Analog SFF, March 2012 Read Online Free Page A

wheel as he took in the whole rustic scene. “There's nothing here. What if that fuel cell of yours doesn't pump enough juice? This is a stupid way to hide your device."
    "We're not hiding it,” I said. “It's stuck in the stone."
    "What?"
    I held up the flap. He rolled in. He stopped at the edge of the cut, his wheels balanced precariously on the lip of stone. He stared a long time, silent. Then he circled the device slowly, wheeling around the pit. Finally he whispered, “It's extraterrestrial, isn't it? Is it extraterrestrial? It's alien."
    I shrugged. Karen told him, “It's five hundred and fifty million years old. So if it isn't from outer space, then it's from someplace even weirder."
    He stared, mouth hanging open.
    "Well?” I asked.
    "Get the equipment."
    "But?"
    "But yeah what you said."
    "I can keep my shares in my company?"
    "Not if I die here of anticipation. Get the goddamn equipment."
    "Aye, aye, captain."
    * * * *
    I held my open palm out before Daltry. All three of us were dressed in his VR suits. Daltry's was a specialty he'd rigged up: it went down only to his waist. He'd built special hand controls to simulate leg pressure and walk a robot.
    Karen bent over to peer down into my palm.
    "Not so close,” I told her. “Don't breath on them, you might blow one away. We'll be in big trouble trying to find it in all these pine needles."
    "Sorry,” she said. She backed off. “It's just, I can barely see them. They look like three dead fruit flies."
    I nodded. “That's about the size. Just over three millimeters long. They're heavier than flies, of course. Internal atomic power source. They can run about a week without replacement of the battery."
    I looked over at the device. We had set a dish antenna out before it, the bell aimed straight at the tiny opening on the front. “These robots should be able to transmit clearly to that antenna, at least till we're in there a few centimeters. But we can carry line in with us if we have to. We should practice on something, shouldn't we?"
    "No practice,” Karen said. “I've waited long enough. We go in."
    "Right,” Daltry agreed. “This is a probe drop, not an astronaut launch. I want in there now."
    "You were supposed to be ground control."
    "The hell with that,” Daltry said. “We're all ground control. You want ground control, pull your helmet off. This is VR. Worse case scenario we lose some of your toys there."
    "Worst case scenario this thing spits out green men who eat our brains."
    "And with that, ground control is going to help you how?"
    I shook my head. There was no arguing with him. We were a rogue mission anyway. Dropping more protocols could not make the mission more improvised than it already was.
    "Okay, we go in. But a short dive. A few centimeters. We see what we see and then we back out, we assess, we plan our next steps."
    "Just drop the bots in the slot,” Daltry said. He pulled on his helmet. They were ungainly helmets, with bulges over the eyes and ears, and a cut that left the mouth and nose exposed. He looked like a seated insect with a human mouth.
    I had air tweezers to lift the robots. I placed each individually on the rim of the small open rectangle on the Ediacarian machine. Each bot had gecko feet, carbon nonfiber tubules that could clench onto nearly any material. They held. When the three bots were lined up, I stepped back and pulled my helmet on.
    In a few moments my eyes adjusted to the pale colors of the robot-eye-view, flanked by dark readouts. “Karen? Daltry?"
    "Here,” Karen's voice sounded like it came from my right. Instinctively I turned my head. I saw the bug-eyed twin sensors of her own microbot avatar look back at me.
    "Your software is good, Daltry,” I whispered.
    "I know,” he said. His voice seemed to come from the left, and I turned and looked at his robot. The voice of course did not come from the robot, but directly over radio. But the software placed it in space so that it seemed to come from his