He must be close to perihelion. The Sun had become a giant torch surrounded by huge hydrogen flares. The asteroid had dipped well inside the solar corona itself, hurtling in to its point of closest approach. Light filled the world. Regulo writhed in its grip, turning desperately about to seek the shelter of the rock. The asteroid, the stars, the ship, all were invisible now, forced to insignificance by the tyrannous power of the great solar crucible.
Instinctively, Regulo began to jet back and forth, firing his thrusts at random in a desperate cast for the shadow. At last he found it by pure luck, a dark crescent bitten from the flaring disc. He moved towards it. Back once more in the blessed darkness, he hung seared and gasping in his overloaded suit.
“No.” His voice was hoarse and choking. “Not this time, you bastard. You don’t get me this time.” He glared through bloodshot eyes at the surface of the asteroid, as though seeing right through it to the burning orb beyond. “You won’t get me. Ever. You think you’re the boss of everything, but I’ll prove you’re not. I’ll beat you. I’ll outlast you.”
Even as he spoke, an icy trickle of rage dribbled into his brain, washing away the fatigue and the terror. He knew that his face was beginning to sear and blister from the harsh sleet of radiation that he had experienced, but he was able to ignore it. All that mattered was the battle ahead. He stared about him.
On each side of the asteroid a stream of ionized gases was roaring past, boiled out from the sunward surface and driven by light pressure. The halo that they formed scattered the Sun’s rays to make a ghostly sheath of green, blue and white, flickering all around him. A hundred meters below, the dark surface of the rock was beginning to bubble and smoke as it slowly turned, roasting in the solar glare like a joint on a spit. He stared at it, cold-eyed. He would have to keep well clear of that, now and for the next seventy hours. No matter. It was just one more reason why he could not afford to fall asleep again. He would not sleep again.
“They never found any trace of Alexis Galley, and of course the other crew member was dead. The verdict on the whole thing was an unfortunate accident, with no one to blame. When they brought the asteroid in to Earth orbit, Regulo owned all of it — survivors on the mining teams always willed the finds to each other if some of them were killed. And Regulo had stayed with the rock, otherwise the value would have been shared with the crew who salvaged the Alberich.”
Corrie was silent for a few moments as she watched the display with its final landing instructions for the field at Way Down.
“That was enough to give him the financing for his first transportation company,” she went on. “He pioneered the techniques for the hyperbolic orbit and cut all the transit times by a factor of two. But he never flew another hyperbolic himself. He has never been closer to the Sun than the orbit of Earth. And he will not tolerate any form of intense light. It upsets him, makes him almost unstable. It’s the only thing that ever has that effect on him.”
“Not surprising, though, after what he went through,” Rob said. “He must have been in terrible condition when they finally picked him up.”
“Not as bad as you’d think. Once he got past perihelion, he did everything right. The old logs of that trip are still in his office. They make interesting listening — I’ve played them myself. Regulo had the sense to ignore everything about the Alberich until he had treated his burns and doped himself up to sleep for a solid twenty-four hours. That took real nerve, to put himself under for so long when the Sun was still big and blazing and he didn’t know if he’d be picked up at all.”
“But why couldn’t they do anything about his face?” Rob asked. “I mean, no matter what the burns were like, surely they could have used grafts or regeneration to repair most of it. I’ve never seen scars like that, and I’ve had bad accidents to my crew on construction jobs.”
Corrie did not answer. She stared straight ahead with a curious expression on her face, as they left the craft and began to walk together to the entry point of Way Down. Rob waited for a reply. When it did not come, he turned to her and looked more closely. Corrie’s skin had paled, so that the smooth tan had become like old ivory, cold and bloodless.
“Are you feeling all right?” he asked. “It never occurred to me to ask before, but I hope you’re not claustrophobic.”
She shivered and forced a smile. “Just a little bit. I’m all right, though. I know what it will be like at Way Down, and it won’t worry me. Come on, let’s start down.”
She walked quickly ahead of Rob, to where the four great elevators stood in the center of the Way Down entrance facility. She stopped at the first elevator, the fast express that would descend twelve miles in less than two minutes, flashing smoothly through the evacuated shaft.
“No. Not that one.” Rob came up beside her and took her arm as she was about to press the Call key. “That’s the nonstop. We want one that we can stop partway down. It’s the one at the end of the building, past the heavy-load elevators.”
“Partway? There’s nothing to stop for,” protested Corrie; but she allowed herself to be led along the broad corridor to a smaller elevator and watched in silence as Rob manipulated the depth selector. He set it to halt a little more than a mile and a half down.
“Just wait and see,” he said. His look was self-satisfied and expectant. “There are things about Way Down that the average customer never knows. Anyone can use this elevator, but most people have no reason to want to. Ready?”
Corrie nodded. The descent began, with the car supported and accelerated by linear synchronous motors set at regular intervals along the length of the shaft. As Rob adjusted the polarization of the surrounding field the walls of the car became transparent. He dimmed the internal lights and switched on an external illuminator set above the ceiling of the car. The sides of the shaft became visible, flashing past them. As they moved deeper Rob gradually slowed the descent. They moved steadily past multi-colored rock strata: hematite reds and silvers, the deep blue of azurite, slate-grays and dark emerald green. The rock layers drifted by them as they fell, slower and slower. The car stopped at last alongside a thick seam of shining black rock. It formed a continuous wall, except at one point where a circular opening about three feet across had been neatly cut.
“This is it,” Rob said. He glanced at his watch and nodded. “Any time now. Take a look through the opening, and keep watching along that corridor.”
The circular window looked out onto a horizontal shaft about four feet high, leading away into the depths of the black rock. The lights from the car cast their reflection just a few yards along the dark tunnel. Corrie, her skin prickling with anticipation, stared out into the darkness. Suddenly she saw a faint movement at the limit of visibility, deep in the corridor. She strained to see it more clearly. A dark shape was moving out of a side shaft to the main tunnel. The form was long and flat, a little more than three feet tall. She could see a blind, stubby head, and as her eyes adjusted to the dim light she could gain an idea of its size. The body appeared to be endless, approaching them silently on broad, black feet. It came closer and closer, shuffling along the tunnel. Finally she could see the whole beast. It was supported on eight pairs of short legs, and formed a long, black-furred cylinder. The rear end of the animal had not one tail but five, long sinewy tentacles. Each lifted above the broad back and ended in a ringed orifice. Corrie judged the whole creature to be about ten meters long. As it continued to come closer, she stepped back from the window.