SYSTEMS ONCE THE CREATURE REALIZES THAT I AM INEDIBLE AND WITHDRAWS.
Why, Martin raged silently, were intelligent robots so stupid? But it was Beth who spoke first.
“We are edible,” she said, clearly and simply as if speaking to a child. ‘The creature knows we are here and it has organic sensors which will confirm our continued presence within you. The creature will not, therefore, withdraw and we are seriously at risk unless you…”
“Get us out of here!” Martin broke in harshly as the floor heaved alarmingly and for a few seconds became a wall.
OF COURSE. MATTER TRANSMITTER ENGAGED. DESTINATION?
“The lander, stupid.”
They had been sprawled in an untidy heap inside the protector and that, following the split second of indescribable shock as their bodies were dispersed into their individual atoms and reassembled again, was how they arrived in the tender’s control center. He helped Beth to her feet, wondering if there was a single square inch of his body which was not aching. Beth winced as she sat down at the console to set about protecting their lander.
The predator had lost interest in the damaged protection vehicle and was moving slowly in their direction. Martin hoped that it was simply curious about the large, unusual object occupying its territory and not aware, at a distance of nearly half a mile upwind, that they were inside.
Their view of the creature became hazy for an instant as Beth put up the lander’s force shield. Then, with an expression which was distinctly maternal, she signaled the damaged protector for a status report.
EIGHTY PERCENT EXTERNAL SENSORS INOPERABLE. SEVERE DAMAGE SUSTAINED TO UPPER HULL. GRAVITY NEUTRALIZATION GRIDS INOPERABLE. POWER SUPPLY OPTIMUM. PRIORITY IS BEING GIVEN TO REPAIR OF THE GRIDS TO RESTORE MOBILITY. ESTIMATED TIME FOR GRID REPAIRS SEVENTEEN MINUTES. FOR RETURN TO LANDER NINETEEN MINUTES.
“There’s no big hurry,” Beth said. “Make a wide circle on your way back and keep the lander between you and the predator. You don’t want to lose another argument with that thing,”
REVISED ESTIMATE FOR RETURN TO LANDER TWENTY-SIX MINUTES.
But before she could acknowledge, the screen color changed from black to red.
EMERGENCY. MALFUNCTION IN SELF-REPAIR MANIPULATORS. SENSORY INPUT REDUCING. MOVEMENT IN ANY DIRECTION IMPOSSIBLE. THE VEHICLE IS TRAPPED IN A LOCAL LAND SUBSIDENCE. REQUEST ASSISTANCE.
“Maintain transmission of all sensory input, incomplete though it is,” Beth said. “We’ll pull you out of there as soon as possible.” To Martin, she added worriedly, “My initial scan of the landing area did not show any subsurface pockets. I don’t understand how…”
She broke off as the screen lit with the bright, crawling blankness indicative of a receiver which no longer had a signal to receive. The adjacent screen showed the already magnified image of the predator galloping rapidly into close-up.
Then for no apparent reason the creature slowed, veered to the right and came to a halt. It began to move slowly in a tight circle with its head held close to the ground. Then it stopped again and reared up with its forelimbs pawing the air and its twin trunks extended stiffly upward in a narrow V. For the first time since encountering the creature they heard it make a noise, a high-pitched hissing sound which wavered above and below the level of audibility.
“Some sort of courtship dance, I expect,” Beth said doubtfully, “except that there isn’t another one of the beasties within detection range- Now, what!”
Without warning the predator had dropped from sight. It looked as if the ground had opened up and swallowed it.
“I’m absolutely sure there were no subsurface caves this close to the landing area,” she said, slipping into the control position and initiating the take off sequence. “We’ll take a closer look at what happened to that creature on the way to rescuing our protector, and before a subsurface cave opens suddenly under us.”
“Right,” Martin agreed.
A few minutes later the lander was hovering above the fresh subsidence. The cave-in was about thirty feet across and roughly the same depth, and the predator was in the exact center of it. Part of a leg and one trunk lay loosely on the fallen soil, looking as if they had been freshly and very crudely amputated, and they did not need the sensors to tell them that the creature was dead.
When they moved to the subsidence covering the protector robot, Beth signaled it again on the off chance that it had been able to repair its communicator. There was no response.
“I’ll work the tractor beam,” Martin said. “Hold us steady while I uncover your sick friend.”
“No,” Beth said, indicating the sensor displays. She sounded as if she herself did not believe what she was saying. “You can’t help my sick friend because it isn’t there anymore. Apart from a few sections of plating, something or somebody has taken our protector robot apart and gone off with the pieces.”
Martin looked over her shoulder, thinking that their lander could not be undermined and taken apart while it was five hundred feet in the air. But that did not mean that the agency which had dismantled their protector and killed one of the largest and most ferocious native predators had no other surprises up its sleeve.
Under emergency thrust, the lander was already climbing through the upper atmosphere when Martin said unnecessarily, “Let’s get out of here.”
Inside the orbiting mother ship they felt safe but very, very confused.
“At this range I can’t detect anything less massive than a heavy screwdriver,” Beth said, “that’s why I’m losing sensor contact with the components of the robot. Even the parts which do not normally break down, such as the power and gravity nullification generators, are being concealed by increasing depth or intervening aggregations of ore-bearing rock. To get a clearer picture I’d have to soft-land a probe and do a proper sonic scan.”
“I suppose we can afford to lose a probe,” Martin said dryly, “as well as a protector robot.”
“It will detect anything approaching from beneath the surface,” she replied irritably, “in plenty of time for me to Lift it clear.”
Considering the virtually limitless resources of the hypership, the loss would be of little importance-except to Beth, who had a very tidy mind.
“Is it possible,” he asked, “that the terrain conceals a life form large enough to ingest surface creatures at will? That predator was literally swallowed up and partially eaten. Maybe it thought our robot was edible, too.”
Beth shook her head. “That’s a bit fanciful. A single beast capable of opening mouths in any desired area of the surface would be large and extremely energy hungry, and the evidence of its presence would be hard to miss. Judging by the way that predator died, its killers are hunters and burrowers who operate as a team. For some reason they prefer to work below ground.”
“On the surface they might be at a disadvantage against the predators,” Martin said, “so they have to be sneaky.”
Which was synonymous, they both knew, with the use of intelligence.
“I’m thinking,” Beth said, “of the way the predator’s attack on the lander was diverted, and why. The presence of a large creature or object can be detected by its effect on the surface, but time is needed to undermine the target, during which it must not move away.
“The robot was easy,” she went on, “because it was damaged and motionless. The predator had to be immobilized in a different fashion. The proper scent would do it, released a few hundred yards upwind. Strong, olfactory indications of a female nearby would make it lose interest in attacking the lander, and once it stopped moving, our friends trapped it in their freshly dug pit. But were they the same group who dismantled the protector, or a different one?”
