McCade's thoughts were interrupted as two more prisoners appeared, each carrying a box. One passed out oxygen canisters with nostril plugs, while the other handed out headlamps. McCade watched the others as they hooked the oxygen canister to the back of their belts, and brought the small plastic hose up and over one shoulder. He did the same. "Don't turn on your O
2
till we're outside," Spigot advised. "You want all the margin you can get."
McCade nodded his agreement, and pulled the headlamp's elastic band down over his head. "Test it," Spigot suggested. "If the bastards forget to recharge one, you're shit out of luck."
McCade switched it on and off and found that it worked perfectly.
"Good," Spigot said approvingly. "Now whatever you do . . . don't lose it. There's a locater beacon built into the light. That way they can find you if you get lost or trapped by a rockfall."
"Now that's a cheerful thought," McCade said. "I notice the only way to get rid of the beacon is to throw away the light."
Spigot gave him a toothless grin. "You're catching on, Sam."
A few moments later, the vehicle jerked into motion, and headed outside. As the doors of the dome slid shut behind them, the men activated their oxygen canisters, and slipped in their nostril plugs. McCade did likewise. After a full rotation outside without it, the trickle of O
2
was quite comforting.
The crawler turned this way and that, following a twisted course between the huge spires of dark rock which punched their way up through the planet's skin. But they hadn't gone far when the vehicle suddenly slowed and came to a halt. The men all looked at the guard, but she pressed on her earplug for a second, and then shook her head. The ramp went down with a whine of hydraulics and then came right back up. A man came with it. McCade couldn't see what he looked like in the dim half light of the vehicle's interior, but whoever he was, he belonged somehow, because everyone greeted him as he moved down the aisle. Except the guards. They seemed to ignore him. So the man wasn't part of Torb's organization. Then why had they stopped for him?
McCade watched with interest as he felt the crawler jerk into motion, and the man continued to move up the aisle, stopping every now and then to talk with one of the men. Finally he dropped onto the center seat across from McCade, and a slash of light fell across his face. Their eyes made contact, and suddenly McCade found himself looking at a hallucination. The man smiled and stuck out his hand. "You remember me, I hope? The name's Walker. It's good to see you again, Sam."
McCade shook Walker's extended hand. The other man had a firm grip, kind of surprising in a hallucination, but then McCade had very little experience in such matters. "And it's good to see you too," McCade said wryly, "or at least I assume it is. How do you do that?"
"What?" Walker asked innocently, his cool green eyes laughing merrily.
McCade looked around, wondering if his fellow prisoners were paying any attention to this somewhat bizarre conversation, but all the others were busy talking among themselves. "You know, appearing in someone's head like that. What is it, telepathy?"
Walker shook his head. "Nope. Physical bodies aren't everything, Sam. There's lots of other ways to get around." He gestured vaguely. "If you read Terran religious history you'll find all sorts of theories. Some of 'em are even true." He laughed.
"So you won't tell?"
Walker shrugged. "I can't. Not in the amount of time we've got anyway. But it's not magic, it's a skill, something you learn. Some people are better at that sort of stuff than others. I'm among the worst."
McCade lifted one eyebrow, and started to reply, but the crawler jerked to a halt and the guard said, "All right, worm meat, hit the ramp. This ain't no excursion bus." She ignored the prisoners' rude gestures, and motioned with her riot gun. The men obeyed.
As McCade stood, Walker said, "I'll catch up with you later."
"Terrific," McCade said dryly. "Be sure to bring your body."
"If you insist," Walker countered, and vanished into the crowd as the men surged forward and down the ramp.
As McCade emerged, he was almost blinded by the hot white glare from the powerful floodlights mounted on each crawler. Gradually his eyes began to adjust, and before long he could make out the other crawlers a short distance away, and the men which surrounded them.
A few hundred yards to the north, there was a low hill with an ominous-looking hole in its side. McCade didn't need a road map to know where they were going. The hole practically screamed, "I'm dangerous, don't come in here." So naturally that's where they'd have to go.
The land surrounding the hill faded off into soft darkness, interrupted here and there by rocky spires of denser black. After a brief moment of confusion, the guards herded the men into a single line, and then watched impassively as they shuffled by a large open box. "That's the tool line," Spigot said, appearing at his elbow. "Go ahead and I'll meet you at the other end."
McCade followed the little man's suggestion. The line moved quickly, and a few minutes later a bored-looking guard handed him a tool, before ordering him to move along. McCade examined it as he left the other end of the line. It was a durasteel rod, about two inches thick, and four feet long. One end was pointed for use as a pry bar, and the other was flattened out and bent at a right angle, kind of like a pickax. It had seen hard use and showed it. Which made sense, because you had to shift a lot of rock, and then break through the solidified goo the male worms used for a sealer, before you could get at the eggs. Or at least that's what he'd heard. Not something you'd want to do with your bare hands. He tried swinging the tool around. Not a bad weapon in a pinch, which explained why they were collected at the end of each shift. Torb didn't want the prisoners digging their way out of the dome's underground prison, or taking a swing at the guards.
"All right, meat, this ain't no damned picnic. Get your butts down there and find some eggs. Torb's offering five extra meal paks per egg, so keep your eyes open." The voice belonged to the same female guard who had been on the crawler. She wore her hair in a short crewcut, and her face was thin and bony. "If you don't," she cautioned, "you're all going on short rations. We're behind quota."
Her speech was met with mixed jeers and grumbling. One voice said, "Yeah? So what else is new?" Another said, "If you're so hot for worm eggs, then get your skinny ass down there and find 'em yourself." But in spite of their brave talk, no one wanted to charge the guard's riot gun, so slowly but surely they shuffled their way toward the dark mouth of the cave.
The path was quite worn, suggesting that they'd been coming here for quite some time. McCade wondered how long it took to exhaust a particular area. Or did the worms lay eggs so fast it didn't make any difference? But if that were true the eggs would be easier to find. Well, it made little difference to him. He was looking for something else, and making damn little progress. He'd spotted a couple of possibilities, but deep down in his gut he knew they weren't Alexander. No, so far his only lead was Walker. The man was strange, but apparently quite real, and seemed to know all about McCade's mission. How and why? McCade swiveled his head right and left, but Walker was nowhere to be seen. He'd promised to catch up. How would he manage that down in the tunnels? But that thought, and all others vanished as they entered the dark opening in the hillside.
It was cold inside and McCade shivered. A slight breeze blew from somewhere up ahead, hinting at other openings, and bringing with it the smell of things long dead. McCade was one of the few who still hadn't turned on his headlamp. Now he did so, adding still another bobbing blob of light to the hundreds which already splashed the tunnel walls. Some of the men were grimly silent, others engaged in forced banter. "Sure hope we don't walk right up a worm's rear end," someone said. "Hell, you are a worm's rear end," another voice replied. "Nah, I've seen a worm's rear end, and it's better-lookin' than Frank is," a different voice said. There was general laughter which quickly died away as they entered a dimly lit open area. Countless tunnels branched off from all sides. The cavern apparently served the worms as a hub, much as the large subterranean vault under Torb's dome once had. Tilting his head back, McCade's light was quickly lost in the darkness above.
"All right, meat, listen up. I'm only gonna give it to you once." McCade recognized Whitey's voice right away. By standing on a small rock, he could see over the men in front of him, and sure enough there was Whitey, seated at some sort of makeshift console, peering into a portable terminal. The wash of light from the VDT gave Whitey's skin a sickly green appearance. The neanderthal, plus a mean-looking black man in worn leathers, stood to either side of him, their riot guns resting in the crook of their arms. "All right. Mendez, tunnel four. Riker, tunnel two. Mugabe, tunnel twenty . . ."
As Whitey read off their names and tunnel assignments, the men reluctantly trudged off, presumably heading for their particular tunnels. McCade had no idea how they knew which tunnel was which. "McCade, tunnel thirty-four."
"Just follow me, Sam." It was Spigot. He had a water container in each hand but no tool. McCade followed, as Spigot wound his way around piles of fallen rock and pools of water, to the far side of the cavern. As they approached the dark mouth of a tunnel, McCade saw there was a small sign over the entrance, and sure enough, it read "34."
"They're numbered one through one hundred and forty-six, starting back where the entrance meets the cavern, and moving from left to right," Spigot explained.
He stepped into the tunnel, and motioned for McCade to follow. As McCade stepped inside, the walls seemed to close in on him, and suddenly he could feel the tons of rock pressing down on him. The passageway was barely six feet tall, and in places he had to stoop to pass. He knew it shouldn't bother him, after all he'd spent months at a time in some very small ships, but that was different somehow. Outside there had been the vast emptiness of space, not ton after ton of solid rock, and while that shouldn't make a difference, it did. Taking a deep breath, he forced the fear into the back of his mind, and followed Spigot's bobbing light.
Suddenly he slipped and almost fell down. Tilting his head forward to throw some light on the tunnel's floor he saw some sort of glistening substance. "Hey, Spigot, what's this stuff?" he asked, pointing down.
Spigot turned to see what McCade was referring to. "Worm slime," he answered matter-of-factly. "Some say they use it to lubricate their way through the tunnels." He smiled a toothless smile. "Others say it's how they shit. Personally I figure it don't make much difference."
McCade nodded at Spigot's obvious wisdom, and they moved farther into the stygian blackness. Every now and then, Spigot would stop to explain a fine point of egg hunting, or tunnel survival. Once he pointed out a small hollowed-out space just off the tunnel, and declared that a prisoner named Hagiwara had found two prime eggs in it. Scooping up what looked like crumbled rock, he held it out for McCade's inspection. It had a slightly reddish hue. "That's what you look for, Sam. It's what their sealer looks like when it's all dried out. As you can see it's a different color than most of this rock."
And about ten minutes later, Spigot stopped again, to point out the side tunnel in which Samms had died. McCade shuddered as Spigot described Samms' death, how the worm had taken him feet first, and how he'd screamed forever.
"But," Spigot added cheerfully, "don't let it worry you, Sam. It actually improves your odds some. I can't remember the last time we lost two in a row in the same tunnel. Anyway, this is where I leave you. Gotta make my rounds. It's all virgin territory from here out. Keep an eye out for color changes in the rock and watch for worms. There's a buzzer built into your headlamp. When you hear it, head back." And with that the little man was gone.
The next four hours were very strange. McCade had decided to approach the situation systematically. For the first four hours he would examine the right wall, and then he'd turn around, and spend the next four hours on the left wall. That should put him back at his starting point with only an hour or so left to kill. As he moved cautiously down the tunnel, there was an eerie silence, broken only by the sound of his own footsteps and the occasional dripping of water. Every now and then, he came to intersections where other worm tunnels crossed his, or passageways had been carved out of solid rock by a thousand years of running water. He ignored them. One tunnel was plenty, without adding the additional hazards of more. More than once he slipped in the worm slime, and almost fell. Twice, he spotted reddish places in the tunnel wall, and attacked them with his tool. But all he found was solid rock. Apparently there was some reddish rock around. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of darkness, the four hours were up. He had just turned around, and started back up the tunnel, when he heard someone call his name and saw a distant light. It bobbed closer and closer, until it was only feet away, casting long shadows down across Walker's face. He smiled.
"We've got to stop meeting like this."
McCade laughed in spite of himself. Then he said, "I suppose you used some more of whatever it is you do to find me."
Walker grinned and shook his head. "Nope. It seemed a lot simpler just to peek in Whitey's holo tank. There you were, checking out tunnel number thirty four, just like an old pro. Whitey was very impressed."
Of course. McCade wondered why he hadn't thought of it earlier. They'd be able to track all the prisoners via the beacons built into their headlamps. That way if someone decided to take a nap, or tried to take off, they'd know about it. Although there'd be damn little chance of that, since anyone who tried to escape would run out of oxygen a few hours later.
Walker looked around, selected a likely looking boulder, and sat down. He reached into an inner pocket and pulled something out. He handed it to McCade as he said, "I understand you like these things, so here's a little present."