Bandicut stood with his hand tingling on the robot’s outer case. He wanted to ask Charlie exactly what he was doing to Napoleon’s programming, but he sensed that the quarx was too deep in his work to answer. He only knew that fairly complex instructions were passing through his skin and glove into the robot’s central processor. The tingling fluctuated for a moment, then faded.
/// Okay. You can take your hand away. ///
Napoleon made a creaking sound over the comm and stared with its black holocam eyes. “Of course, John Bandicut, I will assist as requested.”
“Yes, good,” Bandicut said, clearing his throat. Charlie had apparently just instructed the robot to carry on with the survey in his stead while they set out on foot to the cavern. /What now?/
/// Starting in nineteen minutes,
we will have a forty-nine-minute period
in which there will be no spacecraft or satellites
overhead. ///
Bandicut took a slow, deep breath. /All right. Hey, Charlie—if we do pull this off? You’ll tell me everything the translator says, right? No secrets?/
/// No secrets, John.
We’re in this together. ///
Bandicut set the rover into motion. Napoleon bounded alongside on its gangly grasshopper legs. When they reached the easternmost corner of the assigned sector, fifteen minutes later, he brought the buggy to a halt. They had four minutes to kill before the last of the overhead satellite eyes dropped below the horizon. Bandicut opened his visor and ate a chocolate bar. He tried to ignore the butterflies in his stomach. He knew it had to be done, but he was starting to feel like a criminal.
/// Time. Let’s go. ///
Bandicut opened the bubble canopy and climbed out. Napoleon had already clambered up onto the side of the rover and plugged in its probe. As soon as Bandicut stepped clear, the robot drove off, hanging from the rover like a monkey. /That thing better be back here on time,/ Bandicut said uneasily.
/// It will. Let’s go.
Bearing zero-five-four. ///
Bandicut sprang ahead in the one-thirteenth gravity and loped across the uneven icy surface, across the invisible STOP HERE line, into the unauthorized sector where he and Charlie had first met.