The Prison in Antares (25 page)

“I can get us pretty close,” she replied. “But what I can't do is tell you who or what is between us and him.”

Pretorius grimaced. “I hate to start marching down corridors and through rooms without knowing where the cells are. We'd be too damned exposed. Let's give him a few more minutes.”

Suddenly Ortega waved his arm for attention, then put his finger to his lips.

“Of course!” whispered Pretorius. “They're going to load the transport.”

The door was cracked open, and Ortega was peering through it. He extended his forefinger, then the middle and fourth finger.

Pretorius held up three fingers with a questioning look, and Ortega nodded. Snake drew her burner, but Pretorius shook his head and pointed to her screecher. She holstered the one and drew the other, and Ortega and Irish followed suit.

Are they all here?
Pretorius mouthed the words.

Ortega nodded an affirmative.

Open the door.

Ortega walked through the doorway, which irised to let him pass through, and he, Pretorius, Irish and Snake all fired their weapons at the unsuspecting Antareans, who collapsed in a writhing, twitching heap next to various sacks they'd been carrying.

“Make sure they're dead,” said Pretorius. “Then drag them in here.”

“They're all dead,” announced Ortega a moment later, dragging the first of the three into their room as Snake, Pandora, and Irish began dragging the sacks.

“Why the screecher instead of the burners?” asked Irish.

“A laser beam can put a hole in its target and scorch the walls behind it,” answered Pretorius, “and we don't want to leave any blood or other marks to show that anything happened here. The screecher kills them with a barrage of solid sound; no wounds, no blood.”

Ortega slung the second corpse over his massive shoulder, and dragged the third by an ankle. “Done,” he announced, as the door closed behind him.

“Okay,” said Pretorius. “They're only armed with their version of burners, so we don't need to appropriate their weapons. Check them for any communication devices, anything else that might prove useful.”

They fell to examining the corpses. Suddenly Irish held up a small metallic card, some three inches on a side, with some odd symbols on it.

“What's this?” she asked.

Pretorius took it from her, studied it, and passed it over to Pandora. “Is this what I hope it is?” he said.

“I wish I had the ship's computer here,” answered Pandora. “Still, maybe one of my little ones can confirm it.”

“‘Confirm it'?” repeated Irish. “It just looks like, I don't know, maybe an ID.”

“Oh, it's an ID, all right,” said Pretorius, as Pandora held it up before one of her tiny computers.

“What's so special about that?” asked Irish.

“Give me half a minute and maybe I can tell you,” replied Pandora. She frowned, deactivated the computer she was using, then pulled another one from her belt and held the card up before it.

“Well?” asked Pretorius.

“Looks like it,” she answered. “Give me another few seconds.” Then: “Yes, we've hit pay dirt.”

“Pay dirt?” repeated Irish. “What the hell is it?”

“It's an ID, of course,” said Pandora. “But it's a very special ID. It gives him access to the cell blocks.”

“Then what's keeping us?” said Ortega eagerly. “Let's get Nmumba and Proto and get the hell out of here!”

“What's keeping us,” said Pretorius, “is that we don't know where the cell blocks
are.
” He turned to Pandora. “I don't suppose that thing can tell us?”

She shook her head. “No. Which figures. Of course anyone down here would know where they are.”

“Anything from Proto yet?” asked Pretorius.

“Not a word.”

“Damn!” he said, frowning. “We'll just have to follow his signal, then.”

“Why not wait for him to talk to us?” said Snake. “They wouldn't rough him up enough to put him in a coma. They'll want to question him.”

“Personally, I'd love to wait for him to tell us how to find him,” said Pretorius. “But we just killed three Antareans. How long do you think it'll be before someone notices they're missing and starts a search for them?”

“Okay,” admitted Snake, “you've got a point.”

He turned to Pandora. “Can you pinpoint his location?”

“I can come close,” she said. “But what I can't pinpoint are any obstacles, natural or artificial, between us and him.”

“And we don't know for a fact that he's near Nmumba,” added Irish.

“We're going to have to assume he is until proven otherwise,” answered Pretorius. He looked around the barren room. “Is there any way to hide the bodies and the stuff they were going to load onto the transport?”

“No benches, no chairs, no nothing,” said Ortega. “I'd say we're out of luck on that front.”

“Not at all,” countered Snake. “I'm not climbing through this particular vent again if we're leaving the room, so we can stash them up there.”

“Good point,” agreed Pretorius. “Felix, give Snake a boost, and then you and I will hand each body up to her. Snake, if I have to stand on Felix's shoulders to help you pull the bodies through the vent until all three are up there, I will. Just let me know.”

It took about five minutes, and Pretorius did indeed have to stand atop Ortega, but they finally got all three Antarean corpses hidden from sight.

“Okay, now let me heave these sacks up there, and we're done,” said Felix.

“Wait a minute,” said Pretorius. He stared at the sacks, frowning, for a moment. “Felix, see if the transport is still there.”

Ortega walked to the entrance and looked out at the tunnel.

“Yeah, it's here.”

“Good. Let's load the sacks onto it.”

“Why?”

“There's no engineer or driver on that transport, we know that. So clearly it's programmed, and the fact that it's still here means that it's programmed to pick up those goods before it leaves.”

“So what?” said Ortega.

“You know, I'm not following you either,” said Pandora.

“Their security has been breached,” said Pretorius. “They know that, because they've captured Proto. Now, if the three Antareans are missing
and
their goods never made it to the transport, they're going to assume Proto wasn't alone, and they're going to start looking for three dead men and whatever they were loading, and if you're looking nearby for dead men, you might very well check the vent.” He paused. “But if you know the goods made it to the transport, then you're probably looking for three live Antareans who are off on their equivalent of a drunk, or maybe even hopped a ride on the transport. Anyway, you're less likely to check where we've stashed them.”

“Until they start stinking,” said Ortega.

“If we're not off the planet by the time you can follow your nose to them, we're in deep shit,” said Pretorius.

“I would have thought being two miles deep on an enemy planet with no means of getting off it qualified as deep shit,” remarked Snake.

Pretorius was about to argue when he decided that he agreed with her. “Okay, we'll be in deeper shit,” he said, looking around. “They knew the second Proto was inside that he wasn't an Antarean, which means they've got some scanners near the entrance. We don't want to destroy them; that's a dead giveaway. Pandora, can you neutralize them for maybe a minute, send out some static, something like that?”

“I should be able to, as long as it's just for a minute or two,” she replied, manipulating one of her computers. “Okay—go!”

They quickly loaded the sacks onto the transport, which began moving a few seconds later. Then they reentered the prison, and Pretorius turned to Pandora.

“All right,” he said. “Which way?”

She studied the tiny computer she held in her hand. “That way,” she said, pointing to her right.

“There'd better be a tunnel or a door there,” said Ortega.

“It'd be nice,” agreed Pretorius, walking over. “Yeah, it's a tunnel. Pandora, can any of your machines tell us if we're being watched once we enter it?”

“Probably,” she replied. “It depends on what kind of equipment they're using, whether it reads motion, or heat, or even takes holos, though it's so dark I doubt the latter.”

“They've got normal-sized eyes,” said Irish, “which means they don't see any better in the dark than we do.”

“Okay,” said Pretorius, “the longer we stand here talking, the more likely it is we're going to trip some alarm. Let's get moving.”

One by one, they entered the tunnel.

36

“Are you getting any life readings?” asked Pretorius after they'd proceeded a quarter of a mile.

“Some,” answered Pandora. “But they're pretty much spread out, and they're too small to have the body mass of Antareans. I think they're the equivalent of rats.”

“I hate rats!” whispered Irish with a shudder. “Ours
or
theirs.”

They followed a curve in the tunnel, and suddenly Pretorius stopped. “Lights up ahead,” he announced. “Anything showing up on your machine?”

Pandora shook her head. “Just what I've been getting all along.”

“Just the same, let's approach it quietly. And if you haven't pulled your weapons out yet, now would be a good time.”

They continued walking forward, and soon found themselves in a dimly lit natural chamber.

“How many ways out of here?” asked Pretorius, looking around.

“Four tunnels,” said Snake. “No, make that three. We just came out of the fourth. It doesn't lead to anything but the transport.”

“So do we just take one and see what happens?” asked Ortega.

Pretorius shook his head. “No,” he answered. “With no map, we're as likely to walk in on the jailors' quarters or mess hall. We don't need much to go on, but we need
some
indication, however slight, as to where the cells are.” He paused. “Failing that, I at least want to know where they
aren't
.”

“Well, we can't stay
here
,” said Snake. “If Antareans didn't pass through it regularly it wouldn't be even this dimly lit.”

“Well, damn it all!” exclaimed Pandora, staring at her machine. “I think I've found that better way.”

“What is it?” asked Pretorius as they all turned to face her.

“I only looked briefly at the life readings before,” she said. “They were all spread out. They're
still
spread out, but they're converging on something at the end of the right-hand tunnel. Not fast, but definitely moving.”

“The kitchen,” suggested Irish.

Pretorius nodded his agreement. “Makes sense. There's nothing to eat down here, even for their equivalent of rats. It makes sense that whenever they smell or sense or somehow know the kitchen's in use again, they'd make a beeline to it—or if not to the kitchen itself, then to the general area, looking for scraps.”

“And if the kitchen's in use . . .” began Ortega.

“They're going to be delivering food to the prisoners,” concluded Snake.

“Right,” said Irish. “Hell, even if most of it's for the guards, we know they have at least two prisoners—Nmumba and Proto.”

“We know they have
one
prisoner,” said Pretorius. “We
hope
they have two or more.”

“They wouldn't kill him before they questioned him,” said Snake. “And look how long Nmumba's held out.”

“I hope you're right,” said Pretorius. “But never forget that Proto isn't Nmumba. He's the only member of his race we've ever encountered, and we don't know what his pain threshold might be.”

“If he'd broken instantly, they'd have been searching where the transport is and all the nearby hiding places,” said Ortega. “You're underrating him.”

“I'm just saying that none of us knows how much pain he can bear,” replied Pretorius, “and we'd be foolish to pretend otherwise.” He turned to Pandora. “The right-hand tunnel?”

“Yes.”

“How far down?”

“I can't tell from here,” she answered. “We'll have to start traversing it before I can find out where it ends. Also, I'm assuming that the kitchen is at the end of it, but it might not be. If I can find the point where the mice, or whatever they are, all converge,
that
will be the kitchen.”

“All right,” said Pretorius. “Let's go.”

They went about thirty feet and stopped.

“Damn!” muttered Pretorius. “Now there's no light at all. We're going to have to feel our way along the sides of the tunnel until we get to some light. We don't dare use our own.”

They proceeded slowly and carefully, keeping in physical contact with the tunnel wall, for perhaps two hundred feet. Then the tunnel curved gently to the right, and they could see a light some four hundred feet away.

They had covered half the distance when something launched itself at Pretorius, who went down under the force of the attack. He saw a pair of ravening jaws reaching for his throat and managed to hold them off until Ortega raced up, held it aloft with his natural hand, extended a huge blade from his artificial arm, and beheaded it.

“What was
that
?” whispered Irish.

“I'd say it's the Antarean equivalent of a rat,” replied Snake. “Huge eyes, because it lives underground. Probably weighs about thirty pounds, which is strange, since there's not much to eat down here.”

“I beg to differ,” said Pretorius, getting to his feet. “Its size means that there
is
something to eat down here besides table scraps. Whatever it is, we'd better keep an eye out for it.”

“Let's get moving again,” said Pandora with a note of urgency in her voice.