“Everything guided,” he muttered. “Accelerated. Maybe half a billion years will serve. Maybe less. Though if they want what they’ve made to last as long as that —” He stared before him. “Yes, I believe I’m right about what those monster establishments are for.”
And at last their guides, the Tahirians they called Emil and Fernando, brought them to one.
They stood a long while by the aircar, trying to grasp a sight so huge and strange that their eyes did not know how to see it. At their backs reached the barrens, red dunes, black rock, scudding dust. On the right a pillar lifted white over the horizon, made thin by distance, sheering and narrowing until it became a point thrust against the violet heaven.
Ahead lay the forest, metal boles, skeletal limbs, glimmery webs from end to end of vision. Shapes hunched among them, low domes, pentagonal upthrusts, helices, congeries. Robots moved between, some like giant beetles, some like dwarf war machines, some like nothing describable. The forest thickened farther in until it became a shadowy mass. Beyond loomed the central pyramid, its terraces saw-toothed with walls and spires. Smoke and vapors hazed it to blue-gray. Everywhere blinked the light-sparks, over the metal trees, tangled in their meshes, all hues, chaotic in complexity, the lunacy of a million intermingled meanings. A rumbling noise filled the air, a bass that stole into the bones. Now and then the ground boomed and faintly shuddered.
Nansen brought his glance back to the Tahirians. Emil made a forward gesture. Evidently it was safe to proceed on foot. They started. Human pulses beat high.
In a gravity less than two-fifths terrestrial, the men did not feel weighted down, although they were well burdened. Elsewhere it had sufficed outdoors to wear a breathmask attached to a tank of oxynitrogen, ordinary field garb, perhaps a canteen and food pouch, and whatever scientific equipment seemed appropriate. Here it became helmets with regenerative units, full coveralls, gloves, and boots. The air was noxious from upwellings and ongoing chemistry. The Tahirians wore similar protection, though theirs was mostly transparent and flexible, films enclosing the little four-legged bodies. Fernando carried what must be a locator. A magnetic sense was of scant avail on this planet, and the forest would screen off signals from their vehicle.
Minutes and meters passed. A machine composed of joined modules crawled into view. Emil spoke. Sonic amplifiers conveyed a whistle and purr; the mane shook.
“I wish I knew what en just said,” Cleland sighed. Sundaram had invented the pronoun for members of the race. “That caterpillar — It’s maddening, these scraps of pidgin technicalese we’ve got.”
“We’ve added some vocabulary on this trip,” Nansen reminded. “And Ajit does promise a real language soon.” He grinned. “Of course, then we’ll have to learn it.”
“Meanwhile, though — And we can’t ask what all these lights are for.”
“I can guess,” Brent said. “Whatever else they do, I’m pretty sure the trees make up a sensor-computer network. The blinks are a code, mainly issuing orders to the mobile machines.”
Nansen nodded. “M-m, yes, that sounds like a very Tahirian idea.”
“I wish it weren’t,” Cleland complained. “Confusing. Makes everything seem to jump around. Do you hear a buzz?”
Nansen listened. Only the noise ahead, as of a gigantic kettle aboil, reached him. “No.”
“Imagination. I’m getting sort of dizzy, too.”
“Yeah, can’t say I feel comfortable here,” Brent admitted.
Nansen scowled at the stiff shapes that surrounded them. “Nor I, quite. Perhaps we should turn back. . . . No, we’ll continue for a while.”
The growling and seething waxed. The group came in view of the source. Cleland jarred to a halt, stood for a moment agape, and uttered a yell. “It is! I was right! It’s got to be!”
They had entered a broad open space, a black and jumbled lava waste. Near the middle squatted a sooty shell wherein power labored. Before it, smoke and steam eddied above a ten-meter pool that glowed red. Even at their distance and through their suits and helmets the men felt its heat. It bubbled, spat gouts and sparks, roared in its fury. A channel bore the molten rock off, to congeal after a while into slaggy masses. Several robots quarried these as they cooled, loaded them into a great open-bed vehicle that rested wheelless above the ground. Metal trees lined the channel. Their lights blinked through the same intricate rhythms, over and over.