Part 4 (2/2)

”Be careful, Kareena,” shouted Bairam. There was no reply, except more clattering stones. Dust poured out of the tunnel like smoke from a fire, and Blade started stripping off his own clothes. He might be the largest man in the group, but he was also the strongest and the most skilled in this sort of work.

Then Kareena's voice came again, even more broken by coughing. ”Can't-move-it. Almost-but somebody-push from above.” She sounded as if she was about to strangle on the dust.

By now Blade was naked, wearing only his silver loinguard. Hota moved to block the tunnel, but Sidas and Bairam both stepped between him and Blade. Blade threw them both a look of grat.i.tude, then got down on his hands and knees and started crawling. His natural caution over moving into the unknown fought with his desire to hurry to Kareena's rescue.

Stone by stone, Blade crept downward, the air growing thicker and the light fading with each foot he descended. He was in a weird sort of twilight by the time he came to what had to be the obstacle. It was another slab of concrete, tilted so that it left only about a two-foot s.p.a.ce clear. Blade wondered how even Kareena could have slipped through, and hoped the stains on the slab were Saorm's blood and not hers.

Fortunately there was enough light to let Blade see how the slab could be moved out of the way. He crawled up onto the slab and shouted down into the darkness. ”Kareena! Get out of the way. I'm going to be throwing the stones off the slab. Then you pull out the ones underneath.”

A choking ”Yes, Blade,” from below rea.s.sured him that the girl was still alive and functioning. He started wrestling chunks of stone up over the lip of the slab and shoving them down into the lower part of the tunnel. As they crashed down, the dust rose about him until he was working more by touch then by sight, and he soon found himself coughing almost as hard as Kareena. Finally he'd cleared the top of the slab and scrambled back up to get a breath of fresh air and a crowbar.

It took Blade several tries before he found a position where he could pry up the slab without breaking either the crowbar or his back. Then he thrust the crowbar into place, waited until Kareena signaled she was ready, and heaved with all his strength.

Even Blade's powerful muscles nearly weren't enough. The slab was heavier than he'd expected. He had to lock muscles and joints, then press his back against the wall until he felt blood flow to keep holding it up. About all that kept him going was the knowledge that if he let the slab fall, it would squash Kareena like a c.o.c.kroach.

Sweat oozed from every pore and his eyes nearly popped out of his head, but he held the slab long enough. Suddenly he heard Kareena's m.u.f.fled, ”All right, Blade. I'm safe.” He jerked the bar free and the slab fell with a crash. The tunnel vanished completely in dust, and there were so many more rattles and crashes that for a horrible moment Blade was certain he'd brought the whole tunnel down on himself and Kareena. Then the noise died away and Blade clawed his way down the slope, through a gap now large enough to pa.s.s three men abreast.

He found Kareena sprawled on the floor, writhing and half-choking. She'd put the last of her strength into the effort, and if she didn't get out to the fresh air soon she was going to be in even worse condition. Blade opened his dust-clogged mouth to shout, but only a croak came out. Before he could get the breath to try again, there was another avalanche of small stones and Sidas, Bairam, and Hota came tumbling down the tunnel. Hota was carrying another crowbar, Sidas a torch and flint, and Bairam-bless him!-a leather skin full of water.

Bairam took one look at his sister, propped her up with one arm, and offered her the water. She vomited up the first mouthful, but kept down the second and third. After the fourth, she felt well enough to use some of the water to wipe her face. This left her with a sort of dark mask on her otherwise completely dust-coated skin. Like Blade, she was so thickly coated with dust that you had to look twice to see that she was naked.

Blade drank water until he no longer felt the dust grinding between his teeth. Then he lit the torch and slowly walked around the underground storeroom of the fire jewels. They were there as Saorm and Kareena said, thousands of them. No, tens of thousands, Blade corrected himself. There were crates which must contain at least a thousand of the smallest power cells, or a hundred of the larger ones. There were covered racks of cells larger than any Blade had seen, and on the floor stood still more cells, each at least four feet high. If their power capacity was in proportion to their size, each of the big ones must hold enough power for a tank or even a small town! He was looking at nothing less than an Industrial Revolution for Kaldak, the saving of hundreds of lives and a whole generation on the road back to civilization...

Blade corrected himself again. He could be looking at all these things. He couldn't be sure, until he knew if most of these cells still held their power. Even after that, the Kaldakans would have to do some serious thinking about their Law before they could get the benefits of all this Oltec. Blade was sure there were far too many Kaldakans who would think like Hota, if you could call that ”thinking” at all.

From the noise up above, it seemed that everyone in the expedition except the munfans wanted to come down the tunnel and stare at the Oltec. Kareena was now in shape to give orders again, and she kept everyone except Saorm and two men with rifles from coming down. ”There is more Oltec here than we dreamed of,” she shouted. ”Who knows what the Sky Masters may have left behind to protect it? Until we know, the fewer down here the better.”

Then, still naked, Kareena took one of the rifles. Slowly she raised it, and fumbled at the panel which covered the slot for the power cell. Saorm, Hota, and even Sidas stared horror-struck as she opened the panel and pulled out the old power cell. All eyes followed her as she stalked around the room, looking for the right size of power cell. She found an open crate, picked up a cell, blew the dust off, and held it up in the torchlight. It gleamed like new. By now even Blade was holding his breath.

Slowly, with trembling fingers, Kareena put the power cell in the rifle. It took her three tries before she could close the panel. She had to stop completely, her eyes closed and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rising and falling, before she could raise the rifle.

Then in one smooth motion she raised it, aimed at the ceiling, and fired. The beam crackled across the room, dust and ozone stung Blade's nostrils, chips of hot stone stung his skin, and everything in sight turned a sickly green. He' still felt like cheering. Some of the storeroom's Oltec lived!

”Then-we can make dead Oltec live?” said Sidas. He looked surprised half out of his wits.

”Yes,” said Kareena. ”The fire jewels are great Oltec. With their help-”

”You would destroy the Law?” grated Hota. He sounded like a rusty piece of machinery. ”You, Peython's daughter? Then you must have his will for this-”

”We do have our father's will,” said Bairam. ”It is his will-”

Before Bairam could provoke a quarrel, Blade interrupted. The laser's light was brighter than anything from the torch. In the green glow he'd seen what appeared to be the head of a ladder in a far corner of the room. He took the torch from Saorm and led the merchant over to the corner.

He'd been right. The torch showed the top half-dozen rungs of a metal ladder, running down a circular metal shaft into the darkness. ”Saorm, did you see this when you were here the first time?”

”Y-yes. I did.”

”Did you climb down?”

Saorm looked horror-struck. ”Blade, that would have been so far beyond the Law... !” He looked down at the blackness. ”Also, I was afraid. Who knows what the Tower Builders left down there?”

Blade looked at the ladder reaching into nothingness and couldn't blame the man. ”Who knows indeed?” he said. ”I say nothing against you for that. But we must go down there now. We are already so far beyond the Law as it used to be, that there is no going back within it.”

”For you, perhaps,” said Hota. ”But as for the rest of us, the Law-”

”Is not your own toy,” said Bairam. It looked as if the quarrel Blade had hoped to prevent by calling attention to the ladder and the shaft was going to start after all.

Then a shrill scream floated down the tunnel and echoed horribly around the storeroom. Everyone with a weapon grabbed it. Another scream came from above, then in quick succession the crash of falling masonry, a heavy metallic thud, and the crackle of a laser much more powerful than any rifle.

Everyone made a rush for the tunnel at once and jammed in the entrance. As they struggled to get untangled, a third scream came, another laser-crackle, then the unmistakable odor of burning flesh. Then Blade finally heard coherent words coming from the tunnel entrance above.

”Help! Help! A giant is attacking us! An Oltec giant!”

Chapter 10.

Blade could understand the words but still didn't know exactly what was happening. However, the cries, the laser fire, and the falling masonry said clearly enough that the people up on the surface were facing new danger.

Ruthlessly using feet and elbows, Blade got out of the tangle. He scrambled up the tunnel, more screams and laser fire echoing around him as he climbed. The smell of burning flesh grew stronger. As he hurled himself out of the mouth of the tunnel, the laser fire stopped and the metallic thuds came again.

As Blade stood up, he saw most of the people who'd been in the room vanis.h.i.+ng up the stairs to the second floor. One lay on the floor, writhing silently, too horribly burned to be able to scream. Two others crouched in a corner, a man and a woman with their arms around each other. A moment later Blade heard an appalling crash. Cracks appeared in the wall to the right of the door to the street. Crash, crash, cras.h.!.+ A section of wall twice as high as a man disintegrated and came down in a pile of fragments and a cloud of dust. Through the hole Blade caught a glimpse of something moving-then a laser burned a yardwide gap in the stairs. At the same time the breeze outside swept away the veil of dust. At last Blade had a good look at the Oltec ”giant.” He threw himself on the floor behind the largest piece of rubble he could find, as another laser blast deepened the crater in the stairs.

The giant was a humanoid robot at least twelve feet tall. Its slab-sided rectangular body was mounted on two ma.s.sive legs with armored knee and ankle joints. Two equally ma.s.sive arms with armored elbows and hands with four jointed fingers were tearing chunks out of the wall. In the middle of the chest glowed the laser tube.

The head was a grotesque parody of a World War II German helmet, with eyes, a mouth, and ears. The ”eyes” were obviously some sort of scanner, although one was cracked and dark. The ”mouth” was the black tubular muzzle of what looked like another weapon. The ”ears” were sound receptors or possibly radio receivers; one of them had a long antenna trailing from it. The whole robot was a silvery brown--once this might have been a finish designed to reflect laser beams. Now it seemed tarnished and worn from many years of neglect and many battles.

The two Kaldakans in the corner now sprang up and made a dash for the stairs. The woman hesitated on the lip of the smoking gap in the stairs, giving the robot an easy shot at her. A laser beam cut her in two before she could scream. Her torso and head dropped into the crater, while her legs rolled back down the stairs.

The man howled like a wild animal. He leaped the crater safely, then turned and fired at the robot. It was a wild shot, hitting the robot in one knee and doing no harm. The robot lifted in one hand a chunk of wall the size of a man's head and flung it with horrible precision. The Kaldakan fell backward into the crater, his chest a crushed red mess.

Blade frowned. The war robot was obviously a creation of the Sky Masters, and therefore centuries old. It was still formidable enough to wipe out the whole Kaldakan expedition if it wasn't led away and destroyed. That was a job Blade knew he'd have to face single-handed. Some of the Kaldakans were fast and quick-witted, but none of them had the understanding of modern technology needed to give them the right reactions. The Law had suppressed their curiosity for too long.

Blade mentally d.a.m.ned the Law and looked at the robot again. The hole in the wall was now large enough to let it come into the room, but it seemed to be hesitating. Perhaps it was programmed not to walk on floors which might be unable to support its weight. The thing must weigh two or three tons!

However, it wasn't going to stand there making up its mind forever. Blade crawled to the mouth of the tunnel and called down, hoping the robot's ”hearing” was impaired with age. ”Kareena! Keep everyone down there until someone tells you it's safe. There's an Oltec war machine up here that's gone mad with age. I've got to lead it away from here, then destroy it.” He hoped she would understand what she had to do from this brief explanation.

He heard Kareena's m.u.f.fled voice agreeing, then heard her cursing. After that came the scrabbling and rattle of someone climbing rapidly up the tunnel. A moment later Saorm popped out, pale and sweating but carrying two laser rifles and a bulky leather sack over one shoulder.

”What-?” began Blade, but Saorm only handed him a rifle, pointed at the bag, and whispered: ”Fire jewels. For the Oltec.”

Blade nodded. Extra power cells for the rifles would be useful, although he doubted if rifle fire would be enough for the robot. It had to be armored against much heavier weapons.

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