Charles Stross - Laundry Files 01 by The Atrocity Archives

Author:The Atrocity Archives
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-21T14:15:43+00:00

Blurred shadows dance across the video screen, grey and black textures like ripped velvet laid over volcanic ash. On the floor in front of my feet the coil of cable unspools, snaking into darkness. Hutter, the equipment tech with the control panel, is hunched over it like a video game addict, twitching her joystick with gloved hands. I lean over behind Alan, who has the ringside view; I have to lean because the backpack is a solid mass, thirty kilograms pushing me forward if I even think about relaxing.

“One metre forward; now pan left.”

The screen jerks. There’s a thin wail as air vents through the doorframe and the cable reels out, then the scenery on screen begins to rotate. We see more blurred grey rubble, then a view that swoops away, down to a distant sea. As the camera pans round further the back of the robot comes into view, trailing a white umbilical back into the incongruous side of a wall. There isn’t enough light to examine the wall, or enough scan lines: it’s a night-vision camera, but we’re operating in starlight. The camera continues to rotate until it’s pointing back to its original bearing. There is no sign of life.

“Looks clear,” someone whispers in my ear, voice tinny and half-masked by static.

“If you want to go first, feel free to volunteer,” Alan says dryly. “Mary. See any hot spots?”

“Nothing,” the tech reports.

“Okay. Bearing zero six zero, forward ten or until you see anything, then halt and report.”

She follows through and the little robot lurches forward into the grey and black landscape on the other side of the gate. “Ambient air pressure, ten pascals. Ambient temperature—thermocouple gives an error, FLIR is flat lined, but that backup sensor is claiming somewhere between forty-five and sixty Kelvin. Gravimetric—it’s Earth-like. Uh, I’m worried about the power, boss. Battery load is normal, but we’re losing power like crazy—I think it’s in danger of freezing solid. We never designed a robot to do this kind of environment—it’s colder than summer on Pluto.”

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