Finally, he stopped fighting it. Why had Kyx coveted this particular mind ring? Hunter knew he was about to find out.
He wound his way through the line of workers, a shift change of sorts was in the works. One small group of soldiers was standing just outside the entryway to the cordoned-off processing area. A small clutch of workers was lingering in the shadows close by.
As he drew closer, Hunter saw one worker extend his hand and give something to one of the soldiers. Whatever it was, the soldier pulled back the cordon, and the worker was allowed to pass through. He walked quickly to the small adjacent structure and disappeared behind the building's green door.
It looked very suspicious; Hunter had to see more. Another worker repeated the actions of the first. Money was being exchanged, the worker was allowed to pass between the lines. Hunter reached inside his pocket and found a handful of aluminum coins — so convenient he was sure Kyx had somehow programmed them to be there. He pushed his way through the knot of workers, walked up to the biggest soldier he could find, and gave him his pocketful of coins. The soldier looked at him just long enough for Hunter to wonder if he'd just made a huge mistake, but then he stepped aside and pushed Hunter through the invisible barrier.
Hunter stumbled along for a few feet, surprised by his sudden access. He tripped going through the green door that led into the small adjacent building. It was here he discovered why Kyx had enjoyed this mind trip so much, why he'd frayed the program by overuse, and why the BMK officer had taken great pains to hide this last ring.
The room was filled with young female deportees. Teenagers some of them, others in their twenties, but none much older than that. Beauties all, they were standing in irregular rows, held in place by some kind of localized force fields. All of them looked nervous and intense. They, too, had been relieved of their Earthly clothing, but the drab smocks issued to them were cut very high on the thigh and low on the chest. No one here had gotten her head shaved, either. There were probably a hundred girls jammed into the holding room. Two soldiers were slumped in hovering chairs at the back. Both were sound asleep.
The two workers who'd preceded Hunter into the building were looking over the females like customers might view a new shipment of spaceboots. Finally, one worker stepped forward and yanked a young girl out of the first row, causing a crackle of electricity as she was released from her force field. She went with the man, very reluctantly, toward an even smaller room nearby. When the worker opened the door to this room and pushed the girl inside, Hunter heard a chorus of squeals coming from within. None seemed to be cries of pleasure.
It didn't take an interstellar genius to figure out what was going on here. Hunter's thoughts streamed back to Kyx, sitting in the interrogation room, looking so smug — until they relieved him of his precious mind ring.
That freak…
The second worker selected his prize and literally dragged the girl to the next room. All eyes now turned to Hunter. He felt his hand reach out to grab the girl being held nearest him, but with all his strength, he managed to pull it back. He started to say something to the captives but found no words would come. What was there to say? This was real, but not real. He seemed powerless to stop it; all he could do was drink it in. He hesitated for another moment, but finally he knew he had to leave. He turned on his heel and made a quick exit from the building.
Through it all, the two soldiers sleeping at the back of the room never moved.
He hurried away from the small building, passing back through the soldiers without a word, and falling into the stream of workers once again. He tried to comprehend everything he'd seen so far: the sprawling base, the electric city, the processing station, the small room off to the side. This ring depicted some version of actual events, Hunter felt certain of that. Kyx had somehow stumbled upon it or more likely taken it off the cold body of the commanding officer he'd managed to outlive and replace. Then Kyx had used it over and over again, just to take advantage of what was happening behind the green door. The ring had survived then, not as a historical document but simply as a vehicle for lust.
But the strange trip also confirmed what Hunter and the others had speculated all along: that Xronis Trey had once been a thriving planet, vital and even booming, due solely to the fact that all of Earth's former inhabitants had passed through here on their way to jail. Yet the ring trip had not yet resolved the number-one question, the mystery above all others: Who were the people responsible for deporting the Earthlings in the first place? Hunter had seen no flags here, no signs or emblems or uniform insignias that might lend a clue as to who was committing these enormous acts of barbarism.
So, even though he was certain that Kyx had never bothered to go beyond this point in the trip before, Hunter had to press on.
He was soon walking along the eastern edge of the base; the main part of the warehouse where the deportees were being processed — and relieved of their clothes, their belongings, and their dignity — was now directly off to his left. Even though the blue-light electrical field separated the huge way station from the rest of the base, it was easy to see through the ion field and follow what was happening on the other side.
The processing station appeared capable of moving thousands of people a minute; the stream of deportees trudging in and out of the place just never stopped. There was a network of clear, superglass jet tubes running along the ground all around the structure; most were about two feet in diameter. Hunter could see all kinds of things blowing through these tubes. Clothes, baggage, hats, shoes, you name it — the lives of the hapless deportees being sucked right out of them. But where was all this stuff going? These overlords didn't seem the type to throw anything away; they seemed intent on stealing everything they could from the deportees in their desperate hour and were being very methodical about it. The network of jet tubes told that tale.
The tide of workers slowed down. Ahead there was an official checkpoint of sorts, a main ingress station through which workers could pass and get into the heart of the processing area itself. The command cluster was located here. The structure actually looked new to Hunter now. Its twelve domes were gleaming white and were not the sickly pale hue they were today. Several soaring passageways swirled around them like a jeweled crown. Rather than a poor-cousin castoff hanging on by the edge of a huge crater, the cluster was now the center of attention at the sprawling space base.
Because of the apparent shift change, two huge streams of drones, going in opposite directions, were funneling through the nearby checkpoint. Hunter simply went with the flow, squeezing in slightly as he passed through the opening in the electric-blue fence. Suddenly he was inside the last perimeter of the base; the jet tubes were flowing all around him. He veered off from the formation of workers and went to inspect the massive tangle of see-through superglass conduits.
Some ran along the edge of the cordoned-off area and out to the western edge of the base. A dumping ground of sorts was located out there. Some tubes ran through the command cluster itself, terminating at a point just below the main dome. But most continued right through the middle of the base, past the space gantries and beyond, to the eastern terminus of the facility. Back on present-day Xronis Trey, what lay east of the BMK outpost were a half-dozen small mountains. In the mind ring though, these were six domed structures that were almost as big as mountains. The jet tubes were leading directly into these buildings, each tube apparently delivering only certain types of items to what were obviously huge storage facilities.