The Outward Urge by John Wyndham Page A

detect some pattern in their movements - I’m sure myself that no pattern existed.
    ‘At three kilos the men were doing no better with their shooting, and were starting to show signs of panic. I decided that at two kilos we would withdraw the men and get them below.
    The things kept on coming, as madly as ever. I tell you, I have never seen anything that frightened me more. There was the dervish-like quality of the random madness, and yet the known deadly purpose. And all the time there was the suggestion of huge, scuttering insects so that it was difficult not to think of them as being in some alien way alive...
    ‘Some of the rocket bursts did succeeded in peppering them with fragments now and then, but they were not harmed. As they approached the two-kilo line I told Colonel Zinochek, here, to withdraw the patrol. He picked up the microphone to speak, and at that moment one of the things hit a rocket bomb. We saw it run right into the bomb.
    ‘The explosion threw it off the ground, and it came down on its back. The diameter of the wheels was large enough to allow it to run upside down. It actually began to do so, but then there was a great glare, and the screen went blank.
    ‘Even at our depth the floor of the chamber lifted under us, and cracks ran up two of the walls.
    ‘I switched on the general address system. It was still live, but I could not tell how much of the station it was reaching. I gave orders for everyone to put on space-suits, and stand by for further instructions.
    ‘One could hope that the explosion of one machine might have set off the others, but we could not tell. They might have been shielded at the moment, or, even if they were not, either, or both, of them might have survived. Without air there is not the usual kind of blast and pressure-wave ; there is flying debris, of course, but what else? So little work has been done on the precise effects of explosions here. Our mast had gone again, so that we were without radar or television. We had no means of telling whether the danger was over, or whether the machines were still scurrying about the crater floor like mad spiders; still working closer...
    ‘If they were, we reckoned that it should take them about thirty-five minutes to reach us, at their former rate.
    ‘No half-hour in my life has been as long as that one. Once we had our helmets on, and the intercoms were working, we did our best to learn what the damage was. It appeared to be fairly extensive in the upper levels, for there were few replies from there. I ordered all who could to make their way down to the lowest levels, and to stay there.
    ‘Then there was absolutely nothing we could do but wait ... and wait ... Wondering if the things were indeed still skirmishing outside, and watching the minute-hand crawl round....
    ‘It took them - or it - exactly thirty-one minutes....
    ‘The whole place bounced, and threw me off my feet. I had a glimpse of cracks opening in the roof and walls, then the light went out, and something fell on me....
    ‘I don’t need to go into details about the rest. Four of us in the control-chamber were left alive, and five in the level immediately above. None of us would have survived had the rock had earth-weight - nor should we have been able to shift it to clear a way to the emergency exit.
    ‘Even so, it took us four Earth-days to dig our way through the collapsed passages. All the station’s air was gone, of course, and we had to do it on dead men’s air- bottles, and emergency rations - as long as the rations lasted - and with only one two-man inflatable chamber between us to eat in.
    ‘The emergency exit was, of course, at some distance from the main entrance, but even so, a part of the roof of the terminal chamber had fallen in and wrecked one of the platforms there; fortunately the other two were scarcely damaged. The outer doors of the airlock were at the base of a cliff, and though the cliff itself had been a shield from the direct force of