They came to the first of the three presumed locations of the tunnel’s entrance, and separated and looked for it, using their flashlights guardedly. They didn’t find it.
They started for the second location, a kilometer to the northeast. A half moon came over the shoulder of the mountain, wanly lighting it, and they searched its base carefully as they crossed the rock-slope before it.
The slope became smooth, but only in the strip where they were walking—and they realized that they were on a road, old and scrub-patched. Behind them it curved away toward the parkland; ahead it led into a fold in the mountain.
They looked at one another, and took out their guns. Leaving the road, they moved close to the side of the mountain and edged along slowly in single file—first Chip, then Dover, then Karl—holding their kits to keep them from bumping, holding their guns.
They came to the fold, and waited against the mountainside, listening.
No sound came from within.
They waited and listened, and then Chip looked back at the others and raised his gas mask and fastened it.
They did the same.
Chip stepped out into the opening of the fold, his gun before him. Dover and Karl stepped out beside him.
Within was a deep and level clearing; and opposite, at the base of sheer mountain wall, the black round flat-bottomed opening of a large tunnel.
It appeared to be completely unprotected.
They lowered their masks and looked at the opening through their binoculars. They looked at the mountain above it and, taking a few steps forward, looked at the fold’s outcurving walls and the oval of sky that roofed it.
“Buzz must have done a good job,” Karl said.
“Or a bad one and got caught,” Dover said.
Chip swung his binoculars back to the opening. Its rim had a glassy sheen, and pale green scrub lay along its bottom. “It feels like the boats on the beaches,” he said. “Sitting there wide open…”
“Do you think it leads back to Liberty?” Dover asked, and Karl laughed.
Chip said, “There could be fifty traps that we won’t see until it’s too late.” He lowered his binoculars.
Karl said, “Maybe Ria didn’t say anything.”
“When you’re questioned at a medicenter you say everything,” Chip said. “But even if she didn’t, wouldn’t it at least be closed? That’s what we’ve got the tools for.”
Karl said, “It must still be in use.”
Chip stared at the opening.
“We can always go back,” Dover said.
“Sure, let’s,” Chip said.
They looked all around them, and raised their masks into place, and walked slowly across the clearing. No gas jetted, no alarms sounded, no members in antigrav gear appeared in the sky.
They walked to the opening of the tunnel and shone their flashlights into it. Light shimmered and sparked in high plastic-lined roundness, all the way to the place where the tunnel seemed to end, but no, was bending to its downward angle. Two steel tracks reached into it, wide and flat, with a couple of meters of unplasticked black rock between them.
They looked back at the clearing and up at the opening’s rim. They stepped inside the tunnel, looked at one another, and lowered their masks and sniffed.
“Well,” Chip said. “Ready to walk?”
Karl nodded, and Dover, smiling, said, “Let’s go.”
They stood for a moment, and then walked ahead on the smooth black rock between the tracks.
“Will the air be all right?” Karl asked.
“We’ve got the masks if it isn’t,” Chip said. He shone his flashlight on his watch. “It’s a quarter of ten,” he said. “We should be there around one.”
“Uni’ll be up,” Dover said.
“Till we put it to sleep,” Karl said.
The tunnel bent to a slight incline, and they stopped and looked—at plastic roundness glimmering away and away and away into blackest black.
“Christ and Wei,” Karl said.
They started walking again, at a brisker pace, side by side between the tracks. “We should have brought the bikes,” Dover said. “We could have coasted.”
“Let’s keep the talk to a minimum,” Chip said. “And just one light at a time. Yours now, Karl.”
They walked without talking, behind the light of Karl’s flashlight. They took their binoculars off and put them in their kits.
Chip felt that Uni was listening to them, was recording the vibrations of their footsteps or the heat of their bodies. Would they be able to overcome the defenses it surely was readying, outfight its members, resist its gases? (Were the gas masks any good? Had Jack fallen because he had got his on too late, or would getting it on sooner have made no difference?)
Well, the time for questioning was over, he told himself. This was the time for going ahead. They would meet whatever was waiting for them and do their best to get to the refrigerating plants and blast them.
How many members would they have to hurt, to kill? Maybe none, he thought; maybe the threat of their guns would be enough to protect them. (Against helpful unselfish members seeing Uni in danger? No, never.)
Well, it had to be; there was no other way.
He turned his thoughts to Lilac—to Lilac and Jan and their room in New Madrid.
The tunnel grew cold but the air stayed good.
They walked on, into plastic roundness that glimmered away into blackest black with the tracks reaching into it. We’re here, he thought. Now. We’re doing it.
At the end of an hour they stopped to rest. They sat on the tracks and divided a cake among them and passed a container of tea around. Karl said, “I’d give my arm for some whiskey.”
“I’ll buy you a case when we get back,” Chip said.
“You heard him,” Karl said to Dover.
They sat for a few minutes and then they got up and started walking again. Dover walked on a track. “You look pretty confident,” Chip said, flashing his light at him.
“I am,” Dover said. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Chip said, shining his light ahead again.
“I’d feel better if there were six of us,” Karl said.
“So would I,” Chip said.
It was funny about Dover: he had hidden his face in his arms when Jack had started shooting, Chip remembered, and now, when they would soon be shooting, perhaps killing, he seemed cheerful and carefree. But maybe it was a cover-up, to hide anxiety. Or maybe it was just being twenty-five or twenty-six, however old he was.
They walked, shifting their kits from one shoulder to the other.
“Are you sure this thing ends?” Karl said.
Chip flicked the light at his watch. “It’s eleven-thirty,” he said. “We should be past the halfway mark.”
They kept walking into the plastic roundness. It grew a little less cold.
They stopped again at a quarter of twelve, but they found themselves restless and got up in a minute and went on.
Light glinted far away in the center of the blackness, and Chip pulled out his gun. “Wait,” Dover said, touching his arm, “it’s my light. Look!” He switched his flashlight off and on, off and on, and the glint in the blackness went and came back with it. “It’s the end,” he said. “Or something on the tracks.”