To flirt is capital.
A day or two passed. Repairs to the ship continued, although at a slower pace than they had hoped because all the dragoons in the spaceport remained quarantined. The mechanics grumbled too, because they now had to do much of the work by hand which had been done by the robots. Some dark looks and mutterings were directed at the travellers when the engineers, after examining the now deactivated rogue dragoon, discovered that the virus had been brought to the planet by the travellers, probably an infection from Earth. The travellers felt guilty about that- the quarantining of the dragoons had lost the mining company money. Yet the commander of the station had accepted that it was accidental, and she didn't blame them.
They all agreed that the sooner they could leave the better. After a couple of days the most essential work had been done, and the Hilarity was almost ready to take off. One of the mechanics who had helped rescue Ruth and the others from the mad dragoon was a woman called Mondeo. She had also been very helpful in repairing the ship and seemed to have become quite friendly with some of the travellers. She would often spend time chatting to Patrick and some of the others about the planet and what it was like outside the spaceport.
"Ice and snow, mostly," she said. "Occasionally in summer the snow melts around here, near the equator, but further towards the poles it's permanently frozen all year round. It's a beautiful place. There's several mines scattered around, and they all transfer the raw material here, where we process it and package it for shipping across the galaxy. We're one of the biggest mining corporations in this part of the galaxy, yet even so there's still so much more that can be mined here, so much potential."
Ruth and some of the others were chatting with her as they finished off some of the repairs when suddenly they saw a group of mechanics and engineers running out of the spaceport buildings towards them, shouting.
"What's wrong?" asked Tom, turning to look.
When the Hilarity had been coming in to land, the air controllers had allocated her a landing bay that was some distance from the main part of the complex, partly a standard practice because she and her crew were unknown, and partly because of the uncontrolled way she had been coming into land- they didn't want to the risk of her crashing into any buildings.
Mondeo and the others ran to meet the group. "What's happening?" Mondeo asked.
"It's the dragoons!" one of the engineers said. "They've gone mad, like that one that attacked them." He pointed towards Ruth and the others.
"I thought they'd all been deactivated," Tom said.
"They were! But something's happened to them- they've suddenly started moving around again, and they threatened us..."
As he was speaking they heard more shouting. They turned to see Douglas, the commander of the base and another group of engineers and mechanics come running out. The metallic clanking noise of rusty wheels on uneven flooring filled the air. Behind the running men and women came the dragoons, armed with tools and whatever weapons they had come across, advancing steadily, all the more menacing because they weren't hurrying and all the more terrifying because they had no face or expressions to gloat with.
Douglas hurried over to the chief engineer. "What has happened to them?" she asked. "Is it just a virus, or is there more to it?"
"We didn't find anything else when we analysed the first one," the engineer said nervously. "But it might have mutated, or something. I've never seen anything like this before."
"I thought those other ones were supposed to have been deactivated?"
"They were. I assure you they had their processing units taken out. Without them they shouldn't be able to function- it would be like taking the brain out of a man, and finding that he could still walk!"
"And yet they are still moving- and appear to be capable of independent thought!" Douglas was trying to keep calm, but when you've got a couple of dozen armed robots moving inexorably towards you- and you know they won't hesitate to kill, because you've already lost one man- it's not easy.
"I've never heard of anything like this! I'm sorry, commander, I don't know what to suggest." The engineer sounded close to breaking.
"So they're moving, without having a computer chip in them to process information and tell them what to do, how to move?" Mondeo said. "But that's impossible!"
"Well, something's happened to them," Adam said. "They've turned into zombies! Robotic zombies!"
"But what do robot zombies want?" Tom asked.
They turned, horrified, as the dragoons wheeled slowly, menacingly round the corner. The electronic tones of artificial voices drifted to meet them.
"Chips...chips...give us computer chips..."
The story continues...
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