Xeelee 03-Return to Titan by Stephen Baxter

Author:Stephen Baxter [Baxter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-19T21:33:36+00:00

Poole and Miriam staggered and started shouting instructions to each other. I had my helmet over my head in a heartbeat.

Then there was another crunch, a ripping sound-and a scream, gurgling and suddenly cut off, and an inward rush of cold air that I felt even through my exosuit. I turned and saw that near the shower partition, a hole had been ripped in the side of the gondola’s flimsy hull, revealing Titan’s crimson murk. Something like a claw, or a huge version of Miriam’s manipulator arm, was working at the hull, widening the breach.

And Bill Dzik, naked, not meters from the exosuit that could have saved him, was already frozen to death.

That was enough for me. I flung open the hatch in the gondola roof and lunged out, not waiting for Miriam or Poole. I hit the Titan sand and ran as best I could, the exosuit laboring to help me. I could hear crunching and chewing behind me. I did not look back.

When I had gone 100 meters I stopped, winded, and turned. Poole and Miriam were following me. I was relieved that at least I was not stranded on Titan alone.

And I saw what was becoming of our gondola. The machines that had assailed it—and they were machines, I had no doubt of it-were like spiders of ice, with lenticular bodies perhaps ten meters long, and each equipped with three grabber claws attached to delicate low-gravity limbs. Four or five of these things were laboring at the wreck of our gondola. I saw that they had gone for the wheels first, which was why we had tipped over, and now were making a fast job of ripping the structure apart. Not only that, beyond them I saw a line of similar-looking beasts carrying silvery fragments that could only be pieces of the gondola off up the rising ground towards the summit of the cryovolcano. Some of the larger components of the wreck they left intact, such as the GUT engine module, but they carried them away just as determinedly.

In minutes, I saw, there would be little left of our gondola on the ice surface-not much aside from Bill Dzik, who, naked, sprawled and staring with frozen eyeballs, made an ugly corpse, but did not deserve the fate that had befallen him.

Harry Poole’s head popped into Virtual existence before us. “Well,” he said, “that complicates things.”

Michael swatted at him, dispersing pixels like flies.

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