The Rings of Tantalus by Edmund Cooper Page B

re-join us sooner, but I thought you needed the rest. I had to put quite a lot of plasma into you. I hope you have an appetite because you are shortly going to eat a meal of lightly cooked liver, washed down with half a litre of red wine.”
    C onrad rolled his eyes and grinned. “Oh, the terrors of the sick bay!”
    Kwango said: “Returning to the problems of Tantalus, there is something else you are not going to like too much, Boss. While you were off playing strange games with the rings, I went on my proximity survey and bagged one of those interesting little critters with prehensile tails.”
    “You killed it?”
    “In a manner of speaking.”
    Conrad tried to sit up, and wished he hadn’t. Waves of pain ran up his bio-arm and made his head throb. His vision blurred and he almost passed out.
    Lieutenant Smith noted his reaction. “Serve you right,” she said. “You don’t do anything—I mean anything— without my say so. You will now rest until the meal is prepared.”
    With an effort, Conrad managed to control his temper. “Permission to continue my discussion with Kwango?” he asked meekly.
    “Five minutes only.” She went towards the door. “When I come back, you eat the liver—all of it—and rest. Understood?”
    “Damn you, yes!” Conrad wanted to hit her.
    Lieutenant Smith turned. “May I remind you,” she said softly, “that you are speaking to the temporary commander of this expedition. Your behaviour and reactions as a patient will undoubtedly affect my judgment of the time when you are fit to resume normal duties.”
    Conrad turned red. He was about to make some malicious reference to Applecross, then thought better of it. “Yes, sir. I apologise, Commander.” He cleared his throat and spit out the words like plum stones. “No offence intended.”
    “Keep it that way, spaceman,” she retorted. “Until I decide otherwise you are just an injured man in a bed.”
    She left before he could explode. Conrad turned his frustrated anger on Kwango.
    “You are not empowered to destroy intelligent indigenes. Explain yourself, black man!”
    “Cool it, Boss. You get yourself all worked up, and de good Lieutenant—I mean temporary Commander—is going to keep you here longer than you think.”
    “O.K. I get the message. Now, what happened?”
    “I was cruising along in the hovercar—actually, I was following a herd of quadrupeds that look like zebras and might be a potential meat supply—when this joker rose up out of the grass about a hundred metres ahead of me. It looked as if it was a b out to toss something playfully— like the grenades that took out the vids. So I lasered it.” Kwango shrugged. “I only had the laser on minimum power. Didn’t want to do too much damage, thinking that Zonis might want to take a look at what was left. But, Boss, that creature fell flat on its tiny, and then went up boom. Seems it had a grenade or some such, after all. The pieces were still raining down when I got to the crater.”
    “Hm… Did you collect any of the bits?”
    “Yes, Commander. Here comes the part you are not going to like too much. It wasn’t an animal. It was a robot.”
    Conrad forgot Himself, tried to sit up again, again wished he hadn’t. He waited patiently for the pain to subside. Then he said weakly: “Goddammit!”
    Kwango permitted himself a cautious smile. “My sentiments exactly, Commander. The circuitry, the technology and the hardware—judging from the pieces I found—are so far ahead of our science as to make me feel like a Stone Age savage… Matthew is the most advanced kind of robot we have. He is built like a tank, weighs about two hundred kilos, and looks like an antique washing machine on legs. The robot I lasered was light, compact, extremely agile. Also it had a bio-skin. The innards were electronic and mechanical. But the skin was a living organism.”
    “Who says so?”
    “Zonis says so. She is still doing her nut trying to figure out how it could