Chapter One: Missing! Bud finally had to call out a third time. “Sandy, are you deaf?” In point of fact Sandra Swift’s hearing was rather healthy . always had been . but she had been concentrating with her thermal and evolved gas analyzer and wanted to carefully scale her efforts back to normal perspective before replying. She finally looked up at Bud Barclay with a hint of annoyance. “Busy, Bud. See me busy?” If Bud looked contrite it wasn’t noticeable. Especially since his face was similar to hers. Both of them were gazing at each other through multi-lensed armored turrets at the end of flexible metal stalks. At the time of design expression had been considered something of a non-essential luxury. His voice, however, carried an apology over to her. “Sorry. I just wanted your help.” Sandy couldn’t see where Bud needed it. Like herself he was standing some three meters tall: a body made of jointed cylinders composed of Tomasite reinforced Duralloy surrounding a flattened disc, giving the both of them a crablike shape. The crab form was heightened not only by the video stalks, but by the four jointed metal legs and instrument- laden arms which made up the rest of their appearance. Bud was, at the moment, some eighteen meters away. Sandy concentrated, using the laser rangefinder. Ah . exactly eighteen point seven two two meters away. He seemed in no apparent distress. “What is it?” “Look over at the lower slope of G-21. Tell me what you see.” Sandy turned her turret to focus where Bud was indicating. G-21 was the designation assigned to the nearest edge of the Montes Jura, rising to the north of them just over a kilometer away. Somewhere beyond the slope to their left was Crater Bianchini, while Crater Maupertuis lay some distance further to their right. She scanned the slope, registering nothing. “Okay, so I’m dense---” “No, no. It’s right there in front of you. See the bright line running diagonally down?” Oh. So obvious she was missing it. “You mean that line starting near the top of the slope?” “Uh huh. I’ve been looking for minutes now and, the more I study it, the odder it seems. It’s almost more like a scar . like something tried to take a slice out of the mountain.” “And the slice went down.” Sandy extended her telescopic eye as far as possible, giving the line a thorough examination. “What would cause that?” To her amusement she noted how Bud’s turret shook back and forth. “Something about it’s familiar,” he replied. “I keep thinking I should know the answer, but nothing comes. Do you think we could manage a closer look?” Sandy consulted her notes. The current test had slightly over another hour left on its schedule before they had to board the donkey and return to Swiftbase. They were well ahead of their assigned tasks so some sightseeing was reasonable. “I think Florian would like some samples from the slope at any case. Sure.” Both of them retracted their legs, settling down upon the tread assemblies. Before driving off, Sandy beamed an update to both the relay satellite high above them, as well as to the recording package on the donkey which waited eight kilometers away. She then moved to follow Bud, both of their treads raising gentle clouds of dust behind them. Putting on a burst of speed, Sandy soon brought herself close alongside Bud. “If it was a rock fall,” she said, still examining the long scar, “then why aren’t there any debris between it and the bottom of the slope?” “I know. I’m not a geologist but it bothers me too.” Sandy continued her study. “Looks more like maybe something side-swiped the mountain---” A hiss of static. Bud’s version of catching his breath. “Like a trail left by an airplane crash,” he exclaimed. “That’s what it reminds me of.” Sandy considered it. “Meteor impact?” “Could be. Maybe we’ll locate some of the fragments when we get closer . what!” “Bud!” But it was no use. The world suddenly shifted, heaving violently and tilting upwards. Sandy found herself staring into a growing darkness. A few odd flashes of light . an inability to move . and then she was surrounded by static. * * * * * * * “Test interrupted,” the controller announced over the loudspeaker. “All stations check their recordings.” The sound of hydraulic pumps hissing filled the room as the metallic petals of the virtual command shells slowly parted. Sandy Swift and Bud Barclay carefully shook themselves free of the transfer webs and rose from the moist interiors, lifting their goggles off and their eyes blinking as they accustomed themselves once more to the surroundings of the Virtual Lab. Sandy nodded gratefully at the offer of bottled water from a technician, drinking heavily from it as she turned to watch Bud stagger out of his shell. “What happened?” she finally asked. Bud Barclay . senior astronaut for Swift Enterprises . was holding one hand to the side of his head, grimacing and also drinking water as he approached. “Did everything suddenly flip over and go dark?” Sandy nodded as she peeled herself out of the shell. “Just a few bright ticks in my vision, then nothing.” She looked up at the glass-enclosed control booth. “Freida? Anything?” Inside the booth Freida Morgan, one of Swift Enterprises’ rising young cyberneticists, was slowly shaking her head as she reached for the microphone. “All contact was broken, Sandy,” she said. “We’re still checking data.” “No telemetry at all?” “Everything’s blank.” Lowering the microphone, Morgan exchanged some words with a technician in the booth. “We’re going to contact Swiftbase and see what happened at their end,” she finally told Sandy. “We’ll be up there in a moment.” Exchanging a look with Bud they both left the Virtual Lab, slipping robes on over the snug-fitting transfer garments they both wore. Stepping up a flight of stairs they were soon in the control booth. Morgan was at a console in the back of the booth, bending over an indicator with a technician, and she nodded at them as they came closer. “Everything was all right until this point,” she said, her finger tracing a path on the indicator where various lines of data were suddenly replaced by zeroes. “Telemetry was fine. No indication at all of internal systems malfunction.” She looked up to peer at the both of them closely. “You sure both of you are okay?” “We’re fine,” Bud replied, intently studying the indicator. Sandy found her attention on him and she held back a smile. People who thought they knew Bud only saw him as a continually joking character. They never saw him when a test flight . even one that never left the ground . came up against a problem. They never saw the one- hundred per cent professional which emerged at those moments. Of course Sandy reflected that, if she had her druthers, such “moments” would never arrive in the first place. There had been more than friendly concern behind Morgan’s question. She was not only in charge of the Foresight Project but had been the chief designer of the Foresight robots, as well as having supervised most of the programming which had gone into her creations. The robots were not only vulnerable to mechanical or electronic problems, but also to any problems which their human “hosts” brought with them. Head colds . stomach aches . any sort of ailment could return along the feedback loop and cause operational problems within the robots. Sandy sent a reassuring nod past Bud to Morgan, who was happy at the immediate news, but still concerned over the reported failure. “Keep drinking water,” she told both of them. “No one’s supposed to transition out of VR that quickly.” “Let’s see the recorded feed,” Sandy suggested, and the three of them turned to face the glass wall of the control booth. Ahead of them, the broad space of the Virtual Lab darkened as the telejector systems came on, producing two separate lobes filling the upper portion of the room with an image of what the two Foresight Robots each saw during their final moments. Once more Sandy and Bud “saw” themselves approaching the slope of G-21. They watched as, once again, everything suddenly heaved up . then flashes of light . static, and finally darkness. Sandy was shaking her head. “If I’d remained a meter or so behind Bud I could’ve at least seen what happened to him.” “Re-run at forty per cent,” Morgan instructed one of the technicians. The telejector image faded briefly, then resumed from the beginning of the previous scene. This time everything had been slowed down, and everyone in the control booth watched as it happened again. Even given the additional clarity of the telejector imaging there seemed to be no new clues. “Okay, so the both of us obviously fell into something,” Sandy said, absently using a corner of her robe to pat some of her blonde hair dry. “But that area was checked for holes or crevices. There should’ve been nothing.” Morgan had been reading a report which a technician had passed to her. She wordlessly passed it on to Bud. “Swiftbase reports no seismic activity in the region,” he told Sandy, his eyes on the report. “They’ve got their own satellites sending back images. The dust we kicked up is still settling, but there’s no immediate trace of either of us.” Sandy took the report, knowing full well she wouldn’t see anything the others had missed, but simply wanting something to do with her hands while she thought.