Lost in Space by Joan D Vinge

Author:Joan D Vinge [Space, Lost in]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Maureen and Penny sat at the com of the Jupiter Two, powering up the ship’s drive. Behind them Will fought virtual monsters, heaving invisible spiders off the back of his sim, as the real robot fought real monsters at the other end of their link. Its holographic form around him was already flickering in places, as the real-time damage to the robot mounted.

“Will,” his father shouted from the Proteus’s airlock, “can you get the robot in here?”

More spiders clung to its hull, burrowing through its body in their mindless urge to destroy the living flesh it was keeping from them. Will grimaced as if he could actually feel its pain, and shook his head. “I can’t move him without letting the spiders into the ship!” The robot was crawling with them, inside and out; they were pushing through gaping rents in its body, furiously trying to reach the humans in the airlock.

“Leave him behind,” his father ordered, and Will could barely see the emotion on his face.

“I’m sorry…” Will whispered his final words to the robot, and began to disengage the simbot’s controls.

On board the Proteus, a spider squeezed through the robot’s ruined body, flinging itself with monomaniacal bloodlust toward the airlock door.

“Seal it! Now!” Robinson shouted, and Don hit the button with his fist. The door was still closing as the first monster reached them. The spider-thing lashed out, grazing Smith’s back with its taloned whip, just as the door dropped down.

The alien baby leaped from Judy’s arms with a shriek of terror, landed on Smith, and launched itself toward the rear of the chamber. The door sealed shut, lopping off the alien’s tailhook. It dropped with a mucasoid splat to the floor in the sudden silence of their profound relief.

Smith rubbed his back, glaring at the trembling form of the alien baby huddled again in Judy’s arms. “This tiny horror scratched me.”

Don pressed the stud on his jacket with an unsteady hand, finally retracting the blast shield and his helmet. He looked down, his heart beating like a fist against his ribs as he stared at the severed appendage still twitching on the floor. Slowly, the lock cycled.

Back on board the Jupiter Two, Don shoved his way past the others, heading for his chair at the com. He sank into the pilot’s seat-his seat-with a sense of stupefying gratitude. And then he looked at the screens. The exterior view of both ships showed him countless spiders emerging from the Proteus, swarming over its hull to the place where the Jupiter was docked.

Robinson took the copilot’s seat. “Prepare to disengage,” he said; but Don was already there.

Will watched from inside the simbot as his father and Major West went to the com without a backward glance. More pieces of the robot’s image winked out around him with every passing second.

He stepped out of the mangled form, no longer able to go on witnessing its horrible death. “Good-bye, Robot,” he whispered.

Penny came up beside him and put her arm around his shoulders.

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