assassinate with a good, tight turn. The ejection module, adapted from a small escape pod, had been built with its two unusual passengers in mind. Lenna could walk away from impacts that would have left ordinary humans dead or badly injured. Bill had, of course, been built to very demanding specifications, at least by Union standards. The replacement of many of his vital components, especially his brain and other electronics, with constructed parts had made him especially durable.
Lenna glanced about. The lights were still on and there were no icy drafts at her back, so it seemed that the module had survived the one brief, dramatic journey of its career. Bill was still folded away in his own shock- absorbing cradle, his armored head and camera pods rotated around to watch her. He said nothing. He was obviously his usual charming self; Lenna saw no reason to be worried about him.
“You want to go for a walk?” she asked.
“Baby, it’s cold outside,” Bill answered obliquely; heaven alone knew what he had in mind by that response.
“Why don’t we find out how cold,” she said as she began unstrapping from her seat.
At least she maintained the good sense to get everything ready before she opened the hatch. As a part of her usual procedure, she was dressed in a Union officer’s uniform complete with arctic survival gear, weapons, and forged identities that were good enough to survive even a computer check. Starwolves knew quite a lot of interesting tricks, including magnetic strips on identity cards that told the computer reading the card that it knew her.
Ready at last, she released the hatch and threw her packs outside before following herself. Getting Bill out of a hatch that was three sizes too small was quite another matter, especially now that the module was no longer resting completely level. The sentry was in fact surprisingly agile, his reflexes faster even than her own, but he always moved with exaggerated slowness and deliberation in enclosed spaces. Lenna had never figured out whether that was a function programmed into him or an acquired idiosyncracy. He had collected a few in the course of his existence.
“You know, that was an exceedingly stupid idea,” Lenna remarked as she stretched. All of her bones felt as if they had been rammed together.
“It was your exceedingly stupid idea,” Bill reminded her with the perfect honesty that came from perfect innocence.
Lenna frowned as she began tossing her packs over his back. “You never have learned the meaning of discretion.”
“It is hard to be discreet when you weigh the better part of a ton.”
Sometimes, when they were alone for days or weeks on end, Lenna wished more than anything that Bill possessed the spontaneity to engage in real conversation. Then, on some rare occasion such as this, Bill would do his best, and Lenna was reminded that she was probably better off with a reticent robot.
She turned to survey the horizon to the west, knowing that the approach path of the freighter was to have left her due east of the base. She had no idea of the distance. The drop was to have been where some landform, such as the ridge several kilometers to the west, offered protection from scan and radar. Without any good maps of the planet, finding such a place as that had been entirely a matter of chance. They could be ten kilometers short of their target, or a thousand. If they could make their way to higher ground, then she could put Bill’s optical scanners and sensors to the task.
“Let’s be on with it, then,” she said, rapping affectionately on the sentry’s hull. “I’ve got to keep moving before I freeze.”
“I contain no material which could freeze at the predicted temperatures for this environment,” Bill offered for reasons that no one could begin to guess.
“Bully for you.”
Leading the way, Lenna started out across the ice field. This was going to be hard walking. She was really not cold because of the self-warming arctic gear; she never had to worry about freezing, as long as she had a spare set of fresh batteries to charge from Bill’s generator. But the loose snow and broken rock and ice would make for very rough going. She had grown up in a world that was as mountainous as it was wintry, although she had been an artist and a part-time pilot rather than a ranger in the wild. She was most worried about Bill, and what might happen if he fell over into a tight place. He was so heavily armored that he weighed quite a lot, and he had two sets of legs but no hands.
“It was a better plan than your first one,” Bill proffered after more than a minute of walking.
Lenna turned to stare at him. It took her a moment to realize just what he was talking about, their discussion of the stupidity of her plan for getting them down having been brief and some time past.
She shrugged, resuming their march. “I don’t see how it could have been worse. Riding in to our destination inside a missile and then parachuting down would hardly have been a rougher ride, as long as the parachute opened at the end. It would have saved us this long walk in.”
“I would not have fit inside a missile,” Bill explained in a voice that conveyed simple, patient logic.
“Oh, excuse me!”
“Would you like for me to shut up?”
“No, not at all. Who else would I have to talk to, out here in the middle of nowhere? I am at your mercy.” She paused, having seen a small movement in the snowfield just ahead. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Bill asked.
Lenna saw something move again, and pointed. “Look!”
Lenna could have tripped over her own face, she was so surprised. She looked around, finding herself in the middle of a vast complex of small holes skillfully hidden in the ice. A considerable number of the holes held small, white-furred animals standing upright just above their burrows, peering at her with bright eyes and perked ears. They were about the size of a very small dog, certainly nothing for her to worry about. At least not as long as she had that walking battleship staring over her shoulder.
“What are those things?” Lenna asked quietly. All the information there was to be had on this planet had been downloaded into Bill’s secondary memory storage.
“Ice gophers,” the sentry explained simply, then seemed to shift gears. “Extensive colonies of ice gophers, numbering anywhere from less than a dozen to several hundred, are borrowed into the ice of glaciers and ice fields. The small but hardy pseudo-mammals are intelligent and gregarious, and are noted to be very curious and fearless. The members of the colony are in continual and apparently extensive vocal communication, defending their colonies through the diligence of constant sentries. Their most remarkable trait is their ability to mimic the sound of other animals, even complex speech, with truly amazing clarity.”
“Thus spake Zarathustra,” Lenna said under her breath. “Knowing our friends, they probably have an entire colony of vast proportions surrounding their damned base. Hello!”
“Heigh-dee heigh-dee ho!”
“Heigh-dee heigh-dee hay!”
“By the gods, what a feeling of power!” Lenna said to herself, then started forward again through the middle of the colony. “Take it, maestro!”
“Hey heigh-dee heigh-dee, heigh-dee hay a gopher hole!” Bill roared in a deep, gravelly voice as he followed, his massive hull seeming to sway in time with the rhythm. He was a machine of many unique talents, but music was not one of them.
The first hint Lenna had that they were anywhere near the base was when the small patrol ship came over the top of the hill to their left, moving quickly to intercept them. She recognized the ship immediately as a hover tank, a fairly standard type used by the Union in rugged terrain, part attack craft with powerful weapons and part transport. It could fly like a real aircraft for covering rough ground, although it usually hovered just over the surface on a form of field drive to save power. It could even float, although such a function was of little use in this place.
The tank settled to the ice a short distance away and the main hatch opened, dropping down to form a
