MINDBRIDGE by Joe Haldeman

“That would be starlight reflected off the-“

“It wasn’t there before, I’m sure of it. They’re coming after me . . . Yes, it’s getting closer.”

Jacque felt a vibration in his boots just as Carol said “Behind you!”

A man-sized black spidery machine, like the first artifact the probe had encountered, came clicking across the hull toward him. “Get around to the other side,” Jacque said. “Then turn on your magnet. I’ll do the same here.”

Tania’s voice whispered, “Trouble?”

“We’ll see.” The machine didn’t appear to have any weapons. It approached Jacque and extended a pincered arm. He took one step forward, turned on his magnet . . .

And slammed chest-first to the hull, pinning the machine underneath him. It squirmed like a live thing, then emitted a shower of sparks-Jacque’s short hair tingled with the static electricity-and lay still.

“It’s a machine,” Jacque said; “I crushed it. Are you standing upright?”

No answer. “Carol! Are you standing upright?”

“Jacque,” Tania said, “if she’s on the other side of the ship, she can’t hear you. Line-of-sight transmission.”

Jacque felt his face warm. “That’s right. Say, how are you doing, is it still coming closer?”

“Yes. Not very fast. I think I’ll play with it a little bit. See how maneuverable it is.”

Jacque turned off his magnet. “I’m going to go check on Carol. Good luck.”

“Same to you.” He stood up and was surrounded by a cloud of floating metal fragments. Most of the machine lay flattened out, stuck to the hull by weak residual magnetism.

In the center of the wreck a bluish mass had oozed out and dried in the vacuum: the remnants of a L’vrai brain.

He walked around to where Carol was standing. From the crash of static in his ears, he knew that her suit was magnetized.

“What happened?” she shouted.

“Fell on top of it and crushed it. It’s a machine with a L’vrai brain attached.”

“Have to be careful walking.”

“Forgot. Turned it on with one foot in the air.”

“Vacuum,” she corrected. “We better do the back-to-back. There’ll be more.”

“Okay.” He backed up against her and thumbed the switch that magnetized his suit. They clicked together; the suits had been set up with opposite polarity so they could operate this way.

Nothing happened. After a half hour: “Carol, they aren’t going to come to us while we’re magnetized. Not after what happened to the last one.”

“I guess not.”

“Want to switch them off and go exploring?”

“No, wait. They must know where we are. They might be waiting right under our feet. Zap us as soon as we turn off the field.”

“Wait like this for ten days?” Actually, the prospect wasn’t unappealing to Jacque. At least they were relatively invulnerable.

“No. I have an idea. . . . Stay right where you are.” Carol turned off her field and knelt down, apparently studying the hull under their feet.

“What are you-oh.” Her laser glared. Where it punched through the hull, a long plume of air drifted out. She continued cutting in an arc, centered around Jacque’s feet. Air had stopped leaking out before she was halfway around.

“Now,” she said, a few centimeters from completing the circle- And they were falling in darkness.

They landed on something hard; Jacque stood up and turned on his lights.

“Artificial gravity.” They were standing in a wedge-shaped room, the floor a section of a circle. In one corner was a large round pillow; the only other piece of furniture was something that looked like a filing cabinet, but without handles.

A mass of tentacles protruded from the far wall, the side closest to the space ship’s central axis. They walked cautiously over to investigate.

“It’s the bottom part of a L’vrai,” Carol said.

“Yeah. Got stuck trying to get out of the room, looks like.” Jacque prodded the wall. It was slightly resilient. “Don’t see any seam. When you went through these things before. . . could you tell where they were before they opened?”

“No, but I didn’t really have time to-“

“Here!” Jacque’s finger disappeared into the wall. He pulled it out, pushed it back in, moved it up and down. “You can’t see it, no, but this is where it is.” He got both hands into the seam and tried to pull it open. It wouldn’t give.

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