The Deep Dark Well Read online

  Pandi had been a young girl when her Uncle Matt had given her the guns, the same ones he had used to win championship after championship. She had practiced incessantly, determined to win her own championships. Her first had come at age fourteen. Her last just before she entered Kuiper miner training. She hoped that she hadn’t lost too much of her skill since.

  The bullets struck as accurately as could be expected given the range. The robot was still over fifty meters away, the effective range of the guns. The bullets slammed into the forward section of the mechanism. Fragments of steel jacketed bullets and shattered metal and plastic flew into the air, filling it with a thin cloud of particles. She felt the heat of a near miss, the laser exciting the air close to her ear, as she ran for all she was worth, firing away with both guns.

  Another pillar to duck behind. She ejected both empty mags, shoving them hastily into her pockets. Her expert fingers shoved in new magazines, then hit slide locks to jack a round into each chamber.

  She ventured a look around the pillar and was shocked to see how close the machine was to her. The legs moved in blurs as it hauled its bulk toward her hiding place, as fast as she could run. Shattered cubes lay along its path, and she could see the ripple of its exterior as new cubes slid into place. Only one of the weapon barrels was evident on the front of the thing. At least she had crippled some of its long-range firepower.

  She ran toward another pillar, trying to keep the one she had just been behind between her and the robot. She hugged the pillar as she stopped behind it, trying to quiet her breath. It might not have seen her, but she was sure it would hear her if she kept breathing loudly. One more sprint would take her toward the door she had chosen. Hopefully that would be the right choice, because if she ended up in a dead end it would more than live up to its name.

  Her head came around the side opposite her intended sprint. The machine swiveled its head as the barrel of the laser tracked her. It continued toward her as she pulled her head back and spun into a sprint, striding from behind the pillar on her way to the door, both guns blazing. She knew she missed with a few rounds, but she was sure enough were hitting when she saw the barrel tilt toward the floor. She reached the door as the hammers clicked on empty chambers.

  No use delaying. She was sure the robot was still coming toward her. She doubted her guns had that much effect on it. She jumped through the door and started running down the hall revealed. For a moment she thought about dropping the weight of the jetpack, but didn’t want to stop long enough to undo buckles and shrug it off.

  She turned a corner and the hall ended abruptly. A heavy door lay ahead, and she prayed to the God of her father as she hit one of the buttons on the wall beside the door. Nothing. Another button, and the door slid swiftly open. She hit the same button on the display on the other side, and the door slammed shut in silence. A quick look showed a hand latch on the door. She pulled the lever into place, locking the door.

  Pandi scanned the room. It was small by the standards of this place, only ten meters square. Another door led out on the other side, and she hastily locked it as well. Boxes and cabinets were set against the lower walls, two vents set in the upper walls providing air. This room looked a likely sanctuary right now.

  A thunderous pounding on the door she had entered by interrupted her thoughts. The robot. It was trying to force the door. The pounding increased in fury. The robot was hitting the door a dozen times a second. But the door seemed to be equal to the task of holding it at bay. For minutes the pounding went on, as Pandi bit her knuckles, trying to keep the panic from invading her mind. She stifled a scream, her eyes darting around the room, looking for a weapon that could stop the monster assaulting her refuge.

  As suddenly as it started, the pounding stopped. A quick inspection showed that the door was still strong. The robot had not harmed its integrity. She waited for minutes for the pounding to start again, but nothing happened.

  Pandi wondered if she should leave the room. She wouldn’t go through the door to her front for anything. The robot was probably lurking out there, waiting for her to come out as it tried to figure out how to get in. The other door? She didn’t know where that one led. It could lead her right back to the robot. No, it would be better to stay here for a while, to rest up and think about what she had already gone through, and what might lie ahead.

  The woman sat down against the door, trying to clear her mind. Exhaustion overcame her and she was sound asleep before she was aware what was happening.

  * * *

  Watcher screamed at the display. There was nothing he could do to help her, at least for the time being. She was sound asleep on one of the monitors. One of the other displays showed what worried him. The Fractal robot had pulled a vent cover from the upper wall of the hall. As he watched it reconfigured itself, sliding blocks into a thin, questing tendril, one section thick. Quickly it extruded more and more of itself into the ventilation shaft, until it was gone.

  * * *

  Pandi dreamed. Alabama, and her father was lecturing her again on religion. On the need to honor God, and turn away from the temptations of man. He had just caught her with her latest boyfriend, in the boy’s embrace in the hayloft of the barn. His face was red with righteous rage, his voice shrill. What was he going to think when she told him she was leaving home after she graduated? When she told him she was to study aerospace science, a discipline he considered the handiwork of the devil. After all, God gave the world to man. What right did man have in trying to leave the home God gave to him?

  The sound of the vent cover hitting the floor roused Pandi from her dream. She flinched, waiting for her father to hit her, as her mind tried to orient itself. She had always been a sound sleeper. But through exhaustion her mind struggled up from the haze of slumber. This was not the time or place for sleep, unless she wished to sleep forever. It took her a second to focus her eyes. She immediately honed in on the bent vent cover, lying in the middle of the floor.

  Her gaze flicked from one wall to the other. The one on the left had an intact cover. The one on the right? It took Pandi a second to realize what was flowing out of the vent. A quadruple thick flow of two inch wide square blocks, sliding to the floor. The floor, where a larger collection of blocks was expanding every moment as it gathered more of itself to it.

  Pandi pulled her pistols and aimed them at the robot, realizing as she did that she had not reloaded them. A quick check of her ammo pouches confirmed her fears. Only one seven round magazine left for each gun. She could totally destroy fourteen blocks of the massive robot, if she was careful. Pandi didn’t think that the creature would have any trouble dispatching her minus fourteen blocks.

  The blocks started to reconfigure while it was still gathering itself from the vent. Legs grew from the sides while a sensory cluster formed to the front. Pandi was happy to notice there were no barrels protruding from the head. She must have destroyed them all.

  She looked at the doors, the one she had entered by and the other. She knew where the first led. To the openness of the subway station. That left the other door as the only possible path to refuge. A thought to leave behind the jetpack was put aside. She knew how to work this piece of equipment, which was more than she could say about the stuff she might find along the way. It had the potential to become a weapon, and any weapons were welcome at this time.

  The robot lurched onto its legs as she went through the doorway, pushing the button that slid the door closed. Pandi pivoted into a full out run down the hall. She heard the sound of the door swishing open behind her and knew the robot was in pursuit. There was no illusion in her mind as to what it would do to her if it ever grabbed her. She turned corners as the corridor bent, looking for any hint of an entrance. But there was no way to go but forward.

  The corridor widened, opening into a long room. Pandi’s breath caught as she saw the wide chasm that stretched the length of the room, across her line of flight. Stopping at the edge, she looked down, into an infinity of drop. Th
e chasm was over twenty meters in width. No chance of jumping that, even at her best. She turned back, hoping to somehow find another way, just as the robot came into sight along the corridor. It moved smoothly and quickly toward her, radiating a horrible menace in its unemotional approach.

  Only one hope, she thought, as she shifted the jet pack onto her shoulders and buckled in. Joysticks came to hand as she turned and sprinted toward the chasm. She pressed the fire buttons for a second as she leapt into the air. The pack flamed, and she whimpered as the heat burned her posterior. No protection of a spacesuit, but that couldn’t be helped. Only a quick burst of thrust was needed as she cleared the chasm, landing heavily on her feet to tumble into a roll, absorbing the shock.

  Pandi was back on her feet in a moment, turning to see what the robot was up to. It stood on the other side of the chasm, its sensory bundle questing, one second looking into the chasm, the next at her. Pandi brought a fist up, middle finger extended in a long understood symbol. She wasn’t given much time to celebrate.

  The robot settled down as its legs retracted into the body. A quadruple tentacle of blocks grew from its front, moving swiftly across the chasm. Pandi felt a scream building in her chest. Wasn’t there any way to stop this thing from coming after her? The tentacle touched her side. She moved closer to get a good look at the blocks that made up the creature. Small flat claws grew from each open face. Obviously the means for the blocks to link into a complete creature.

  When it had brought enough of itself across the chasm, a matter of moments, it formed a secure bridge. The bulk of the robot began to slide forward, crossing the barrier faster than Pandi would have imagined possible. Time to scoot, she thought, as she turned and ran down the one corridor leading away from the chasm and the deadly robot.

  Again there were no noticeable exits from the hall that bent this way and that through the mass of the station. There must be some kind of access beside the vent covers, too small for her to think of squeezing through. What use the corridor, if it led to nowhere, with no rooms or connections along the way? But if there were doors they fitted too closely to the wall, and opening mechanisms were hidden as well.

  No choice but forward. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her. Her breath rasped through her burning lungs. She had always prided herself for staying in shape. But duty as a Kuiper miner required a different kind of fitness from that needed to jog through endless corridors under what seemed to be Earth normal gravity.

  “Damn,” she gasped, as the next barrier appeared before her. A twenty meter wide shaft, covering the entire breadth of the corridor. No corridor opened on the other side. Hurriedly she looked down. It seemed to shrink into the nothingness of perspective, a bottomless drop. Looking up produced the same view. Frantic searching revealed openings on both upper and lower shafts, corridors opening into what looked like a service access of some type. Ladder rungs were set into the walls, as well as single rungs for workers to attach safety harnesses.

  The one question remained. Up or down? The robot could follow her either way. But it could drop on her from above. So up it was. Her hands grasped the rungs on the left side wall as she pulled herself onto the ladder. Quickly she climbed upwards, trying to put as much distance between herself and the robot as possible. She looked through the first opening she came to. Ten by ten meters, with no apparent exit except an endless corridor to nowhere. No better than where she had just come.

  Up, one hand over the other, faster and faster. She heard a scraping sound below and looked down, her heart beating even faster as she prepared for the worst. The robot was pulling itself into the shaft, forty meters below, extruding multiple arms to grasp any purchase on the side of the wall. It started up after her, faster than she was climbing. Panic started to build in her. She reacted instantly, her fear fueling her. A forty-five pointed downwards at the robot, the boom of its shot echoing deafeningly through the shaft. Several cubes fell away and the creature lost a handhold, but soon regained it. Pandi continued to fire, blasting fragments from the robot, until the pistol slide stuck in the open position, empty. She threw the useless gun at it with a cry as the robot continued its climb. She pulled herself up the ladder ahead of it.

  She was even with another opening, another corridor to nowhere. Her arms were aching with fatigue and she knew her time was running out. How to get rid of her pursuer? If it would just go ahead and fall the shaft might finish it off, and she would be safe. But it didn’t look like it was going to fall.

  As the thought entered her mind she swung her feet into the opening to her side, falling into the corridor. Hands flew to buckles and the jetpack was off in an instant. A few adjustments and the pack was set to do something most people didn’t know how to make it do. But Pandi had learned, in her more paranoid moments, how to make use of all of her equipment to defend herself, if need be.

  She pushed the engage button on one joystick, then tossed the jet pack into the shaft. Crawling quickly along the floor she moved from the opening. A shattering blast sounded behind her as the flaming fuel of the jet pack shot up the shaft. Heat washed over her body for a second, then the flame was gone.

  Crawling back to the shaft she pulled her remaining pistol and looked cautiously over. The robot still hung from the wall, not moving, held in place by a trio of appendages. Burning fuel covered the creature and she would have sworn it was stunned. She sited carefully with the pistol, firing at the remaining appendages. Cubes blew away, until the robot was hanging down from a single arm. Pandi aimed at the arm, sweat beading on her forehead. Her last round, it had to be true. She let out a bit of breath as she squeezed the trigger. A hit, the cube cracking open. In seeming slow motion the robot started falling downwards. She watched as it fell, growing smaller as it dropped, until it was out of sight.

  Pandi rested for a second, then pulled herself back into the shaft. Pulling herself up she knew that the shaft had to open onto a more promising area of the station. She had no more weapons, after all. Something would have to be found, before she ran into another of the robots.

  * * *

  Watcher laughed as he watched the robot fall down the shaft. He followed it till it hit the bottom of the shaft, tens of kilometers below. The robot shattered into individual cubes, most of those destroyed by the impact.

  She was smart and brave, this one, he thought, as the view shifted back to her. If she could only stay out of trouble for a few more hours his minions would get to her. If they could get there before his forces, she would be safe, an honored guest in his realm. He was looking forward to the meeting.

  Chapter 5

  The being we have designated Watcher continues to mature at an incredible rate. He absorbs information like a sponge, sitting in front of a half dozen monitors, watching everything that comes. How much can he absorb before he reaches his limit? With an endless life span, I am sure he will eventually discover his limit, if we do not.

  Notes From the Improved Human Experiment.

  “So what the hell happened?” yelled Admiral Micas as he strode onto the bridge of the Orca. He did not like to be told of failure, his or anyone else’s.

  “As far as we can tell,” said Captain Valari Midas, his voice subdued, “the torpedoes malfunctioned and went off course. They exploded at closest approach to the comet.”

  “Not close enough to do any damage?”

  “No sir,” said the captain, sweat beading on his face even in the cool of the command center. “At least a million klicks off course.”

  “How in the hell could they both malfunction?” yelled the admiral, his fist pounding on the nearby weapons console.

  “It could only be due to incompetence,” said the tall staff lieutenant who walked onto the bridge. The admiral looked at the man with distaste. Always trying to get ahead, this Lieutenant Senior Daris Mollara. He had been about to say the same thing, and didn’t like having his thunder stolen by a subordinate, even if that man was the nephew of the Patriarch of the Nation, Nigel Disreali.r />
  “You have proof of this?” said the admiral coldly to the staff officer he had been burdened with.

  “What other proof is needed,” said the man with a sneer on his haughty face, “than the improbability of two torpedoes malfunctioning at the same time.”

  “They could have been influenced by an outside force,” said the captain, his eyes flicking from face to face. Scared, thought the admiral, and he didn’t blame him. Men had been relieved of command for lesser breakdowns in the efficiency of their crews. The holy mission of the Nation's Navy was not something to be taken lightly.

  “And what might this outside influence be?” asked Mollara. “What could influence the flight of two of the torpedoes developed by the people’s science?” Mollara’s voice rose in a good imitation of the Patriarch’s, accusing anyone who dared question the perfection of the Patriarch’s plan, the divine mission of the church.

  “Remember where we are, Lieutenant Mollara,” cautioned the admiral, as the bridge crew tried to hide its discomfort. Mollara looked confused for a moment, as if trying to discern the admiral’s intent.

  “We do not know what we will find when we get to the Donut,” said the captain. “And who knows how far its powers stretch.”

  “Any way we can hit them with another torpedo?” asked the admiral.

  “No sir,” replied Captain Midas. “We are over half C, and anything we launch astern would have to overcome our own velocity. It would be dead in space before it built up enough momentum to reach that target.”

  “I want all stations on level two alert,” ordered the admiral. “Anything out of the ordinary is to be reported to me. Lieutenant Mollaris, you are to come with me.”

  Both men saluted, the captain snapping his heels in place, the staff officer falling in behind the admiral as he headed out the door.