Soon he again reached the big room with its sealed metal door. Squatting down in front of it, he forced himself to wait another quarter hour. When nothing happened in that time, he stood up and drifted across to the heavy door.
The photo-cells were first, and easiest. They took less than five minutes. After they were de-activated he turned his attention to the door itself. The design was unfamiliar and expensive-looking, but it was clearly a magnetostriction lock. He had prepared for that, and for four other possibilities. In the silent gloom he took out delicate tools from their plastic cover and began to examine the seven locking seals.
His previous experiences on Atlantis had not been wasted. Although forcing an entrance to the room might have been easier, he wanted to leave no trace of his visit. The trick was subtlety, not violence.
It was work that called for analytical skill more than manual dexterity, otherwise Rob might not have succeeded. In the past few months he had badly neglected the exercises needed to keep his hands at maximum efficiency. His concentration on the complex lock design was broken only once, when his peripheral vision thought it caught the trace of a dark shadow sweeping across the window to his left. He went quickly across to the panel and looked out. There was nothing to be seen, and after a few seconds he went back to the door.
In thirty minutes he had worked out the probable schematic for the mechanism of the lock. Ten minutes more, and he was easing the tight-fitting door open.
He came into a room with no window to the aquasphere. Two doors stood at the far end, and from this distance they looked to have the same type of locks as the one that he had just opened. Rob recalled the geometry of the living-sphere. The door on the left would logically lead to the surgery and laboratory that he had seen on his earlier visit to the aquasphere; that on the right would lead to the room that he had previously glimpsed only through its open doorway.
Rob moved to the right-hand door and began work on its lock. It was a little more complex than the first one, but experience more than made up for that. In less than twenty minutes he was easing it back on its sliding fitting.
He glanced at his watch before he entered. Too slow. Almost three of the hours that he had allotted to exploration were gone. Hurrying, he returned his sensors and pick-locks to their case, slid the plastic cover into his pocket, and moved on into the next room.
Even before he could see anything in the gloom, he felt that he was in the presence of something alive. He paused. Within, all was dark and nearly silent, but when he stood absolutely still he could hear faint sounds of movement somewhere along the right-hand wall. More than that, the sweet, cloying smell of the air told his senses that he was not alone. To his left, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he could see the faint outline of the door opening that led to the surgery. At the far end of the room was a second door, also open. A dim greenish light coming through that opening suggested that this room also possessed a window looking out onto the aquasphere.
After a few more minutes, Rob’s night vision was good enough for him to see general outlines. He began to move quietly forward, a pencil light held in his left hand. At the right-hand wall he halted and shone the light downward and ahead of him.
He realized at once that his search for the Goblins was over.
A row of pallets had been placed along the wall. Each was less than seventy centimeters long, and most of them were occupied by small sleeping figures. Rob stepped closer. He shone the light onto the nearest two recumbent forms, long enough to make a visual recording of the scene on the miniaturized video he had taken from his pocket. The Goblins were a mature male and a mature female, both well-formed and symmetrical in face and figure. Neither wore clothing. When the light touched her face, the female grunted softly in her sleep and lifted a tiny, plump arm to cover her eyes.
Rob switched off the flashlight and stood silent in the darkness. These were the Goblins, beyond a doubt, but they did not match the description that he had heard before. Lenny Pascal had said that they were “ugly as sin.” The sleeping forms in front of Rob were handsome and shapely, with fine, smooth skin and regular child-like features. The male was unshaven, with a fine blond beard that was just developing.
After a few moments of thought Rob went quietly along the line of cots, flashing his light briefly on each sleeper in turn. All were naked. At the twentieth one he stopped and took a much longer look. This Goblin, a male, was of a different type. The face was old and gnarled, like the bark of a tree, and his breathing was heavy and labored, like drugged slumber. Rob bent closer, examining each feature. He recorded the image of what he was seeing, then moved on slowly along the line.
There were two main types, in roughly equal numbers: handsome elfin folk, and hideous gnomes. There seemed to be no young ones, but Rob at one point heard an infant’s cry, so faint that in other circumstances he would have dismissed it as imagination. The babies must be sleeping in another nearby room. He made a quick circuit of the room that he was in. Most of it was food and water dispensers and sanitation facilities, with no real furniture or other equipment except for the cots on which the Goblins were sleeping.
He moved on into the other area, where he had seen the green light of the aquasphere shining through the door.
This room was completely empty and had no other door. On the wall opposite the transparent panel that led to the aquasphere, Rob saw low braces mounted in secure wall fittings. He bent to take a closer look, wondering if they were used to hold the Goblins prisoner. As he did so, the lights in the room suddenly came on to full brilliance. Rob straightened and turned to the door. Standing in the entrance was Joseph Morel. His face was drained of its usual high color and he was glaring at Rob with a cold and burning anger.
Before Rob could do anything or try to explain his presence, Morel took two quick paces backward through the doorway. The heavy metal seal slid swiftly shut. Rob heard the clang of external bolts as they were drawn into position across the entrance.
With the lights of the room turned high, Rob could confirm his original impression. He was in a square chamber, almost ten meters on a side and two meters and a half high. There was a single large window, facing out towards the aquasphere. The only door had been securely blocked by Morel. Rob examined it carefully, but in the first few seconds he knew that the instruments he carried with him would be useless to move the heavy outside bolts.
Rob went quickly around the whole room, examining walls, floor and ceiling. The overhead lights could be dimmed from two stations, one near the door and the other at the far end of the area. He could darken the room when Morel returned, but it was hard to define any advantage in doing so.
Rob completed his inspection with no enthusiasm. As he expected, there was no alternate exit. Yet he felt that he had to find one. Morel had not spoken when he discovered Rob, but the look in his eyes had been unmistakable. Whatever the secret of the Goblins — and Rob was becoming increasingly sure that he understood that secret — Morel was determined to keep it. He had killed before, he would be willing to kill again. He would surely return with a weapon. Rob needed a means of self-defense, no matter how primitive. He sat down on the floor, next to the big window, and bared his left forearm. Pressing at carefully chosen points along the inner arm, he turned off all sensory inputs coming from his left hand. It was still attached to his own bones, nerves and sinews, but now beyond the wrist there was no feeling. If need be he could use it as a club or a shield with no possibility of pain.
Rob would have to get near Morel for that to be of any use. He was not optimistic that he would be given the chance. When the other man came back he would certainly have weapons or assistance, and his instinctive caution in locking Rob in at once without waiting to hear any explanation suggested that it would be impossible to trick him into coming close enough for physical attack. From the look of him, Morel was also at least as strong as Rob.