Thorbum had them use their antigravs sparingly, checking, as Regulations demanded, each time they were operated. The batteries gave only a certain operating time; they must not go past the halfway mark before they had reached their destination.
Presently, after a long upward drift with the antigravs pulling them up a narrow slot that extended sideways out of reach of their probing lights, they reached a ledge, dusty and filled with the discarded husks of sixteen legged animals, as large as dogs, shining and brittle.
“Flangs,” explained Thorbum. “As they grow they have to shed their skins. Stupid creatures. Don’t waste a shell on them. Wave a light in their eyes and they’ll fracture their legs trying to get away.”
He looked up at the top of the ledge, ten feet above. “Lights out!”
As the headlamps died to orange glows and then blackness, the Foragers’ eyes slowly adjusted. The engineers were quietly unstrapping their equipment and setting it up, working by touch and feel. Presently Stead felt, rather than saw, a dim illumination seeping over the top of the ledge, a pale washed-out radiance that obscurely depressed him. It felt cold.
“All ready,” called the engineer leader. “Cutting.”
Muffled drills bit. An electric saw whined and then, at the swift curse of the leader, hurtled down the cliff. Something banged, loud and shockingly.
“Whoever built this ought to be stepped on!” said the engineer leader. “It shattered on the metal. Dark glasses, everyone. We’ll have to bum.”
“Sims and Wallas,” ordered Thorbum. “Left flank. Vance and Stead, right. Move!”
Stepping carefully after Vance into the darkness, feeling the flangs’ discarded skins cracking beneath his feet, Stead felt the awful engulfing fear of the dark swamping in on him. Yet mankind knew the darkness as a friendly cloak. Why should it bother him?
Before he removed his dark glasses he stared back. A fierce, ravening, man-made flame bumed viciously against the metal of the wall, cutting and melting. That gave him heart, and he turned to his guard duty with a feeling of stronger purpose. Nothing happened until Thorburn called, “Check in. We’re through.”
The engineers were already packing their equipment when Stead returned.
“Wait until I’ve been through,” said Thorbum. “If I’m right, we should be able to pick up food at once. You can take some back.”
The engineers didn’t argue. They were Foragers, and to a Forager full sacks meant a way of life.
“Stead!” Thorburn motioned. “Stand right behind me. Look over my shoulder. Learn.”
Quivering with the excitement of the moment, Stead did as he was bidden. Thorburn climbed purposefully through the hole, his cape not recoiling from the bumed edges where the engineer’s cooling liquid had brought the temperature of the metal down. All Stead could see in the pale illumination was a shining metal wall, rounded, going up out of sight. To one side of that Thorbum crouched, staring about, his splutter-gun up. After a few moments Thorbum pointed. Stead looked.
The trap must have sprung on the animal just as it had seized the scrap of food in its jaws. It wasn’t a Scunner, but it had sixteen legs, sprawled now and lax, and its body had been nearly cut in two by a great shining blade.
“He must have got in by a different route,” said Old Chronic’s voice in Stead’s ear. “Have to remember that.”
“You mean—”
“Before you forage anything, Stead, have a good look around. These infernal traps are clever.” Stead felt sick.
Thorbum waved. With Stead pushed back into the ranks, they all squeezed through the hole.
At first, Stead had no real notion of where he was. He stood on a surface of wood, partially covered by a thick and clumsy paper, surrounded by tall, shining, rounded, metal walls, and great humped masses covered in more thick and clumsy paper. The smell of food was overpowering.
“Fill up,” called Thorbum. “And be quick, about it. We could get in two trips.”
Watching the others swing their axes and machetes, Stead followed their example, and began to hack huge odiferous hunks from the enormous masses of food. He worked on a mountain of meat, slicing foot-thick strips away and stuffing them into his sack, feeling the material bulge with the meat. They passed their first loaded sacks through the hole and the engineers took them with little grunts and piled them on the equipment sleds.
Stead, busily chopping away at his meat mountain, became aware that Thorbum was looking about keenly, obviously coming to a decision. At his side Sims ceased carving, screwed his three-quarter-filled sack up tightly; on the other side Wallas took a last chunk of cheese from his food mountain.
“We’ve gone far enough here,” said Thorbum. “Wipe traces, everyone.”
Stead felt bemused. He looked at his half filled sack and from it to Thorburn’s massive head, outlined against the glow coming from the distant side of this food quarry. Tentatively, Stead approached, aware of the bustle of efficiency all about him, and said, “But my sack isn’t full yet, Thorburn. Full sacks—I thought.”
“Regulations, Stead. Full sacks, yes. But not too much from any one place. We’ve taken our quota; now we move on.”
“Regulations. I see,” said Stead. But he didn’t.
They congregated by the hole, dragging their sacks, scarcely exchanging a word and that in a furtive whisper.
Julia said, “I found another trap around the back.”
Thorburn glanced at his watch. “Days and nights are different in the Outside world from our real world, Stead,” he said thoughtfully. “We’ve a little time yet. Come and learn something.”
With Thorburn in the lead, the sacks lying at the hole, they all went toward Julia’s trap. Massive it was, towering, gleaming and dark with menace. On the floor a man-sized chunk of cheese rested like an accidental crumb fallen from the main mountain. Thorburn unhitched his rope and grapnel, swung it, let fly, sank it into the cheese. He looked around. Then he pulled.
The trap hissed. From the ceiling a glittering knife blade descended with the violence of death, sliced across the cheese as the grapnel pulled it loose. Below where the cheese had been, two springs, now touching, were revealed.
“By the immortal one!” said Stead, shaken. The slashing crash of the descending blade half numbed him. He felt the blood beating painfully through his fingers, as though his hands had constricted all unaware.
“Pretty little things,” Vance said, kicking the still vibrating blade. “Same sort we have over on the other side.” He was quite casual about it. “Do you have those beastly trapdoor things over here?”
Sims nodded. “Yes, they’re really tricky.”
Vance said with a casualness that Stead could not fault, “Took me three hours to cut my way out of one once. Never again.”
The others looked at him with a new respect. If he’d done that, he really was a Forager. Thorburn retrieved his grapnel. The trapknife had sheered off one prong. Wrapping the rope up, Thorburn said, “Just another lesson, Stead. Check everything first; there are no second chances Outside.”
And that, reasoned Stead, ran counter to what Vance had just told them about the trapdoor trap. Deliberately?
Out of the hole the darkness crowded in more thickly than before. The engineers had gone. The party moved sideways along the dusty, flang-shell littered ledge, lights pooling ahead, thrusting back the dark.
“Should be lighter soon,” Thorburn said after another time check. “We can mine in here now and be clear before the Outside day begins.”