The turn became an interminably descending spiral. The turning radius was enough to preclude dizziness, but at about the twelfth circuit I began to get a little disoriented. I thumbed the toggle that gave me back manual control of the rig and slowed down. We descended still farther, about ten more levels, until the tunnel straightened out, ran along for a few hundred meters, then debouched into a huge circular cavern. Spaced evenly along the walls were entrances to passageways radiating outward. I swung the rig sharply to the left and aimed for a tunnel-mouth that took my fancy.
For the next half-hour we wandered aimlessly through a maze of gigantic rooms connected by ramps and passageways. Here and there we passed huge empty bays cut into the walls going back at least a hundred meters. There was nothing at all in them, no equipment or machinery. After finding at least a dozen of them, something occurred to me.
'Everyone on auxiliary motors,' I ordered.
'Good time to test ours under field conditions,' Sean said, referring to the strange new backup engine which Ahgirr technicians had retrofitted Ariadne with. From what I had gathered, it was a thermoelectric motor powered by the controlled burning of oxidized fuel pellets?sort of like a solid-propellant rocket running in slow motion. I didn't entirely understand how it worked, but Sean reported good numbers on his readouts. It was working, more or less. (Ahgirr technology was odd in that it was highly advanced in some areas, like electronics, and clumsily jury- rigged in others.)
'Good thinking, Jake,' Carl said. 'Neutrinos can travel through solid rock like it wasn't there.'
'Should have thought of it earlier.'
'They probably have other ways of tracking intruders.'
'I'm inclined to think they don't get many intruders here, or don't expect to,' I said. 'Anyway, we might as well eliminate the obvious method.'
'One problem, though.'
'What's that?'
'This buggy doesn't have an auxiliary motor.'
'No? Do you have any idea how the power plant works?'
'Not the foggiest. If you look under the hood, you'll see that it looks like a chrome-plated internal combustion engine. In fact, it's a ringer for a Chevy 283 with fuel injection.'
'Yeah? What's that?'
'That means it has a 283 cubic-inch displacement, and instead of a carburetor it has… Never mind all that. Doesn't mean a thing, because the engine's a dummy.'
'Well…' I sighed, resolving once again to get to the bottom of Carl's mystery somehow, even if I had to beat it out of him. 'Hell. Shoot that weird goddamn thing into the trailer and shut it off.'
'Hey, don't talk about my car that way.' Carl was highly offended.
I squelched the mike and cocked an eyebrow at Roland. 'Touchy bastard, isn't he?'
'I've always thought that most Americans have odd neurotic quirks,' Roland said in all seriousness.
I stared at him for a moment. 'Roland?'
'What?'
'Go to hell.'
He shrugged it off. 'Talk about touchy,' he mumbled. 'Simply an observation.'
'Sorry about that, Carl,' I said when I had turned the mike back on. 'Didn't mean anything by it.'
'I should be the one to apologize. l was totally out of line. It's just that?'
'Forget it. I'll evac the trailer. Sam?'
When Sam didn't answer, I reached up to the trailer control panel and did it myself. 'Sam?'
No answer.
I tapped Sam's voice synthesizer module. 'Sam? You there?'
I withdrew the module, blew lightly on the contacts, and reinserted it.
'Sam? Can you hear me? Blink your function light if you can.'
The tiny red light under his camera-eye on the dash remained steady.
I flipped down the keyboard on the terminal, punched up Sam's diagnostic display and ran a quick program: The problem wasn't immediately apparent. The readings were strange, though. I blew air through my lips and sat back. 'We got problems.'
'Serious?' Roland asked.
I shook my head slowly, staring dolefully at the screen. 'Don't know.'
Carl's signal came a little weakly, bouncing out of the trailer and off the walls. 'I'm in.'
'Sean? Get your buggy in there, too.'
'Right you are.'
After Sean had climbed up and in, I lowered the rear door, retracted the ramp, and recycled. When there was enough air in the trailer to carry sound, I switched my feed to the intercom. 'Stay in your vehicles a bit. Going to look around for a dark comer to hide in, then we'll palaver. We gotta decide what we're going to do.' I flipped off the mike, then flipped it on again. 'Besides panic.'
'What about Yuri?' John asked from the back.
'Ah, Yuri,' I said. 'Mind's preoccupied.' I reached and switched over to the comm circuits. 'Yuri?'
'Yes, Jake?'
'Are you using your auxiliary engine?'
'Yes, we are.'
'Good. Just follow me.'
'Affirmative.'
Our tour of the area continued desultorily. We rolled by several kilometers of empty bays… until we found one occupied.
By a Roadbug.
Rather, one-and-a-half Roadbugs.
'It's dividing!' Roland gasped in wonder. 'Reproducing itself!'
I yelled for everyone to come forward.
The thing in the bay had developed a deep rift down its back and had expanded to half again its normal width. It was a stunningly simple and effective method of parturition.
'Now we know they aren't machines,' John said in awe.
'Do we?' I asked.
Roland shook his head at the immense bifurcated blob within the enclosure. 'But complex organisms can't reproduce that way! They just don't!'
'Maybe they're all one cell,' Sean suggested.
'Impossible,' Roland answered, sounding less than certain.
'My question is,' Susan said, 'are they the Roadbuilders? And is this their home planet?'
'Everything points to it,' John said. 'The barrier, the obviously artificial nature of the planet, the dozens, maybe hundreds of portals…'
'I wouldn't jump to conclusions, John,' Roland cautioned.
'They act like bloody machines, though,' Liam said thoughtfully. 'And they function like machines. Yet…' He tugged at his untidy beard and pursed his lips.
'Yet there it is,' Darla said. 'They're organisms in the sense that they reproduce. But that doesn't rule out their being machines.'
'A Von Neumann mechanism,' I said.
Sean squinted one eye and looked at me askance. 'I've heard of that somewhere. Self-reproducing machines?is that the concept?'
'More or less,' I said. 'But I'm inclined to believe that we're looking at something here that obliterates the borderline between organism and mechanism, between the organic and the inorganic.' I turned to Susan. 'As to your question about whether they're the Roadbuilders, I'd say no. It's just a hunch. Bugs may be highly intelligent, maybe enough to have constructed the Skyway, but take it from an old starrigger?they're cops. There's an air of the bullet-headed civil servant about them. Whoever caused the Skyway to be constructed had some very good reason?sublime or practical, I don't know which. But it's all part of a grand scheme. These guys'?I cocked a
