught the blue environmental suit full. It shimmered, glowed white, and for just a moment there was the sense of a human or humanoid body shape in the midst, then it winked out, leaving only white powder that was quickly picked up and dissipated by the wind.
Damn! Lucky had caught onto that one, but where were the other two? Their colors should really stand out if they were hovering in the blind spots, so obviously they weren’t. They also had clearly turned off and adjusted every element to be as invisible to sensors as possible. So where were they? Even if the creatures had gotten inside somehow, it was very unlikely that they could have brought their suits in with them without access to the controls in this room, and that she was going to deny them.
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