"Genesis" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

CHAPTER TWO

Roy and the others emptied their weapons to no avail. The looming weapon hand swung to a new target as they ducked, switching their turned-and-taped double magazines around to lock and load a fresh one.

A second stream of superheated brilliance blazed, and another marine was incinerated.

Roy realized the radio was useless; it was in Hersch's rucksack, and he'd just been fried. Roy turned, spotted the RPG rocket launcher dropped by the first victim, and made a dive for it.

The gunnery sergeant gave him a look of misgiving but kept his peace. Firing the weapon might be suicidal for a number of reasons, including secondary explosions from their attacker, but Roy saw no other options; their escape was cut off, and there was no cover worthy of the name.

The RPG was already loaded. Roy peered through the sights, centering the reticle, and fired at the thing's midsection, where two segments met. The resulting explosion split the metal monster in half; it toppled, venting raging energy. The secondary blast knocked Roy off his feet.

He lost consciousness for a second but came to, momentarily deafened, with the gunny shaking him. Roy managed to read his lips: "It's still alive!"

Blearily Roy followed the pointing finger. It was true: Segments of the shattered behemoth were rocking and jouncing; those that had some articulation were trying to drag themselves toward the intruders. Other pieces were firing occasional beams, most of which splashed off the faraway ceiling.

The gunny got Roy to his feet and began dragging him around the remains in what seemed like the direction from which they'd come. Even though he couldn't hear, Roy could feel heavy vibrations in the deck. He turned and found a second monster approaching. He couldn't figure out how the first one had come upon them so silently, and he didn't wait around to find out.

The thing halted by the smoldering debris of the first as Roy staggered off behind the gunny.

"… remember coming through here," Roy dimly heard the gunny say when they paused after what seemed like a year of tottering along the deck. Evidently, the gunny had covered his ears to avoid the rocket's impact; he was listening as well as looking for more enemies.

"Neither do I," Roy said wearily. "But all our other routes were blocked."

"They could've polished us all off, Lieutenant," the gunny said.

Roy shook his head, just as confused as the marine. "Maybe they're herding us along somewhere; I dunno."

They took up their way again. Roy's hearing was coming back, accompanied by a painful ringing. "Maybe they don't want to kill all of us because-"

The gunny screamed a curse. Roy looked down to see that the deck plates were rippling around their legs like a running stream, engulfing them.

Gloval gripped his automatic resolutely. "Are you getting all this on the video, Dr. Lang?"

Lang put his palm to his forehead. "Yes, but those shapes keep shifting… gets me dizzy just looking…"

"Kinda like… vertigo…" T.R. Edwards added.

Gloval was feeling a little queasy himself. He called a halt for a breather, sending Edwards to peer into the next compartment. Gloval watched Lang worriedly; with the arrival of the alien ship, Lang became the most indispensable man on the planet. Lang must be kept safe at all costs, and the fact that Gloval couldn't raise Roy's party or the outside world on the radio had the captain skittish.

Edwards was back in moments, face as white as his teeth. "You'd better brace yourselves." Edwards swallowed with difficulty. "I found Murphy, but-it's a little hard to take." He swallowed again to keep from vomiting.

One by one they went to join him at the entrance to the next compartment, from which an intense light shone. Lang caught the edge of the hatch to steady himself when he saw what was there.

In a large translucent tank wired with various life support systems floated the various pieces of Lance Corporal Murphy in a tiny sea of sluggish nutrient fluid.

They drifted lazily, here an arm, there the head-sightless eyes wide open-a severed hand bumping gently against the stripped torso. The fluid was filled with fine strands glowing in incandescent greens. Tiny amoebalike globules flocked to the body parts and away from them again, feeding and providing oxygen and removing wastes.

Gloval turned to the marine behind him. "Establish security! Whoever did this may still be around." The men shook off their paralysis and rushed to obey.

All, that is, but one, who was about to pluck out a leg by a white, wrinkled foot that had bobbed to the surface. "We can't leave 'im like this!" Through the grinding war, the marines had maintained their honor and their high traditions proudly; esprit de corps was like the air they breathed. To leave one of their own on the battlefield was to leave a part of themselves.

But Lang pulled the grunt back with surprising strength. "Don't touch him! Who knows what the solution is? You want to end up pickled in there too? No? Good! Then just draw a specimen with this device and be careful!"

Gloval, carefully gauging the alien topography to keep his mind-and eyes-off Murphy's parts, determined that his suspicions were true: The internal layout of the place was changing around them. There was no way back.

He quickly formed up his little command and got them moving, grimly satisfied that Edwards wasn't so cocky anymore.

Moments later, as the party moved through a darkened area, he felt a marine tug at his shoulder. "Cap'n! There's a-"

And all hell broke loose as armored behemoths set upon Gloval's group from the rear, blasting and trying to stamp the puny humans into the deck.

One marine gave the beginning of a shriek and then blew into fragments, the moisture in his tissues instantaneously converted to steam, the scraps of flesh vaporized in the alien's beam.

The humans cut loose with all weapons, including a man-portable recoilless rifle and a light machine gun whose drum magazine was loaded with Teflon semi-armorpiercers. A second marine was cremated almost instantly.

They had better luck than Roy's team in that the machine gunner and the RR man both happened to aim for the lead monster's firing hand and were lucky enough to find a vulnerable point, blowing it off.

The fortress's guardian staggered and shook as the fire set off secondary explosions. "Gloval! In here!" screamed Edwards, standing at the human-size hatch to a side compartment. The survivors dashed to it, crowding in, two of the marines hauling Lang between them while the doctor continued recording the scene as the injured machine-thing shot flame and smoke and flying shrapnel through the air.

"We can hold 'em off from here-for now," Edwards said, throwing aside a spent pair of magazines and inserting a fresh one in his Ingram MAC-35.

"Concentrate fire on anything that approaches that door," Gloval told the marines, and turned to survey the rest of the compartment. It was quite tiny by the standards of the wreck: Perhaps eight paces on a side, with no other exit.

Lang was shaken but in control, willing his hands to be steady as he took what videos he could of the scene in the outer compartment. Gloval was about to command him to get back out of the line of fire when the floor began to move.

"Hey! Who pushed the up button?" Edwards shouted, pale again.

"Security wheel!" Gloval bellowed. "Doctor Lang in the center!"

Lang was thrust into the middle of the rising elevator platform as the others put their backs against him, weapons pointed out before them. The ceiling was about to crush them, but suddenly it rippled like water, letting them pass through. They came up into a brighter place and heard a familiar voice.

"Well, well. 'Bout time you guys got here."

"Roy!" The lieutenant stood leaning against a stanchion in the most immense chamber they'd seen yet, lit as bright as day.

When stories were exchanged, Gloval said, "All right, then, we've been herded here. But why?"

Lang pointed to a bridgelike structure enclosed by a transparent bowl, high to the stern end of the compartment. It was big but seemingly built to human scale.

"I'm betting that is the ship's nerve center, skipper, and that is the captain's station."

"It's our best shot, so we shall try it," Gloval decided, "but you stay with the main body, my good doctor, and let Roy go first."

"What an honor." Edwards grinned at Roy.

Zor's quarters were as he had left them, so long ago and far away. The sleep module, the work station, and the rest were built to human scale and function. Lang stared around himself as if in a dream.

Despite the many objects and installations that were impossible to identify, there was a certain comprehensibility to the place: here, a desk unit, there, a screen of some kind.

Roy, Gloval, and the others were so fascinated that they didn't notice what Lang was doing until they heard the pop and crisp of static.

"Lang, you fool! Get away from there!"

But before Gloval could tear him away from the console, Lang had somehow discovered how to activate it. Waves of distortion chased each other across the screen, then a face appeared among the wavering lines.

Gloval's grip on Lang's jacket became limp. "Good God… it's human!"

"Not quite, perhaps, but close, I would say," Lang conceded calmly.

Zor's face stared out of the screen. The wide, almond eyes seemed to look at each man in the compartment, and the mouth spoke in a melodious, chiming language unlike anything the humans had ever heard before.

"It's a 'greetings' recording," Lang said matter-of-factly.

"Like those plates and records on the old Voyagers," Roy murmured.

The alien's voice took on a different tone, and another image flashed on the screen. The humans found themselves looking at an Invid shock trooper in action, firing and rending.

"Some kind of war machine. Nasty," Lang interpreted.

As the others watched the image, Roy touched Gloval's shoulder and said, "Captain, I think we'd better get out of here."

"But how? This blasted ship keeps rearranging itself."

"Look!" cried Edwards, pointing. The deck rippled as a newcomer rose up through it. All weapons came to bear on it except Lang's; the doctor was dividing his attention between what was going on and the continuing message on the screen.

A familiar form stood before them. "It's the drone robot, the one that broke down," the gunny said.

Edwards's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, but how could it have followed us?"

"It appears to be functioning again," Gloval said. "Maybe we can use it to contact the base."

Lang crossed to the robot, which waited patiently. He opened a rear access cowling and went to inspect the internal parts there, then snatched his hands back as if he'd been bitten.

They all crowded around warily, ready to blast the machine to bits. "This isn't the original circuitry," Lang said, sounding interested but not frightened. "The components are reshaping themselves."

As they stared, wires writhed and microchips changed like a miniaturized urban renewal project seen from above by time-lapse photography. Things slid, folded, altered shape and position. It reminded Roy of an unlikely cross between a blossoming flower and those kids' games where the player slides alphanumeric tiles around into new sequences.

"Perhaps it's been sent here to lead us out," Gloval suggested.

"But why'd the other gizmos attack?" Edwards objected.

Lang shrugged. "Who knows what damage the systems have suffered? Perhaps the attacks are a result of a malfunction. Certainly, the message we just saw was intended as a warning, which implies good intentions."

"But what's it all mean, Doc?" Roy burst out.

Lang looked to him. "It means Earth may be in for more visitors, I think. Lots more."

"All right, all of you: Get ready," Gloval said. "If we can get the drone to lead us, we'll take a chance on it. We've no alternative."

While the others readied themselves, dividing up the remaining ammunition, reloading the last two rocket launchers, and listening to Gloval direct their order of march, Lang went back to the screen console.

He had been right; this was the ship's nerve center, and the console and its peripherals were the nucleus of it all. Lang began form-function analysis, fearing that he would never get another chance to study it.

Certainly, the ship used no source of power that he could conceive of. Some uncanny alien force coursed through the fallen ship and through the console. Perhaps if he could get some data on it or get access to it…

At Lang's cry they all turned with guns raised, as strobing light threw their shadows tall against the bulkheads. The command center flashed and flowed with power like an unearthly network of electronic blood vessels.

The console was surrounded by a blinding aurora of harsh radiance that pulsed through the spectrum. Lang, body convulsed in agony, holding fast to the console, shone with those same colors as the enigmatic forces flooding into him.

"Don't touch him-!" Gloval barked at Roy, who'd been about to attempt a body check to knock Lang clear. Edwards moved to one side, well out of range of the discharges, to get a line of fire on the console that wouldn't risk hitting Lang. Edwards made sure his selector was on full auto and prepared to empty the magazine into the console.

But before he could, the alien lightning died away. Lang slumped slowly to the deck.

"Captain, the robby's leaving!" The gunny pointed to where the deck was starting to ripple around the drone's feet.

There was no time for caution. Roy slung Lang over his shoulder, hoping the man wasn't radioactive or something else contagious. In another moment they were all ranged around the robot, sinking through the floor.

Air and matter and space seemed to shift around them. Lang was stirring on Roy's shoulder, and Roy was getting a better grip on him, distracted, when one of the marines hollered, "Tell me I'm not seein' this!"

The ship had changed again, or they were in a different place. And they were gazing at the remains of a giant.

It was something straight out of legend. The skeleton was still wearing a uniform that was obviously immune to decay. It also wore a belt and harness affair fitted with various devices and pouches. But for the fact that it would've stood some fifty feet tall, it could have been human.

The jaw was frozen open in an eternal rictus of agony and death; an area the size and shape of a poker table was burned through the back of its uniform, fringed by blackened fabric. Much of the skeletal structure in the wound's line of fire was gone.

"Musta been some scrap," a marine said quietly, knowingly.

Lang was struggling, so Roy let him down. "Are you all right, Doc-"

Roy gaped at him. Lang's eyes had changed, become all dark, deep pupil with no iris and no white at all. He had the look of a man in rapture, gazing around himself with measureless approval.

"Yes, yes," Lang said, nodding in comprehension. "I see!"

There was no time to find out just what it was he saw, because the robot was in motion again. Roy took Lang in tow, and they moved out, only to round a corner and come face to face with two more of the armored guardians.

The gunny, walking point right behind the robby with one of the RPG launchers, let fly instantly, and the machine gunner and the other RPG man cut loose too as the red lines of tracers arced and rebounded of the bright armor.