Creations (33 page)

“Another task has unexpectedly taken priority. The crew of the rover have had to stay out a day longer than they planned.”

“And what exactly are they doing?”

Joel paused, as if composing his answer. “They are monitoring the control signals sent between the colonies and their robots,” he said. “The Cambria colony just recalled all of its mining robots. It is nothing serious, but we want to find out why it has happened. That is all.”

“Why would it recall its miners?” Max said. Something had struck him as significant about what Joel had just said but he couldn’t work out what.

“I don’t know, probably to recycle them,” Joel said. “It must have decided on a new design. That is the only reason I can think of.”

“Okay,” Max said, doubtfully. Joel, however, was already starting to back out of the door.

“I must return to my work,” he said as he left, “but I promise, you will be taken to the base tomorrow.”

Max sat in silence for a long time after Joel had left. Ariel was still complaining about the treatment they were receiving but Max wasn’t listening to him. Instead, he was looking at the floor, deep in thought. The others were busy talking among themselves and seemed to have forgotten he was there. Suddenly Max sat up straight, and cut Ariel off in mid sentence.

“Ariel, I need to ask you something.”

“What?” Ariel said, shocked by Max’s interruption.

“Do they keep guns in a place like this?”

“Guns? What — you want to force these people to take us back?”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m looking for something that could be used as a weapon, even if it wasn’t built as one, like a cutting laser or a riveting gun.”

“No, nothing like that. This is a research site. Why would they have guns?”

“Then what about explosives?”

“Maybe blasting charges for survey work or trench digging. They’re strictly controlled though, stored away from the main buildings. Why, what do you want them for?” He was looking at Max in confusion. Safi was looking at him as if he’d gone mad.

“We may need them,” Max said. “I think there’s going to be —”

“Going to be what, Lowrie?” Everyone looked up to see Oliver standing in the doorway. “Going to be hell to pay when your little attempts at spying land you in the shit?”

“Going to be trouble, I was about to say.”

“Well you’re right there. Industrial espionage is a serious matter. Don’t think you’re going to be let off lightly just because Joel likes the look of you. I’m going to make sure that you receive the strongest possible treatment. You realise that this is a criminal matter?”

“No more criminal than you bugging the island and selling it to Anna Liu,” Safi said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Oliver said. “And I challenge you to prove otherwise.”

“Then how do you explain what you’re doing here?” Safi said. “You must have realised we got the Prospectors to work, or else why come crawling back?”

“I crawl for no-one. In case you were wondering, Victor came to
me
. I was the principal engineer on that project, and he offered
me a posting here because he knew this was where my skills would be better used.”

“Really? You got here on merit? I find that hard to believe.”

“Some of us
are
good at our jobs you know.”

“No, Oliver, I don’t know what you told Victor, or anyone else to get this job, but you didn’t get here because you’re any good. All you’ve got to offer is what you stole from other people. Joel as good as said so.”

“Huh, I wouldn’t listen to a word that little idiot says. His capacity for lunatic ideas is almost as large as yours. And that’s saying something.”

“What, lunatic ideas like machines replicating themselves? Something you said was impossible but we managed to achieve?”

“If you call those floating death-traps of yours an achievement, then I feel sorry for you. What about you, Lowrie, are you proud of what you built back there?”

Oliver certainly knew what buttons to press. Max couldn’t answer yes, but he wasn’t about to say no either.

“I’m proud of sticking with it, Oliver, instead of jumping ship when the work got too hard.”

“Jumping ship? You can call it that if you want to. Though I think when the revenues start to flow we’ll see who made the right decision, don’t you?”

“Is that the only reason you came to see us?” Safi said. “To gloat?”

“No, I came to inform you that for some reason Joel has decided to house you in the accommodation block for tonight. If it was up to me then you’d be out in the vacuum by now, but there you go. I would take you there myself but I’m growing sick of the sight of you. Just wait here until someone comes for you. Oh, and keep your eyes away from our work. You don’t want to land yourselves in any more trouble.” With that he left.

The next morning Max woke suddenly. At first he was only dimly aware of what had woken him, but as the sounds of running feet and raised voices in the corridor came into focus in his mind, he quickly realised that something wasn’t right. He sat up and looked round the module, trying to work out what was going on. Safi, Ariel and Damon were awake too, sitting up in their bunks, looking at each other in confusion. Harris however was nowhere to be seen.

“What’s happening?” Safi said. “What’s all the shouting about?”

“I don’t know,” Damon said. “And where’s Harris gone?”

Just then Harris appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the light outside.

“Ariel, I think you should see this,” he said.

“Why, what’s going on?”

Harris looked back at him gravely. “Things just got interesting.”

They got up and dressed quickly, then followed Harris out into the corridor. He took them to what appeared to be a control room for the colonies, explaining to Ariel what he’d already seen as they went.

“It looks like some new type of robot has appeared, unlike anything they’ve had before. The drivers who were meant to be taking us back have been following a group of them. But now they’ve started — well, see for yourself.”

They went into the darkened control room then moved away from the door and hid themselves at the back, seemingly unnoticed by any of the personnel inside. A large display screen was on the far wall, showing a low quality video feed taken somewhere on the lunar surface. It was from a handheld camera, presumably held by one of the crew of the ESOS rover, working
outside in the open. They recognised the location at once.

“Oh my God,” Safi whispered. “That’s our rover.”

Or what’s left of it, Max thought. By now only the lower half was still recognisable. The upper half was almost gone, and what was left was being systematically dismantled by the four robots gathered round it. Superficially they looked the same as the miners they’d seen already, but these ones were much larger, and were fitted out with the same cutting and crushing tools they’d seen in use at the colony. As they watched, whole sections were being torn out of the rover’s pressure hull and reduced to fragments, then piled up ready to be hauled back to the colony. It stood to reason, Max thought. Instead of strip mining the soil, they’d found a ready-made source of materials, just waiting to be carved up and taken away.

“I knew it,” Max said. “That one that took the tools, it must have detected the same materials making up the rover. That’s why the miners have been redesigned.”

“Incredible,” Safi said. She must have spoken too loudly however, because just then Oliver turned round and saw her. Then he noticed the others and his mouth fell open.

“What the hell are they doing in here?” he shouted. “Get them out, keep them out of the way!”

“I prefer to stay if you don’t mind,” Ariel said, stepping forward. “That’s our vehicle your machines are destroying. I think we have the right to an explanation.”

“You lost your rights when you first set foot here. I would be a little more co-operative if I were you. Now go!”

Joel was also in the room, sitting at a console at the front. He sprang up and came over to Ariel.

“You must go, please. Let us handle this. We know what we are doing.”

“You’re doing nothing!” Ariel said. “Base property is being destroyed and you’re doing nothing to stop it!”

“Please, we have enough to handle here. Let us deal with
everything else then we can talk about your rover.”

“Everything else?” Max said. For some reason something sounded significant about that. “What do you mean, everything else?”

Joel didn’t answer, but instead looked off to his side, at a large display screen on one of the other walls. Max followed his eyes and looked the same way. It showed a map of the research site, with the settlement on the southern boundary and the colonies arranged to the north of it. The Germanised word “Kambria” marked the colony they’d been taken to the day before, but for some reason all the colonies surrounding it were marked in red, flashing as if in alarm. Then Max realised what it meant.

“Those other colonies, they’re being attacked too aren’t they?” he said. “The Kambria machines are breaking them up as well.”

Joel seemed reluctant to answer. “I think that is what we are looking at, yes.”

Max, however, knew exactly what he was looking at. “Predators,” he said.

At that moment the voice of one of the rover crew came over the video link, saying something in German that Max couldn’t understand, but sounding as if he was calling for attention. Everyone in the room simultaneously looked to the front and saw what had appeared on the screen.

Off in the distance, beyond the remains of the rover, more robots were approaching. There were five or six of them, moving in a group, and all built to the new design. The crewman holding the camera backed away from them as they drew near, opening up the picture and revealing the ESOS rover parked off to the side. It was a standard pressurised design, and, Max noticed, looked almost the same as their own one had.

“Joel,” he said, his voice level but urgent. “Tell your men to get out of there.”

“What?”

“Get them out of there, now. Can’t you see what’s going to
happen?”

Joel looked uncertain for a second, then he seemed to understand. He went back to his seat and spoke quickly into the microphone. Again Max couldn’t understand what was being said but the communication went back and forth several times, almost as if Joel was having to talk the crew into leaving. It didn’t sound as if they were convinced.

This time there was more urgency in Max’s voice. “Get them out of there, Joel, before it’s too late!”

A few seconds later however, it was too late. The first of the robots arrived, going straight past the remains of the first rover and heading for the ESOS one. It rolled up to the nearest corner of the vehicle, extended a pair of cutting tools and began to slice into the metalwork supporting one of the wheel arches. Only then did the crew take the threat seriously, shouting and exclaiming down the audio link. Max and the others saw the picture on the screen lurch as the camera was thrown to the ground and the two crewmen ran forward to challenge the machine. They were only just visible in the picture as they kicked and swung at the robot, trying to break its grip on their vehicle. By now however, others had arrived, effectively surrounding the rover and cutting into it on all sides. Suddenly a blast of gas and vapour was seen, as the rover’s pressure hull was punctured and the cabin air rushed out into the vacuum. Max hoped that no one had been inside. If they had been though, then it would probably have been quicker for them than what happened next.

The scream was so loud that everyone in the room recoiled at once. From the grainy pictures on the screen it looked as if one of the crewmen had got too close to the cutting arms of the robot and had lost his own arm in the process. All that could be seen as he fell to the ground was a dark mist spraying from his severed suit as the air inside shot out, taking droplets of blood with it. His scream stopped almost immediately, but only because there was no longer any air in his suit to carry the sound. The onlookers in
the control room watched, horrified, as the body on the ground continued to turn and writhe for at least five seconds more as the machine cut into it. All they could hear were cries of revulsion from the other crewman as he tried to force the thing away.

Then the machine turned on him, he at least had the sense to run. He bounded away from it, round to the back of the rover and into the now airless cabin. Almost at once the rover began to move, trying to reverse away from the robots that were attacking it, but it soon became clear that the damage it had sustained was too much for it to cope with. The left side of the vehicle was rising and falling as if one of the wheels had been buckled and a large gash was being cut in the soil as part of its damaged superstructure dragged along the ground. It struggled on however, steering erratically past the camera, as the robots turned and followed it out of the picture. By now all that could be seen on the display was the body of the first crewman, motionless at last, but on the audio link the second crewman could still be heard, breathing heavily as he fought to get the vehicle under his control.

Joel tried to talk to him but the replies he got were limited. As far as Max could see, the only hope for the man was for another rover to be sent out to rescue him, assuming he could keep ahead of his pursuers. That question was answered quickly though, when shouts of anger and exasperation from the crewman made it clear that the rover had ground to a halt for the final time. What happened next was less clear, though how it ended was only too apparent. They heard the crewman’s breathing getting faster and deeper, as if he was struggling with something, perhaps trying to get out of the vehicle to escape on foot; they heard the muffled impact of soil under his boots as he ran from the rover, seemingly for his life; and last of all they heard the same final futile cry for help that showed that his attempts too had failed.

As before, the cries were cut short almost immediately. For
whole seconds there was silence in the control room as those who’d heard what had happened just stood and stared at the screen in disbelief. However, even as they did so, and the echoes of the crewman’s voice faded in his mind, Max knew that the robots would be communicating with their home colony, and what was more, he could almost imagine what they would be saying. “Sometimes the resource will move,” the message would go, “and sometimes it will move fast. Build the machines so that they move faster.”