Griffin's Egg

Methodically snapping his wrist latches shut one by one, Gunther said, "I think it's a metal punch."  Then, because the helmet muffled his words, he repeated them over the chip.

CLANG.  This second time, they were waiting for the sound.  Now there could be no doubt.  Something was trying to break open the outer airlock door.

"A what?!"

"Might be a hammer of some type, or a blacksmith unit.  Just be thankful it's not a laser jig."  He held up his hands before him.  "Give me a safety check."

She turned his wrists one way, back, took his helmet in her hands and gave it a twist to test its seal.  "You pass."  She held up her own wrists.  "But what is it trying to do?"

Her gloves were sealed perfectly.  One helmet dog had a bit of give in it, but not enough to breach integrity.  He shrugged.  "It's deranged--it  could want anything.  It might even be trying to repair a weak hinge."

CLANG.

"It's trying to get in here!"

"That's another possibility, yes."

Izmailova's voice rose slightly.  "But even scrambled, there can't possibly be any programs in its memory to make it do that.  How can random input make it act this way?"

"It doesn't work like that.  You're thinking of the kind of robotics they had when you were a kid.  These units are state of the art:  They don't manipulate instructions, they manipulate concepts.  See, that makes them more flexible.  You don't have to program in every little step when you want one to do something new.  You just give it a goal--"

CLANG.

"--like, to Disassemble a Rotary Drill.  It's got a bank of available skills, like Cutting and Unbolting and Gross Manipulation, which it then fits together in various configurations until it has a path that will bring it to the goal."  He was talking for the sake of talking now, talking to keep himself from panic.  "Which normally works out fine.  But when one of these things malfunctions, it does so on the conceptual level.  See?  So that--"

"So that it decides we're rotary drills that need to be disassembled."

"Uh ... yeah."

CLANG.

"So what do we do when it gets in here?"  They had both involuntarily risen to their feet, and stood facing the door.  There was not much space, and what little there was they filled.  Gunther was acutely aware that there was not enough room here to either fight or flee.

"I don't know about you," he said, "but I'm going to hit that sucker over the head with the toilet."

She turned to look at him.

CLA--The noise was cut in half by a breathy, whooshing explosion.  Abrupt, total silence.  "It's through the outer door," Gunther said flatly.

They waited.

Much later, Izmailova said, "Is it possible it's gone away?"

"I don't know."  Gunther undogged his helmet, knelt and put an ear to the floor.  The stone was almost painfully cold.  "Maybe the explosion damaged it."  He could hear the faint vibrations of the assemblers, the heavier rumblings of machines roving the factory floor.  None of it sounded close.  He silently counted to a hundred.  Nothing.  He counted to a hundred again.

Finally he straightened.  "It's gone."

They both sat down.  Izmailova took off her helmet, and Gunther clumsily began undoing his gloves.  He fumbled at the latches.  "Look at me."  He laughed shakily.  "I'm all thumbs.  I can't even handle this, I'm so u

"Let me help you with that."  Izmailova flipped up the latches, tugged at his glove.  It came free.  "Where's your other hand?"

Then, somehow, they were each removing the other's suit, tugging at the latches, undoing the seals.  They began slowly but sped up with each latch undogged, until they were yanking and pulling with frantic haste.  Gunther opened up the front of Izmailova's suit, revealing a red silk camisole.  He slid his hands beneath it, and pushed the cloth up over her breasts.  Her  nipples were hard.  He let her breasts fill his hands and squeezed.

Izmailova made a low, groaning sound in the back of her throat.  She had Gunther's suit open.  Now she pushed down his leggings and reached within to seize his cock.  He was already erect.  She tugged it out and impatiently shoved him down on the cot.  Then she was kneeling on top of him, and guiding him inside her.

Her mouth met his, warm and moist.

Half in and half out of their suits, they made love.  Gunther managed to struggle one arm free, and reached within Izmailova's suit to run a hand up her long back and over the back of her head.  The short hairs of her buzz cut stung and tickled his palm.

She rode him roughly, her flesh slippery with sweat against his.  "Are you coming yet?" she murmured.  "Are you coming yet?  Tell me when you're about to come."  She bit his shoulder, the side of his neck, his chin, his lower lip.  Her nails dug into his flesh.

"Now," he whispered.  Possibly he only subvocalized it, and she caught it on her trance chip.  But then she clutched him tighter than ever, as if she were trying to crack his ribs, and her whole body shuddered with orgasm.  Then he came too, riding her passion down into spiraling desperation, ecstasy and release.

It was better than anything he had ever experienced before.

Afterward, they finally kicked free of their suits.  They shoved and pushed the things off the cot.  Gunther pulled the blanket out from beneath them, and with Izmailova's help wrapped it about the both of them.  They lay together, relaxed, not speaking.

He listened to her breathe for a while.  The noise was soft.  When she  turned her face toward him, he could feel it, a warm little tickle in the hollow of his throat.  The smell of her permeated the room.  This stranger beside him.

Gunther felt weary, warm, at ease.  "How long have you been here?" he asked.  "Not here in the shelter, I mean, but ..."

"Five days."

"That little."  He smiled.  "Welcome to the Moon, Ms. Izmailova."

"Ekatarina," she said sleepily.  "Call me Ekatarina."

Whooping, they soared high and south, over Herschel.  The Ptolemaeus road bent and doubled below them, winding out of sight, always returning.  "This is great!" Hiro crowed.  "This is--I should've talked you into taking me out here a year ago."

Gunther checked his bearings and throttled down, sinking eastward.  The other two hoppers, slaved to his own, followed in tight formation.  Two days had passed since the flare storm and Gunther, still on mandatory recoop, had promised to guide his friends into the highlands as soon as the surface advisory was dropped.  "We're coming in now.  Better triplecheck your safety harnesses.  You doing okay back there, Kreesh?"

"I am quite comfortable, yes."

Then they were down on the Seething Bay Company landing pad.

Hiro was the second down and the first on the surface.  He bounded about like a collie off its leash, chasing upslope and down, looking for new vantage points.  "I can't believe I'm here!  I work out this way every day, but you know what?  This is the first time I've actually been out here.  Physically, I mean."

"Watch your footing," Gunther warned.  "This isn't like telepresence--if you break a leg, it'll be up to Krishna and me to carry you out."

"I trust you.  Man, anybody who can get caught out in a flare storm, and end up nailing--"

"Hey, watch your language, okay?"

"Everybody's heard the story.  I mean, we all thought you were dead, and then they found the two of you asleep.  They'll be talking about it a hundred years from now."  Hiro was practically choking on his laughter.  "You're a legend!"

"Just give it a rest."  To change the subject, Gunther said, "I can't believe you want to take a photo of this mess."  The Seething Bay operation was a strip mine.  Robot bulldozers scooped up the regolith and fed it to a processing plant that rested on enormous skids.  They were after the thorium here, and the output was small enough that it could be transported to the breeder reactor by hopper.  There was no need for a railgun and the tailings were piled in artificial mountains in the wake of the factory.