Chapter 12: Floating in Unending Space

Soreto continued to stand watch, swaying on her feet. I ought to wake Tina, she thought. But Tina was sleeping so peacefully. And even moving to wake her felt as if it would require more energy than Soreto had left. Her body was made of lead, her mind of mud.

I ought to just lie down and sleep, she thought. What was she guarding against? There was nothing here that could harm them but the cold, and there was no keeping that away.

There was a noise of metal on rock, and Soreto snapped back into wakefulness. The sound came again, closer.

"Tina?" She pushed at Tina's shoulder, and the girl blinked awake slowly.

Soreto could hear more noises approaching. Chances were it was some night expedition from one of the research bases, maybe even someone who had seen them and was coming to their rescue. It might even be one of their lost companions.

But the dark, coffin-shaped robots from under the ocean were sill a horror in her memory, and she had no idea what else might be prowling the Antarctic wastes.

Then a nightmare lurched up over the rise—a swollen, bulbous, misshapen darkness with two glowing red eyes and the limbs of a spider.

"Tina, RUN!" Soreto ordered, turning to flee herself. She ran staggering over the ice and rocks, every gasping breath searing her lungs with cold. Ahead of her, Tina stumbled, and Soreto pulled her to her feet, shouting, "RUN!" once more and they ran on, Soreto trying to keep herself between the monster and the princess. It was too huge, too fast. It was almost on them.

"Soreto!"

Soreto's head twisted back, and she tripped, falling on the rocks, staggering back to her feet.

"Soreto!"

The huge black shape of the beast leaned over her, and from its maw a dark shadow dropped, and it seized her.

"Soreto!"

"Tarlant? TARLANT!" She grabbed him, hugged him so tightly her arms ached, and felt his arms around her. A moment later she felt the impact as Tina threw her arms around the both of them. "Tarlant!"

Against all hope, the land of death had opened once more, and given up one of its victims.

Mel continued to examine the climate regulator. Once the case had been opened, it had revealed itself to be even more interesting a device. Inside the tiny maintenance crawlspace, Dumas huddled, shivering. His energy pack had finally given out. He had been under the water so long, Mel had been afraid she'd sent him to his death. Still, with the regulator radiating heat at its current rate, Dumas's pack would be recharging itself quickly, and would soon return his body to its proper temperature.

"Are you sure you don't want to come in here? Just for a minute, till you warm up?" Seth asked.

"I'm sure," Mel said. She would rather have jumped in the ocean.

Still, even out on the catwalk, the increased warmth made survival less taxing, and her energy pack was beginning to charge itself slowly.

Now that they were no longer in imminent danger of freezing, thirst became the next torture and the next threat. It took very little energy to rehydrate when you were standing right over a reservoir like the Antarctic sea, but Mel had nothing in her energy pack to spare yet, and the ocean water was undrinkable in its natural state.

"This machine has a navigational readjustment system more sophisticated than anything I've seen in Earth technology before," she informed the others. "It has a propulsion unit that operates by magnetic field manipulation and is actuated by satellite positioning data."

"How nice for it," Dumas said through chattering teeth.

"You're being sarcastic, you must be feeling better." It was good that the young man was returning to his normal state, though she couldn't let him see her relief.

Mel had long forgiven Dumas for what he had done to her. It was not in her nature to hate or bear grudges. But she still felt unreasoning terror when he was near her, and she believed he would see any fear, any gentleness toward him as a weakness. He would try to exploit weakness. Dumas used people. And Mel refused to be used by Dumas again.

"What I'm saying," she interpreted for the non-educated, "is that the regulator stays in position by comparing its own programmed coordinates with its position as confirmed by a tracking satellite, and then by adjusting its location."

"So?" Dumas snarled.

"So…it can move?" Seth was quicker on the uptake, though, to be fair, his brain wasn't still half frozen.

Mel nodded. "Easily, either by changing the target coordinates or by altering the receivers to accept a signal of our own in place of the satellite's."

"Well, where do we want to go, then?" Seth asked. "Can you find anything on the scanner yet? Any sign of the others?"

Mel shook her head. "Its range is too short." She had tried repeatedly. "We should head for the shore and search from there."

"Randomly search Antarctica for survivors? No." Dumas was recovering quickly. "The only sensible course of action right now is to return to the Rugen Institute as quickly as possible. How fast can this thing move?"

"Very slowly," said Mel reluctantly, "as long as it's in the water." Her heart sank.

Dumas fixed his eyes on her. "Is there another option?"

"I might be able to adjust the magnetic pulse engines and give it hovering flight capability," she admitted.

And to do that, she would have to go into the crawlspace.

They slept that night, the three huddled under one blanket, their arms wrapped around each other as the robots warmed them and watched over them.

Tarlant had food, medical supplies, tools and other useful equipment. They traded stories in the morning as Tarlant applied healing biogel to Soreto's battered face.

After the wreck, Tarlant had regained consciousness lying on the shore, on a slab of sensor panel, with several deep gashes across his chest and shoulder. Warm light was radiating down on him. The robots, Bubble and Squeak, had pulled him from the water and kept him warm. Other bits of cargo and wreckage had been brought up and lay upon the ice around him.

But no people. He was alone.

Without the robots to look after, he might have sunk into despair. But Squeak had three legs snapped off, and Bubble's carapace was cracked, and there was nobody to do anything about it but him.

Working on the robots had let him put off his grief and horror long enough for hope to revive in his soul, and when they were fixed, Tarlant linked them together into a single beast and loaded what little salvage was actually useful aboard their broad back. He reshaped the carapaces to make a shelter for himself to ride in, cut an eye slit out of an equipment pouch to wear as a hood and made mittens out of a chunk of his coat, and they set off along the shore, scanning for survivors.

Lifeform readings had proved useless. His first joy at discovering a strong life signal had been dashed when he reached it and found a colony of penguins. After chasing down a seal or two, Tarlant switched to scanning for energy signatures. Unfortunately, several of the local research installations and the climate regulators seemed to use a similar energy collection system. Finally, after being distracted twice by false leads, he had found the two cloth-wrapped figures, and heard Soreto's voice.

"I'm glad at least Hasmodai and Belle are okay, too," Tarlan said. "Maybe we'll find the others yet!"

"Let's hope. We left the escape pod a day's walk in that direction," Soreto said. "If anyone can fix it, you can, Tarlant."

"Wrecked the ship, then wrecked the pod," Tarlant said. "Tell me, Soreto, back home in Nohedge—have you applied for your driver's license yet?"

It actually got a laugh out of her. She probably needed it.

The robots could not carry all three of them, but it was easy for Tarlant to put together a makeshift sledge from some of the salvaged gear, and they set off back along the path the girls had taken, considerable faster than they could have walked.

After a little more than an hour, the robots suddenly halted. The higher-pitched chirps of Squeak rippled through the air.

"What is it?" Soreto called.

"I think they're picking up something on the sensors. Go on, check it out."

The robots changed course and soon, from his vantage point on their backs, he saw something ahead. "I think there's someone walking on the ice!" Tarlant called.

There was someone, and as soon as they were near, Soreto jumped out of the sledge and ran to her.

It was Belle. She was wearing nothing but a bodysuit, stumbling along the ice with her hands tucked under her armpits

"Belle!" Soreto shouted. The girl barely reacted. Soreto seized her by the arm, dragging her toward the robots. "Tarlant, I think she's got some serious frostbite."

Belle sat numb and silent as they patched her up. Eventually she began to sob, which Tarlant took as a sign of returning life.

"Belle, how did you get here?" Soreto demanded. "Where's Hasmodai?"

"I used the escape pod. He's still on the ship," Belle sniffled.

"You left him alone, with a head injury, and no escape pod?"

"I had to find Ian!" Belle wailed.

For a moment, Tarlant honestly believed Soreto was going to strike the girl. Instead, she turned with a cry and ran.

"Soreto?" Leaving Belle to Tina's care, Tarlant ran after Soreto. She was going incredibly fast—she must be using the suit's motion enhancement, despite the need to conserve power. Tarlant willed his own suit into action, trying to keep pace.

The ice ended in something like a cliff. Soreto stopped at the edge, wildly looking over, then ran along it, stopping again.

"Where are you going?" Tarlant shouted, and she whirled to face him.

"I'm trying to find where that…that STUPID CHILD left the escape pod!"

That made sense, at least. Tarlant joined the search. In the end, he saw it first, at the base of the cliff. Calling for Soreto, he jumped down from one ledge to the next to land beside it.

The pod's hatch had been left open. It was half submerged, partly encased in ice, and the hull was cracked. Soreto struck it with her fist with a scream of rage and frustration. Then she turned to him.

"Tarlant, how fast can you get this thing in working order?"

He looked at it doubtfully. Even if there was no unseen damage, it would be tricky to get the pod out of the ice and where he could work on it. The shattered hull might take hours to fuse, and from what he could see of the energy meters, it was nearly drained of power. Belle had been lucky to make it to shore. He estimated a day, at least.

Looking at Soreto's worried face, he knew she didn't want to wait that long. Neither did he.

"Do you know exactly where the ship is?" he asked.

"I remember the coordinates."

I'll send one of the robots to check on Hasmodai. At least we'll know if he's okay."

They ascended again in a series of leaps, to find that Tina had led Belle and the robots after them. It took fifteen minutes for Tarlant to separate the robots into individual machines again. Then he sent Bubble into the water.

In a moment, Squeak began projecting the images Bubble transmitted back. They watched impatiently as the robot made its way across the rocky ocean floor, passing stones and seals and ice chunks. Schools of fish appeared, scattered, and disappeared from the projection. By the time the robot reached the ice fields, Tarlant's hands were clenched into fists. Soreto paced restlessly back and forth.

"There it is!" Tarlant said. The remains of the ship had appeared in the projection, appearing to be at quite a distance. Slowly it grew larger.

"What are those?" Tarlant asked. Around the ship, running sensor-covered claw hands over it, were some sort of submersible robot, black and elongated.

I'm not sure, but they're dangerous," Soreto said. "Can Bubble zoom in on the image without getting any closer?"

The image stopped moving, and then magnified. The ship's cockpit was lying on the ocean floor, tilted up against a large boulder. It looked empty, abandoned.

Then Belle screamed and Tina gasped, covering her mouth. Something dark floated past the viewscreen. Something like an empty suit, whose occupant had left it.

"Tarlant, can Bubble scan the ship for life forms?" Soreto asked, her voice level and strained.

Tarlant ran the scan. Twice.

"Nothing." Among all of them, Hasmodai had been his closest friend.

Soreto stood, turning her back to walk away a short distance. "Bring back Bubble, Tarlant. We can't risk losing the robot any longer."

"But…but…you can't just LEAVE him there!" Belle protested.

You did. Tarlant couldn't speak such a cruel truth, but it hovered unspoken in the air.

Soreto stood silent for a while, her backs to them. She had shared Hasmodai's love of poetry and literature, Tarlant remembered.

Without turning to look at them, Soreto said, "When the robot's back, see what you can do about getting that pod back in working order. We came to Antarctica for a reason, and we need to carry on with the mission. There's nothing more we can do for Hasmodai."