SRD jumped at the alarms that blasted through his head. Unknown life form?! On Venus?! Why on Venus out of all places? Was this another project he was untold of?
SRD's 'brain' functions were having a hard time trying to connect all the pieces. A few of his usually 'dormant' systems activated, thoroughly searching through every bit of information the robot has gathered through his entire 'life'. It was all to no avail. This was genuinely unknown to him.
SRD hastily looked around for any weapon to defend himself with before an idea struck him!
"P6234, search sector 4 of the memory sequence 20. Match this information with the Martian data collected." He commanded. Soon after, one of his eyes turned into a green colour as the so-called P6234 began dissecting said memory sequence.
A voice played back in SRD's head, which he lightly shook off. "Info unmatching — You can read more on the unmatching info below."
SRD was quite at a loss on what to do. He could barely pull the drill, which meant that he can't do any actual 'fighting' with it. Not only that, but the temperatures on Venus were high, restricting him from using any weapons that were already built-in.
As a last resort, SRD tried to figure out what he can about the approaching creature.
"P1623, analyze the report P6234 just gave us. Place it in a memory sequence 21 in its own file. Give the file a random name."
Not even a second passed before SRD let out a small 'hm' as all the information was dumped inside of his memories. The creature, judging by the sound, was four-legged. That's... That's all he knew. Something was off, one of his chips were not functioning properly, he deduced. It had to be P6234.
"SA2512QB, report a full scan of inefficient parts." He ordered, only adding more and more randomized letters as process names.
After a few seconds, a huge red list appeared on SRD's monitors, blocking out his vision temporarily. Out of the 5.8 million processes his body ran, 2.2 million of them were not running, or at least running inefficiently. They were all listed under two causes:
"Chips are missing" or "Bad replacement/handling".
What happened?
Thinking about it... M fixed him up a couple of times... didn't he? Oh god, what was he replaced with?! Oh, that bastard! SRD had to abandon the precious metal they came all the way here for, sprinting out of the creature's direction. He didn't want to be attacked here. Definitely not.
He could hear the creature rushing behind him, and he had no idea what to do.
Due to the 'bad handling', SRD was not able to deduce anything about the creature except the way it walked... which to be fair, was not much information. How big was it? How strong? Is it organic or artificial? From the sounds of the footsteps, the creature was around the same size as SRD was, maybe bigger. But he had no confirmation.
The only way to see this being is to stand still and face it. Venus was covered with a golden fog that limited SRD's vision, meaning he had to prepare for the worst.
SRD stayed close to the block of metal he came here to get, before adjusting himself into a defensive stance. The hope here was to throw the creature away if it lunged over at him.
SRD could see a shadow of a four-legged creature coming closer, although it stopped running. It was now regularly walking, it seemed.
"I can visualize you, unintelligent creat—" Before SRD could complete his sentence, a beam of light fell on top of SRD, covering both him and the block of metal. Within the matter of a few seconds, the light beam dissipated, leaving behind nothing.
A cloaked figure then approached the same area where SRD once stood. He tapped the drill a couple of times, before looking upward. "It left..." the figure said, letting out a small sigh. The man looked down at a four-legged furry being next to him. It had white fur and bright yellow eyes. It resembled much of a regular dog, but a lot more muscular. "It left a... drill? I wonder what it was used for..." He mumbled, almost talking to himself. "Come on now, that'll help us get out of here." He said, starting to pull the drill off into the distance.
Back on the ship.
The light beam re-appeared where the circle was. As it disappeared, SRD was seen with the block of metal next to him. "What took you so long?" He asked in a nonchalant tone, looking down at M.
"I... didn't expect you to finish that quickly? Besides, we didn't really think this through, to begin with. I had to take a bargain and hope that you got the metal. Why does it matter anyway? You're here now..."
"I may have encountered another living form on Venus." He announced. "And it may have almost destroyed me, if not for your perfectly-timed save." SRD added, stepping a bit closer and coming face to face with M. "If my chips were working correctly, I may have been able to save myself. What have you done to them?"
"A... a living person on Venus?" M asked, taking a few moments to realize what SRD just said. "That doesn't sound very plausible... Did you see how it looked like?" M followed up with another question, completely ignoring what SRD said about the chips.
"Not exactly, no. The most I recorded was the fact that it was four-legged. Nothing more. It did not get that close to my eyes. I could not snap a picture of it."
"Four-legged...? That means it's quite unintelligent. Or maybe it just has a weird structure?" This was all confusing for M. He didn't know how life could make it on Venus — the temperatures were scorching hot there, and the atmosphere did not help in any way. The legs burst out the sides of the monitor, and he took a few steps closer to the metal. "Well, It's finally here!" M exclaimed.
"That might be true. I didn't get any clear picture of it, sadly." SRD said, turning back around and looking at the metal. "Is it the right one?"
"Of course it is!" He said, gazing at it. "Adrum — One of the most electricity and heat-conducting metals known to man! The reason this is so crucial is that if I tweak it correctly and pair it alongside some other parts in the machine, wonders happen! To be exact, I can take energy straight from the sun in large bulks, rework the taken energy, amplify it, and after a boring process, it turns into usable electricity. The structure on Earth is certainly not able to power your whole civilization, but it'll be able to start up some sort of spark, and we can build on it from there."
SRD nodded, staring at the so-called Adrum. This is what'll help him revive his civilization. To think that he started off from only 2 hours of time to going all the way to venus, then back with this material is mind-boggling. It all happened so fast. "Does that mean we can go back now? And what about this martian, do we take him back too?"
"Yes! We can go back to Earth now... Although I don't know how easy that'll be..." He glanced back at the somehow still unconscious Martian. "We can just drop him off here. The four-legged being — whatever it is, will take care of him. I'm sure it's starving." M replied, giving off a sinister laugh. "Drag him below the circle, I'll beam him down. He'll probably burn before he reaches the surface, but just pull him here."
SRD nodded, not really caring about what'll happen to the Martian, whatever his name was. He grabbed his hand, dragging him onto the circle that he just came through. He moved the Ardum out of the way before he stepped back himself, leaving nothing else below the surface... Except for the Martian.
"And there he goes!" M said as the same exact beam of light fell on top of the unconscious body, making it disappear from the ship. "Good riddance. Now we don't have a Martian lying around on the ship."
The ship steered itself, facing the direction of Earth. "Alright then, off we go, yes?" M said, and SRD didn't respond much, only giving a small nod.
The ship's engines started moving, and it began accelerating forward. Just as it left Venus' orbit, both M and SRD can see little dots coming at them from the sky.
SRD walked a bit closer to the windows, trying to see what those black dots were. "Are those... stars?"
M's simplistic face went from left to right, indicating a sort of head shake. "No... Stars are usually not black... And we'd probably be burnt if those many stars just appeared..." The screen stared at the windows. "I'm not sure... they're too far away."
The black dots began increasing more and more, littering the vast and empty space they were travelling in. It was almost like a swarm of flies just appeared through thin air, about to devour the ship.
"I'm strug—" And before any of them could realize what happened, a red laser beam broke through the window, completely penetrating M's screen in the process. The monitor let out a crackle, and the ship's engines began to slow down again before shutting down.
The ship was no longer flying nor hovering.
it was falling.