FSF, March-April 2010 by Spilogale Authors

went rock collecting one day, and I came back alone. They thought I'd gone crazy, until incontrovertible evidence turned up. There was talk about replacing me with Zaremba."
    "Jeez."
    "He was against the idea, though. He'd worked security with me long enough to realize what I said was true, no matter how it sounded."
    Nozaki drove alongside the deep gouge in the iron and lateritic nickel surface.
    In the few days Wolverton had been on LGC-1, he'd taken samples of an impressive array of ores—molybdenite, scheelite, manganese, quartz, iron, and lead—the products of lateral secretion blasted by Gamma Crucis's hydrogen shell for hundreds of millions of years. The digger had cut a broad swath across it all, at least two meters deep and perhaps a hundred meters wide, rendering today's work useless.
    "It's some kind of mining machine,” he said.
    "That makes sense,” Nozaki said. “A consortium of races has this place staked out for ore."
    "They didn't say anything about that during my training.” Wolverton felt as if he'd fallen through the looking glass.
    "That's because we're still preparing the report. You're the only one who's seen their technology besides me...if it is their technology."
    She kept driving near the trench's edge.
    He watched her self-assured handling of the rover. Wolverton hardly knew Nozaki, but he was talking to her easily. He'd never been able to make friends on Earth or Mars; out here on the frontier, he'd hoped it would be different. Nozaki had been especially nice to him ever since the hopper brought him to LGC-1, and now she'd saved his life. Crises brought people together, just as he'd always heard.
    He liked Nozaki. He liked her a lot. In fact, he was falling in love with her.
    "What if the digger gouges out base camp?” Wolverton asked.
    "It wasn't moving in that direction,” Nozaki said, sounding a bit uncertain for once. “Besides, the compound is probably too big to miss, even for something that size."
    "Probably?"
    "Come on, Wolverton. I told you they're advanced, very civilized. They wouldn't want to harm us."
    "But since there may be an infinite number of realities intersecting here, you can't be sure who built the digger."
    "No,” she admitted. “I guess I can't. What do you think its functions are, besides digging up everything in its path?"
    "I suspect that it's identifying ores just as we're doing, only on a much grander scale. It must analyze all the rocks by volume, separating them inside itself after scooping them up."
    "They're in a hurry to acquire metals."
    "Exactly where is this bubble, anyway?” Wolverton asked.
    "Hard to say. It's centered in near space, but its parameters move around. Sometimes it comes down to the surface."
    "And that's how we passed through it? Accidentally?"
    "Yes. The digger may run into the bubble again and disappear, or..."
    "Or it will chew up base camp, analyze the chunks, and spit out whatever it doesn't want."
    "That's a pretty grim prognostication."
    "But it could be accurate,” Wolverton said. “In fact, given the small size of this asteroid, I'd say it's quite likely."
    "You've got a point. We'd better get back."
    She turned the rover away from the trench and started toward base camp. Wolverton regretted leaving, realizing that he might never get another chance to be alone with Nozaki.
    They soon saw the glare of floodlights over the steeply rounded horizon. Base camp abruptly came into sight. Labutunu's construction crew worked on the compound's new addition, affixing lead-sheet shielding to an erect wall.
    Wolverton said he'd put away the rover, giving Nozaki a chance to get inside and provide a detailed account. She opened all channels and called everyone to the briefing room, while he detached the battery pack and fumbled with the rover's panels, until he finally managed to fold it up and lean it against the others.
    The construction workers were already inside by the time he finished. Ducking his head to get out of the shack, he