Free More Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem Page B

storage units are situated near the siding of a narrow-gauge track eight kilometers from the provisional landing field. Immediately after the disaster, a rescue operation was initiated, and the first order of business was to check out all personnel, to see if anyone had been buried beneath the devastated buildings. This action lasted about an hour; in the meantime, however, it developed that from the concussion the central administration buildings had lost their full seal, so the work dragged on till midnight. Around one o’clock it was discovered that the breakdown in the main grid supplying the entire construction site, as well as the interruption of telephone communication, had not been caused by the meteors. The cables had been cut—by laser beam.”
    Pirx blinked. He couldn’t help feeling that he was participating in some sort of play, a masquerade. Such things didn’t happen. A laser! Sure! And why not throw in a Martian spy while you were at it? Yet this commodore-engineer hardly looked like the type who would get hotel guests up at the crack of dawn in order to play some stupid joke on them.
    “The telephone lines were repaired first,” said Achanian. “But at that same time a small transporter from the emergency party, having reached the place where the cables were broken, lost radio contact with Luna Base. After three in the morning we learned that this transporter had been attacked by laser and, as a result of several hits, now stood in flames. The driver and his assistant perished, but two of the crew—fortunately they were in suits, having got themselves ready to go out and repair the line—managed to jump free in time and hide in the desert, that is, the Mare Tranquilitatis, roughly here…” Achanian indicated with his ruler a point on the Sea of Tranquillity, some four hundred kilometers from the little crater of Arago.
    “Neither of them, as far as I know, saw the assailant. At a particular moment they simply felt a very strong thermal blast, and the transporter caught fire. They jumped before the tanks of compressed gas went off; the lack of an atmosphere saved them, since only that portion of the fuel which was able to combine with the oxygen inside the transporter exploded. One of these people later died, in as yet undetermined circumstances. The other succeeded in returning to the construction site, crossing a stretch of about one hundred forty kilometers, but he ran and exhausted his suit’s air supply and went into anoxia. Fortunately he was discovered and is now in the hospital. Our knowledge of what happened is based entirely on his account and needs further verification.”
    There was a dead silence. Pirx could see where all of this was leading, but he still didn’t believe it; he didn’t want to…
    “No doubt you have guessed, gentlemen,” continued the dark-haired man in an even voice—his profile stood out black as coal against the blazing mercury landscapes of the moon—“that the one who cut the telephone cables and high-tension line, and also attacked the transporter, is our sole surviving Setaur. This is a unit about which we know little; it was put into mass production only last month. Engineer Klarner, one of Setaur’s designers, was supposed to have come here with me, to give you gentlemen a full explanation not only of the capabilities of this model, but also of the measures that now must be taken to neutralize or destroy the object.” The cadet next to Pirx gave a soft moan. It was a moan of pure excitement, uttered without even the pretense of sounding horrified. The young man was not aware of the navigator’s disapproving look. But, then, no one noticed or heard anything but the voice of the commodore-engineer.
    “I’m no expert in intellectronics and therefore cannot tell you much about the Setaur. But among those present, I believe, is a Dr. McCork. Is he here?”
    A slender man wearing glasses stood up. “Yes. I didn’t take part in the designing of the