“I know. But there's no radiation.” He repeated the reading like a prayer. “The reactor has to be intact. That's still worth a ship and then some … it's still worth plenty! And look at the waldoes, they haven't been touched. I know a factory back home that'd pay a mint just for those.”
They crossed the distance toward the factory's evaporating shadow in bounds that seemed effortless, her body as light as her spirits. The airlock that faced on the empty docking field gaped open in a cry of perpetual astonishment; but this time the morbid image did not stay in her mind. They passed on through it into the factory's fractured cavern.
Near the entrance their spotlights picked out the broad access tunnel that led down into the planetoid's insulating heart, where the factory's hundreds of workers had lived before the war. Passing it by, they moved on into the plant itself. Dim illumination suffused the interior from the broken wall to their right, and gradually their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Looking up, Mythili saw cranes and unnameable appendages dripping like stalactites from the ceiling high overhead, the shadowy walls and partitions that broke the space into a maze of soundless mysteries through which they drifted like lost souls. “Do you know where we're going?” she asked, suddenly uncertain. “What are we looking for?”
Chaim nodded, ahead of her. “More or less. I almost worked at one of these places; they gave me an orientation. I want to see the reactor, and what kind of damage there's been.”
Mythili glanced down at the radiation counter at the wrist of her suit. It still registered nothing; she followed his slow, searching progress without further questions. The light grew stronger as they neared the ragged break in the dome's fragile outer shell. She found herself wondering that a hit which had apparently come so close to the reactor itself had not damaged it enough to cause even a small leakage.
“Watch your step—” Chaim was silhouetted as he bounded up and over the heap of rubble from a collapsed wall. She followed him like a dancer over the shifting surface, saw him turn sharply left through a breach in a higher, heavier wall.
A sudden shout rattled in her helmet as he disappeared from sight. She threw herself forward in a long bound, and another, until she could see him again. He was struggling to get to his feet again, where he had fallen in another pile of girders and rubble. But just beyond him was the thing that had wrung the cry from him—a vast hole opening in the surface of the vaster floor.
Mythili caught a protruding end of beam, pulling herself up short at Chaim's side. “What happened?” not directing the question at him, but at the hole beyond him.
“It's gone.” His own thoughts followed hers to the rim of the pit. “The reactor—it's gone!”
She clung harder to the beam-end, strangling the useless words that tried to form in her throat. Why? Where? Who? “How?” She voiced the one question that she could possibly imagine having an answer.
“I don't know. I don't know.…” Chaim muttered, drawing himself up. “God help me. But this—” he waved a hand at the blasted wall, “—must've been done on purpose, for a way to get the thing out of here. Maybe the blast was what slowed the rock down enough to trap it here. They must've been in a hell of a hurry to rip it out the hard way.”
“Then you think someone found this place after the first attack, and—stole the reactor out of it?”
He grunted. “Yeah.”
“But what happened to it? Why wasn't there ever any record of it?”
“I don't know. If it happened during the war, it could be nobody ever knew it happened. Maybe the reactor's in use somewhere in the Demarchy right now. Or whoever stripped it might have got blasted themselves, and the thing was lost forever. All we need to know is that the goddamn thing is gone!” He wrenched loose a piece of metal and hurled it. She watched its slow, graceful arc outward and down beyond the rim of the hole.
She bit her lip, feeling her own emotions stretched beyond the limits of control, beginning to break loose and recoil. “But the rest of the factory is still here!” She threw that undeniable fact in the face of her faltering courage. “There must be other things worth salvaging, that some factory could use—”
Chaim turned back to her; she searched behind his faceplate glass. She heard the long, slow intake of his breath. “Maybe there is. The exterior waldoes we saw as we came across the field; they looked intact. The factory I told you about—its waldoes were damaged. If we can get these clear, we just might be able to sell them for our own ransom. Nobody else's got replacement parts to offer.”
“I do.” A third voice, a stranger's, filled the captive space of their helmets.
Mythili shook her head in disbelief; she saw the perplexed look that Chaim gave back to her. Together they turned, found a third figure standing, impossibly, behind them. A shudder crawled up her spine as she imagined that she saw a specter from the dead past, a ghostly guardian seeking vengeance on the violators of a tomb.
“What the hell.…” Chaim whispered. “Who—?”
“Don't tell me you've forgotten me, Chaim. It wasn't so long ago we met, back on Mecca. I'm your father's friend, and yours, boy.”
“Fitch!” Chaim shook his head, uncomprehending. “What in the name of God? How—what the hell are you doing here?”
“Following you. You don't think this was a coincidence, do you?”
“You tracked us all this way.” Mythili was already sure of the answer, sure there could be no other explanation. “How? The signal separater you gave us back at Mecca wasn't bugged, I know it wasn't!”
Fitch came toward them, his face still invisible to her. “You're a bright girl,” he said mildly. “But not bright enough.… How's Lucky doing? And did you ever take a good look at his cage? That's where the transmitter was hidden.” He laughed. “You must've paid a fortune for those damned crickets!”
She felt her face flush. “You bastard—” she murmured, hearing Chaim's curse echo her own. She cursed herself, silently; knowing she should have realized that power leak meant something.
As Fitch approached, she saw that he carried something massive at his side, something she couldn't identify. She felt herself beginning to sweat.
“What were you following us for?” Chaim asked, although the answer was as clear to her as the answer to how; and probably it was to him, too.
“I told you before, Chaim: I knew your father. I knew he was smart—I knew he'd leave you something, a key, a clue. I knew you weren't going out on this survey without a real goal in mind.” She could see his face now, familiar, shining with sweat like her own. “That was smart of you, trying to throw anybody who suspected off by spending so much time in the Main Belt. I almost had to give up on you, I didn't know if my ship could take it; it'll never make the trip back to the Demarchy from here. But I didn't give up. And now after all this time, it's finally paid off … I'm going to be a rich man.” He pulled the thing he carried forward.