Ho eased himself through the hole. He let himself drop. He fell about three metres and hit a floor. He landed on his feet. He was in a corridor. It was lined with doors that looked as though they led to cubicles of some description. Lee Harvey Thot lay on the floor dead. Tom Hoa and Lorenzo Binh crouched with their guns at the ready.
The corridor ran absolutely straight for about two hundred metres. Then it disappeared over a kind of horizon as it followed the curve of the outside of the sphere. A number of small, yellow clad figures were just disappearing over it. As far as Jeb Stuart Ho could judge, they were only about half his height. It looked as though the computer had done something drastic to the growth pattern of its human operatives.
Jeb Stuart Ho turned round. A series of coloured lights had begun to flash on and off. The sound of wind rushing past his helmet indicated that the sphere’s atmosphere was rushing out through the hole that they’d cut. He looked at the other two and spoke into his communicator.
‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yes, whatever was jamming the communicators has cut out.’
‘We’ll move thirty metres down the corridor. It’s obvious that some alarm has been triggered. Even if our presence hasn’t been detected, I estimate that some kind of emergency repair on the hole will be made.’
They moved watchfully down the corridor. Suddenly Tom Hoa shouted.
‘Look.’
Ho and Lorenzo Binh spun round. Two steel partitions were sliding across the corridor on either side of the hole. They locked into place, effectively sealing off the leak. The alarm lights went out.
Tom Hoa looked at Jeb Stuart Ho.
‘Could it be that we have not been detected?’
Jeb Stuart Ho looked thoughtfully down the corridor with its long line of doors.
‘It would be a great advantage if that was the case, but I do not think it is so. I have a feeling that the computer may be observing us and waiting for us to reveal more of what our purpose is.’
Lorenzo Binh looked round cautiously.
‘You think that we are being observed, Jeb Stuart Ho?’
‘I think that it is most probable.’
‘Could it be possible that we survived the automatic defences on the outside by some design of the computer?’
‘The possible is immense.’
‘What would you calculate as being our next move, Jeb Stuart Ho?’
Jeb Stuart Ho didn’t answer immediately. He was somewhat disconcerted by the way the other two seemed to be looking to him for leadership. He scarcely felt worthy, particularly as he had failed in his only previous mission. He realized, however, if that was the way it was going to be he would have to accept it.
‘I think we should first ascertain the nature of our immediate surroundings.’
All the doors along the corridor had symbols on them. Jeb Stuart Ho looked at the one nearest to him. The characters on it read CTA 102. He pressed a stud just under the inscription. The door slid smoothly and silently open to reveal a small bare cubicle. In some ways the starkness of the little room reminded him of his cell in the brotherhood temple.
The bed in the cubicle was tiny, scarcely larger than for a child. Again Jeb Stuart Ho wondered what had happened to the Stuff Central humans. He stepped back, into the corridor, and looked at the other two.
‘This seems to be a dormitory area. We will have to go on.’
The others fell into step behind him with their guns at the ready. They had only gone a dozen paces when another, different coloured set of warning lights began to flash on and off. Lorenzo Binh swung round in alarm.
‘What can this mean?’
Jeb Stuart Ho remained calm.
‘We will doubtless find out in time.’
They assumed a defensive position. As a group they covered both ends of the corridor. Jeb Stuart Ho half crouched in the open doorway of a cubicle. He examined the grey metallic wall, and found that the panelling was almost as thin as foil. It would offer hardly any protection against projectiles. The illusion of cover was still somehow comforting.
They waited. For long tense moments nothing happened. Then tiny vents opened in the ceiling of the corridor. Thick pink gas began to pump out of them, and rolled down the corridor in billows.
‘Poison gas?’
‘Perhaps. We’ll be safe inside our helmets.’
‘It could simply be a smoke screen.’
The gas was certainly obscuring their vision. Jeb Stuart Ho smiled dourly.
‘I think we can be certain that we’ve been detected.’
They strained to see through the thick clouds. Visibility was reduced to just under a metre. Then a tight hail of steel needles sliced through the wall above Jeb Stuart Ho’s head. He threw himself flat on the floor, yelling into his communicator.
‘We’re under attack!’
More needles slashed into the thin metal. They hit the very spot where Jeb Stuart Ho had crouched just a moment before.
‘Communicator silence. They may be using locator equipment.’
He rolled over and another hail of deadly steel slivers scored the floor where he’d been lying. It was plain that whatever was attacking them was relying on some kind of sound picture. He controlled his breathing. He fired at the approximate source of the attack, and immediately dodged. More needles sprayed the corridor.
Ho wondered if the attackers were men or simply another automatic system. He didn’t have to wait long for an answer. A helmeted figure appeared out of the smoke hefting a large, heavy duty spiral needle gun.
For an instant, Jeb Stuart Ho saw the figure very clearly. It wore a pale green belted coverall with a black letter B printed on the chest, heavy white combat boots and a white helmet. Its face was covered with a fitted gas mask that gave it the look of a huge eyed, bizarre insect. Jeb Stuart Ho snapped off a shot and the figure crumpled.
Four more similar figures came out of the gas fog. Ho sprang to his feet. Face to face with an enemy he could fight, he felt far more confident. He whipped out his sword and in a single, lightning sweep took out two of them. Tom Hoa shot the third and Lorenzo Binh leaped at the fourth and tore away its gas mask. Before the creature stumbled back clutching its throat and coughing blood, Jeb,Stuart Ho caught a glimpse of a flat, brutal, dead white face. It was human, but strangely sexually neutral.
For a moment, no more attackers came. The three brotherhood assassins stood alone surrounded by the clouds of gas. Jeb Stuart Ho looked at the other two. At last they were fighting like a team. He experienced a moment of grim satisfaction. He knew it was the sensation of a warrior’s true reward.
It faded when he looked down at one of the bodies at his feet. He noted that it was at least a head taller than he, with a massive muscular frame. These things were very different to the tiny, yellow suited beings that lived in the corridor.
He realized that these must be the specially tailored defenders of Stuff Central. They may have once been human, but the computer had adapted and altered them until they were simply the antibodies in the machine’s complex system, protecting it from outside intruders and internal malfunction.
Jeb Stuart Ho knew they wouldn’t be easy to fight. They’d be guided by the computer’s monstrous intellect, and, beyond the cloud of gas, there could be any number of them.
***
Billy and the Minstrel Boy arrived at the Inn. The Inn was a single building with its own stasis field. It dominated a strange midpoint in the peculiar road system that wove in and out of the nothings like a tangled, convoluted, hideously complex Mobius strip.
The Inn was about as small as a stable area could get. Its generators didn’t run to luxuries like sky, scenery or even day and night. There was air, warmth, solid matter and gravity. That was it.
The Inn was a strange ramshackle affair. Wings and extensions had been added to the central, slab sided stone building with no attempt at any kind of continuity in style. There were flying buttresses, turrets, thatched roofs, domes and even a geodesic annexe.