"Just a half-hour?"
"An hour?"
Yoko glanced around. Cattermole had vanished back inside his nest of computers. She took hold of Vickers' hand.
"Let's see how flattering you can get."
It looked like they were heading into another confrontation with the military. Vickers and Fenton mingled with the crowd of workers going on shift. They were on the third level and moving toward the heavily guarded entrance to the power plant. Security around the plant was some of the tightest in the bunker. The power plant was, without a doubt, the most vulnerable spot in the underground installation. If the fusion reactor went out of control, it would vaporize the bunker and the land for miles around. Through its life it had specifically been guarded from saboteurs, Reds, anarchists and now Wantouts. Any second, Fenton and Vickers would discover how well it was defended against them. On the plus side, there was their reputation, on the minus side, there was the fact that they had absolutely no authority. The power plant was the only place that Vickers was going to get a radiation suit, though, and he didn't intend to venture outside without one. He wanted to see the sky again but he definitely didn't want to set himself up for cancer, radiation sickness or worse.
It had only been after a good deal of deliberation that Vickers had told Fenton about the tunnel. At first he had considered Parkwood. If anything, Parkwood was the more reliable of the two but Fenton had a streak of craziness that would be invaluable on such an extreme adventure. At first Fenton had wanted them to go out together, but after two hours and most of a bottle of whiskey, Vickers had persuaded him that the best idea was for one to go out first for a short exposure, nothing more than a two-hour look around. After faking the coin toss, the task fell to Vickers while Fenton would stay behind and cover for his absence. Vickers' only stipulation was that they should steal a radiation suit so he wasn't completely vulnerable to anything the outside might throw at him. When they'd sobered up, the idea of stealing a radiation suit from the power plant seemed a good deal more hazardous than it had in the light of the whiskey bottle. About the only thing they had on their side was that most people would have a hard time imagining why they would want to steal a radiation suit in the first place. It was the basis of their bluff.
The first test of this bluff was rapidly coming up. The regular power workers had to use a thumbprint check to pass through a combined body scan and ID gate. Each gate was manned by a human guard as a second line of security. There was no other way in. Vickers and Fenton joined the line that led up to one gate. They'd decided to go in together, claiming it was a line-of-duty visit. Their guard was blonde, cute apart from a pair of hard, calculating eyes. Vickers doubted that they could put anything over on her. As they approached, she coldly looked them up and down.
"What do you two want?"
"There's something we have to check out in the jumpers' locker room."
"You got passes?"
"We don't need passes."
The guard's face hardened. "I never heard that."
"You know who we are."
"Sure I know who you are but I still never heard that I should let you into the plant without passes."
Fenton glanced back at the line of plant workers who were backed up behind them.
"Why don't you let us just step inside and we'll talk about it. We're holding up the line here."
The woman put a hand on the strap of the M90 slung over her shoulder.
"I can't let you do that."
"Suppose you called the officer who can talk to us."
The guard thought about it.
"I suppose I could do that."
She pushed a button beside the thumbprint scanner. The officer, a rather vapid captain, appeared much more of a pushover than the guard. He was far more in awe of the two corpses than his subordinate.
"What seems to be going on here?"
The guard looked at the captain with scarcely veiled contempt.
"These two want to get in without passes."
"But you know who they are?"
"I don't have authority to let anyone through without a pass."
Fenton tried to take control of the situation.
"Listen, Captain, if we could just step through and explain the situation we'll stop holding up the line and I'm sure when you hear what we have to say you'll see it our way. And if you don't, we'll leave. Okay?"
The captain seemed uncertain. He looked like he wanted to ask someone what to do but was afraid of losing face. Fenton leaned in to his indecision.
"Well?"
The captain was tipped over.
"Yes, I suppose you'd better step inside."
Fenton and Vickers made to pass through but the guard didn't get out of the way. She looked enquiringly at the captain.
"Sir?"
The captain covered himself with impatient bluster.
"Yes, yes, let them through."
"On your authority sir?"
"Yes, damn it, on my authority. Now start this line moving." He waved Vickers and Fenton to where he was standing on the other side of the barrier. "So what is all this about?"
Fenton put an arm around the captain's shoulder and steered him away from the guards and the lines at the gates. Vickers followed them.
"It's like this, see. We think we might have a problem with one of your jumpers and all we wanted to do was to go down to the jumpers' locker room and discreetly go through his stuff."
The captain was looking nervous again.
"A jumper? One of the ones who actually go inside the reactor?"
"One of those. One of those exactly. That's why we have to be so very careful. I mean, those people don't have very long lifespans, do they?"
"It's not as bad as it was on the outside, we take better care…"
"Yeah, but what with contamination and their hair falling out and everything, they've still got plenty of room to get mean. Am I right?"
"I guess so."
"And if one of them went rogue they could do an untold amount of damage."
"That's right."
"We only had the faintest of whispers that one of these people might be up to something but there was no way that we could ignore it."
"What was this whisper?"
"That someone was stashing explosives inside the fusion loop."
The captain actually turned a little pale.
"You have to be joking. Do you know what even the smallest explosion in the fusion loop could do?"
"And that's why we have to go in and check things out."
The captain shook his head.
"If you want to go in and search why didn't you go through channels?"
Fenton removed his arm from around the captain's shoulder with a look of exasperation.
"Are you back on that again? You know what it's like around here. If we'd gone through channels everyone in the plant would have known about it inside half an hour. The whole point here is to keep it quiet. Quiet, you understand? If there's nothing to it we don't want to give the bastards any ideas, do we?"
"I guess not."
"So are you going to take us down there or do I have to get someone with some real clout?"
It was Vickers' moment to interrupt. "Do we have to fuck around with this jerk any longer? Let's just find his superior and explain how he's fucking us over."
Fenton became the calming influence.
"Hey, give him a break, will you? He wants to cooperate, he's just nervous. They go by the book down here, that's all." He turned to the captain. "You're going to help us out, aren't you?"
The captain caved in. "Okay, but I'm going to have to come down there with you.
Fenton beamed. "Sure. Let's go to it."
With the captain completely buffaloed, the rest was easy. They went through to the jumpers' locker room and opened the locker of one Jose Torres. The computer had selected him as being the same size as Vickers, so his radiation suit would fit. He was also off-shift so the suit would be hanging in his locker. While the captain watched, they searched every inch of the suit. Finally they delivered the verdict.