107
You pass the central processor which is cocooned in a web of soft polystyrene and cooled by a steady flow of near-freezing air.Beyond it is the whir and clank of machinery, and the heat of a small furnace. It is an ore refining plant and the Polybdenum ore is being fed in at one end and the lumps of reddish rock emerge at the other in the form of sleek rods usable in the Variac Drive of Time Machines. Beyond the refinery is the back end of the armadillo-like mining droid where a conveyor belt moves the rods onto a plasteel rack. Beyond the rack hover two guardian wardroids. A sensor in the mining droid alerts them to your presence and they swoop towards you. The lancing white- hot beam of your blaster ionises the yellow gas, turning it red on its path towards one of the wardroids. You score a direct hit on its power plant and your helmet faceplate turns dark as the lurid explosion lights the interior of the mining droid and debris is hurled through the churning yellow gas of the atmosphere. Carborundum lurches forward, crashing into the second droid, smashing its hover pads and immobilising it. As the wardroid crashes to the ground you see that it is aiming a missile which points at the Thrix. Your blaster cuts a path to destruction once more, fusing the metal casing of the droid until it begins to melt, collapsing in on itself. Turn to 181.