Frankowski & Grossman - Tank 02 by Frankowski Leo

Author:Frankowski, Leo
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Shooting at a Star

It was a long, nerve-wracking trip, with nothing we could do but worry about whether we would make it to the surface or not. After a while, I ordered the tanks to put us all to sleep, and wake us when we got near the top, or the bottom, as the case might be.

Conan said, "If it's all the same to you, Mickolai, I would just as soon not be awakened if we are approaching the bottom."

"What? But then you would miss the only opportunity you'll ever get to experience something absolutely unique!" Quincy said.

"That was my idea, yes."

Agnieshka said, "You are all in need of physical training. You are way behind schedule."

"Not now, dammit!" I said.

"When we get into actual combat, you all must be physically fit!"

"Then exercise us while we are asleep. I know that you can do that."

"That would be purely physical, without the mental coordination that you also need."

"Follow orders, dammit!"

"Yes, sir."

I woke up a hundred meters from the top of the shaft, at combat speed. Conan and Maria, on the opposite side of the "cork," were already moving the truck from the center to a position over themselves.

We went over the lip, and bloomed like a flower, spreading outward exactly the way we had in the last simulation.

What wasn't like the simulation was the pile of debris we found around us.

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All of our maps of the surface had been made by the first probe to get to this system, a hundred years ago. Very few people had been on the surface since then, and those few hadn't done any mapping. Why bother? What changes on an airless planet?

When the Japanese had dug the shaft, they had apparently taken the debris that their machines had removed and used a linear accelerator to blast it up and out of the hole. This debris had settled around the hole like a pile of volcanic ash. It even looked like a volcano, from the outside.

From the inside, it looked like we were in a huge funnel, with a hole in the bottom that went down forever. I felt Agnieshka firing two of the charges that were normally used to right a tank that had been turned over. This had the effect of giving us enough spin to make a complete flip before we came down, hard on our bottom, on the funnel of debris. Over the years, the metallic debris had vacuum welded itself into a solid mass that was more than a bit slippery.

Almost any metal will weld itself to just about any other metal that it is placed in contact with. This doesn't happen on planets like Earth because in an atmosphere, metals are coated with a thin layer of air, which keeps them from actually touching each other. On an airless world like New Kashubia, metals lack that coating, and they weld up solid.

The other tanks also fired charges, while the drones just did the best they could.

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