Good, Bob Millard answers. We copy you beyond its killin’ range.
Close observations have shown that an EM cannot focus and deliver fatal power levels at distances greater than 120 meters. This was of prime importance in designing Daffler’s tactics, and his suit. The fabric he wears will reflect above ninety percent of incident radiation at the EM hunter-killer wavelengths. Nigel surges over a field of broken gravel and through a sand lobe, trying to bring Daffler into view. There: he is coming out of a rutted gully, a thin figure in the wan light, kicking up puffs of ruby sand. Nigel can see other servo’d forms at distant spots, dispersed so that the EMs will not be disturbed if they notice something odd about the reflecting disguises the humans use.
Daffler stops, kneels, sets up his apparatus. Power okay.
The EM Daffler has selected is a stiff array of folded legs and body, still and waxy in the distance. Nigel suppresses the gathering EM chorus in order to hear Daffler. The EMs are singing out a complex form of darting spikes, coming down hard on a note which forms part of the word maybe, still a fragment from that old program from Earth. May … Daffler taps in his carrier wave; Nigel can hear its hum … beee
Here goes.
Daffler’s reply comes booming in. It starts the antique radio program over from the beginning: It’s Arrr-thur Godfrey time … and the notes roll out from the rutted valley.
Nigel is holding his breath, leaning forward so the pads butt against his shoulders, reminding him of where he is, encapsulated in Lancer, and the frozen forms down the amber valley show nothing.
Their chorus pulses on for a beat, two beats, and then there comes from the EMs a curious spiky scattering of notes, a rippling in the higher frequencies which cascades down into their central fugue, spreading noise and confusion through the next word whhh … until it loses coherence … whhheeerreee and dissolves in the foam of a thousand random buzzing, clicking jots.
As they have planned, Daffler switches to a new program, now that he has caught the attention of at least some of the aliens. He focuses forward, toward the nearest, and begins the signal. It is a simple code, a few pulses. Beneath it, keeping contact, Daffler sends the continuing program, the long-dead announcer brightly calling out the names of the guests and the background music coming up, piano, light like splashing water.
The nearest EM begins to lower its head. Down the valley the other stickwork shapes are moving, too, the great square heads tipping down from the shrouded red glow above, with its distant beckoning point of radio, alive with the babble of life, and the legs begin to work, tilting them erect as the nearest one suddenly jerks into motion, taking a step, and a new voice pours into the radio spectrum, sharp and clear: a fast chatter of blips that ripple and soar upward in amplitude, obviously something carrying a complex code.
Nigel instinctively starts forward, rocks clattering beneath him as he speeds down the hillside without thinking of the gradient, the hydraulics protesting with a wheezing churn. “It’s a framed”—he begins, and a rising tide of anxious clicks stutters across the radio spectrum—”reply,” he yells.
Daffler is transmitting his patient tutorial cues beneath the stretched syllables of the program, thaaattss … It is a simple arithmetic pattern with geometric implications, a form the exologic specialists thought general enough and even obvious.
Clank and suddenly Nigel slews to the left and spins, sensors abruptly canted uphill as he feels the treads and rocker arms lose their grip. Pebbles rattle against him, he slides into the wake of a small avalanche he has started, dust fogs the lenses and he falls, crunches against a boulder, his treads spit gravel, the center axis tilts, and he begins to tip over. He slams on the brake, lets the robot rock backward, and abruptly accelerates, throwing himself to the left as the treads spin, grapples fight for purchase, and the axis comes level. He thuds to a stop Christ Nigel what’re you suspended a third of the way over the lip of a gully.
In the last two seconds Daffler’s geometric hailing signal has spat out another amplitude-modulated spike ahhll … and a fresh piano note springs into the air, each fragment of time hangs, crystallized. The radio spectrum is a forest of uttering spikes, a pattern Nigel has not seen before, bunching and rebunching, in furious movement like bees swarming around the sober, bell-shaped linewidth that is the envelope of Daffler’s steady signal … whheee … Above it the piano note subsides, falling into a bass uuummmmm and Nigel sees the EMs have stopped broadcasting their piece of the old program, their energy is now converging and crowding into the shifting, darting turbulence which closes in on Daffler’s line.
Nigel peers out at the valley. The EM heads swivel toward Daffler. Their arms flail about, cutting the air in elaborate arcs. They lurch to their feet and the thin spindly legs stamp ritually at the ground, pounding, pounding. Some dart back and forth, heads jerking with anxious energy. Nigel pauses to watch but the soil beneath him crumbles, a shelf cracks and falls away under his forward struts. He clutches at a stone ledge, misses, grasps it, and sags farther over the edge. The gully is rocky and deep. If he falls—
“Daffler!” he sends. “I think they’re trying to get a coherent signal together.”
Yeah. Good. I’m getting through, at least. Just—
“They must have planned some reply, the same as we. They can triangulate on you so they know you’re local, but—
The ledge slumps and tumbles down the gully. Nigel pushes down on his forward arms, catching at the caked soil to gain an increment of momentum, and thrusts back, motors roaring as a plume of dust gushes from his threads. The steel links catch—slip—catch—and he surges back, scrabbling to safety as Bob’s voice repeats Christ Nigel what the hell is all ’at you’re to stay put—
“They’re excited, look at them—”
Yeah give Daffler a minute an’ we’ll see—
“No, I don’t—”
On the spectrum the spikes converge by the hundreds on Daffler’s thick line. The EMs are tuning their individual frequencies, flexing interior muscles to adjust the lengths of their metal-laced spines. Their signals sputter with detail, the amplitudes shifting on the carrier waves in complex patterns, spilling into Daffler’s line, caahhnnn … focusing on him, many of them performing the curious jittering back-and-forth dance, agitated in a way never seen before, seized with passion, expending their electric reserves in a spilling torrent, each straining toward Daffler, reaching out with their planned surging stutter.
Nigel senses them trying to see Daffler, to resolve him, to unmuddy the image, but their low frequencies cannot see detail shorter than their wavelengths, cannot pick out the spindly arms and legs which would distinguish Daffler from the native Isis animals, and so a storm of emissions moves to higher frequencies, seeking definition. The EMs are sending their preordained answer and at the same time they try to see Daffler, the bringer of tidings, tilting their heads swiftly, canting themselves at angles, pouring energy into the spectrum—
Daffler cries out.
Jesus—it’s—I’m regis—
A sputtering howl comes welling up from the man. He shrieks. Daffler topples, curling up. The parabolic dish beside him crashes over. Daffler writhes, puffs of dust obscure him. The shriek chokes off into a gurgle.
Nigel leaps a narrow ravine and roars down the hillside, scattering stones as the EM spectrum fills with discordant notes and the comm band says I’m not picking up insuit from him—Look I’m moving to flank that nearest bunch of ’em I don’t like—His equipment’s out—Can’t see anything try to move closer—Nigel you make out any movement, and the EM emissions recede, the spiky jumble dies. Nigel finds a sure path and surges down the slope, toward the pall of fine iron dust that shrouds the area. He approaches.