“See you down there—and be careful. Belden would know about this, too,” Yulin warned, and punched a new combination.
“Now I understand why Yulin wasn’t eager to be on the first car,” Wooley noted sarcastically. “Our big brave bull is about as cowardly as I have known.”
Mavra said nothing. The drop was too uncomfortable. It was a long way to Underside, and although the rate of descent was controlled, it felt as if they were falling at all times—an uncomfortable sensation, and it was a long, long ride.
Above them the others clambered into the service car, which was not quite as roomy as the first one. The Bozog managed, with great difficulty, although if the Ghiskind had had feet or if Vistaru and Renard had been larger, it would have been stepped on the whole way. Yulin was scrunched up trying not to step on the strange creature.
Finally it ended, and the front of the car dissolved again. Mavra climbed out with difficulty, and Wooley almost snagged a wing, doing the same. They found themselves in a sterile, brightly lit hall, resembling any of the tens of millions of halls in the stark technological centers common since the dawn of technical civilization. The others arrived almost immediately; the smaller car’s speed was determined by the larger one, and let out a floor above.
Yulin’s bull’s head nodded and he looked around in satisfaction, tail swishing back and forth in anticipation. This was his element—the metallic walls and artificial lighting, the bowels of a great machine. He had helped design the place and supervised its construction. It seemed a part of him.
They walked along the hall, ready for anything. After a bit, it opened to reveal a broad platform and an overlook from which stretched a great wide bridge across a huge, impossibly deep pit.
“No bodies again,” Yulin noted, surprised. “Then Belden has been here.”
“Look!” Renard called. “Out there—across the bridge! Isn’t that a body?”
They all strained. The Yaxa had the best vision, and her death’s head nodded. “Yes. A man. Outlandishly dressed, too. Very dead, I think—maybe for an awfully long time. A good deal of decomposition is evident.”
Yulin considered it. “Looks like he tried for the computer. In the defense mode he’d just about get across before the lethal charges hit him. Even at this end, it’s got fifty volts as a discouragement, so he was nuts, driven, or determined. Probably all three.”
“Think it’s Belden?” Vistaru voiced the other’s thoughts.
“Probably,” Wooley replied. “The man has a horse’s tail, he’s big, and he’s dressed in flowing robes, a wreath on his head. Looks like the new Emperor of New Pompeii finally got bored Topside and decided he was able to defy the computer. That explains everything, I think.”
Renard was thoughtful. “Well, if it’s just an electrical defense, I can walk right through it,” he noted confidently.
“It’s about ten thousand volts where Belden got,” Yulin pointed out. “It’s not on until needed, of course. The system senses a life form, then zaps it, then there’s no life form any more and it shuts off.”
“Ten thousand wouldn’t bother me,” the Agitar replied. “The excess would simply discharge.”
“But only Obie can open that door,” the Dasheen told him. “And it will defend as it has to. There are guns here, too, as a fail-safe. Lots of nasty stuff. No, it’s got to be by proper code, everything done in the proper sequence, or no go,” he said earnestly.
“Want to get it over with?” Mavra asked him. “What do you have to do?”
He was thoughtful. “All right, first I walk out on that bridge in a certain manner—that will cancel the voltage to a particular point. Then I say the password and advance in the same manner. The door will open as I approach it. Then I must go to the panel and cancel the defense mode or it will be reinstated.”
“One of us will go with you,” Wooley said suspiciously.
He shook his head. “No, it’s got to be one, only. Don’t worry. Even if I don’t cancel the mode you’ll know how to break into it, right? Hell, haven’t I played square with you all up to now?”
He had, but he’d played square with Trelig for years, too.
“Perhaps the Ghiskind,” Mavra suggested.
“No!” Yulin was adamant. “Nobody! Sure, it might be ignored, but then again it might not, and it sure as hell can’t say the password—and the Bozog can’t make the gestures. Neither could you. It’s me alone.” He threw up his hands. “Come on! What the hell are we arguing for? In five minutes we could all be inside and that would be that.”
They were uncertain, and there were whispered conferences, but the conclusion was inescapable, as Yulin knew it had to be. Wooley voiced it.
“We haven’t come this far to turn back now,” she pointed out. “All right, Yulin. Go ahead.”
He nodded to her, satisfaction and confidence mirrored in his manner. He turned and walked to the foot of the bridge, then raised his arms and turned palms out. He hesitated a moment, as if expecting a jolt, then stepped onto the bridge and started across.
A bit more than halfway he was a small figure that they watched anxiously. Wooley and Renard drew weapons and aimed them at Yulin without a word.
Yulin walked nervously, head bobbing, trying to look at both sides of the bridge. Long ago he’d shot a mark into it for the proper place. For a moment he was afraid that the mark had somehow been erased, or that his less efficient vision would miss it, but then—there it was! It was farther along than he remembered, but he hadn’t been zapped yet, so that must be it.
Keeping arms upraised, palms out, he stopped and nervously cleared his throat.
“Obie!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing across the chamber and up and down the great shaft. “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet! Hear me, Obie? There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet!”
He hesitated a moment more, took a deep breath, and walked on.
Nothing happened.
He reached the other end of the bridge, a tiny figure very far away and almost invisible to all but Wooley, whose pistol remained firm and dead on.
Yulin looked down at the body. It was badly charred and decomposed. Very ugly. That bastard Belden deserved every volt of it, he thought without pity.
The door slid back and he was surprised to feel a warm blast of air greet him. He stepped inside, then to one side and immediately to the control panel.
He flipped it on.
“Defense mode returned to my voice signal cancel only!” he said quickly, entering a series of numbers through the key pad on a control panel. The door slid rapidly shut.
“Defense mode on,” Obie’s voice said, as if from thin air. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you, Ben?”
He chuckled. “Hello, Obie. Well, a little. I—” He stopped suddenly, noting that the dish—the platform used by Obie, the one from which the guests had received their tails and from which he’d received the disguises he used to escape from New Pompeii—was on active, ready to energize.
“Cancel that energize!” he ordered into the operator’s mike. He walked over to the rail and looked down.
He saw a large oval, more than a hundred meters across at its widest by about seventy. A railed three-meter-wide balcony on which were located three control consoles was elevated above it. From the balcony, stairs led to the lower level, in the center of which was a metal disk raised perhaps a half-meter. Above it Obie’s dish hung from its boom.
Ben Yulin gasped. Someone was on the disk—two people in fact. Humans!
“Hey! You on the disk! I’m Ben Yulin! Who are you!”
They looked slightly fearful, glancing at the little dish above them.