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.“I think it actually is old tennis shoes.”“Eat up—it’s good for you,” Jan said, vainly trying to look enthusiastic.“It’s loaded with good stuff…protein…and vitamins…and…”“Old tennis shoes.” Petra took a sip from her squeezebulb and her expression of distaste became even more evident.“Ugh! Sugary water!”“For your information, that’s a high-energy glucose drink—scientifically designed to keep you going.”“To the bathroom?” Petra showed her opinion of the drink by squirting some of it over Jan’s boots.“Next time we go on a picnic, Jan Hazard, I’m packing the hamper, and I’ll start off with something that’s worth eating.”“Do me a favour and throw in some decent food for me,” Jan said, pretending to puke.“This stuff is pretty awful, isn’t it? My Dad chose the rations, and nobody can say he was planning to spoil himself on this trip.”“Still, if we’d been loaded down with goodies we might not have gotten away from the bulldozer.” Petra’s eyes grew sombre as she recalled the narrowness of their escape.“The skeleton at the wheel looked horrible and spooky, but we know it had nothing to do with the bulldozer coming to life.It was just the remains of the poor driver who was…How can things like this happen, Jan? How could a bulldozer come to life?”“I’ve been thinking about that, and not getting very far,” Jan said, toying with the unappetising foodstuff.“The official theory about Verdia…about planetary electromagnetic forces somehow entering machines and making them go haywire…has always seemed a bit too pat to me, too easy, too much of a cop-out—but at least it was based on the laws of Nature.”“So you’re saying the bulldozer was taken over by something…supernatural?”Jan shook his head.“I don’t want to say that—it goes against everything I was ever taught—but we both know what happened back there.The dozer came after us, hunted us, as if it was being controlled by some kind of an evil spirit.I can’t come up with a logical explanation for that, and I doubt if any of the eggheads back on Earth could, either.”“We’re a long way from Earth,” Petra said pensively.“It might be that things work differently here.Perhaps the natural laws that we know, don’t apply in this part of the galaxy.”“If that’s true, the odds against us are worse than we imagined.I was a real smart-ass, Petra.I was so sure I had everything worked out in advance, and now…”“You’ve done well,” Petra said softly.“Your father would be proud of you.”“Thanks.” Jan gave her a wry smile.“I wish I had been able to speak to him before I took off.”“He knows where you are and what you’re doing.”“He’ll be worried, that’s for sure.You see, my mother was killed in a tourist plane crash on Cerulea when I was three.Then Bari disappeared.And now I’ve vanished into the same jungle without even a radio to maintain any kind of contact.Dad must feel that space is an enemy that robs him of his family, one by one.That’s why he was so determined to go it alone in the Seeker.”“There’s no need for you to feel guilty,” Petra said.Jan shrugged.“I know—but somehow I can’t help it.”“Look at it this way.” Petra tentatively placed her hand over Jan’s.“You and I are good runners in pretty well peak physical condition, but we beat that bulldozer by only a couple of metres.Your father was detained, but if he had been there instead of us the monster would have caught up on him—and that fact alone justifies everything you’ve done.”Jan was comforted by her words and warmed by her touch.He drained his squeezebulb and threw it away into the surrounding undergrowth, causing a pitter-patter as droplets cascaded from the disturbed leaves.The grey cloud ceiling seemed lower than ever, hiding the tops of the highest trees, and sheet lightning flickered incessantly through the gloom.“We’d better get going again,” he said, rising to his feet, feeling a renewal of confidence in spite of the depressing environment.“We’ve barely got started on the job.”“Yes, but we’re going to finish it,” Petra replied as she stood up.“No matter what dirty tricks this damned planet has up its sleeve!”Chapter SixAlmost by instinct, they had curved their path through the jungle in a northerly direction and now, through gaps in the foliage, they could see the outline of another spaceship projecting into the sky.Its smooth lines were interrupted by the bulges of weapons turrets, and it was obvious to Jan and Petra that they were approaching the area where the Stellar Expeditionary Force had tried to establish its beachhead.“This is it,” Jan said, his voice betraying his excitement.“This is where we find out where Bari has gone to.”“Great! Then we can all get out of this place.” Petra spoke brightly to conceal her growing concern over Bari Hazard’s probable fate.In spite of all they had learned about Verdia’s inexplicable terrors, Jan was clinging to his belief that highly trained soldiers would have been able to survive where civilian workers had perished.But Petra, judging by what she had seen, found it hard to imagine anybody escaping alive from the kind of widespread destruction which had been visited on the engineering team.She had not expressed her fears to Jan, out of consideration for his feelings, but now there was no need—they were within minutes of learning the truth.“We’ve got to watch out for some kind of sign or message,” Jan said.“I suppose the most likely place to look would be around the ship itself.” He tried to quell the pounding of his heart as Petra and he moved cautiously out of the tree cover and walked in the direction of the spaceship.Lightning still flickered on all sides to the accompaniment of rolling thunder, sporadically illuminating the huge craft with violet-tinged brilliance.“It’s just like the other one,” Petra said in a low voice as her eyes took in the fact that the ship had been subjected to incredible bolts of energy which had torn plates out of its pressure skin in some places and had melted the tough alloy in others.“It’s even worse!”Jan nodded.“There’s a hell of a mess on the ground, as well.I didn’t think it would be as bad as this.”In the area around the ship the scene was similar to the one they had seen earlier, except that in place of derelict earth-moving plant there was abandoned military equipment.Tanks, bridge-layers, personnel carriers, helicopters, field guns, jeeps…The tanks had been fitted with wire-guided missiles in the hope that they would be less prone to electromagnetic interference than radio-guided missiles.Almost all of the missiles had been fired and their guidance wires trailed limply from the inert tanks.Some machines were lying on their sides and others had been overturned, like toys which had been broken and scattered by a child in a tantrum.The awesome destruction was, if anything, more complete than at the terraforming site.Two years earlier something had swept through the encampment with the force of a thousand tornadoes, laying waste all around it
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