Once we were on the way back we didn’t expect that anything much would go wrong. I was already thinking ahead to the next danger point—when we turned up for the meeting we’d arranged, to see what transpired.
As I’ve observed before, though, plans have a terrible tendency to go wrong.
When we got back to the broken seal through which we’d entered, two of the four cold-suits had vanished.
12
It didn’t take a genius to work out what must have happened.
We’d even heard someone moving around as we came out, and I cursed myself now for having let it go so easily. I looked at Serne, and could almost hear him thinking that we ought to have left a guard. It was all too obvious now, but at the time I hadn’t thought about it, and he hadn’t made the suggestion. So much for the value of Star Force training.
“A lone scavenger,” I said, bitterly, “hiding out from the invasion.”
“Surely there must have been two,” said Scarion. “There are two suits gone.”
“No,” I said. “If there’d been two, we’d have lost the lot. He’s taken a cutting-tool as well as the suits—that would be about the limit of what one man could carry.”
In a way, we had been lucky—if the scavenger had been cleverer, he’d have stashed the two suits and the tool in some hidey-hole of his own, and then come back for the rest. Maybe he simply hadn’t had that much nerve. In all probability, he’d gleefully made his grab and then set off into the distance, making sure that he was as far away as possible from the scene of the crime when we got back.
I realised, though, that his intemperate exit didn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t come back for the rest. It just meant that he wouldn’t come back alone.
It was bad enough to find that our doorway to the city was useless. We also had to face the fact that it might now become a magnet drawing all the undesirables in the vicinity.
With two suits left and further trouble in store, our options were limited. We could pick up the rest of our gear and move on, trying to find a safer exit-point, but that seemed rather pointless. It looked to me that we had to split up. Two of us would have to remain in the city, cut off from our base, while the other two took the sad tale back to the colonel and 994-Tulyar.
“What use are the cold-suits to him?” complained 74- Scarion. “Unless he belongs to a species closely related to yours or mine, the drip-feed won’t be adjusted to his metabolism.” On investigation, we had found that 74- Scarion’s was one of the suits that had been taken.
The other was mine.
“He might not find it entirely satisfactory,” I answered, “but it would keep him alive long enough to make a trip through the levels, if that’s what he wants. Any humanoid could get by using your suit or mine for a couple of days. But I don’t think he’s going to use either suit himself. I think he’s got the black market in mind. The stupid thing is that he’ll sell the damn things to someone on our side— someone who desperately wants to get information out of the city to one of the C.R.E. bubbles, in the hope that it can then be transmitted to the Tetrax in orbit. If the buyer realises where he got the suits from. ...”
“It’s not so bad,” said Serne. “We have spare suits back at base. Do you want to take my suit? You could have the spares back here in a couple of hours. I’ll be safe here for as long as it takes.”
“No,” I said. “You and Vasari go. But don’t come back here—it’s too dangerous. The Turkanian will have to guide you to the second of our planned entry points. Scarion and I will go directly there, on the inside—it’s on this level and it’s no more than ten kilometres away. We’ll meet you there at . . . damn this idiotic City time ... at 25.00 tomorrow.”
Serne frowned. “We don’t know that the second point is any safer than this one,” he pointed out.
He was right—we didn’t.
“Sometimes,” I reminded him, “you just have to guess. Anyhow, with only the mud guns to protect us, we’re not really in a position to defend ourselves here. Better to get out. We’ve spent all day out there, and it’s reasonably safe. I’d rather be under the lights than waiting here like rats in a trap.”
He still didn’t like it, but he conceded the point. While he and Vasari suited up, 74-Scarion and I came back to the city side of the old plug, so that Serne and Vasari could re- seal it before opening up the outer one.
“Perhaps you should have gone,” said the Tetron. “The sergeant’s suit would have fitted you well enough.”
“I have a feeling,” I told him, “that a star-captain is expected to stay with his sinking mission. It’s probably the Star Force way.”
I was being sarcastic, of course, but the Tetron thought it a perfect answer. “I understand,” he said. Matters of duty and obligation were things that low-status Tetrax understood only too well.
There was a rustling sound close at hand, and when I flashed the torch round the beam caught some furry thing scampering away, illuminating it for a fraction of a second. I let out my breath slowly.
“Let’s get out of the tunnels,” I said. “I’ll feel better when we’re back in the light.”
We moved back along the dark corridor, quickly but cautiously.
But we were already too late.
When we got back to the place where the corridor let us out into the fields, and took a look outside, the first thing we saw was a group of humanoids hastening toward us.
“Merde!” I said, with feeling.
One glance was enough to tell me that it couldn’t be much worse. There were three vormyr and three Spirellans, looking as ugly and as vicious as all their kind, and I had more than a suspicion that our chances of recruiting them to the noble fight against the alien invaders were not good. Clearly, the bastard who’d lifted our cold-suits had made his contact.
74-Scarion and I backed off a short way into the corridor. I wondered whether we had any chance of hiding out, but I didn’t like the idea. These scavengers might know the territory, and as soon as they found the rest of our gear gone they’d be after us. Vormyr are said to have good low-light vision, and I didn’t fancy playing hide-and-seek with them. Our only possible advantage was the fact that they couldn’t know we were back yet. We had a chance to surprise them.
I wished that I had Serne or Vasari with me. They were combat soldiers, who could probably have taken out this gang comfortably. 74-Scarion was a Tetron immigration officer, and fighting was definitely not his line.
“Got to try the ambush,” I told him.
He nodded uneasily.
We waited, mud guns at the ready. I felt anything but confident. My quick glance had told me that one of the vormyr had a needle-gun, and it would be lunatic optimism to suppose that any of the six might be weaponless.
To make things worse, I had a dreadful suspicion that they might know who I was. Amara Guur wasn’t the kind of man who had friends, but the vormyr notion of vendetta wasn’t based on friendship. If they did recognise me, they’d be all the more enthusiastic to tear my head off.
“Take out the three vormyr first,” I whispered to 74- Scarion. “Spirellans are dangerous, but vormyr are worse.”
He nodded to show me that he understood.
As soon as they came around the corner, while they were still silhouetted against the light, I let fly at the one whose needier I’d seen. I kept my finger down on the firing-stud of the gun, hoping to spray the knockout juice over as many of them as possible. 74-Scarion seemed to be firing even faster, with panic-driven wildness.
The trouble with a mud gun is that its effects aren’t usually instantaneous. I’d shot John Finn in the open mouth, and even he’d crumpled up slowly. It was the shock rather than the anaesthetic that had stopped him from firing back while his presence of mind remained.