have groundborne callers. From there we can shoot, throw rocks, and
otherwise hint to them that they’re not especially welcome.” Slumped in
exhaustion against a boulder, she paid him no heed.
He inflated the insulating floor of the sealtent and erected its
framework. The wind gave him trouble, flapping the fabric he stretched
across until he got it secured. Because the temperature had risen to
about minus fifty, he didn’t bother with extra layers, but merely filled
the cells of the one skin with air.
To save accumulator charge, he worked the pump by hand, and likewise
when it evacuated the tent’s interior. Extreme decompression wasn’t
needed, since the Waylander atmosphere was mostly noble gases and
nitrogen. The portable air renewer he had placed inside, together with a
glower for heat, took care of remaining poisonous vapors and excess
carbon dioxide, once he had refilled the tent with oxygen at 200
millibars. (The equipment for all this was heavy. But it was
indispensable, at least until Djana got into such condition that she
didn’t frequently need the relief of shirtsleeve environment. And she’d
better! Given the limitations of what they could carry, they could make
possibly fifteen stops that utilized it.) While renewer and glower did
their work, Flandry chipped water ice to melt for drinking and cooking.
They entered through the plastic airlock. He showed Djana how to bleed
her spacesuit down to ambient pressure. When they had taken off their
armor, she lay on the floor and watched him with eyes glazed by fatigue.
He fitted together his still, put it on the glower, and filled it with
ice. “Why are you doing that?’ she whispered.
“Might have unpleasant ingredients,” he answered. “Gases like ammonia
come off first and are taken up by the activated colloids in this
bottle. We can’t let them contaminate our air; our one renewer’s busy
handling the stuff we breathe out; and besides, when we strike camp I
must pump as big a fraction as I can manage back into its tank. When the
water starts boiling, I shut the valve to the gas-impurity flask and
open the one to the water can. We can’t risk heavy metal salts,
especially on a world where they must be plentiful. Doesn’t take but a
micro quantity of plutonium, say, this far from medical help, to kill
you in quite a nasty fashion. A propos, I suppose you know we daren’t
smoke in a pure oxy atmosphere.”
She shuddered and turned her glance from the desolation in the ports.
Dinner revived her somewhat. Afterward she sat hugging her legs, chin on
knees, and watched him clean the utensils. In the cramped space, his
movements were economical. “You were right,” she said gravely. “I
wouldn’t have a prayer without you.”
“A hot meal, albeit freeze-dried, does beat pushing a concentrate bar
through your chowlock and calling it lunch, eh?”
“You know what I mean, Nicky. What can I do?”
“You can take your turn watching for monsters,” he said immediately.
She winced. “Do you really think–”
“No. I don’t think. Too few data thus far to make it worth the trouble.
Unhappily, though, one datum is the presence of two or more kinds of
critter whose manners are as deplorable as they are inexplicable.”
“But they’re machines!”
“Are they?”
She stared at him from under tangled tawny bangs. He said while he
labored: “Where does ‘robot’ leave off and ‘organism’ begin? For
hundreds of years there’ve been sensor-computer-effector systems more
intricate and versatile than some kinds of organic life. They function,
perceive, ingest, have means to repair damage and to be reproduced; they
homeostatize, if that horrible word is the one I want; certain of them
think. None of it works identically with the systems evolved by organic
animals and sophonts–but it works, and toward very similar ends.
“Those bugs that attacked me have metal exoskeletons underneath that
purple enamel, and electronic insides. That’s why they succumbed so
easily to my blaster: high heat conductivity, raising the temperature of
components designed for Wayland’s natural conditions. But they’re
machinery as elaborate as any I’ve ever ruined. As I told you, I hadn’t
the time or means to do a proper job of dissection. As near as I could