“Move!” The guy with the gun jerked him by the collar, and he staggered up and moved toward Jeremy. There were four of them, last-night holding onto Jeremy, short-and-wide between him and Jeremy, man-with-the-gun behind him and skinny-man to the side with another gun… he tracked all that, saw the door, and stayed docile while he passed short-and-wide with a gun in his back and last-night holding onto Jeremy, steering him for the back door to this place.
“Captain’s going to have your guts!” Jeremy said, and kicked at the man’s shins. The man maintained a grip on his arm and shoved him at the door, using one hand to open it; and they were on the verge of going where they’d have a simultaneous accident.
No time. Fletcher spun around and knocked man-with-a-gun into the shelves. Boxes came down; and he didn’t wait for skinny-man to close in. He dived at last-night and saw a knife—feinted as if he had one and the fool’s nerves reacted. The knife went out of line just that far, and he shot an arm past the man’s guard, and rammed him aside, trying to get through the door; but a shot ricocheted off it; and last-night was getting up.
He grabbed Jeremy and they ran past a row of stacked shelves, knocking down displays and merchandise on their way to the door.
And man-with-the-gun showed up in their path.
He stopped cold. Kid and all.
The man motioned back toward the storeroom.
The man would shoot. He believed that. But the police had sniffers. Blood anywhere and there was hell denying who’d been where. And now they were thinking; now man-with-the-gun was in charge, last-night being down and nursing a cut on his head.
“In there,” man-with-the-gun said; and Fletcher kept a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder, stifled one attempt at a revolt, and steered him on through the door.
They’d gotten smart. Skinny-man was waiting inside with a gun on them.
“All right,” he said. “You want a deal—”
“Get them out of here!” last-night said. “Use the safety-exit.”
The tunnels, Fletcher thought. The maintenance tunnels. The dark network of through which the conduits ran, the air ducts, emergency systems, wiring, everything.
Every station, like every other station. Same blueprint: just the neon signs were different. The whole might be different, but structure, on a modular level, was absolutely identical.
Catwalks, dark. Lose a body in the tunnels and they were lost. Maybe for a hundred years.
The gunman walked them back through the double row of shelves, back to a set of boxes.
“Move those.”
“Do it,” Fletcher said, afraid Jeremy would try something desperate. The kid was scared. And the kid had reflexes like steel springs. “Do it, Jeremy.”
“Yessir,” Jeremy said, and moved boxes back from the maintenance door.
Shopkeepers weren’t supposed to have keys to places that gave access to the maintenance tunnels. The doors should be locked to the outside.
“Open it,” the man said, and Jeremy didn’t know how to work the latch. Skinny-man had to come close and do it, while Fletcher stood with the gun aimed at him.
“Fletcher,” Jeremy said plaintively.
“They don’t dare do us harm,” Fletcher said, playing the absolute, trusting fool. “They know our ship knows where we are. And they’ll search this entire section.”
Skinny-man swung the door open. The draft that came out was cold, and the depths echoed as skinny-man, gun in hand, went out onto the catwalk.
“Move,” the first man said, and Fletcher said carefully, “Go on, Jeremy.”
Jeremy went and Fletcher followed right against him, took firm hold of the kid’s sweater and gave a sharp tug when they passed the door and the gun. Down!
“Run!” he yelled then, and shoved skinny-man into the rail and slammed the door as he spun around.
Total black. The maintenance doors latched automatically when shut. There was that second of total blindness… but skinny-man’s gun went off, a deafening sound, a burst of light that burst inches from him. Fletcher shoved him—shocked when he felt resistance fail and heard a body thump and clang down the pitch-black stairs.
“Jeremy, look out!”
He ran, down the steps in the dark, knew by memory where a landing was, where Jeremy’s thin body was huddled, clinging to the metal stairs. The man falling must have gone right over him.
And in the same second, light blazed out from the opening door above.
He jerked Jeremy loose from his handhold and dragged him with him—oxygen atmosphere in Esperance tunnels, no need of a mask. He knew the turnings, the pitch of the stairs that turned and that let them go for another catwalk and along Main Maintenance Blue.
Pursuit came down the steps and thundered along the catwalk, shaking the rail in his hand. Somebody yelled—“Get a light, dammit!”
They were in Blue, in the fives. Next door, in the fours… they’d be in another recess of shops. They could come out there. Get away. Get help.
“Where are we going?” Jeremy gasped.
“Just stay with me!” He didn’t want Jeremy behind him as a target… but a buried bit of knowledge said it didn’t matter where Jeremy was: they were shooting bullets, not needles, and a shot could go right through him and hit the kid. It was distance and turns that could save them, and he took them in the dark, in the lead.
The tunnel racketed with echoes, with footsteps of their pursuers trying to find them. “Get someone out there on the docks!” he heard. They had a light. The beam zigged and zagged across the maze of catwalks and girders and conduits, crossed ahead of them, and lent him light to see the webwork of structural support and tension cables and pipes.
He ran behind the beam, raced, lungs burning, toward the exit stairs for the next section of shops. Climbed, towing Jeremy after him. His sides ached. Jeremy’s gasps were as loud as his as he reached the door and flipped the emergency latch on a locked door with expert fingers.
The door opened into warmer dark, almost stifling warmth after the cold of the tunnels.
Then light blazed around them. A burglar-light had come on. That meant an alarm had sounded somewhere. He tugged Jeremy through the door into the warehouse of some shipping company, and shut the door. It would latch. Please God it would latch. The other one had been jimmied, surely. They didn’t know how to open the emergency latch: that was a tricky piece of business.
He got a breath. Two. Slid down the wall, feet braced on the store. “What did you think you were doing?”
Jeremy sank down by him, gasping. “Nobody else was going to do anything!”
“Dammit, they hadn’t had time!”
“Well, they weren’t! They didn’t! I walked in there and I asked to see it again and I just ran—”
“Yeah, and they had a shoplifter lock and they triggered it from under the counter before you ever got to the door!”
“Yeah,” Jeremy admitted, with a sheepish glance up. “The door locked.”
He didn’t want to explain to Jeremy how he’d ever learned about such tricks. The kid was white-faced, sweating.
“Thanks for the help,” he said, elbow pressed against ribs aching from the running.
Meanwhile there was a burglar alarm reporting their presence to the police. He wasn’t averse to being found by the cops. It was a lot better than where they’d been. But he wanted to get out of it if they could; and he’d caught breath enough. “Come on. Let’s see if we can get a door open.”
“Fletcher…”
He heard the note of fear. Heard the sound of footsteps coming down metal steps, behind the wall.
He grabbed Jeremy’s arm, pulled him through the warehoused boxes and barrels toward a door that ought to lead out.