Part 57 (1/2)

470.

'Oh, Holy Mary, and I'm to deliver us into your tender hands, am I? Lord forgive me.' He dropped over the side of the platform with surprising ease, and started walking down the rail towards the north wall.

Greg landed lightly behind him, then turned to help Julia. The crash team began to jump down, the resonant hammer blows of their boots. .h.i.tting the rock echoing round the silent chamber.

Sinclair looked round, and muttered a despairing, 'Jesus.' Greg took the lead as Sinclair led them past the rail tunnels, heading towards the heavy machinery at the end of the chamber. A small secretion awoke his intuition, and allowed him to expand his espersense. The three psychics in the crash team had used their sacs to activate their own psi abilities. They all exchanged mental grins of acknowledgement.

It was going to be one of the service tunnels that carried pipes and cables up to the second chamber, Greg decided. He whispered a request for a link to Melvyn Ambler into his throat mike. 'Melvyn, I'll go in on Sinclair's heels, but I want two of your tech specialists behind me. I'll know if we're heading into anything lethal, or if Sinclair's brewing up trouble. But there are bound to be sensors.'

'Roger,' Melvyn acknowledged. 'Carlos, Lesley, up front. Ms Evans, could you and Rick move into the middle of the team, please?'

Greg sensed the beginnings of resentment rustling round in Julia's mind. He ordered the communication circuit off. 'Best place,' he said, and held her eye.

'Yeah, all right.'

Sinclair walked into one of the service tunnels, a simple tube three metres in diameter. Inside was a remote, basic world; walls scored by the blades of the mining machine which had cut it, a metre-wide pipe fastened to the rock at waist height by solid metal brackets, cables strung from the ceiling in long hoops which made him duck every few metres. The rock was cold, leaching warmth from the air, minute beads of condensation clung to every surface. Long oblong grids had been laid down to give a narrow level floor. Dim biolum panels were stuck to the wall every five metres. Greg 471.

could see a tiny silver trickle of water underneath the metal grid.

He reckoned they'd gone about seventy metres when Sinclair halted.

'Would you be so kind as to give me a hand here, Captain Greg?' Sinclair asked as he bent over. 'Me back isn't what it used to be.'

He stuck a couple of fingers through the grid, and fished up a wire hoop. 'Here we go. Just tug on that. It'll come up like a trapdoor.'

Greg sensed a tingle of satisfaction in Sinclair's thought currents, nothing malicious.

'I'm registering some magnetic patterns,' Carlos said. 'They came on when Sinclair picked up that ioop. This section of the tunnel is wired. Something just above you, sir, small and delicate. Probably a photon amp and mike. I'm jamming the processor.'

'Will they know that?' Greg asked.

'Not unless it was military grade hardware; it should just seem as though the hardware is down.'

Greg couldn't believe the Celestial Apostles would use military 'ware. They'd know someone was coming, but not who. He got a grip on the hoop, and pulled. It was heavier than he expected.

The grid came up with a loud squeak, revealing solid darkness. He slipped the energy dissipater suit's hood over his head, feeling the wet lick of the photon amp adhering to the skin round his eyes. His universe s.h.i.+fted to a weathered blue and grey grisaille, and the darkness receded.

There was a large crack running along the bottom of the tunnel. It had been widened below the grid, chiselled away with some kind of power tool. The jagged hole was over a metre wide, rough-hewn steps leading downwards. He bled in the infrared, adding a faint pink hue to the image. But there were no hot spots, no sign of life.

'Is there anybody on duty below?' Greg asked.

'Certainly not, Captain Greg. What would we be wanting with look outs? We're not criminals, we're believers.'

Greg hopped across the hole to Sinclair. There wasn't 472.

room in the tunnel to get past anyone. He probed round with his espersense, the crash team invading his consciousness, a complicated melange of emotions. n.o.body else.

'Melvyn, it's clear for the first fifteen metres.'

'Roger. Carlos, Lesley, secure the entrance please.'

The first armoured figure waddled gracelessly up to the lip of the hole, ma.s.sive in the restricted width of the tunnel. Infrared picked out ruby s.h.i.+mmers around its joints, fluctuating at each movement. Greg wondered if any of them would be able to fit down the steps.

Carlos held out an arm and dropped a thick ten-centimetre reconnaissance disk down into the hole. Greg watched the miniature UFO swoop into the cave, its motor glowing, tracing a crimson line that curved through the air like a bent laser beam.

'No hazards visible,' Carlos reported. He started down the steps. His arms sc.r.a.ped the rock on either side, sending up a burst of vivid orange sparks.

Greg winced.

Lesley followed with more grinding noises.

'I see you don't intend on creeping up on my folk,' Sinclair said.

'Is it all this narrow?' Greg asked.

'No. And you'll be going to thank the Lord for that this next Sunday.'

'I might just do that.'- It was unlike any cave Greg had ever seen on Earth. The rock had been split along natural fracture lines, crystalline weaknesses, stress lines, veins of metal in the ore. Greg imagined a tracery of hairline cracks spreading down from the electron-compression blast crater, cancerous shadows eating through the rock. Pressure differences clas.h.i.+ng at each shock wave. Some of the internal structure around the fractures must have compacted, while others had wrenched apart in a parody of tectonic faults, creating vast empty fissures.

For every sheer surface there was a corresponding plane above, razor-sharp ridges had left torn gauges, the angular 473.

root-pattern of s.h.i.+ning metal veins was perfectly twinned. It was the most intricate three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle ever made. And for the first time in his life, Greg felt claustrophobic. Floor and ceiling so obviously fitted together - they belonged together. Jaws of a vice, waiting.

Sinclair waited until all the crash team came down the steps from the service tunnel, then took a torch out of his pocket. 'Now then, would you be so good as to close the grid above you there?'

The light of Sinclair's weak beam was picked up by Greg's photon amp, illuminating the cave like a solaris spot. He saw a couple of power cables trailing out of the crack next to the steps, snaking away into the gloom. The Celestials must have spliced them into the lines up in the service tunnel.

'We'll reel out an optical cable as we go,' Melvyn said as the last team member pulled the grid back into place. 'Keep our communications with the security centre open.'

'Yeah, OK,' said Greg. He gestured at the red power cables. 'Is this your power source?' he asked Sinclair.

'One of them, Captain Greg. s.p.a.ce is awash with energy. The light, the radiation, the wind from the sun. Bountiful it is. I'm sure Miss Julia here doesn't begrudge us this mere trickle.'

'Sure she doesn't. So where were you given the flower?'

'This way.' He started following the red cables, stepping lightly over the crumpled rock.

The cave turned out to be about fifty metres across, its floor a gentle upward slope. Sinclair was heading for a bottleneck crevice opposite the stairs. There was no dust, Greg noticed, none of the little drifts of soil and bat droppings that contaminated natural caves.

His initial feeling of claustrophobia was fading. Bubbling up in its wake came a twinge of expectation. Foolishly he felt bright to the point of being cheerful. It wasn't quite his usual intuition, more like instinct. On the right path and getting Closer. The same blind compulsion a salmon feels as the Unique surge of fresh water from the mouth of its birth river finally flows around it.

The alien.

474.

Was this the bewitchment Sinclair experienced? G.o.d knows, it was cogent enough to be mistaken for divine guidance.

A grin tugged at his lips. You're enjoying this, you idiot.

A glimmer of light was s.h.i.+ning out of the crevice ahead of him. He pulled his dissipater-suit hood off, initially confused by the monochrome gloaming he found himself immersed in. A swirl of air cooled his sweaty face. The light coming from the crevice was blocked out as Sinclair moved into it. Greg hurried after him.