“Shit!” Everett said, as a round from Tram struck the badly wounded man and dropped him. But the saving shot had come too late for Jack. Everett saw another man rise up where Collins had disappeared after hitting the rocks. Carl fired from the hips and then several more rounds from Tram struck the terrorist simultaneously, dropping him cold.
Carl saw Jack rise once more, stagger forward and then fall. For Everett, all semblance of reality was vanishing fast as he realized Jack was done for.
Niles rubbed a hand over his balding head. He had just returned from outside, where he had witnessed the new problem they were facing-he had nearly frozen at the site of the mechanical giants that were now chasing, catching, and killing the men defending the gallery. He knew these weren’t a technology of Earth origin, so he had to believe they had been left here to either kill the ancient travelers, or they had been left here by those same Visitors, though for what reason Niles didn’t know.
Appleby slammed his hand down on the alien weapons in the vise grips. He was frustrated when they couldn’t get the coolant tube to open. As he grew more and more frustrated, it was nothing compared to what Pete, Dubois, and Ellenshaw were feeling as they tried desperately to figure out where McCabe and possibly the Germans had failed in making one of the weapons operational.
“Look, I’m telling you based on the damaged weapons we’ve seen in here that they all overheated, so it must be the liquid hydrogen they were using. Either it was not enough, or our coolant just doesn’t work with their technology,” Dubois said as he looked angrily at Ellenshaw and Golding.
“I can’t believe that. No matter where these beings came from, the liquid nitrogen would still be on their periodic table. It would be just as cold on their world as ours. It’s not the coolant but the mineral!” Ellenshaw said forcibly, as Pete nodded his head in agreement.
“You’re a freaking cryptozoologist,” the MIT professor said to Charlie. He turned and glared at Pete. “And you’re a computer expert. I think I know who has a degree of confidence here when it comes to physics, and it’s not you two. The coolant is failing!”
“Oh, so we’re tossing degrees in everyone’s face now,” Ellenshaw said as he took a menacing step toward the much smaller Dubois. Pete stepped between the two men and adjusted his glasses.
“May I remind you two that we have men dying out there?”
Charlie nodded and angrily turned away.
“Look, I agree with Charlie here. If you look in the power pack-” Pete held up the large magazine-like power source for the light weapon. “-you can see that McCabe and his scientists, and possibly the Germans also, ground up the mineral, particulate matter and all. Look here. See that? It was so hot that heat turned it to solid carbon. We have to break the mineral down into its base form, separating the energy source.” This time Golding held up a small meteorite that had been stored inside a large airtight container. “This strange metal here, see the gold and silverish flecks? We have to break that free from the particulate matter. That way the carbon won’t overheat the energy pack, causing the nitrogen not to work. It’s our only chance.”
“How do you suggest we mill it in time? As you said, we have men dying out there,” Dubois countered.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Ellenshaw said. He snatched the small meteorite from Pete’s hand and ran to the worktable. He rummaged through the mess of tools there and found what he was looking for. “You guys at MIT spend too damn much time in the lab. You need to get out more,” he said as he brought a hammer high into the air and smashed it down on the meteorite. The small rock shattered. Pete started scrambling on the floor to pick up some of the loose debris. Charlie brought the hammer up again and smashed down with all his strength.
“Okay, I see your point,” Dubois said. He too started picking up the metal as it was freed from the rock. “We don’t have time to chip away the rest of the particulate.”
“It doesn’t matter, as long as the percentage of heavy metal is far greater than the percentage of rock. That will allow the nitrogen to cool it better and create the chain reaction. The only problem is, in order to discharge the energy buildup, we have to continuously fire the damn thing or it will blow. That’s what we don’t have the time to figure out,” Ellenshaw said. He grabbed another meteorite and started slamming the hammer into it.
“I think I’d better get out of the lab more often,” the MIT professor said.
Niles finally found the access tube for the liquid nitrogen.
“The nitrogen works in two different ways with this weapon,” he said. “It’s introduced into the power pack as the liquid active agent, and this little induction pump here forces oxygen, or air, into the magazine, thus creating the chain reaction we witnessed on the Moon. Once the buildup is achieved, we only have… hell, I don’t know how long we have, but we had better target something and shoot, or the damn thing will blow up in our hands.”
“I see,” Appleby said, finally calming down as the noise of Charlie’s hammering echoed inside the blockhouse.
“Or I should say Charlie has only so long to discharge the weapon,” Niles finished.
Ellenshaw stopped a hammer blow in midair and looked at Niles with a questioning look on his face.
“Well, you’re the one who always wants to shoot something. Here’s your chance,” Niles said and tossed Pete the empty power magazine.
“Great,” Ellenshaw said. He slammed the hammer down one last time, freeing the mineral that would either save them or blow the entire gallery into oblivion.
Either way, the battle for Columbus would soon be coming to an end.
As she bounced into the first room she came to, Sarah saw she had entered an area that had offered the visitors of millions of years before a place to suit up into their environment clothing. There was an airlock, which had been destroyed by the explosion created by the Beatle, and then a large connecting room that looked as if it ran off to connect with labs and other parts of the buried complex. As she watched, a soldier bumped into her. She turned and saw General Kwan as he unloaded a full magazine of bolt-sized kinetic rounds at one of the mechanical giants. She pulled him deeper inside the room with no roof. As she did she saw one of the men, a Chinese soldier, go flying past them more than thirty feet in the air. Her eyes followed him until he vanished over the exposed roof of the bunker. She kept pulling at Kwan as he reloaded a weapon that was the equivalent of throwing rocks at a tank. Sarah let go for as long as it took to activate her COM system.
“Will, get as many of the men together as you can and get them into the bunker any way possible. Maybe we can find a level here that these things can’t squeeze into.”
There was no answer for the longest time. She once more took General Kwan by the oxygen pack and pulled him along. She had only gone a few feet when a giant hand crashed down through the strange composite material and crushed the wall nearest them. She looked up as she fell and saw the robot staring down at her and Kwan. They were had. The thing towered over them in the silent vacuum of the Moon’s atmosphere. She saw that it had no mouth, no ears, and a head that looked like some kind of buffed or stainless steel. The red eyes were like quartz crystals. It had no numbers or distinguishing marks. The gears inside its body spun, stopped, and spun some more. There were pulsating bladders protected by a series of giant metallic ribs separated by only inches. Even if they had ground-to-air missiles, she didn’t know if anything like the BGM-71 TOW system could penetrate the strange alien armor. These things were built to survive, and had done so on this hostile rock for 700 million years. As she tried to get up, the metal beast raised its steel-entwined arm into the air and leaned over the high wall of the first building. Kwan kept firing, aiming for the eyes, as he was thinking that maybe they were some sort of information-gathering device. To Sarah’s way of thinking this was right, because robots certainly didn’t need eyes for aesthetic purposes. She knew that she and the general were about to be smashed to pieces, but at that moment several dozen kinetic rounds slammed into the steel and threw the robot off balance.
Sarah saw this and pulled on Kwan harder. This time the general didn’t need much convincing. They both turned and struggled down a not too wide hallway, one that wasn’t accommodating for their bulky suits, and made their way deeper into the alien complex. As she did, she heard Will Mendenhall ordering the survivors of the attack inside from someplace where they had attacked the first robot. Thus far she didn’t know the disposition of anyone.
Sarah saw a smaller room off to her right and made for it, closely followed by the general. As Sarah turned
