I went up the ladder in three bounds; over the top and flat on the wharf in the best assault manner. I hugged the permacrete, trying not to breathe. Silence and darkness; the fog both muffled and hid. I heard nothing from Sea Eagle which should be easing away from the wharf. I estimated the direction of the tunnel and started to crawl toward it. After about two meters I rammed my raised face into the side of a container.
I rubbed my skinned forehead and hoped that my nose wasn’t bleeding, felt for the edge of the container, crawled round it, and ran into another. The whole wharf was covered with the damned things. By a process of trial and error, the strategy of a dumb automaton, I found a gap between them and at least saw a dim light. The tunnel was still lit. I crawled to the entrance and found both gates blocked open. They’d been offloading containers onto the wharf and just shoving them up the tunnel.
There was no sound or sign of life from the inspection station or beyond. I felt my way back to the wharf, saved myself from falling over the edge, and gave a quick call on my com. “Wharf all clear. First boat, come in!”
The first person to appear out of the darkness was Judith, the second was Barbara. “We’re the ones who know our way around!” whispered Judith.
“Midge is moving Sea Eagle astern,” added Barbara. “Dad’s alongside now. Shall I scout the tunnel?”
“You stay here and call the other boats in. I’ll scout the tunnel.”
“I’ll follow as link-up. As I did last time,” said Judith. When we reached the dim light of the inspection station she stared at me. “What have you done to your nose?”
I felt my face and found my hand covered with blood. A nosebleed is not a leader’s wound. “Rammed a container. Stay here. I’ll scout ahead.”
The hall was the same dimly lit cavern we had visited months before, now crammed even more tightly with containers. I sidled between them to the door which would let us reach the Surveillance Center. I couldn’t open it Judith knew the code; I didn’t I went back to fetch her and found Enoch and his squad already assembled in the inspection station with Martha’s being guided up the tunnel by Barbara.
Colonel Jewett would have approved of the silent and organized manner in which forty rifles were moving themselves from boats to wharf to inspection station, though he would have court-martialed somebody later for exceeding orders. As it was I could only watch the operation complete itself. These inshore fishermen could not only see in the dark, they must communicate by smell. All of them arrived without anybody dropping anything, treading on anyone, or cursing above a whisper.
When they were all hidden in the shadows I hissed, “This time—wait here! Judy, come and help me open that door.” This time they did wait while Judith was attempting to open the door to the stairs. She succeeded in hitting the right combination on her fifth try, by which time I was about to send back for dynamite and risk blowing it in. We couldn’t go undetected much longer. “Thank Christ!” I muttered when it swung back to disclose the same deserted and dirty stairwell as before; the only foot marks in the dust were ours. “Now go and guide the rest here. Bring them in small groups.”
“You’re laying a neat trail with that nose of yours!” she whispered, and disappeared.
They arrived in twos and threes while I reconnoitered ahead. My chief fear now was that the guard had been beefed up or replaced by effectives. My goal was to reach the Surveillance Center and identify who and where they were. The occasional light still burned on the stairs and along the passageways, but there was no sign that anybody had used them since our visit. I reached the Surveillance Center and was again faced with a locked door. Again I went back to fetch Judith, threatening to strangle her if she didn’t remember the combination sooner this time.
She opened the door on the third attempt and I burst into the room. Empty! All screens off. I moved quickly down the rows of switches, bringing up the cameras. I was still searching the matrix of images for signs of life when I realized that the whole team were crowding into the room and watching me with fascination. I swung around to curse them, remembered I hadn’t told them to wait, and turned back to the screens.
“It doesn’t look as though there’s anybody here!” said Barbara, in a tone that suggested she had maintained from the start that the Pen was now deserted.
“Can’t be sure of that yet!” I continued to study the banked images of rooms, cells, corridors, and stairs. “We’ll have to search the whole of the guards quarters. They may be using rooms that aren’t monitored.” I explained the general layout of the Pen, using the plan on the wall of the Surveillance Center, and then sent out groups to move cautiously through each area. And not to start anything if they did find anybody. While these Believers were giving thanks to the Light for having let them get into the Pen so easily, I could also sense a vague disappointment that our entry had lacked the promised drama. I myself was starting to feel a fool. We could have waited for daylight and simply walked ashore.
By dawn I was fairly certain the place was deserted. It was packed with stores of various kinds, most of them still containerized, as though the rush had been to get as much as possible into the place before some deadline. There were also signs that the guard had only left during the past few days;
half a carton of milk in one of the mess rooms had hardly had time to turn sour. And at daylight, when I went up onto the roof, I found a small chopper pad had been installed near the lucaplex dome. A pad which had recently been used. The area was no longer verboten to aircraft. If anyone came after us, they would probably come by air.
Enoch joined me on the roof. “There’re ten boats with another eighty rifles coming from Fairhaven. Should arrive around noon.” He looked at the fog swirling across the Point. “It’ll be clear by then. Breeze picking up. Blow this lot away.” He filled his pipe. “Looks like you’ve done it. We’ve got a safe place to stay awhile.”
“It won’t be safe until we can close the gates. Put all hands to work moving those containers out of the tunnel.”
Enoch nodded and left. I stayed on the roof, trying to think like a commander planning consolidation, while feeling more like an escaped con who has been caught and brought back to prison. And the place was a mess! The lucaplex dome was intact but, looking down through it, I could see only a jungle of tangled greenery. Climatic control had been allowed to run wild, and so had the plants we had tended so carefully. I felt the anger of a man who returns to his summer cottage and finds it has been used by hunters who have left the toilets blocked, the kitchen filthy, and the yard full of trash.
But the fusion generator was still pouring out power. We had heat and light. The hydride converter could probably be made operational and would give us fuel for the boats. I stood on the roof, looking around as the sun started to break through. A fresh breeze was sweeping the fog away. Soon it would be as Enoch had forecast: one of those sparkling days when Fundy shows a wild beauty.
It had already cleared sufficiently for me to see the rocks and scrub around the Pen. At the tip of the Point, about nine hundred meters away, the outline of a large chopper pad began to appear with a road running from it to the wharf; they’d been bringing stuff in by air as well as by sea. I began to pick out sites from which launchers and automatics could cover the pad, the road, and the wharf. There might be such weapons packed away in some of the unopened containers. I hoped we’d have time to find them before somebody found us. It would have made defense of the Pen easier if the Charged Particle Beam projectors had still been in position, but even in our need I could not wish they were.