Genesis

Despite the many objects and installations that were impossible to identify, there was a certain comprehensibility to the place: here, a desk unit, there, a screen of some kind.

Roy, Gloval, and the others were so fascinated that they didn't notice what Lang was doing until they heard the pop and crisp of static.

'Lang, you fool! Get away from there!'

But before Gloval could tear him away from the console, Lang had somehow discovered how to activate it. Waves of distortion chased each other across the screen, then a face appeared among the wavering lines.

Gloval's grip on Lang's jacket became limp. 'Good God… it's human!'

'Not quite, perhaps, but close, I would say,' Lang conceded calmly.

Zor's face stared out of the screen. The wide, almond eyes seemed to look at each man in the compartment, and the mouth spoke in a melodious, chiming language unlike anything the humans had ever heard before.

'It's a 'greetings' recording,' Lang said matter-of-factly.

'Like those plates and records on the old Voyagers,' Roy murmured.

The alien's voice took on a different tone, and another image flashed on the screen. The humans found themselves looking at an Invid shock trooper in action, firing and rending.

'Some kind of war machine. Nasty,' Lang interpreted.

As the others watched the image, Roy touched Gloval's shoulder and said, 'Captain, I think we'd better get out of here.'

'But how? This blasted ship keeps rearranging itself.'

'Look!' cried Edwards, pointing. The deck rippled as a newcomer rose up through it. All weapons came to bear on it except Lang's; the doctor was dividing his attention between what was going on and the continuing message on the screen.

A familiar form stood before them. 'It's the drone robot, the one that broke down,' the gunny said.

Edwards's eyes narrowed. 'Yeah, but how could it have followed us?'

'It appears to be functioning again,' Gloval said. 'Maybe we can use it to contact the base.'

Lang crossed to the robot, which waited patiently. He opened a rear access cowling and went to inspect the internal parts there, then snatched his hands back as if he'd been bitten.

They all crowded around warily, ready to blast the machine to bits. 'This isn't the original circuitry,' Lang said, sounding interested but not frightened. 'The components are reshaping themselves.'

As they stared, wires writhed and microchips changed like a miniaturized urban renewal project seen from above by time-lapse photography. Things slid, folded, altered shape and position. It reminded Roy of an unlikely cross between a blossoming flower and those kids' games where the player slides alphanumeric tiles around into new sequences.

'Perhaps it's been sent here to lead us out,' Gloval suggested.

'But why'd the other gizmos attack?' Edwards objected.

Lang shrugged. 'Who knows what damage the systems have suffered? Perhaps the attacks are a result of a malfunction. Certainly, the message we just saw was intended as a warning, which implies good intentions.'

'But what's it all mean, Doc?' Roy burst out.

Lang looked to him. 'It means Earth may be in for more visitors, I think. Lots more.'

'All right, all of you: Get ready,' Gloval said. 'If we can get the drone to lead us, we'll take a chance on it. We've no alternative.'

While the others readied themselves, dividing up the remaining ammunition, reloading the last two rocket launchers, and listening to Gloval direct their order of march, Lang went back to the screen console.

He had been right; this was the ship's nerve center, and the console and its peripherals were the nucleus of it all. Lang began form-function analysis, fearing that he would never get another chance to study it.

Certainly, the ship used no source of power that he could conceive of. Some uncanny alien force coursed through the fallen ship and through the console. Perhaps if he could get some data on it or get access to it…

At Lang's cry they all turned with guns raised, as strobing light threw their shadows tall against the bulkheads. The command center flashed and flowed with power like an unearthly network of electronic blood vessels.

The console was surrounded by a blinding aurora of harsh radiance that pulsed through the spectrum. Lang, body convulsed in agony, holding fast to the console, shone with those same colors as the enigmatic forces flooding into him.

'Don't touch him-!' Gloval barked at Roy, who'd been about to attempt a body check to knock Lang clear. Edwards moved to one side, well out of range of the discharges, to get a line of fire on the console that wouldn't risk hitting Lang. Edwards made sure his selector was on full auto and prepared to empty the magazine into the console.

But before he could, the alien lightning died away. Lang slumped slowly to the deck.

'Captain, the robby's leaving!' The gunny pointed to where the deck was starting to ripple around the drone's feet.

There was no time for caution. Roy slung Lang over his shoulder, hoping the man wasn't radioactive or something else contagious. In another moment they were all ranged around the robot, sinking through the floor.

Air and matter and space seemed to shift around them. Lang was stirring on Roy's shoulder, and Roy was getting a better grip on him, distracted, when one of the marines hollered, 'Tell me I'm not seein' this!'

The ship had changed again, or they were in a different place. And they were gazing at the remains of a giant.

It was something straight out of legend. The skeleton was still wearing a uniform that was obviously immune to decay. It also wore a belt and harness affair fitted with various devices and pouches. But for the fact that it would've stood some fifty feet tall, it could have been human.

The jaw was frozen open in an eternal rictus of agony and death; an area the size and shape of a poker table was burned through the back of its uniform, fringed by blackened fabric. Much of the skeletal structure in the wound's line of fire was gone.

'Musta been some scrap,' a marine said quietly, knowingly.

Lang was struggling, so Roy let him down. 'Are you all right, Doc-'

Roy gaped at him. Lang's eyes had changed, become all dark, deep pupil with no iris and no white at all. He had the look of a man in rapture, gazing around himself with measureless approval.

'Yes, yes,' Lang said, nodding in comprehension. 'I see!'

There was no time to find out just what it was he saw, because the robot was in motion again. Roy took Lang in tow, and they moved out, only to round a corner and come face to face with two more of the armored guardians.

The gunny, walking point right behind the robby with one of the RPG launchers, let fly instantly, and the machine gunner and the other RPG man cut loose too as the red lines of tracers arced and rebounded of the bright armor.

INTERLUDE

Listen, take the Bill of Rights, the Boy Scout oath, and the Three Laws of Robotics and stick 'em where there's no direct dialing, jerk! «Good» is anything that helps me stay at the top; «bad» is whatever doesn't, got it?

Senator Russo to his reelection committee treasurer

'And, in brief,' Admiral Hayes finished, 'Captain Gloval's party made it back out of the ship with no further casualties, although they encountered extremely heavy resistance.'