Colossus and Crab (22 page)

Staples was already lighting the thermal lances. “Put your goggles on and grab this,” he said to a nervous guard. “Go on - it won’t bite you!” He chalked a rough circle on the cement, “Aim there.” Soon the two men were painting the area with flame. Satisfied, Staples supervised a third man laying out the final length of hose. “Okay, get back to the fire-plug and test - then stay there.”

Angela returned in the Commander’s car without the owner. “I said he should get back to his office - maybe there’ll be an important message,” she explained, adding in a very different voice: “Or maybe not.”

Blake was equally glad to be rid of the man. Angela had brought a folding chair, and he sank gratefully into it. God - he felt so tired, the day so endless …

She was at his elbow with food and coffee. Irritably he waved it away, but she would not be put off.’ ‘Don’t be a damned fool, Blake. Eat!”

A long way back, in one of these same buildings, they’d been lovers - or, more accurately, they’d had sex together - once. For neither of them had it been a great experience; he remained “Blake” to her.

Staples took his share with slightly more gratitude, but kept his full attention on the wall and his watch.

“How much longer?” Blake had not meant to ask; Staples knew what he was doing, and there was no point in riling the man.

“Give it another five minutes.”

Slowly the time passed, the almost invisible flames having no apparent effect on the wall. Blake gripped the arms of his chair, forcing himself not to look at the sky.

Staples signaled to the man at the fire-plug. The hose bulged, snaking on the ground. He shouted, “Okay, stand clear, you guys!” As they hastily moved away, he took a sighting shot on the wall to one side, then swung the shaft of water at the target. Steam billowed upwards. The watchers heard a faint crackling sound. The steam vanished. He turned off the hose and dropped it, walking quickly to the wall, Blake shambling unsteadily after him.

Faint cracks crazed the still-warm surface, and in several places the wall was pockmarked. Staples picked at the cement with a pocket knife; thin flakes fell. He shook his head. “Reckon we’ve lifted one, two millimeters.”

“That’s too bloody slow!” Blake struggled with his temper. “At that rate we’d not hit the mesh for goddam hours!”

“Right,” agreed Staples calmly. “For speed it’s jackhammers or explosives.”

Blake shook his head.

“I could fix some mild blasting, Doctor.”

“What d’you mean, mild?”

“I could drill a pattern of holes, fill half with water, seal ‘em with iron cement, and try the heat on ‘em.”

“Why half - and how d’you keep the water in?”

Staples ignored Blake’s snappy tone. “Reckon the empty half will take some of the expansion. The water stays put ‘cause I’ll drill the holes obliquely, downwards.”

Blake rubbed his face nervously. “How long?”

“Mebbe an hour.”

Blake’s gaze searched the craftsman’s face for an assurance that was not there. He sighed.’ ‘Okay, Joe. Go to it. I know you’ll do your best. I’m gonna sleep. Call me before you have action.”

Suddenly he felt time was not vital. They’d never make it; Forbin and the rest would just have to take that thirty-minute run. At least it would give them a few hours’ more life - time for another good meal, a good lay - except they’d never know it was the last. …

Angela took him to a nearby office block; three sleeping bags were laid out on the dusty floor. Without comment Blake lay down, and was instantly asleep.

It seemed he had hardly shut his eyes when Angela shook him. Wearily he struggled up, with her help.

The target area was now marked by two concentric rings of irregularly shaped red patches. Staples explained tersely: the inner ring of sealed holes were loaded with water; the holes in the outer ring were empty. When heated, the steam in the inner holes would seek the weakest point; the concrete should rupture outwards to the second ring.

Blake grunted, Staples nodded, and the lances came into play, the men keeping to one side of the target. For a time nothing happened.

A whipcrack, and a plug disintegrated. Blake swore, and Staples frowned. Turning towards the craftsman, Blake felt a sharp blow on the shoulder. The air was full of flying fragments and firecracker explosions. He ducked. A guard yelled, dropping his lance; only Staples, prudently stationed to one side, remained calm, turning the hose on the wall, regardless of the unfortunate guards. The wall crackled and banged anew.

“Guess that’s done something,” said Staples, discarding the hose for a hammer and cold chisel.

Blake followed him into the steam, glancing at his watch: three hours left… . Hopeless.

Staples poked the wall with the chisel, then jammed it in a crack and gave it a hard, sideways blow. Blake winced. He hit again, passed the hammer to Blake, grasped the chisel with both hands, and wrenched. An irregular lump, big as a grapefruit, moved, fell.

A short length of round steel bar, thick as a pencil, gleamed dully in the setting sun. Before Blake could stop him, Staples touched it.

“It’s okay. I checked the field before I started drilling. It’s not energized.”

“You don’t haveta prove it,” said Blake, handing back the hammer. He turned away as Staples renewed his attack. He daren’t watch.

At last, in a very long day, the sun he had seen rise eight thousand kilometers to the east was setting, the towering cliff above them was dark, and the distant hills were lost in a deepening blue haze. Back in the complex it would be night, a night fast wearing away towards a dreadful dawn and the next lethal test. That thought, reinforced by the powerful thudding of hammer on chisel, made up Blake’s mind.

“Okay Joe - jackhammers!”

Staples stopped, arms hanging loosely, breathing heavily. Several square inches of the mesh was visible. “I may cut the mesh. How about a secret capacitance circuit?”

Blake hesitated. The risk was hideous, but it had to be taken. “To hell with it! If there is a circuit - I doubt it - we’ll never get in, however much we pussyfoot around. Go ahead!”

Staples preserved his monumental calm. “You have to have a mighty good reason, Doc.”

“Just get on with it!” Blake pulled himself up short. “Yeah, there’s a good reason, all right.”

“Okay, you’re the boss.”

Blake sank into the chair Angela had moved up, briefly wondering how Staples could be so goddam calm in accepting an order that might destroy the world. Perhaps, like Blake, he did not really believe there was a risk - but just suppose they were wrong? Blake went over the problem once again. To his certain knowledge there was no auxiliary nuclear power supply inside. Unlike the super-Colossus, men knew exactly what lay inside this older version. Again and again he reminded himself that he had cut the power, and that without energy nothing could happen. All would be well. The exercise did no good; he remained haunted by the fear of something overlooked, forgotten.

The taciturn Staples took Blake’s order with outward unconcern, but his actions were ultracareful. His ragged nerves tortured by the craftsman’s apparent slowness, Blake saw the sense in making haste slowly, but it was all he could do to stop himself screaming when Staples insisted on rigging floodlights before starting work.

Less than two and one half hours remained. Even if they got inside in, say, an hour, it left so small a margin… .

The muffled sound of the jackhammer made him turn. For a while he watched the slowly increasing cavity. Staples, who would not trust anyone else with the tool, had stripped to his sweat-stained undershirt. The insistent clatter and fatigue drove Blake back, shivering, to the Commander’s car. Angela sat beside him, produced coffee and whisky. Both stared in silence at the brightly lit work area. Blake had long since stopped worrying about the Martians. If they came, they came; it was all or nothing now. Questions teemed in Angela’s mind, but she had enough sense not to offer them. Three hours earlier, what they were now doing would, she was sure, have engulfed the human world in flame, yet nothing had happened. The Guard Commander, who was not as dumb as all that, had a man stationed, watching the “door.” Under normal conditions the black gaping mouth remained open, main air intake for the cooling system. Only in action status did an armored door slide shut, the computer going over to an independent refrigerated recirculation system. Once, for real Colossus had dropped that visor; ten minutes later, a city had died.

And that was Angela’s lead question: why had the door not moved? It was impossible - yet Blake had clearly expected, or at least had had grounds to expect, that nothing would happen. But if she asked, Blake would certainly bawl her out. She glanced cautiously at the hunched figure beside her, sipping his drink, staring blankly at the light.

But Blake was far from mentally idle, repeatedly rehearsing his action if once he got inside.

First, reach the control/test desk: thank God that was not far into the labyrinth. Bloody great old-fashioned affair, hundreds of switches and warning lights, it was not designed as an operational desk - no one man had a hope of controlling it - but as a comprehensive test bench. It had the only internal input facility, and Blake was fully conversant with that … and damn little else, he thought apprehensively.

Not for the first time, his mind baulked at that point. If he made just one slip, the moment power came on … He shook his head violently to rid himself of the vision. “What’s the time?” Angela told him. Jesus! Less than two hours left. … He grappled with the first problem: if they got inside, they’d have wrecked the defense integrity of the mesh. Before activation, the mesh-control circuit - circuits? - had to be neutralized. Vainly he tried to recall if there was a control on the desk. He couldn’t remember. Hell, it had not been his problem, not then… .

Angela holding a flashlight, he reread Forbin’s hurried notes. Mesh was not mentioned. Blake swore luridly. Suppose the control function was one hundred percent in Colossus’s hands?

Staples yelled. They scrambled out and hurried over. A roughly circular disc had been cut to the depth of the wire. The workman stood back, mopping his face. “There’s your mesh, Doc.”

Blake hesitated fractionally. “Go ahead - cut!”

“I’ll test first.” Staples’ tone brooked no argument.

With a delicacy that amazed Angela, he fitted tiny collars an inch or so apart on a length of steel rod, connecting them by leads to a meter. Several times he switched the device on and off; the needle remained inert. “Okay so far.” He looked at Angela. “You hold it, miss.” He produced a miniature pair of bolt-cutters. “You jist watch that needle, miss - hold it steady. Ready, Doctor?”

Blake nodded, his heart thumping: the tiniest deviation from zero would be enough. Staples positioned the cutters between the collars with care. “Keep the meter still - and watch. Now!”

Blake involuntarily jumped at the small click; Angela remained rock steady. The needle never moved.

“We’ll never get better’n that,” observed Staples.

“Okay.” Blake’s mouth twitched uncontrollably. “Cut!”

In a minute the job was done. Staples nodded to a waiting guard, leaning on a sledgehammer. “Right, son. Aim for the middle.”

At the fourth blow the inner skin cracked, no longer supported by the mesh; fragments fell inside. Blake, breathing more easily, tore his gaze from the crumbling wall to check the time. One hour twenty. He could not keep still, biting his nails, sweating.

Massively calm, Staples had other men hauling up a lighting cable and lamp. He ordered one dimly seen figure beyond the light to go fetch a chair on the double. Without argument the Guard Commander doubled.

The rough work was done. The gaping blackness beyond revealed nothing. Not given to fancies, Angela viewed it with irrational fear: this was like robbing the tomb of a long-dead king - except that what lay in that darkness was not dead, and held power beyond the wildest ravings of any megalomaniac who ever lived… .

With a few brisk strokes of hammer and chisel, Staples took off the worst of the jagged edge, dropped his tools, draped his jacket over the lower rim, and disappeared headfirst into the blackness. In seconds, red-faced, he appeared and grabbed the light, hauling the cable rapidly inwards.

Helped by the chair, Blake followed. Three weeks earlier he’d never have made it; for the first time he was glad he’d lost fifty pounds.

He called back to Angela, his voice high-pitched. “Get the car up to the wall, have a man guard the radphone. You stay close to here, listen for me!” Then he was gone.

Angela had other ideas. Detailing a second guard for her assignment, she, too, struggled through. Although a tight fit, anonymous hands got her generous rump inside. Her hair a mess, she looked out, her eyes hard and glittering in the light. “Thank you!”

“Thank you, miss!” The wit was safe in the outer darkness.

“Pass the coffee flasks!”

In seconds, the all-too-human touch of male hands was forgotten: Blake and Staples had gone, and the light with them. In a few short steps, Angela’s flashlight became the most important thing in all the world to her. In terror, shoulders hunched, she half ran, following the cable.

Chapter XXII

AT THAT MOMENT in time, Forbin was noting, with the calm despair of the hopelessly damned, that exactly one hour remained to the second and final test.

Red-eyed, unshaven - a common state in the complex that night-he waited, conscious of a sense of utter helplessness. Foiled by the Martian absence of any chance of a final intercession, his hopes struck bottom with Blake’s continuing silence. He had not expected progress reports, but he had prayed for just one word, a code word, from the Rockies. The fact that it would inevitably spell death to all in the complex was a mere abstraction; all he craved was release from the bad dream life had become, even if that relief was no more than total oblivion. But nothing had happened, and he sleepwalked stoically towards what must be.

All that could be done, had been done. The general warning had gone out hours back. Thousands upon thousands of humans were already in refuge, normal life suspended. No form of transportation by sea, air, or land moved; South England and North France were, within the boundaries he had ordained, lands of the near dead, and nothing under human control moved in the seas between.