“What the hell are they doing and why?” she almost wailed after it happened yet again.
Harker patted her arm gently. “They’re broadcasting,” he said simply. “And maybe they’re receiving as well. Bear with it. We can’t be too far from our goal now.”
It had taken most of the night, some of it spent crawling over raw stone or broken concrete on their bellies and elbows, but this was true. Hamille, who seemed less affected by the broadcasts, had kept the physical markers—mountains, sea, bluffs, and the pattern of roads and ruins on the ground—in closest focus. They had swung way out, skirting the old spaceport ruins, then come back in along the main spaceport highway.
Once this had been an industrial park for high-tech products most of which were related to spaceport maintenance and spaceship repairs. The only exception was the special project of the Karas and Melcouri families. This was a large complex now almost completely obliterated above ground, but that went down, down into the very bedrock. Now, as the sun grew closer to the terminator, the light of false dawn was spreading, and the Titan base activities lessened. They reached the same spot that had been reached a few years earlier by another offworlder, one who could neither get to its still hidden treasures nor escape from the planet, but who had had the guts to get the message out.
Now they made their way down into a drainage ditch half-filled with debris, going along toward a small open pipelike tunnel ahead.
The emotional roller coaster caused by the Titan signals had subsided almost to a memory. Though they were extremely tired and bloodied on the elbows and knees from the night’s crawls, they saw the end of the quest ahead.
It was dark and silent in there, but they weren’t afraid, not after what they had had to walk and crawl through just to get there.
Some air circulated, probably from other old half-exposed vents and exhausts, but it was suddenly quite cool.
“Let’s rest here and consider how we proceed from this point,” the colonel suggested, sinking to the damp rubble that served as a floor inside the tunnel. The others did the same.
“I’d say that we have to find some way to get some light in here or we’re going to have to go totally blind,” Harker noted. “Hamille, can you see much in here?”
“Better than you,” the Quadulan responded. “Not good enough.”
“It’s odd, but even in this muck in the darkness I feel better than I have since we landed and lost our stuff,” Kat Socolov commented. “It’s like—well, like there was some kind of constant background noise that’s suddenly been cut off. Don’t you all feel it?”
“I think I know what you mean,” a weary Harker responded. “For some reason, we’re no longer connected to the grid. They’ve been broadcasting constantly to us, to all of us, and now we can’t receive the signals. Odd that it wouldn’t penetrate this far. We can still see the opening.”
“I can’t hear them,” Littlefeet said, amazed. “For the first time since I climbed the mountain, I can’t hear them. And we are almost on top of them!”
“It couldn’t be so simple, or there would be organized underground societies on the Occupied Worlds,” Harker noted.
“It’s not,” N’Gana told him. “I suspect that this place, like several of the high-industry areas dealing in very dangerous radiation and other forms of energy manipulation, required shielding. What shielded and protected the population of Ephesus does the same now for us. The odds are that it began with the topmost floors of the buildings above that no longer exist. Dissolved, they’ve lined this conduit. Now the buildup of debris channels the water away, so we’ve got this protected area. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’ll serve as an explanation until something better comes along,” Harker agreed. “But it’s pretty damned temporary. With no food, no uncontaminated water except this little bit in Spotty’s gourd, and no light, we can’t stay here long. One way or the other, we have to move.”
“Light is our first, last, and only priority right now,” Socolov agreed. “With it we can deal with the rest. Without it, we don’t have a chance. Damn! I wonder what the Dutchman’s man did for light? He couldn’t possibly have been in any better shape than we are!”
“Actually,” said an eerie voice just beyond in the blackness, “I turned on the lights when his presence awakened me. Shall I do the same for you?”
TWENTY
The Caves at the Gates of Oz
All tiredness vanished. Every one of the group felt their hearts jump almost out of their chests. In an instant they were on their feet and eyeing the distant oval, which was now showing some sunlight filtering in.
Littlefeet was in a combat stance, and N’Gana and Harker had reflexively pulled the gun barrel truncheons they still carried.
“Who are you?” the colonel called. “Where are you? Show yourself!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, as I’m not really much of anywhere at all,” the voice, a rather mild, almost bland man’s baritone, responded. “However, I do believe I should turn on illumination. I apologize that it is only emergency lighting, but I dare not risk anything more powerful.”
The tube did not illuminate, but at the far end a pale yellow glow turned on, showing an entry into a larger area beyond.
“What do you think?” Kat asked nervously.
“A trick!” N’Gana hissed. “I don’t know what this is, but it’s not possible!”
“We have a choice?” Gene Harker put in, considering their position. “Come on! If we’ve got light, let’s use it.”
“Ghosts! I will not go down to where the ghosts live!” Littlefeet said firmly. “Anything living I will take on, even the demons themselves, but you can not fight a ghost!”
“That’s no ghost, Littlefeet!” Kat tried to calm him.
“I’m afraid that’s about what I am,” the voice responded. “But I will not harm you. I will not harm any of you. I cannot. I was built by your kind to serve and protect, and that is what I continue to do.”
Both N’Gana and Harker started to breathe again. “You’re a computer?” the colonel asked.
“I am a mentat. I was supervisor of this installation until the Fall. Please—come down, all of you. You cannot know how happy I am to see you. I began to fear that my message had not gotten out with Jastrow.”
“It’s okay,” Harker told Littlefeet and Spotty, who still seemed more frightened of the voice than of what they’d just come through. “It’s a friend. We know who it is now and it is on our side. Please—you trusted us this far, trust us now.”
They made their way carefully down toward the yellow glow, and finally reached a point where the great tube had a section broken out of one side. Looking through the break, the first underground level of the old complex showed in eerie indirect light.
It was huge. It was also, astonishingly, pretty much intact. Robot arms and huge control cabs were all over, and sheets of various fabricated parts of some great machines were stacked up here and there.
Just below was a catwalk, intact except for one section immediately below that had been more or less dissolved. The remaining section was only a couple of meters away, though, and easy enough to reach.
“The breach in the pipe was quite recent—about five years ago,” the mentat told them. “When the water rushes down the pipe, a little more goes, but it’s not that serious. Only a small amount reaches here now.”
One by one, they lowered themselves down onto the catwalk, each helping the next. Harker decided to be last, to ensure that Littlefeet and Spotty would go in as well. He not only didn’t want them to run, he particularly didn’t want them to go back up and outside and fall into the data stream of the Titans. Not now. Not after all this.