Virginia remembered how proud Jim Vidor had been of it, just before his slotting so long ago. It had been a beautiful work, crafted in six shades of ice, traced in native crystal. But now the carved spacer lay crumpled on its side, and the blue planet was crushed.

Deep under the surface, in her lab, Virginia tensed on her webbing as she looked at the vandalism through the mech’s eyes. “Who…?”

Jeffers’s voice was tense. —Dunno. I’d guess some of Sergeov’s Ubers did it.—

“But why?”

The spacer shrugged. —Cruz was an Ortho.—

That seemed explanation enough to him. Virginia felt her skin flush, just then ashamed to be a Percell.

“Has Jim ever seen this?”

—Naw. Matsudo brought him out in 2073 or so, and Lintz’s cyanutes fixed his first disease. But then they had to slot him again a year or so later with a real bad blood infection. I guess in a way it’s a blessing, at that. He’ll never see how bad it’s all gotten since then. Jim was an Ortho. But I liked him a lot.—

“Yeah,” she said, unable to think of anything else to say. She stepped her mechs around the shattered moment to join Jeffers. Come on Let’s see if we can work a miracle or two.”

—Right, pretty Hawaiian lady.—Jeffers reached up and pulled several narrow envelopes off a rack carried by one of the mechs. —This way to the Elephants’ Graveyard.—

They rounded a rocky hummock and Virginia sighed. No mere statistics could have prepared her for the scene before her now. Machines, laid out row upon row, in orderly ranks that stretched nearly to the curved horizon, all frozen, unmoving, locked in a rigor of uselessness and disrepair.

“Where do we start?” she asked in dismay.

Jeffers clapped his gloved hands together and lifted off the ice a couple of meters in his nervous excitement.

—Who cares! For three years I’ve been pokin’ way at the hardware, fussin’ in the autofactory, scragging prototype spares. But I keep hittin’ software glitches, ROM blocs, clapes I just couldn’t grok! Frustrated everythin’ I tried.—

He landed facing her mech.

—But now, in just two weeks, you’ve sorted out things that had me dead stopped!—

Her mech lifted a metal hand, exactly mimicking Virginia’s gesture down within her darkened lab. “Now hold on, Jeff. I said this was just a first cut. No promises…”

But the man had already jetted over to a spindly repair-bot… a sophisticated androidlike machine designed for the maintenance of other devices, but now frozen itself in a locked rigor of uselessness.

—Let’s start with this puppy. I already did a physical workover on it.—

Virginia watched nervously as the spacer sorted through the envelopes, selected one, tore it open, and drew forth a gleaming sliver. He pried open an access panel and slipped the reprogramming crystal into the back of the machine.

—Arise!—he commanded, stepping back with a theatrical wave of his arms.

Virginia held her breath. For an instant, it seemed that the frost coating the rigid mech would bind it into immobility. A part of her wondered, Can a statue come to life?

But then the frost cracked, puffing away in tiny, silent explosions as amorphous ice changed state directly into gas. With a wavering delicacy, the machine unfolded. In an unlimbering of stiltlike, mantis legs, it stood up and turned to face Jeffers. Eye cells gleaming, it extended a long arm strong enough to snap the man in two. A many-fingered hand opened, like a blooming flower.

Jeffers laid the stack of envelopes into the sure, deft grasp.

—The Armies of the Dead arise this mornin’!—He laughed. —Come on, angel face. We got some heavy-duty resurrectin’ to do!—

Virginia forgave the man his marginal blasphemy. His excitement was infectious. Almost as much as the deadly illnesses and the manpower shortage, this gradual decline in the colony’s mech force had contributed to the pervasive mood of hopelessness, the impossibility of achieving anything real.

Oh, it won’t make enough of a difference, whatever we accomplish out here. Nothing can replace missing human beings.

But we just may be able to make life a bit easier around here.

Jeffers was a dervish on the ice, hurrying from drone to roboid to waldo mech. Virginia thought she had no illusions; still, she grew amazed and more hopeful as they moved along the silent rows of the graveyard, swapping program slivers, lubricating, energizing.

It was thrilling to watch. Long-dead machines, frozen rigid for years, shuddered and stood up. Others rolled by on grapple wheels, or floated free of their moorings. Data channels clicked, beeped, twittered with well-ordered computer code.

Their efforts began to multiply as reprogrammed repair-bots moved out on their own, taking over whole rows of disabled mechs. What had been a small cluster of activity spread outward like ripples from a spring-thawed pool.

As dust drifted away from long-quiescent machines, their headphones carried sounds of wonder and growing excitement from the agro domes. Crowds began to gather, staring out at what had heretofore been a silent, frozen army. Airlocks opened, and spacesuited figures spilled onto the snow to stare at the milling mechanical crowd.

Jeffers cried out as a huge lifter mech puffed away on a burst of ionized hydrogen to hover nearby, its green and blue lights glittering. Shadows spread past them as it moved over to moor beside the long-unused supply depot.

The headphone-channel monitors cut in to dampen an overload of cheering from the onlookers.

More and more people appeared on the ice, in spacesuits not used in years, wearing once-white tabards now ratty from age. Some threw away caution and leaped in excitement, to arc high overhead for tong minutes while others jeered happily.

Virginia laughed. Halley’s north pole had become a festival —bumping into mechs, which uncomplainingly swerved to avoid more-violent collisions. Percells pirouetted with Orthos. Spacers talked excitedly with Arcists. Someone piped music over D-channel, and the weird, twisting dance of near-zero gravity filled the sky.

It doesn’t take much… just a little good news.

From one agro dome, a dozen spindly children stared… some slack-jawed and barely seeing, but a few clapping their hands and tugging at the sleeves of nearby adults, pointing excitedly at the boisterous celebration.

A figure appeared beside Virginia’s mech and reached up to tug on the machine’s arm. Virginia felt it at her own elbow and looked down.

“Oh. Hi Carl!” She felt like a little girl, and it was good to see him smile again, under the glossy faceplate of his grimy suit. “How did you know which mech was me?”

—Osborn to Herbert, channel AF. How did I know, Virginia? It was easy. I just watched the way each mech walked, and picked the one with the sexiest moves.—

She felt herself blush, and was glad that out on the surface none of it would show. “You always did have a gift for bullsh.”

Suddenly, Virginia was interrupted by an awful sound. It was the blood-chilling wail of a suit-rupture alarm, interrupting every channel, cutting through the celebration, and stopping all chatter in mid-breath.

“Oh my gosh. Where… ?” She whirled her mech to look. Already several of the most sophisticated models were charging toward a crowd of spectators, drawn now into a cluster near one of the agro domes.

“I can’t tell,” she started to say to Carl. But then she realized that he was already gone-launched in a propellant spray toward the site of the commotion.

The alarm cut off abruptly, dropping to a low, mournful drone that denoted cessation of life functions.

Somebody had died.

Virginia started moving toward the crowd, then stopped, feeling foolish. Of course she did not have to take this particular mech over there to get a closer look. With a tongue click and a pulsed subvocal command, she transferred her point of view to a tall, spidery drone standing over the cluster of muttering humans.