Chapter 17 Chapter Seventeen

The group of people who escaped from death were all covered in cuts and bruises, with blisters everywhere, and glycerin found along the way was smeared on the wounds, making a mess and making the image even more hideous.During the long journey of escape, there was no water, food, or medicine. They barely survived by taking many emergency measures.Just when they were hungry and thirsty and unable to move forward, they came to the northern half of the food production center.Stumbling into the computer control room, I saw hundreds of human corpses lying in different curing tanks, and some of them knew some of them—this was the cousin of so-and-so, and that was the familiar "Master Rice" ,etc.Someone knocked a trough, and the liquid in the trough flowed out. He scooped up a handful in both hands and took a sip.Everyone watched without stopping him, only paying attention to his reaction after drinking.This always happens when primitive people band together to find new food.After a while, when everyone saw that he hadn't been poisoned and fell down, they swarmed up, jumped into each curing tank separately, and drank up the curing solution inside.

Under the nourishment of the nourishing fluid, their burns miraculously healed slowly.The day was finally over, everyone regained some energy, and continued on their way north regardless of the corpses left at the bottom of the dry tank.A day later, they came to a yeast culture hall lit by arc lights, and found something edible again.And distinguish which is the water pipe and which is the alcohol pipe.The problem of survival is temporarily solved. Another day passed, and a man staggered into the hall from outside.No one recognized who he was for a while, only to see that he, like everyone else, had burns all over his body.When the women saw it, they screamed in fright, thinking it was a dead body crawling out of some destroyed maintenance tank.

The dead man kept muttering and repeating this sentence from his chapped lips: "Troppel, I want to see Handel, Innison, and Germin." Handel was called by the crowd. "Troppel," said the old wolf Handel loudly, looking up and down at the frightening creature, "shall I send for your wife?" "Wife?" murmured the charred man. "We don't have a wife. Come with me...we...I..." "You delirious thing, talking nonsense, how can we go with a fool?" Handel reassured him, "Give it a few days, and we'll get—er—something to cure you. Let’s talk about healing—"

"What? Get it quickly, it's needed on the road. We'll lead you to get your weapons." He looked into Handel's eyes and said eagerly. This strong man from Princeton didn't know what to do for a while, and he raised a hand anxiously, shaking it non-stop.At last he said aloud: "Troppel! Are you Troppel? I thought—I just don't know what I'm thinking." He turned to Inison and Jermin behind him and snapped, "Hear No? Do you understand what he said? Go and gather everyone." After a long time, Handel explained the situation at that time and said: "The scene was like six people asking each of you to fight hand-to-hand - six against one. Naturally, you would not accept such a challenge. If you still It must be madness to dare to fight. I am not crazy, so I did not accept the challenge of Troppel. Faced with the situation in front of me, I have no choice but to let him replace me."

The crowd tied the yeast cakes into strings and hung them casually on their bodies, as long as they didn't wipe the wounds. Then they followed their seemingly insane Savior and embarked on a new path of salvation.They emerged from the warm and bright yeast culture hall and entered a tunnel. The tunnel is cold for a while, hot for a while, and the air is sometimes thin, sometimes dirty, and sometimes mixed with a pungent sour smell.Gala Troppel was also in the procession.For days, she refused to admit that the man was her husband, Glenn.He looked a little like Glenn, but didn't know her.Until the end, the best Gala was willing to admit was that, in a sense, it was Glenn.As for what happened to him and how he became like this, she had no way of guessing.She just vaguely felt that if she could comfort him herself and kiss those strange scars on his forehead—not burn scars, he might be better.

Under the constant urging of the new leader, a group of people still staggered to walk a full 40 miles a day, although they were struggling.They came to a room with a temperature as high as 60°C. Under the leadership of Troppel, they all passed through without leaving a single one.But the situation in the spectrophotometry room was different later.Due to the influence of the superconducting effect, the temperature here is extremely cold, just like being in space.Troppel encouraged everyone to rush, but some of the weakest people lay down and died of the cold after only a few dozen paces. Passing through several other equally cold rooms, they suddenly entered the bottom of a huge deep well.Looking from the wellhead, the outside is a dark night sky full of stars, only the wellhead is covered by a glass roof to prevent the already very thin air below from leaking further.It used to be a photoelectric astronomical observation station, but now the observation mirrors, photon quantum range extenders, spectroscopic gratings, interferometers and other equipment have been damaged and fragmented due to the impact of newly arrived equipment, and can no longer be used.This is now an arsenal, the Princeton arsenal on Earth, moved here by Troppel.Guns, explosives, tanks, military helicopters, supplies, armor, gas masks, bottles of oxygen, etc., are all the ammunition prepared by Handel, Inneson and others to attack the Sakya-Mata Pyramid .

Handel and Innesson counted the weapons, happily lying on the explosive shells, landmines and 4.2 cm mortars, humming a little tune.Troppel stood strangely, like a panning camera, slowly turning his head back and forth, scanning everything around him.Finally he said: "Paper and pencil." His hand stretched out mechanically as if controlled by a hydraulic brake, and stopped there, waiting tirelessly for a long time until he was handed the paper and pencil.Then, holding a pencil in his hand, he walked briskly back and forth on the paper, and gradually a map appeared under his pen.Although the map is drawn by sketches, the lines are smooth, clear and accurate, as if drawn with drawing tools such as a T-square, triangular board, and curved board. The turning points of the lines are like sand leaking, which is natural , without harshness.Soon, the general sketch came out.After the second process was completed, he had marked all the locations, action instructions, and action routes on the map.Immediately, he changed hands and handed the picture to Handel.Then, after the same two procedures, another map was drawn, which was for Inison.Afterwards, many more sheets were drawn, one for Jermin, 12 for the platoon leaders, and 36 for the squad leaders.

Tropel did not issue a grand mobilization order to his heroic soldiers. When the commanders studied the map, he just waited quietly like a machine that was temporarily turned off. Finally, the time to attack came.The seven human bodies headed south with a crawler trailer sent a signal to the green tentacled man lying in the Arctic Crystal Palace, and then forwarded it to Tropel through the green tentacled man.After receiving the confirmation signal from the feedback, the seven bodies immediately made a 180-degree turn, turned around and headed towards the pyramid cleaning line of fire in the north.The cleaning wire is now a pentagon, and three more pyramids have been added.In order to maintain the super-large magnetic field required to confine the plasma clusters, the pyramid consumes a lot of energy, so shifts and refueling are more frequent.

The three pyramids in the feeding station received a signal from the five pyramids on the line of fire urging them to return—a machine signal without any emotion, so the three pyramids stopped feeding, and slid south along the messy surface to rejoin Purge fire ranks for enhanced purge fire. "All the feeding stations are empty now," Tropel coldly issued a battle order, "we will immediately go to the feeding stations according to the route marked on the map, and we must blow up all the designated targets on the pyramid's food supply trunk line. After the destruction, the blasting points must be guarded by people to prevent the pyramid's maintenance robots from repairing in time."

The food supply trunk, the throat of the pyramid.This population from the earth is not a rat, they only know how to gnaw on the walls of buildings and grind their teeth; they are transformed from wolves, and they want to bite the throat of the owner of the building, chasing his life and taking his soul. The seven human bodies and the miserable tentacle green man in the Arctic Crystal Officer jointly commanded this armed army of earthlings through Tropel.According to their orders, Troppel led the Earthman Legion to rush out of the arsenal and go straight to the various combat locations.It turned out that the filling stations were no more than a mile away from the secret arsenal, and they stood like basalt cliffs rising high on the equator.The legion climbed out of the deep well along a slanting tunnel and appeared on the ground.Then the soldiers were divided into nine groups and arranged in a fan shape.Among them, the eight roads rush to the eight feeding stations separately, and the specific location is the connection between each feeding station and the feeding pipe.There, a 25-inch-diameter steel pipe with a half-inch-thick wall connects to the feeding station.The Ninth Road, led by Troppel and Jermin, rushed to another thicker pipeline.The pipeline is the main feeding pipe leading from the food production center. It is buried deep in the ground, and after being exposed to the surface, it is divided into eight branch pipes, leading to eight feeding stations.Columns from all walks of life climbed the cliff, crossed the ruins, and marched non-stop to their respective combat locations.

They also engaged in some small-scale sabotage activities along the way. There was a loose wire hanging from the tunnel to the ground a few inches above the ground, and someone stepped on it and broke it.Then, a general fault signal is issued: disconnection.After receiving the signal, the robot on duty who inspects the line starts to check the toolbox to see if the voltage and current of the battery are sufficient to temporarily connect the line with patch cords; After passing through, wrap a layer of insulating material on the wiring.According to the situation, the robot on duty either rushes to the warehouse to pick up materials, or rushes directly to the broken line for repair.No matter how fast it is, it takes an average of half an hour. One woman in the line was so thirsty that she could have distinguished a water pipe from a variety of pipes by more than a hundred subtle features: pipe temperature, material, finish, slope, position, and so on.But she always broke the water pipe at the water pipe joint to drink water, and then staggered straight away after drinking, letting the water gushing from the crack.Then an emergency fault signal was issued: the high pressure dripped, and the water pipe burst.A maintenance robot quickly arrived and welded the rip. The water that can flow out flows around, causing a series of chain failures such as short circuit and corrosion.This is not something that can be fixed in a short while.Besides, the maintenance robot is not a great thing, it can be dealt with easily.If by chance it arrives while you're still drinking, it'll push you aside to weld the pipes.But you can also push it back so that it cannot get close.At this time, it has no power to resist, and can only keep leaning against the water pipe; the driving wheel on the track slipped and rotated in vain, unable to exert any strength.It takes about a quarter of an hour on average to walk to the water pipe. Generally speaking, when the liquid flowing in the pipe encountered is the collection of several pipes, that is, when encountering a pipe with a shape such as "Y", "Ψ" or other types with more pipes and only one outlet , you have to be extra careful.Once the outlet supervisor of this type of pipeline is smashed, there will be a special large-scale maintenance robot rushing to repair it.The more branch pipelines, the more maintenance robots will come, faster and more decisively.If it was a "Y" pipe that broke, the robot who came to fix it was a squat three-wheeled plumber, and it was hard to push this stupid guy away with just your hands.If it was a "Ψ" shape that was smashed, it would be a half-ton robot that rushed towards it, and even two big men couldn't subdue it. Team members on the march often saw robots rumbling along the tunnel at high speed. They weighed two tons, had crawlers on their feet, and were equipped with bulldozer shovels and 18-inch rock drilling augers.People try to be careful not to pester them.It can be inferred that they are close to the end product of the entire production activity on this planet.This product is the main ingredient of Pyramid Food.And those huge robots they encountered were responsible for repairing the pipelines that transport end products. Everyone will move forward along this food line. More than 30 people from Tropel and Jermin's columns arrived at the designated place, and saw a giant cylinder with a diameter of 50 feet and a height of 150 feet towering into the dark night sky on the top of a cone-shaped ore dump like a hill. Among them, there is a sudden 90-degree turn at the highest point, and it turns to the south. Supported by many tall steel frames with pairs of spider legs, it stretches out and disappears in an endless distance.It's a giant pipe.But it can be concluded that somewhere in the distance it will divide into eight branch pipes, leading to eight feeding stations. Due to the effects of various planetary stresses, the poor operation of the wandering robots, and the aging of the material itself, the pipeline was greatly damaged.Even uprights and elevated sections of pipe are not immune.For tens of millions of years, various ruptures, leakages and other accidents have inevitably occurred in these pipelines.The waste and gravel produced by maintenance robots are pushed and shoveled together, and after a long period of accumulation, they have become like hills.The steel frame supporting the spider legs has been corroded for a long time, and it may break with a "snap" at some point; then, the pipe may break, or be suspended, or tilted; Weld gaps.There is a huge welded patch on the vertical pipe, and there is also a welded patch at the same position on the opposite pipe, apparently caused by a meteor strike and then repaired.There is a 50-foot section of elevated pipe that is entirely newer than the rest of the pipe, having apparently been reinstalled after it collapsed.This suggests that a rare major earthquake must have occurred here, perhaps the most recent major shock in the planet's tectonic history. The feat that these more than 30 people on earth will do is incomparable to meteors and earthquakes. Jermyn touched the protruding pipe cautiously—just a light touch, and suddenly there was a rush of mechanical clangs on both sides.It turned out that the two black things squatting beside the big garbage mountain started to move.Those two things were inconspicuous, and everyone didn't pay attention to them at first, and regarded them as waste.After another rattling of gears, they raised their purple quartz eyes and looked directly at Jermin. "General warning," Troppel judged accurately, "the clang just now is the first alarm, issued when the maintenance robot or transport machine fails. Now, all of us must not move faster than two miles an hour, Otherwise, the warning system will sound a second alarm and release the hysteresis current. That current will burn the metal objects we carry red. Now, let's deploy the tritium charges." Seven pregnant women and eight men wore gas masks, each carried an oxygen cylinder and a 30-pound pack of high-strength tritium explosives, stooped deeply, and slowly, slowly, sneaked in the direction of the garbage mountain.The dynamite packs are shaped like bricks, each weighing a pound, and are coated with self-adhesive to stick to each other.They were followed by an eighth woman, Gala Tropel, with a large coil of rope slung over her shoulder.The rope is actually the detonating wire. In order to enhance the concealment, the pattern of the insulating coat of the detonating wire is specially woven into the pattern of the diamond-spotted rattlesnake.They groped all the way along the pairs of steel frames supporting spider legs, stayed under each pair of steel frames for a while, pulled off a piece of explosive package, and stuck it to a leg of the steel frame with a snap.Gala Troppel followed, inserted the end of the detonating cord into a sticky hole in the charge, and left a yard-long length of cord trailing on the cold ground.It took a long time to lay out one by one like this.In the end, they finally placed the explosive package under all the supporting steel frames up to a quarter of the entire elevated pipeline.Then, on the way back slowly, they helped Gala Tropel to connect the ends of the detonating wires of the packs to the main detonating wire. Meanwhile, the fifteen men who remained at the upright pipe had been circling it incessantly, as if it were a maypole.It turned out that they were winding the detonating wire, winding it tightly in countless turns, and then laying many wax seals on the detonating wire at intervals of 8 inches. These things are cones for directional blasting. Shaped charge, a strange weapon that is deployed here but causes great destructive power there.The conical charge is arranged on the surface of the explosive object along the circular detonating line. Only one point of the powder body is in contact with the surface of the explosive object, and the rest is not in contact.Once ignited and detonated, the circle of the explosive object along several conical charges connected with the detonating line will remain intact, and in the central area surrounded by it, no matter how hard it is, a deep hole will be blasted out neatly. deep hole. [①May Day is a traditional festival in the Middle Ages and modern Europe. Every year on May 1, celebrations are held for the arrival of spring. During the event, people often dance and play around a flower column in the center. ——Translator's Note. 】 During the whole process of laying the explosives, only one person was killed.It was an African man, and he was very excited when he went to the garbage mountain and meticulously placed a cone-shaped charge.Everyone was waiting for him to return to show off, but nothing came back.He fell while going down the hill and rolled all the way down the hill.With a speed of more than two miles an hour, the stupid warning system concluded that the transport machine was out of control and issued a second alarm.At this time, another robot with an indescribable shape that was dumping waste on the garbage mountain received an alarm and suddenly discovered that something had happened.Therefore, it immediately drained all the electric energy of the battery it carried, and emitted a strong hysteresis current to the human body that was rolling down the slope.Before the African rolled to the foot of the mountain, the oxygen cylinder on his body had already turned red and exploded in an instant.In the flames, people and oxygen cylinders, everything was blown up.The other people who were distributing the explosives also suddenly felt that their shoelaces and wires suddenly became hot, burning them; To burn.The terrible high-voltage electricity passed away in an instant, but the burning pain remained unabated, and became more and more unbearable.Everyone insisted on continuing to lay the explosives in a completely numb state, and did not release the detonation bus until the second group returned. Through the green man with tentacles, Troppel maintains an indistinct and indistinct brain connection with the seven human bodies, neither fully participating in the activities of the seven human bodies, nor completely detached from it and acting alone.This is the difference between coma and death—a distinction that may seem meaningless to the bystander, but to the patient it is vital. In Tropel's comatose brain, another consciousness flowed like a trickle: the pyramid changed its octagonal offensive tactics to deal with the magical giants carrying seven human bodies, and their energy consumption speed accelerated.Great.Troppel took this information down.Now it's time for the other eight columns to complete their preparations, he thought. Troppel's team was responsible for the final detonation. Troppel took 30 of his men into hiding behind an abandoned Solvay soda production tower, where their remaining weapons were also piled.Then he inserted the fusible end of the main detonating cord into a pack of yellow tritium explosives fifty feet away, and then returned to cover, planted a rifle firmly on a rusted iron plate, and aimed at the A small triton pack.Aim, aim again... bang!A 30 mm diameter mixed rare earth tracer bomb flies into the target. [①Ammonia-alkali method for producing soda ash (sodium carbonate) invented by Belgian chemist Solvay (1838-1922). ——Translator's Note. 】 The dynamite pack that was hit exploded.The ignited detonating cord was lifted by the powerful air wave, soaring into the air, burning cracklingly, and burning downward at a speed of 1,000 feet per second. The small charmander ignited by the detonating wire jumped up the vertical pipe first, followed by a series of loud noises, accompanied by bursts of rattles, and the cone-shaped charge of the directional blast blasted many neat round holes around the vertical pipe.The sound of the explosion didn't stop, and the Charmander jumped over the giant supporting steel frame again, illuminating the scenery along the way.Then there was another long-lasting explosion, which rang from near to far.The fire from the explosion was like a huge swimming fire dragon, continuous and continuous.Suddenly the explosion stopped, and there was a strange silence for a moment, without any sound.Immediately afterwards, a new loud noise was set off again.This time it was no longer the sound of an explosion, but the rumbling and crunching sounds of metal colliding and twisting when it hit the ground.After the bang, all the supporting steel frames on which the explosive charges were placed disappeared, and the quarter-mile-long pipeline was suspended. Then, the suspended pipe began to slope slightly downward from the center, tilted, and finally, with a click, it broke completely.The huge pipeline slammed down on the ground, colliding with the rugged rocks and gravel piles on the ground, and the already aging and fragile pipeline immediately cracked into a pile of large and small steel plates, fragments and debris.The aftermath of the loud noise spread to the soles of the feet, bone marrow and eardrums with the shaking of the mountains, and everyone felt thrilled. A viscous torrent jetted out from the broken pipe head suspended in the air. At the same time, the whole body of the upright pipe was like fireworks blooming. Countless strands of white liquid gushed out from every hole. The scene was truly spectacular. .After a creaking sound, the huge bend that lost its support at the top of the upright pipe drooped its head deeply, and finally fell down with a bang, completely finished.The standpipe itself began to split slowly along the hole.Those holes that became white hot due to the explosion were not only torn further by the food liquid, but also annealed.With this heat and cold, the crystal structure of the metal itself is changed.Structures that are malleable when heated become brittle and lose their malleability when cooled, which can shatter.Finally, accompanied by another loud noise, the biggest one in the forest of pipelines fell down.The top end of the pipe was all smashed, and the bottom end collapsed and twisted into a typical loose figure-eight knot. The same scene is playing out a mile away to the south.People hiding behind soda production towers saw flames soaring into the sky on the horizon and heard distant explosions and the clatter of metal.The sound rattled their teeth. "We've done a good job," the Seven said solemnly to Troppel. "Now we must prevent internal divisions." "Isn't it?" the tentacled green man added sarcastically. More and more various machines that have been scattered and dormant for many years are now active one after another.The robots in charge of repairing the main food pipeline crawled out of the pile of discarded electrolytic cells.They weren't hiding there, they were just left there because they hadn't been used for many years.They are machines that can adapt to any environment, and unless the hydraulic pressure in the main conduit drops or the related lines fail, they will stay where they are.They were last used a century ago to restore the upright mains destroyed by a meteor, and since then they have been lying idle; the waste lead batteries from the chlorine workshop were dumped on them by the cleaning robot, and they were deeply buried. It has been buried below for more than a hundred years.But as soon as they receive a signal to start work, they will dig out obstacles and rush out.Now, the signal for them to start is given. There are a total of 100 robots of all kinds. They form a super-large machine array, equipped with tools and equipment, such as free telescopic cranes, mechanical arms, forklifts, etc.Although they are not attacking robots, for survival and mission needs, they will eradicate all obstacles on the way forward, rush to the accident site, and repair catastrophic accidents caused by earthquakes, meteors, floods or cable interruptions. However, they have never encountered catastrophic accidents caused by earthlings. The machine array was divided into two groups. The first group of 10 rattled and rolled the ground, moving towards the explosion ruins of vertical pipes and overhead pipes; the other group of 90 rushed across the desolate land to several other The accident site went. The 30 earthlings could not breathe, and waited quietly.In utter horror, Jermyn unscrewed the lid of a box bearing the ancient stenciled words: ABERDEEN PROving Ground.There are some cells like a honeycomb cell inside, and each cell has a missile with a head like an egg and a tail like a fin, a total of 12 missiles. "Reload as directed," Troppel said to Germin.Picking up the bazooka by himself, he looked along the body of the barrel, and the intersection of the crosshairs was aimed at the robot rushing aggressively at the front 300 yards away. At this moment, seven people died.In an ordeal of mutual love, parting, and pain, it sent Tropel a final image: a blue line of fire formed by plasmoids.The curing liquid in the curing tank was transpiring, and the seven human bodies struggled in it until they died. Troppel stood motionless in a daze.Germin tentatively patted him on the shoulder lightly, indicating to him that "the bomb is finished", but he suddenly collapsed on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.It wasn't the insignificant weight of the launcher and the missile that weighed him down, but the extreme sadness.He died, his spirit died.just died. "Give me this shit!" Gala Troppel said, snatching the bazooka out of his hand and throwing it on her shoulder. "God, be careful!" Jermyn screamed. "This is a nuclear weapon." "I know," she replied curtly, as she moved the bazooka back and forth over her shoulder, steadied it, and aimed, finger on the trigger. "Swoosh!" The rocket flew out.A stupid woman was standing right behind Gala, and she didn't know how to dodge. As a result, one of her shoulders was cut off by the flames from the tail of the rocket.She hugged the wound with her hands and fell to the ground, curled up and rolling on the ground in pain.No one noticed this unlucky guy, and everyone's eyes were only on the little fireball where the flying man was the robot.I saw the small fireball leap into a big fireball, and then, a purple mushroom cloud jumped up, like a giant umbrella propped up, reaching up to the sky and trailing down to the ground.Gala grabbed Jermin, faced the unbelievable scene in front of her, and murmured: "My Lord! My Lord!" For the next hour, the sky around the equator was illuminated by mushroom clouds one after another, and 100 robots were dying in the flames.Humans also paid a heavy price, and many people died together with the robots.Unfortunately, Handel's Princeton column got a box of undetected duds, and they had to shoot at the robots with rifles, but they could only punch one small hole after another in their transmission gears.As a last resort, he had no choice but to throw a cone-shaped charge of directional blasting at the robot at a close range, which was so close that it was almost suicide.Therefore, the column suffered heavy casualties.By the time the brother column had freed up fire to support them, there were only two of them left. When the battle is over, after counting the number of casualties and cleaning the battlefield, the world returns to silence.At this time, under the promotion of static electricity, the pyramid slowly slid over without a sound.They barely squeezed into the walled black filling station, waiting desperately... They are waiting for food.With the food, they can continue to move, and they can recreate more food, and it's okay...but they can't wait for anything.They will just wait in vain like this forever, until they are completely finished. In the face of these giants, the human beings who were terrified at first, then angry, and finally had to rise up to resist, were surprised to find that they also developed a little sympathy and compassion for these huge and stupid inanimate things.