123
[score an M]
The side of the refinery slopes smoothly to a polished metal droid highway below, like the edge of a bowl. You step over the edge and slide down shooting across the highway at the bottom as if you were on ice. A few worker droids which are using the highway ignore you completely. After about half an hour you emerge from behind a huge iron cooling tower, towards the fluorescent building. You see a large wardroid hovering ahead and duck into a passageway between two large dome-like structures sporting revolving sensor dishes pointed at the stars. You continue along it, skirting the wardroid. When you emerge, you see a massive flat-topped tower ahead. A dark shape appears in the sky and a heavy Interplanetary cargo droid sinks slowly onto the top of the tower, its retros roaring. Your helmet radio picks up a recognition signal from the cargo droid to the tower and you switch your transmitter to record. The cargo droid beams another message to the tower.
There is a deep rumbling sound and the droid is drawn into the tower - its roof is an Access Pad. You transmit the Main Access, Code to CAIN in Falcon's Wing. Note down the number 15 and that you have the Main Access Code. You will be told when you can turn to 15. You turn away and head towards the hangar-like entrance of the fluorescent building. The rim of the hangar boasts twenty great space-artillery pieces like outward pointing teeth in the cavernous maw of a prehistoric monster. As you approach it, skirting a huge iron cooling tower, an incredible sight meets your gaze. A spaceship almost as large as one of the generation starships of the 24th century is being dismantled on a huge brass landing field. As you fly over it you see a contraption which can only be an enlarged Variac Drive being hoisted out of its front end. It takes a few seconds for you to realise what has been happening. The factory droids must have manufactured this colossal Time Machine in hours! Hundreds of them hover about it. They must have planned to invade the Eiger Vault with this machine on Earth, 3033 AD. Now that you have destroyed the Polybdenum and the Timehole on Thrix has closed, Yelov must have altered his plans. As you go onwards, a daunting vista lies ahead. It is Mechanon's space launch field, and it is packed with an interstellar warfleet the size of which defies belief. Row upon row of Interceptors, Ion-drive Battle Cruisers and Atmospheric Fighter-carrying Mother-ships glow a burnished bronze beneath the dull red sky. Turn to 234.