With this cheering encouragement the men slithered and crawled the awful length of that great tunnel, almost gasping with relief when they were back in the safety of a communications tube again. Shortly after this Jerry Cruncher halted and pointed up at a ladder that rose into the darkness above.
"Ninety-eight BaG dropwell. This is the one you want, to that second center you talked about."
"You're sure?"
Jerry Cruncher eyed the Lieutenant with something very much like disgust and he groped his pipe from his pocket.
"Being you're ignorant, mister, I take no offense. When Jerry says a tunnel is a tunnel, that's the tunnel he says."
"No offense meant!"
"None taken," he muttered around the pipe stem. "This is the one. You can see all the wires and communication cables going up there as well. Can't be anything else."
"What's at the top?"
"Door with a handle and a sign saying 'No Admission Under Par. 897A of the Military Code.' "
"Is the door locked?"
"Nope. Forbidden under paragraph 45-C of the Tunnel Authority Code. Need access, we do."
"Then this is it. Sergeant, take eighteen men and get up that ladder. Synchronize your watch with mine. In two hours we go in. Just get through that door and start shooting — watch out for the equipment through — and keep shooting until every one of those slimy, dirty Betelgeuseans is dead. Do you understand?"
The Sergeant nodded with grim determination and drew himself up and saluted. "We'll do our duty, sir."
"All right, the rest of you, move out."
They had walked for no more than ten minutes down a lateral tunnel lined with frosted pipes before Jerry Cruncher stopped and sat down.
"What's wrong?" the Lieutenant asked.
"Tea break," he said, putting his still-warm pipe into his side pocket and opening his lunch box.
"You can't — I mean, listen, the enemy, the schedule…"
"I always have tea at this time." He poured a great mugful of the potent brew and sniffed it appreciatively. "Tea break allowed for in the schedule."
Most of tinmen brought out rations and sipped from their canteens while the Lieutenant paced back and forth slapping his fist into his hand. Jerry Cruncher sipped his tea placidly and chewed on a large chocolate biscuit.
A shrill scream sliced through the silence and echoed from the pipes. Something black and awful launched itself from a crevice in the wall and was attached to Trooper Barnes' throat. The soldiers were paralyzed. Not so Jerry Cruncher. There was a whistle and a thud as he instantly lashed out with his spanner and the vicious assailant rolled, dead, onto the tunnel floor before their bulging eyes.
"It's. . it's. . hideous!" a soldier gasped. "What is it?"
"Mutant hamster.” Jerry Cruncher said as he picked up the monster of teeth and claws and stuffed it into his lunch box. "Descendants of house pets that escaped centuries ago, mutated here in the darkness until they turned into this. I've seen bigger ones. Boffins at the university give me three credits for every one I bring them. Not bad if I say so myself, and tax-free too, which I hope you won't be repeating." He was almost jovial now at this fiscally remunerative encounter. As soon as the trooper had been sewn up, they pressed on.
A second squad was left at the next communication substation and they hurried on towards ComCent itself.
"Ten minutes to go," Lieutenant gasped, jogging heavily under the weight of all his equipment.
"Not to worry, just two tunnels more."
It was three minutes to deadline when they reached the wide opening in the ceiling above them, sprouting cables from its mouth like an electronic hydra's head.
"Big door at the top," Jerry Cruncher said, shining his torch up the shaft. "Has a dual-interlock compound wheel exchange lever. As you turn the wheel counterclockwise the lever in position ready must be…"
"Come up with us, please," the Lieutenant begged, peering at his watch and chewing his lip nervously. "We'll never get in in time and they'll be warned by the attacks on the other stations."
"Not my job, you know, getting shot at. I let them as has been paid for it do it."
"Please, I beg of you, as a patriotic citizen." Jerry Cruncher's face was as of carved stone as he bit down heavily on the stem of his pipe. "You owe it to yourself, your family, your conscience, your country. And I can guarantee a one-hundred-credit bonus for opening it."
"Done."
They climbed against time and when they reached the platform at the top, the second hand on the Lieutenant's watch was just coming up on the 12.
"Open it!" The wheel spun and gears engaged, the great lever went down and the massive portal swung open.
"For Mother Earth!" the Lieutenant shouted and led the charge. When they had all gone inside and the tunnel was silent again Jerry Cruncher lit his pipe and then, more out of curiosity than anything else, strolled in after them. It was a vista of endless steel corridors lined with banks of instruments, whirring and humming under electronic control.
He stopped to tamp down his pipe just as a door opened and a short hairy creature, no taller than his waist, shaped like a bowling pin and possessing a number of arms, scuttled out and raced towards a large red switch mounted on the opposite wall. Five of its arms were reaching for the switch, spatulate fingers almost touching it, when the spanner whistled once again and sank deep into the creature's head, flooring it instantly. Jerry Cruncher had just retrieved the spanner when the white-faced Lieutenant raced through the same door.
"Praise heaven," he gasped, "you've stopped him in time!"
"Didn't like his looks at all, though I didn't mean to bash his brains in."
"That is their leader, the only survivor, and he was going for the destruct switch that would have blown us all a mile high. He's our prisoner now and he'll talk, believe me. You didn't kill him. The Betelgeuseans have their brains in their midriffs, their stomachs are in their heads. He's just unconscious."
"Like a boot in the guts. Glad of that, didn't mean to kill him."
"Where you been?" Agatha called from the kitchen when she heard Jerry's heavy tread in the hall.
"Special job," he wheezed, pulling off his high boots. "Going to be some extra lolly in the pay packet this week."
"We'll need it to fix the viddy. It's been out of order all day, though it just came back on. Something wrong with it I'm sure. Had phone trouble too, would you believe, all in the same day. Tried to call Mum but our line went dead. Was it a hard job?"
"Not specially," Jerry grunted, digging out his pipe. "Government work — bit of a bonus in it too I imagine. Showed a bunch of chaps through the tunnels. Not a clue they had. One mashed his hand in a lid and the other just sat there while a hampmutey went for his throat."
"Oooh, don't say that, I'll have no appetite at all. Tea's ready."
"Now that is the sort of thing I like to hear."
He smiled for the first time since he had got out of bed that morning and went in to have his tea.
If
"We are there, we are correct. The computations were perfect. That is the place below."
"You are a worm.” 17 said to her companion, 35, who resembled her every way other than in number. "That is that place. But nine years too early. Look at the meter."
"I am a worm. I shall free you of the burden of my useless presence." 35 removed her knife from the scabbard and tested the edge, which proved to be exceedingly sharp. She placed it against the white wattled width of her neck and prepared to cut her throat.