Seconds stretched into nerve-racking minutes. Vandy hitched his way out of the room, the goggles clasped tight to his chest. He was at the door, getting to his feet again. Nik set aside the bundle, and his hands closed on the boy, jerking him back and out of what could have been a trap.
He looked down into Vandy's face. The boy's eyes were alight, his lips curved in a wide smile, but Nik did not respond. He pulled Vandy away from the door.
"Don't ever try anything like that again!" He thinned his whisper to the merest thread of sound, his lips close to Vandy's ear.
Vandy was still grinning. "Got 'em!" He dangled the goggles.
"And whoever was in there could have gotten you!" Nik retorted. "No more chances—"
Teaming with Vandy was trouble. Nik had been transformed into Hacon outwardly, but for a human being to resemble the imagined hero of a small boy was almost impossible. In the fantasy adventures of Hacon and Vandy, Vandy had always had equality of action. If Nik tried to impose the need for caution on the boy now, it might end in a clash of wills that would imperil their escape. Feverishly Nik searched his Hacon memory for some precedent that would render Vandy more amenable to his orders in the immediate future.
"This is a Silcon job." He brought out the best argument he could muster. "A slip will mean failure, Vandy."
"All right. But I did get the goggles! And we'll have to get another pair, won't we?"
"If we can." Privately Nik thought that their picking up the first pair had been such a piece of good luck that it was unlikely that such an opportunity would occur again. He recalled Leeds' belief in luck but was not moved to accept that belief for his own. To acquire one pair of goggles without mishap was perhaps all they dared hope to do.
The soft whish-whish of the air current over their heads was the only sound in the corridor. Nik counted doors to locate the room where he had seen the arms rack. Once both of them paused as a mutter from another sleeping chamber suggested the occupant was awake or waking. Nik was somewhat appeased by Vandy's present sober expression and his quiet.
At the arms room, they were faced by a closed door, which did not yield to Nik's efforts to slide it back. But the thoughts of the blasters kept him busy past the first sharp disappointment. To venture out into the unknown dangers of the tunnels without weapons was too perilous. He had too good a memory of that winged thing that had attacked outside the refuge. Perhaps other native creatives had found their way underground. Neither did he want to face any pursuit of Orkhad's forces with empty hands.
Nik's fingers traced the crack of the door. It did not give in the slightest to his urging. He turned the supply bundle around in his hands, examining those glittering "weapons" still in the belt loops. They could not deliver the power Vandy had imagined for them, but in their shapes and sizes, there might be one to answer his purpose now.
He chose the mirror ray and worked its curved edge into the door crack at the position of the locking mechanism. It was not a finger-heat seal, for which Nik was thankful, and his probing did meet obstruction. Carefully he began to pry, levering the mirror edge back and forth, so that it moved more freely.
Nik applied more pressure. His position was awkward, and he could not bring much weight to bear. But at last there was a click, and the door moved. A locked door should mean an empty room, and it was dark. Swiftly, Nik grasped the goggles, not sure they would work.
But they did, and he was able to see in an odd fashion, enough to make sure that the room was empty of all except its stark furnishing and the arms rack. He motioned Vandy in with him.
Four blasters stood in the rack slots. Nik took the first and saw that the dial butt indicated a full charge. At least Orkhad's men kept their arms in order. He thrust the weapon into the front of his tunic. Vandy reached for the second in the rack. Nik was about to protest and then kept silent. Whether Vandy could use the arm or not, a second one would be worth taking. Nik slipped the two remaining out of the rack, set their beams on full, and laid them on the floor. With any luck, they would lie there undiscovered until their charges were completely exhausted. It would take time to recharge them.
Luck again—he was beginning to think as Leeds did. And why was he so sure that the men here in the refuge were his enemies? Nik returned to the present problem, that of getting away from the quarters of Orkhad's force.
Vandy was staring, fascinated, at the wall beginning to glow red from the force beams. What effect that disintegration might have Nik did not know, but he shouldered the pack and pushed the boy back to the corridor. Outside, he shut the door once again and inserted in the crack another of the belt "tools," twisting the narrow strip of metal well into the slot and then melting it with his new weapon to make sure. That was a new door lock that would take them some time to break.
They came out on the balcony above the terminal of the tunnels. What if there was no way down? The expanse above that star-shaped convergence was big and shadowed. Nik could make out a matching balcony on the opposite side as he came to the edge to look over. There was nothing moving below, no sign that Orkhad's people had any use for that series of rock-hewn ways. Nik measured the drop with his eyes and then went to work.
The contents of the bundle were spread out and two of the covers knotted together. Yes, that ought to reach.
"We climb down?" Vandy whispered.
"No, I'll lower you, then drop—" Nik tested the knots with hard jerks, listening all the while for any intimation that their escape had been discovered. Was the scent of suequ stronger? Had Orkhad gone back to the pipe? Nik fastened one blanket end to Vandy and helped the boy clamber over the rail.
He played out the improvised line and saw the pale face turned up to him as Vandy signaled safe arrival. Now up with the rope again. A bag was made of it to lower the supply containers. The whole thing dropped. Not too far away there was a rise in the surface of the tunnel level, close to Orkhad's quarters. Nik measured that distance by eye. To approach that end of the balcony was an added risk, but it was his best chance. He waved to Vandy and saw the boy nod vigorously.
Nik sped for that end of the balcony, Vandy matching him. Below the boy dropped the blankets in a heap as Nik climbed over the balustrade. As he had hoped, that tangle cushioned his fall. Jarred but unhurt, he got to his feet.
"Which way do we go now?"
Vandy's question was apt. Nik could see no difference in the radiating tunnels, no difference save direction. In that way, they should reach toward the outer world and the place where the LB had set down, which meant toward the spot where Leeds should come, in turn. But wouldn't Orkhad reason the same way? Nik hesitated as he faced the dark mouths in what seemed the right direction—left, middle, right—If the Veep did hunt in that direction, he would have to split his force in three. Success might depend upon how many men he commanded. Nik made his decision and took the tunnel to the right.
"That way!"
Blaster in hand, he started down the track to discover that, once into the passage, they did not need the goggles after all. At well-spaced intervals, there were plates set in the walls that glowed dully. Nik thought that those who had built these ways had certainly not shared his type of eyesight—perhaps to that forgotten and doomed race, those plates had presented a maximum of light. Had Dis always been a night world for Terran stock or had the sun flare altered more than its surface?
"Where are we going now?" Vandy asked.
"Wherever we can hide until Captain Leeds comes."
"Who is he, Hacon, a Patrolman?"
Nik grinned wryly. Strode Leeds was probably far from a Patrolman, but he was certainly their only hope of surviving this venture.
"No—he's just the man who'll take us away from here." And Nik hoped that was the truth.
"When is he coming?"
When—that was the question! For the first in what might have been hours, Nik's left hand sought his face. Time—time to keep him what he now was or just to keep him and Vandy alive. The conflicting stories concerning the boy returned to plague Nik as they walked on along what seemed endless miles of tunnel, with no change in the walls, no sign there was any end to this burrow hollowed for an unknown purpose long before either of them had been born.
"I don't know." Nik roused to answer that last question.
"If we hide, how can we tell when he does come?" Vandy was practical.
"We'll have to find a hiding place from which we can see the landing apron," Nik replied. "Only near there is where they will hunt us, too."
"Go outside?" Vandy sounded doubtful, and Nik did not blame him.
Stay in the burrows where Orkhad could eventually track them down—go outside into a nightmare world where only a pair of goggles would give them freedom of movement, perhaps mean the difference between life and death? But also—to go outside was the only way to be sure of Leeds' arrival. Nik had no assurance of the wisdom of his own decisions. He could only make them by choosing the lesser of two evils. And he clung stubbornly to the idea that in Leeds lay their only safety now.
"Yes." His reply was curt. And then he began to wonder if they could reach the outside world—if this tunnel had any opening onto the surface of Dis.
"Look!" Vandy's outheld hand was a vague blur in the gloom. What he indicated lay mid-point between two of the dim lights. It was a greenish glow, stronger toward the roof, tapering as it descended. Nik pulled up the goggles, startled by the sharp focus that leaped at him.
Plants—or rather fleshy growths against the bare rock. They had no leaves Nik could identify but innumerable thin arms or branches that matted together, intertwining and twisting until they made a thick mass. And they grew through a break in the wall only a little below the room. A way outside?
Nik could not bring himself to touch that mat of weird vegetation with his bare hands. The stuff had such an unhealthy, even evil, look that he thought of poison or fungoid contamination. Yet the chance of an unexpected bolt hole could not be missed.
"What is it?" Vandy demanded, and Nik realized that to the boy's unaided eyes the growth was a hazy mystery.
"Maybe a side door if we can open it." Nik dialed the low beam on the blaster and turned it on that twisted mass.
There was a burst of flame licking across the whole growth in one consuming puff. The stench of that burning blew back at them, forcing a retreat. Then it was gone, and only stained rock remained. But the crack the plants had masked was open, and there was light from it, light well visible to Nik's goggled eyes. Since the cleared space was big enough to scramble through, he leaped and caught at the sides, pulling himself up for a look.
Around him the concentrated stench made him gasp, and there was a whirl of thick and heavy smoke. It would seem that the fire started in the tunnel had ignited the vegetation here also.
Nik, coughing, held to his vantage point long enough to discover that the break was at the bottom of a wedgelike cut, the lips of which were far above. The fire puffed now up the walls of the cut, running with lightning speed along the trails of plants that must have originally choked most of that space.
The walls looked climbable, and Nik thought they had found their way out. He dropped back to wait for the fire to clear the cut, taking advantage of that interval to share a tin of rations with Vandy. They had food; now they must find a place to hole up for rest. Vandy had made no complaint, but Nik judged by his own growing fatigue that to climb out of the cut might be all the youngster could do.
He was right, Nik discovered, when they did climb. Vandy was slow, fumbling, and Nik used his belt as a safety device to link them. Vandy was not just tired; he was climbing that grade blind, making it necessary for Nik to guide his hands and feet. When they at last pulled out on top, Vandy sat panting, his head bowed on his knees.
"I—I don't think I can go on, Hacon—" he said in a small voice. "My legs—they're too shaky—"
Nik stood surveying the landscape about them with concentrated study. The ground was rough with many outcrops of rock among which grew lumpy plants, some inches high, others branching into the height of normal trees, but none of them wholesome-looking. The dank humidity of the outer world was a stifling blanket, weighing down their bodies almost as heavily as the fatigue. No, neither of them could go far now, and the rocks offered the best hope of shelter.
The nearest was a cluster of squared blocks where patches of growth made lumpy excrescences. Whether those rises also contained any protecting crevices or niches he could not be sure, but he was certain Vandy could not go much farther. Somehow, Nik got the boy to his feet and half led, half supported him to the rocks. The cloying scents in the air made them both gasp. And once or twice during that journey Nik gagged at a smell alien enough to human nostrils to arouse nausea.
A creature humped of spine, which moved by hops, broke from hiding almost under Nik's feet and took a soaring leap to the top of one of the blocks. There it slewed around. A tongue issued from a wide, gaping mouth to lash across a patch of fungi-encrusted stone and transfer a burden of harvested vegetation to that lipless stretch of warty skin.
Nik sighted the shadowy space beneath that hopping thing's perch. A moment later he supported Vandy to the edge of a dark pocket, pausing only to use the blaster to clear its interior. Then they were in a slit passage running on between the blocks. Nik pushed Vandy along that narrow way. It was not a cave. The continued regularity of the walls made him sure that this was the remains of a structure.
A rattle underfoot drew Nik's attention from the wall to the floor. He had kicked a grayish object. About as long as his forearm, it was formed of a series of rounded knobs linked together until his foot had disturbed them and several had rolled apart. Bones? Remains of what—and how recent the death that had left them there? Was this the lair of one of the killers of Dis?
Still, the way before them was open, and Nik had the blaster. Now he saw light ahead—further proof that this was a passage rather than a cave. Three or four more strides and he was fronted by an opening well above the surface of the way, a window to look out upon an eerie landscape so dark that even the goggles did not help much in his inspection.
Ruins—that was surely true. The block piles were regular in pattern. And they extended all along a shelf to his right. On the left was an abrupt drop, and then another, as if he were on the edge of a flight of steps intended for the use of giants.
No use trying to go on now, stumbling into the ruins. The window opening was well above the surface of the pavement, and if they bedded down immediately beneath it, they would be well protected. Nik was shaking with fatigue, and Vandy had slid out of his hold to lie still, his eyes closed, his panting breath coming in a more even pattern. Vandy was finished for now, and Nik had no strength to carry him. This had to be their refuge. He managed to spread the blankets and roll the boy on them. Then he sat down, his back against the wall, the blaster resting on his knee, wondering how long he could hold out against the sleep his body demanded.