The Abyss of Time

Chapter Forty Eight

     He woke up briefly to feel himself being carried, slung across someone's shoulders like a sack of potatoes. He was aware of the feel of female skin against his own, the contact between them slippery with sweat. He was lying across her neck, one of her hands behind his knees, the other gripping his wrist. Whoever it was was panting with the effort. Then he passed out again.

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     When he woke up again he was lying in one of the beds of the infirmary. Charles Tharp was wiping his body down with cold water and there was an IV tube in his arm. The other bed on the other side of the small room was hidden behind a translucent curtain, but he saw Jean's golden form lying prone behind it while someone whose blurry outline resembled Mary Tharp was attending to her.

     "How is she?" he asked.

     "She'll survive," Charles replied. "She carried you most of the way back. Luckily she was in sight of the Landmaster when she finally collapsed. We went out in surface suits to bring you in."

     "And the drone?"

     "Seems to be inactive. It managed to get a message away, no doubt telling the cyborgs it was under attack by something, but without a camera it would only have been able to tell them that something was pounding on it. Hopefully they'll think it was an animal."

     "You're sure it didn't get a look at us?"

     "The cameras were still retracted, for protection while it was under attack. It didn't see you."

     Miller breathed a sigh of relief. "Even so, the cyborgs are going to want to retrieve the wreckage, so they can recycle it. It might take them just a few hours to get here."

     He tried to rise from the bed but Charles held him down. "You need to rest. Regain your strength."

     "We have to hide every sign we've been here," said Miller, though. He pushed the scientist away and pulled the IV from his arm. "Load the refinery back aboard. Cover the drill holes. Erase every sign of activity."

     "The others are already doing that," said Charles. "They don't need your help."

     "They do. Cyborgs can travel fast. Very fast. How long have I been asleep?"

     "Couple of hours."

     Miller swore and jumped down from the bed. Then he had to pause while he waited for a wave of dizziness to pass. "They could be here any time. We have to finish sanitising the site and move the Landmaster away from here. A couple of klicks at the very least. Where are my clothes?"

     Charles gave in to the inevitable and went to find their surface suits.

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     Outside, the others has been busy and Miller was pleased to see that almost all trace of their presence had been removed. The holes left by the gophers and the core sampler had been filled in and scattered over with leaf litter and the men were now using branches to wipe away their footprints. It was still possible to see that the site had been disturbed, but a fight between two large animals could account for that. If the cyborgs came only to retrieve their damaged drone and didn't examine the surrounding area too much, they might not get suspicious.

     The drone itself was another matter, of course. One glance was all it would take for them to see that it hadn't been attacked by animals. Jack and Dorelis had hauled it to the Landmaster, therefore, leaving drag marks clearly visible in the mud. Now they were hauling it further on into the jungle while Vezenes erased all signs of their passage.