Creations (30 page)

“Did they all come?” Max said. The chance of aberrant behaviour was still his number one concern.

“Every last one,” Ross said. “Do you want to see them? I’ll send up some of the footage we took.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Max and Safi set the film clip running as soon as it arrived, then watched as the entire Prospector population, by now numbering over a million, swarmed in toward the island. Crowded together with no gaps between them they formed a continuous mass almost nine miles across. The shots were taken from the air, presumably from Garrett’s helicopter, but despite the bright sunlit waters and postcard views of the island there was little to the place that Max missed. He didn’t miss the Prospectors either; seeing them now reminded him just how sinister they looked, like blind lumbering creatures, dark and menacing in appearance. He was glad to see them disappear beneath the surface as they scuttled themselves and sank from view, piling up at the foot of the huge underwater cliff that ringed the island. It was good to be rid of the things.

“When are you going to blast them?” he said.

“We’ve already done it,” Ross said over the pictures. “You’ll see it at the end of the film. The pile was almost a thousand feet deep, but they’re well broken up now.”

So the Prospectors no longer existed, Max thought, their materials had been returned to the same sea they came from. In a way he wished he could have been there to see it himself, or even pressed the button to set the explosives off in person. The detonations didn’t look huge on the surface, but down on the seabed they must have pulverised those fragile machines that hadn’t already been crushed by the pressure or sunk into the mud. The avalanche of debris from the cliff itself would have covered what was left. “I wonder what future archaeologists will think, if they ever dig up the remains?” he said when the clip had finished.

“I don’t know,” Ross said. “I guess we’ve given them something to think about.”

* * *

The next morning Max and Safi got together again to run through the pictures she’d taken the previous day. Ariel was working that morning, which gave them half a day to decide on their next course of action.

“Well, I was wrong about those things at the top,” Max said, as her more than capable camerawork played out on the viewing screen. “They look more like mirrors than solar cells.”

“You’re right,” Safi said. “I’ll bet there are generators and furnaces inside those blocks there. The mirrors must follow the sun round, and focus the light down inside. More than enough power.”

“In that case I think I can see how the place is laid out now. The miners bring the raw materials in here, and these blocks must be where the stuff is processed.”

“Yeah, look at what’s coming out on that conveyor. It’s almost like metallic powder. Must be magnesium. I guess those tubes must be taking other materials.”

“And it all feeds into the centre, where the printer is.”

“Simple really.”

“Yes, but remember, the robots are doing most of the hard work. There must be some pretty complex machinery inside those blocks. Even the mining robots are pretty sophisticated, considering how they’re made.”

They watched for another few minutes, then Max suddenly saw something and got her to rewind a few frames and pause.

“That’s interesting,” he said, pointing out one of the structures on the screen. “Look at that block, over on the far side. It doesn’t look as if it’s been finished.”

“I see it,” Safi said.

The block Max had spotted was near the perimeter of the buildings, but the wide hole in its side was only visible when looking at it across the centre from the other side. And unlike the other blocks, this time the interior was perfectly visible. It looked as if some kind of half built manufacturing robot was inside it, waiting lifeless for the components that would make it complete.

“I get it,” Safi said. “This place is self-extracting. It’s building itself, growing outward one block at a time.”

“And the more machines it builds, the more materials it can process, and the more it can spread.”

“Exactly.”

“But it can’t grow forever. It looks like the printer at the middle is the only part that can actually make anything. What does it do when it reaches its limit?”

“I don’t know, we haven’t seen enough yet. We need to get out there again, see it up close.”

“Are you sure? Aren’t these pictures enough?”

“No, they’ve given us as many questions as they have answers. We don’t want to miss anything out. Let me call Ariel, I’ll tell him what we want to do.”

* * *

They drove out again later that day, this time with Damon in the driving seat, and went straight to the site they’d explored the day before. They waited again to see if anyone else was around, then parked up alongside and got into their suits.

“Wow, look how it’s changed,” Safi said once she was outside. She’d gone straight to the spot that gave the best view of the block they’d seen in the pictures, and already it seemed to be almost complete. The machinery inside it filled its interior right to the top, and many of the missing outer panels had now been put in place. They even saw one of them being installed, as a small, wheeled robot, carried it over from the printer block and
pushed it into position. The panel seemed to latch into place, without the need for any screws or fixings.

“I was right, it’s growing,” Safi said.

That however wasn’t the only change. Harris called them over to where he was standing, and pointed down at his feet.

“Look at the ground, where we were standing yesterday. Something’s been busy while we were gone.”

It looked as if the hard paved surface that connected the cylindrical blocks had been extended outward, covering some of the footprints that they’d made the previous day. The hard slabs were perfectly flat, but rough in texture.

“Sintered basalt,” Safi said, kneeling down to look at them. “These must be made in the furnace, basalt powder fused together by heat. Just like we did. I guess it’s getting ready to put another building here.”

Just then Max saw some movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to look over his shoulder.

“Look out, Safi, there’s a miner coming in,” he said.

Safi moved to the side to let the machine through, then they watched as it went through its now familiar routine of backing up to the unloading bay and waiting for its delivery to be extracted. It was only there for about twenty seconds before it moved off again. However, what happened next took them all by surprise. Just as it was turning to head back out into the wilderness, two new robots emerged from one of the buildings and put themselves in its path. The newcomers were much smaller than the miner but were equipped with a fierce looking array of cutting tools on their fronts. As the miner came to a halt they drove over to it and started methodically cutting chunks off its structure, one on each side. Before the miner had a chance to move, its wheels had been completely shredded. Max, Safi and Harris looked on in amazement as it was reduced to pieces no bigger than a fist. The two robots then started to bulldoze the remains toward one of the structures.

“Now why did they do that?” Harris said.

“Must be for recycling,” Safi said. “Getting the materials back. But if this place is growing you’d think it would need more miners, not less. Strange.”

“Is it worth seeing if that happens again?” Max said. “We could get some pictures of it if we’re quick enough.”

“Yeah, good idea,” she said, reaching into her suit pouch to get her omni. Then she tried another pocket, and another, and finally the thigh pockets. “Damn it. Now why would I do that?”

“Do what?”

“I left my omni back at base, in the hab module. Do you guys have anything with you?”

“No,” Harris said.

“Nothing here,” Damon added. “Maybe there’s a camera in the rover.”

Suddenly Ariel’s voice came through their headsets, calling them over from the far side of the site. “We have something new here,” he said.

They moved round and joined him where he was standing.

“Look at those marks,” he said. “They’re not like anything I’ve seen before.”

“They certainly weren’t there yesterday,” Max said.

Leading out of the complex, heading off into the hills, was a collection of tyre tracks. They were bigger than those left by the mining machines, but smaller than those of a rover. Several sets were visible, some coming and some going, as if the same vehicle had gone away then returned several times in succession. Ariel bent down to examine them, then stood up again and looked out into the distance.

“Some new kind of machine,” he said. “Something we haven’t seen before.”

“Well, let’s go see where they lead,” Safi said.

They got back into the rover, then followed the tracks out over the low, undulating hills that made up the local landscape. Only
ten minutes had passed when they spotted their target in the distance. Damon brought them to a halt so that they could watch.

The robot was bigger than the mining machines they’d seen but seemed to be built along similar lines with its low, broad profile and its six bulbous tyres. However the array of arms and manipulators at the front was new, as was the rack on top of it, loaded with various pieces of machinery. It had stopped in the middle of a wide flat area between two ridges and was busy building something out of the parts it had brought with it. Max and the others watched from their vantage point as the construction took shape.

“It’s making another printer, you can see the shape of it,” Safi said. “It must be building another site from scratch.”

“So those nests don’t just grow, they can reproduce as well,” Max said. “I should have guessed that would happen.”

“What are those things, piled up around it?” Ariel said, pointing out of the window. Surrounding the new machine were eight or nine mounds, as if bars and rods of different materials had been stacked up for safe keeping.

“I don’t know, they remind me of haystacks,” Safi said. “Some kind of materials store?”

“That must be what it uses to establish itself, before it can make its own mining machines,” Max said. “The yolk of the egg. It would make sense.”

“Do you want to take a closer look?” Ariel said.

“Sure,” Safi said. “Let’s go.”

Damon set the motors running to take them down the slope, then released the brake to let them move off. Then he suddenly put it back on again and scanned the instrument panel, concern on his face.

“Something’s wrong here, we’re overheating.”

“I can smell burning,” Max said. “It’s coming from the back, under the floor.”

“Right, suits sealed,” Ariel said urgently. “We need to vent.”
With the high oxygen content in the rover, the merest suspicion of a fire had to be dealt with quickly. Fortunately all five of them were still in their suits, so once their faceplates were sealed, Damon opened the vent valves and sent the cabin atmosphere out into space. Max could still detect the burning smell in the air around his face. He hoped his suit’s breathing system would filter it out quickly.

“What was that?” he said.

“The motors,” Harris said. “That’s where they’re installed. This rover was brought in with electrical problems. They were signed off as fixed.”

“It’s completely dead now,” Damon said from the front. “Must have shorted out.”

“So we’re stuck,” Safi said.

“That’s right.”

Max decided not to ask what they should do now. He knew they would be thinking about it already without him prompting them, so instead he waited. Ariel looked sternly at the floor, thinking hard.

“We need to follow standard breakdown procedure,” he said eventually. “There’s no alternative.”

“Are you sure?” Safi said. She didn’t look happy with the decision. “Why not call the base?”

“I’m sure. Whoever we talk to will just route the message back up here anyway. Damon, make the call.”

“What’s the standard procedure?” Max asked Safi.

“We send a distress call on the emergency channel, then whoever’s based nearest comes to pick us up.”

“But the nearest settlement is —”

“Exactly. Damn it, Max, this was all going so well.”

* * *

The response to the SOS call came quickly, barely a minute after
it had been sent out. The ESOS operative who spoke was clipped and business like in the way he dealt with them but Max could easily hear a note of confusion in his voice when he read back the position they’d given. However the emergency channel wasn’t the right place for him to ask what they were doing there; those explanations would have to wait until they met their rescuers face to face.

“There’s no point lying,” Safi said when the call was finished. “We can’t just pretend we got lost. They’ll figure out why we’re here.”

“Well I’m not going to just sit and wait,” Harris said. “We might as well go outside and see if we can fix the damage before they get here.”

Ariel nodded. “You’re right. Let’s see what we can do.”

Ariel and Harris worked solidly on the underside of the rover for half an hour as they waited, with Damon and Safi helping them as required. Max just stood off to the side feeling spare. They didn’t want to repressurise the rover in case a fire broke out, so he stayed outside and watched as the pile of parts and tools slowly built up around the vehicle.

They’d almost given up on repairing it when the two open topped rovers appeared in the distance, kicking up swathes of dust as they bounced over the hills like beach buggies. Max was the first to spot them. He and the others turned to face them and waited for them to close the gap.

The rovers pulled up next to their own, then the driver of the lead one got out and walked over to them. They could only see his face through his visor once he was within ten feet of them. He looked at each of them in turn as they waited expectantly, and only then did he speak.

“You should come with us. Get onto the rovers, now please.”

His accent was German, like the ESOS man who had taken their original call; Safi had said this branch of ESOS was run from there. They did as he said without saying a word, climbing
awkwardly onto the two vehicles. Then the rovers moved off, back the way they’d come.