The enemy-trace crawled toward the entrance again. And again a noiseless burst of machine-gun fire spewed about the cave, driving the enemy fragment back. More vibrations in the rock—
“I’m your friend. The war’s over. It’s been over for months … Earthmonths. Don’t you get it, Grumbler? ‘Grumbler’—we used to call you that back in your rookie days—before we taught you how to kill. Grumbler. Mobile autocyber fire control. Don’t you know your pappy, son?”
The vibrations were an irritant. Suddenly angry, it wheeled around on the crag, gracefully manuevering its massive bulk. Motors growling, it moved from the crag onto the hillside, turned again, and lumbered down the slope. It charged across the flatlands and braked to a halt fifty yards from the entrance to the cave. Dust geysers sprayed up about its caterpillars and fell like jets of water in the airless night. It listened again. All was silent in the cave.
“ Go ’way, sonny’’ quavered the vibrations after a time. “ Let pappy starve in peace.”
It aimed the small spitter at the center of the black opening and hosed two hundred rounds of tracers into the cave. It waited. Nothing moved inside. It debated the use of a radiation grenade, but its arsenal was fast depleting. It listened for a time, watching the cave, looming five times taller than the tiny flesh-thing that cowered inside. Then it turned and lumbered back across the Hat to resume its watch from the crag. Distant motion, out beyond the limits of the demiworld, scratched feebly at the threshold of its awareness—but the motion was too remote to disturb.
The thing was scratching in the cave again.
“I’m punctured, do you hear? I’m punctured. A shard of broken rock. Just a small leak, but a slap-patch won’t hold. My suit! Aubrey from Sawyer, Aubrey from Sawyer. Base Control from Moonwagon Sixteen, Message for you, over. He he. Gotta observe procedure. I got shot! Fm punctured. Help!”
The thing made whining sounds for a time, then; “All right, it’s only my leg. I’ll pump the bool full of water and freeze it. So I lose a leg. Whatthehell, take your time.” The vibrations subsided into whining sounds again.
It settled again on the crag, its activators relaxing into a lethargy that was full of gnawing pain. Patiently it awaited the dawn.
The movement toward the south was increasing. The movement nagged at the outer fringes of the demiworld, until at last the movement became an irritant. Silently, a drill slipped down from its belly. The drill gnawed deep into the rock, then retracted. It slipped a sensitive pickup into I he drill hole and listened carefully to the ground.