The Darkside Of The Sun

universe. Please .
    Dom hesitated, and the lake saw why.
    I have no power. I may aid, but I cannot fight. What should I want with conquests? I am …
    Untranslatable, but images of a mind rather than a force; an idea formed in water rather than a creature; a certainty that the lake was speaking – not the truth, because that suggested it could lie, and Chatogaster could not lie …
    ‘I may be overruled by the Board but,’ he opened the little bottle that had been in his carryall, ‘step right in.’ An air bubble escaped from the bottle.
    Thank you .
    A kick carried Dom easily to the surface. He broke water and struck out for the shore.
    Crackdown appeared to have ended. One or two eggs spiralled down as he scrambled up the slope, but they exploded a long way off in the south. A few damp pups, no bigger than a man, were taking their first shaky steps.
    Here and there older pups were baying at the sky, long snouts pointing trembling at the clouds. The reddish hair on their cone-shaped bodies was sleeked down. One near to the lake was shuddering.
    ‘Pssst!’
    Hrsh-Hgn and a robot with a large Three on its chestplate leapt out of the grass. Without pausing in their stride they each grabbed him by an elbow and the three of them tumbled back towards the lake.
    The air began to smell of methane, a fruity foul smell that caught in Dom’s throat.
    ‘Hrsh! Isaac got you, then? What’s happened to Isaac? You’re Isaac? What happened?’
    The robot was half covered in soot, and there were superficial metal runs down one arm. The phnobe nodded absently and peered back across the plain. The nearest pup was trembling now, violently, and a thin plume of vapour was coming from three swollen glands around its broad rump.
    ‘The robot was bitten by a dog,’ murmured Hrsh-Hgn. ‘It’ss been ssomewhat exciting up here. Cave canem! ’
    They hit the grass. An explosion dug a crater in front of them. A hot wind whipped over the sweetgrass, driving a boiling cloud of greasy black smoke. In an instant a false night fell.
    Above it the sunpup wobbled into the air on three blinding blue flames. Slowly, following the route its ancestors had taken a million years before to escape a hostile world, it rose above the plains.
    It gained speed and height, blew a smoke ring, and was still accelerating when Dom lost it in the distant cirrus.
    Calculations:
    Hrsh-Hgn manipulated a small slideball.
    ‘I’m relieved to ssay it could not work,’ he said.
    ‘There are two suits in the One Jump ,’ said Dom. ‘One ought to fit you.’
    Two miles away a sunpuppy rose baying on a spreading cone of smoke.
    ‘Look at it this way,’ began Isaac persuasively. ‘If we attack Madam with whirling memory swords she’ll stop playing and start blasting. I dare say she won’t see Dom hurt but ...what do you rate your chances?’
    ‘Better a boiled lamb than a roasst sheep.’
    ‘There’s no fuel in the One Jump ,’ said Dom.
    ‘Not a drop,’ added Isaac.
    ‘It’s the only way.’
    Another puppy thundered upwards on a vast ventral explosion of gas. Hrsh-Hgn watched it go, his big rheumy eyes betraying a storm of mixed emotions.
    ‘But I am no good with animalsss!’ he wailed.
    It was defeat. Dom and Isaac looked at each other and nodded.
    Fifteen minutes later the Drunk sank into the grass by the empty yacht. Joan surveyed her bodyguard impatiently.
    ‘Twenty of you and they got away!’
    ‘The Class Five robot precipitated an illogical series of events,’ explained Twelve.
    ‘He was a Class Five mind. He told us to count to three,’ added Nineteen helpfully.
    ‘Then he hit us,’ said Twelve.
    ‘When we get back to civilization I’ll see to it that the robot is lobotomized,’ said Joan grimly. ‘Why did we ever start building human robots?’
    ‘The Class Fives were constructed because of their …’ began Twelve, and was intelligent enough to stop when Joan looked at him.
    Four more robots trudged in, carrying the prone bodies of Three and Eight.
    ‘I feel sad,’ said Twelve.
    ‘May they rust in peace,’ echoed Nineteen.
    ‘When they’re recalibrated I’ll make sure they go down a class,’ muttered Joan. ‘Right. The rest of you spread out. We won’t leave till they’re found.’
    Ten miles eastward three sunpuppies blasted upwards. They wobbled a little, trying to stabilize the extra weight, then soared towards the stars.
     
    Hrsh-Hgn wailed that he appeared to be in a fast-decaying orbit, but you couldn’t