" — four — five — six. That's the one — the sixth on the left — "
Kana's beam flicked to number six and, as it picked out the stones and ancient brickwork at the bottom, Hansu slid awkwardly down into it. The recruit jumped after the Blademaster, trying to keep his footing in the rubble of embedded blocks. Though he had no idea of what his companion was seeking, he knew better than to ask any questions just then.
This trench was longer than the others, running farther back from the road, but at last they came to a pile of loose dead brush and stones which marked the end of the excavation. Hansu pulled at the brush with his left hand and Kana sprang forward to help. Under their tugging the stuff came away, to display a dark hole.
"What — ?" Kana began.
"Underground ways — running into Prime — from the old days — " Hansu's answer was broken by curious pauses and Kana swept the torch beam across the Blademaster's face. Sweat trickled down through the grime and dust and under that Hansu wore the look of a man forcing himself to go on nerve alone.
But Kana sensed that this was no time to offer help. He allowed the light to travel on, back into the hole. And then he stepped into what was clearly a manmade tunnel. Under his boots were two strips of rust which must have once been metal rails.
These ancient ways were often almost death traps. As the Swordsmen advanced they passed side corridors choked with cave-ins and twice they had to dig through piles of gravel and earth. However, surprisingly, the further they went from the entrance, the better the condition. Kana could not believe that these hidden ways had been abandoned ever since the days of the nuke wars. And his suspicion of that was confirmed as he caught sight — in a side tunnel — of some metal shoring, which reflected the beam of the torch, undimmed by the prevailing damp.
The main passage which they followed widened as more and more side corridors emptied into it. This must have once been a main entrance to Prime, or rather to the now almost forgotten seaport upon the ruins of which Prime had been erected.
"How much farther — ?"
"Don't know." Hansu walked mechanically. "I've heard about this. We should be able to contact the Reachers — maybe one of their cars will find us — "
That did not make sense to Kana, but he did not challenge it. Who Hansu's "Reachers" might be he was beginning to guess — the mysterious underground within Combat of which Matthias was the probable head. But why the Blademaster expected to encounter them here was a puzzle beyond his solving.
They rounded a turn, a wide sweep which now embraced not one set of tracks but four, and came out into a space which echoed hollowly to the sound of their boots and in which the torch beam was swallowed in the dark. Kana switched on its full power and pointed the beam at the walls, sweeping it from one dark arch of entrance to the next. They were in a vast circle, the center of a web the strands of which led out to every point of the compass. And which of those archways should they enter? As far as he could see they were all exactly alike.
The unease Kana had always felt when confined in a small space began to operate now — although the area of the crossing tracks was large. But beyond the limit of his torch the dark had a thickness to it which was almost tangible, as if they were truly buried far below the surface of the earth with no hope of winning to the open air again. The dank smell he thought born of the damp and earth carried other faint taints — nose-tickling reminders of the far past. And now that they had paused he was sure he could hear not too far away the gurgle of running water.
"Which way now?" His basic dislike of the dark, of being closed in by tons of earth, brought that query from him in an impatient demand.
Hansu grunted but made no other answer as Kana continued to mark the edges of the circle with his moving torch beam.
Their problem was given a sudden and dramatic solution. From one of the archways, Kana could not be sure of just which, there came a humming sound, which began as a drone and grew to the proportion of a siren as it moved toward them. He grabbed at Hansu's arm, striving to draw the Blademaster with him in retreat into one of the other passages, wanting to take cover until they had a chance to investigate.
But it was already too late. They were caught — pinned in a wide beam of light which blistered their eyes as if it had been blaster fire. And from beyond the source of that luminescence a voice snapped an order they dared not disregard:
"Up with your hands — and stand where you are!"
With a sinking heart Kana obeyed. They were helpless, unarmed prisoners.
And that capture had only one logical conclusion — as he might have foreseen, Kana thought bitterly some time later. The wall facing the bunk shelf where he sat was an even, solid gray without a single seam or crack to distract his eyes or give a slight root for his imagination and so relieve the monotony of a time which was no longer divided into minutes, hours, days, or even weeks.
Even the indirect lighting of his cell waxed or waned at intervals which had no regularity so that he could not gauge the passing of time by that. When he was hungry he opened the door of a tiny chute beside the bunk and took out the capsules and plastic water bubble he found there. How they were placed there, he had no knowledge.
The continual silence was the worst. It was a thick deadening blanket which he fought until his nerves were tense, pacing the floor, exercising in a frantic endeavor to wear himself out physically so that he could sleep away a small portion of the endless hours. He was caught in a trap from which there was no escape. And the worst was that he knew the time would come when he could erect no more barriers against the silence, when the demon which was his own particular fear would close in to inhabit his mind.
The whole world had narrowed to this windowless, doorless cell somewhere deep in the foundations of Prime. The functions of the room were entirely automatic. Kana could be forgotten by his human captors, left here for countless years, and still he would continue to receive rations, the light would go on and off according to some weird pattern set up on a machine. But he himself would cease to live —
It was when his thoughts centered in that groove that Kana had to fight for control, make himself think of something else. If he only had a record-pak or writing material But for that matter, he might as well wish for freedom! He did not even know if he were already judged and condemned or was still awaiting trial.
Hansu had been wrong — so wrong — in believing that the underground ways of Prime were any secret to the Combat officials. There had been a C.C. Agent in the group to welcome them when they were herded from the rail truck at the brilliantly lighted station under the headquarters building.
They had been taken without a struggle. What had happened since to Hansu, he wondered dully. His last glimpse of the Blademaster had come when they were separated at the interrogation room, just before he had been turned over to the questioners.
Those specialists at Interrogation were not crude in their methods. The use of torture to loosen tongues of stubborn captives had vanished long ago. Now after he had been given certain drugs there was nothing a man could conceal. Kana knew that he must have babbled every secret of his life to any ears caring to listen. When he recovered consciousness he had been here, stripped to the shorts of a prisoner, and here he had remained ever since.
Now he began his self-allotted task for the period after each meal, the attempted recall of all X-Tee lore he had managed to absorb. Sometimes he could really lose himself in that mental labor for as much as several minutes.
"Zacan" — he spoke the word slowly, trying to give it the proper hissing accent — "is a planet of Terra type. The continental land masses are mainly archipelagoes of islands. The largest of these is Zorodal. The citadel of Zorodal was first founded in the semi-mythical reign of the Five Kings, now a period almost legendary. Archaeological excavations have verified some of the legends and have proved that there are the remains of at least ten civilizations on the same site, sometimes with a lapse of a thousand years between the downfall of one and the rise of the next. The Zacathans are a reptilian race, comparable to Terran lizard forms. Their life span is many times that of man. They are not aggressive, being contemplative with a well-developed interest in historical studies, producing many historians and philosophers of note — "