'We're coming up on the edge of the world,' John inIormed us solemnly.
'That may work to our benefit,' Arthur said.
The curve of Microcosmos' rim swept under us looking like an LP record covered with moss and lichen. We flew out into space following a trajectory that kept us at a fairly uniform altitude above the bulge of the cross- hatched, metallic disk edge.
That's where they got us. A blinding blue-white flash enveloped the ship.
'Oh, dearie me.'
The ship wobbled, then shuddered, then wobbled again. The walls went opaque, and the interior lighting went off. Strange forces pushed and shoved at us. The lighting returned.
'Everybody up against the bulkhead!' Arthur yelled. 'Strap in!'
I stepped back and leaned against the bulkhead, which immediately threw out rubbery tentacles that snaked around my thighs and my chest, wriggling under my arms.
'Merciful deity-types!' Ragna exclaimed as the same happened to him.
The next minute was disorienting. We went into a tumbling fall, then straightened out and dove in a tightening spiral. G-forces tore at us, but the straps, marvelously resilient, cushioned the shocks, and the bulkhead behind me seemed to have turned soft and mushy. I wondered if there were anything in the infinitude of possible universes that this craft could not do.
Besides making a claim of absolute invulnerability, that is. It couldn't do that.
'They caught us in a cross fire,' Arthur said after he had regained control of the ship. We seemed to be flying fairly straight now, though still descending. 'I was wondering if there was a weapon that could bring this ship down. And there isn't. But they maneuvered us exactly into a position so that three of the defensive batteries along the rim could get off shots at us simultaneously. That did the trick, at least temporarily. The main propulsion system is inoperative. It can fix itself, but it'll take time. Meanwhile, I have to set her down, like right now.'
There was a gentle bump. The ship skidded a couple of dozen meters, stopped, rocked back and forth a few times, and came to rest.
'Whew,' Arthur said. 'Crash landing.'
I said, 'Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, I always say.'
'They'll be here any second,' Arthur said. 'There should be a tunnel entrance around here someplace. Our only chance is to get in the truck and get underground right away.'
The rubbery straps retracted, disappearing into the bulkhead. I looked around. It was dark outside. We had come to rest on a flat metal plain whose only nearby discernible feature was a reticulated cube glinting in the starlight about fifty meters away.
I took a step forward, bounced up about ten centimeters, and floated gently back down.
'The only gravity here is what the mass of Microcosmos generates naturally,' Arthur warned. 'It's about one twentieth of what you people are used to. Watch your step.'
'You coming?' I asked.
'If there's any time, I'll deflate the ship and stow it in your trailer. Get going.'
'Looks like we're back in the trucking business,' Sam said.
We ran to the rig and piled in. I turned her over, and by the time I had the engine squeezing hydrogen, the door to the cargo bay had dilated. I backed out, slipping and sliding. The gravity was just barely enough to allow the rollers to grab at all. I juiced them up to maximum traction.
'No need to brief me on the current situation,' Bruce said. 'I have been monitoring.'
'Good boy Bruce,' I told him.
Sam was staring at the dashboard camera, which had once been his eyes. 'Who the hell is Bruce?' Then he figured it out. 'The Wang A.I.?'
'Right,' I told him.
Arthur followed us out. As soon as he stepped out onto the blue-tinted metal of the surface, the ship began to shrink. I cycled the trailer and opened the rear door. There was no air out there. When the spacetime ship had become a miniature of itself, Arthur picked it up and galumphed around back. Arthur could move when he wanted to.
I scanned the dark sky. One of the blue cubes was hovering off to starboard at about a hundred meters off the surface. 'Damn!' I said. 'We've had it.'
I checked the trailer camera. Arthur was aboard and I saw something back there I couldn't believe, but now was not the time to ponder it.
I gunned the engine and shot forward, making a sharp turn toward the cubical structure. A pink flash stabbed my eyes. Sitting in the shotgun seat, Sam looked back. 'It's the cube,' he said. 'Firing at us.'
Green spots chased each other in front of my eyes. 'Are they hitting us?'
'I guess. Can't tell. I don't see how they could miss at this range.'
Another flash lit up the metallic plain, but by this time I had the ports polarized.
'Did you have this rig retrofitted with some kind of supertech defensive screen or force-field?' Sam asked.
'No-I never thought of it. Should have. Had the opportunity, in fact.'
The cubical structure was big, its surface running with pipes and conduits. Antennalike projections bristled here and there. It had no opening, however. I swerved away from it, rolling over the smooth featureless surface. The cube got off another shot at us, and this time the rig shook a little with the impact.
'Hm,' Sam said. 'They're not missing.'
There was an obstacle up ahead, a pipeline or something of the sort, running across our path. I turned left and ran along it until it ended at an elbow joint curling into the ground. There were other structures to the left, and I turned and scooted toward them, rolling in and out of one of two shallow troughs on the way. I ducked into the midst of some oblong buildings, shooting up and down the alleys between them, finally exiting the miniature town and heading for another just like it which lay across an obstacle course of valves and pumps: I nearly flattened a few of these; it was dark out here on the edge of the world. The flashes were getting more violent. The cab shook and buffeted more with each new assault.
'They're getting through to us,' Sam said worriedly.
'I wonder what's been holding them back so far,' I said.
I shot through another whistle-stop town of mechanical structures. At the other end I found a ramp leading up to a wide raised slab which cut across our path-a sort of elevated roadway. I had to get up on it or double back, so I gunned the engine, sent the rig thumping up the steep ramp, and turned left on the roadway, looking for a way down the other side, because we were sitting ducks up here. The star-filled sky crawled with red disks and blue cubes, most of them shooting beams of pink fire at us. Colorful bastards, I had to give 'em that.
I floored the power pedal and got some speed. up. The roadway was wide enough to permit cautious evasive action — the edge was difficult to pick out. As we made our way down the level road, I could see that the ground below was dropping away. Then all of a sudden the ground left off entirely, the road having become a bridge over a deep pit, at the bottom of which lay things that looked like cranes and wrecking equipment. There was no guardrail, and although being up there would have been scary under any circumstances, getting shot at into the bargain provided that certain zest, that sharp experiential tang, that… je ne sais quoi which makes life worth living. He said blithely.
There was something lighting up the murk at the other end of the bridge, something familiar yet frightening.
'What the hell is that?' Sam demanded, and I realized that Sam had never seen what Carl had named a Tasmanian Devil.
'It's a real pain in the butt,' I answered, braking hard. Looking like a swirling tornado of red-orange fire, the strange phenomenon slowly but steadily advanced toward us, strange shadows writhing at its center. I slid the rig to a halt — it was hard stopping in this gravity-and switched all the monitors to rearview: The roadway wasn't wide enough to execute a U-turn, and there wasn't time to back and fill, so I slammed the transmission into reverse and floored it. This is just the sort of thing you don't want to do with a trailer truck. There was a very good chance that we'd wind up at the bottom of the pit. But we really had no choice. I knew what that thing would do if it caught us. When it caught us. I had first seen a Devil back on a planet called Splash-it seemed a thousand years ago. Roland and I had inadvertently unleashed one by fiddling with the weapons controls on Carl's Chevy. This one, and the one
