Part 8 (1/2)
”How is it going, Dasinger?” Miss Mines asked.
”All right,” Dasinger said. He realized he was speaking with difficulty.
”I've found the thing! Trying to get it shut off now. Tell you in a minute....”
He tapped the extended stud twice with the b.u.t.t of the gun, then slashed heavily down. The stud flattened back into the machine. Its counterpart didn't move. The drowning sensations continued.
Dasinger licked his lips, dropped the gun into his pocket, brought out the lock opener. He had the generator's cover plate pried partway back when it shattered. With that, the thunder that wasn't sound ebbed swiftly from the cabin. Dasinger reached into the generator, wrenched out a power battery, snapping half a dozen leads.
He sat back on his heels, momentarily dizzy with relief, then climbed to his feet with the smashed components of Hovig's machine, and turned to the door. Something in the debris along the wall flashed dazzlingly in the beam of his light.
Dasinger stared at the star hyacinth for an instant, then picked it up.
It was slightly larger than the one Graylock had carried out of the Antares with him, perfectly cut. He found four others of similar quality within the next minute, started back down to the lock compartment with what might amount to two million credits in honest money, around half that in the Hub's underworld gem trade, in one of his pockets.
”Yes?”
”Got the thing's teeth pulled now.”
”Thank G.o.d! Coming right down....”
The Mooncat was sliding in from the south as Dasinger stepped out on the head of the ramp. ”Lock's open,” Duomart's voice informed him. ”I'll come aft and help.”
It took four trips with the gravity crane to transfer the salvage equipment into the Antares's lock compartment. Then Miss Mines sealed the Mooncat and went back upstairs. Dasinger climbed into one of the three salvage suits, hung the wrist communicator inside the helmet, snapped on the suit's lights and went over to the edge of the compartment deck. Black water reflected the lights thirty feet below. He checked the a.s.sortment of tools attached to his belt, nudged the suit's gravity cutoff to the right, energized magnetic pads on knees, boot tips and wrists, then fly-walked rapidly down a bulkhead and dropped into the water.
”No go, Duomart!” he informed the girl ten minutes later, his voice heavy with disappointment. ”It's an unG.o.dly twisted mess down here ...
worse than I thought it might be! Looks as if we'll have to cut all the way through to that vault. Give Egavine the signal to start herding the boys down.”
Approximately an hour afterwards, Miss Mines reported urgently through the communicator, ”They'll reach the lock in less than four minutes now, Dasinger! Better drop it and come up!”
”I'm on my way.” Dasinger reluctantly switched off the beam-saw he was working with, fastened it to the belt of the salvage suit, turned in the murky water and started back towards the upper sections of the wreck.
The job of getting through the tangled jungle of metal and plastic to the gem vault appeared no more than half completed, and the prospect of being delayed over it until the Spy discovered them here began to look like a disagreeably definite possibility. He clambered and floated hurriedly up through the almost vertical pa.s.sage he'd cleared, found daylight flooding the lock compartment, the system's yellow sun well above the horizon. Peeling off the salvage suit, he restored the communicator to his wrist and went over to the head of the ramp.
The five men came filing down the last slopes in the morning light, Taunus and Calat in the lead, Graylock behind them, the winged animal riding his shoulder and lifting occasionally into the air to flutter about the group. Quist and Egavine brought up the rear. Dasinger took the gun from his pocket.
”I'll clip my gun to the suit belt when I go back down in the water with the boys,” he told the communicator. ”If the doctor's turning any tricks over in his mind, that should give him food for thought. I'll relieve Quist of his weapon as he comes in.”
”What about the guns in Graylock's hut?” Duomart asked.
”No charge left in them. If I'm reasonably careful, I really don't see what Dr. Egavine can do. He knows he loses his half-interest in the salvage the moment he pulls any illegal stunts.”
A minute or two later, he called out, ”Hold it there, doctor?”
The group shuffled to a stop near the foot of the ramp, staring up at him.
”Yes, Dasinger?” Dr. Egavine called back, sounding a trifle winded.
”Have Quist come up first and alone, please.” Dasinger disarmed the little man at the entrance to the lock, motioned him on to the center of the compartment. The others arrived then in a line, filed past Dasinger and joined Quist.