Love, Death and Robots. Volumes 2 & 3

As Maril rushed to obey it only took the flat of a hand in the middle of his back to send him and the lamp down into the hold. Torrin slammed the hatch down on the sudden gust of flame then the screams and horrible squeals that followed. He looked ‘round now and located Chantre on the bridge next to Saparin. Torrin ran towards the bridge. Trying not to be trapped where he was, Chantre hurried for the bridge ladder. Coming down the ladder in a panic, he slipped and landed flat on his back on the deck. Without pause, Torrin pulled out the captain’s gun and shot at him.

Chantre scrabbled up into a crouch, decking splintering beside him. Torrin fired again, exploding the man’s elbow, then again, the bullet slamming into his side. But in a last scramble, Chantre managed to get to cover beside the cabin. Torrin did not pursue, as he was thoroughly aware that there was an angry thanapod below, a fire, and fifty barrels of wax-sealed shark oil. He grabbed a rope and lowered himself hand-over-hand to the shark boat. He was easing off on his first panicked rowing when the first barrels blew scattering debris in the sea all about him. He stopped rowing and gazed back.

The side of the ship had gone, and a hot fire burned within. Another explosion had the ship heeling over and a slick of burning oil spreading out on the sea. Black smoke billowed into the sky and a fishy, burning stink infected the air. Torrin watched the ship sink. The thanapod had almost certainly burned in it, but if not…

He looked over the side of the boat. Here, near the islands, the waters swarmed with thumb sharks and hammer whelks—a cornucopia of voracious life seeded by the first men—more than enough to stop any monsters getting ashore.

Torrin smiled his lopsided smile and continued to row… for the shore.

THE VERY PULSE OF THE MACHINE Michael Swanwick

Click.

The radio came on.

“Hell.”

Martha kept her eyes forward, concentrated on walking. Jupiter to one shoulder, Daedalus’s plume to the other. Nothing to it. Just trudge, drag, trudge, drag. Piece of cake.

“Oh.”

She chinned the radio off.

Click.

“Hell. Oh. Kiv. El. Sen.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Martha gave the rope an angry jerk, making the sledge carrying Burton’s body jump and bounce on the sulfur hardpan. “You’re dead, Burton, I’ve checked, there’s a hole in your faceplate big enough to stick a fist through, and I really don’t want to crack up. I’m in kind of a tight spot here and I can’t afford it, okay? So be nice and just shut the fuck up.”

“Not. Bur. Ton.”

“Do it anyway.”

She chinned the radio off again.

Jupiter loomed low on the western horizon, big and bright and beautiful and, after two weeks on Io, easy to ignore. To her left, Daedalus was spewing sulfur and sulfur dioxide in a fan two hundred kilometers high. The plume caught the chill light from an unseen sun and her visor rendered it a pale and lovely blue. Most spectacular view in the universe, and she was in no mood to enjoy it.

Click.

Before the voice could speak again, Martha said, “I am not going crazy, you’re just the voice of my subconscious, I don’t have the time to waste trying to figure out what unresolved psychological conflicts gave rise to all this, and I am not going to listen to anything you have to say.”

Silence.

* * *

The moon rover had flipped over at least five times before crashing sideways against a boulder the size of the Sydney Opera House. Martha Kivelsen, timid groundling that she was, was strapped into her seat so tightly that when the universe stopped tumbling, she’d had a hard time unlatching the restraints. Juliet Burton, tall and athletic, so sure of her own luck and agility that she hadn’t bothered, had been thrown into a strut.

The vent-blizzard of sulfur dioxide snow was blinding, though. It was only when Martha had finally crawled out from under its raging whiteness that she was able to look at the suited body she’d dragged free of the wreckage.

She immediately turned away.

Whatever knob or flange had punched the hole in Burton’s helmet had been equally ruthless with her head.

Where a fraction of the vent-blizzard—’lateral plumes’ the planetary geologists called them—had been deflected by the boulder, a bank of sulfur dioxide snow had built up. Automatically, without thinking, Martha scooped up double-handfuls and packed them into the helmet. Really, it was a nonsensical thing to do; in a vacuum, the body wasn’t about to rot. On the other hand, it hid that face.

Then Martha did some serious thinking.