The Prison in Antares (27 page)

“I believe I can lead you there, though we'll almost certainly encounter opposition along the way.”

“We could also fight our way there and find that there's no ship,” said Snake. “I mean, how the hell long does it stay after it's disgorged its prisoners?”

“They had two ships already here when mine landed,” said Kramin. “They were heavily armed. I assume they're there to repel any attacks.”

Pretorius turned to Pandora with a questioning look. “Could you fly one?”

“How different can it be?” she replied.

“Okay, lead us there, Kramin,” said Pretorius. “Or, rather, tell us how to get there and walk in the middle of our group so we can protect you. After Nmumba, you're the one being we can't afford to lose.”

Kramin began uttering directions, which led them through a different series of tunnels than those they had come by. Now and then there were artificial barriers, but Pandora was always able to unlock them or make them recede.

After a few minutes they heard some rabid screaming.

“What's that?” asked Pretorius.

“The Denebians, yelling and cursing in their native tongue,” answered the Antarean. “Either they've found some of their jailors, or their jailors have found them.”

After a minute the screaming stopped.

“Sounds like one side won,” remarked Ortega.

“The jailors,” said Pretorius. “Unless the Denebians found a cache of weapons somewhere.”

“Or maybe one side just frightened the other side away,” said Snake. “Damn it! I wish we were in the good old days, when a gun made a
bang!
and we knew for sure what was happening.”

“Those good old days ended more than four thousand years ago,” noted Irish.

“And we pretty much know what happened,” said Pretorius. “The same thing that happens every time one side has weapons and the other doesn't.”

They continued on, and in another quarter mile they came to a solid door.

“This is one of the interrogation chambers,” announced Kramin.

“I hope it's empty,” said Nmumba weakly. “I need to sit for a minute or two.”

“We all hope it's empty,” said Pretorius. “Pandora, do your thing.”

She softly uttered commands into her computer, and the door vanished. The chamber was about forty feet on a side, with a table, half a dozen chairs, a heavy door at the far end, and a Neverlie Machine.

“Did they use that on you?” Pretorius asked Nmumba as the latter sat down, exhausted, on the nearest chair.

“Almost every time,” he answered.

Irish walked over and examined the machine's controls. “It's not set at Lethal,” she announced, “at least not for Men. It might kill a Denebian or a Bortoi at this level.”

“Have you experienced it too?” Pandora asked Kramin.

“Yes,” he said. “But only as punishment. I never hid or denied my actions, so I had no secrets to reveal to them.”

Pretorius waited until Nmumba gestured that he was ready to walk again, and then said, “Pandora, the door?”

She help the computer up to her mouth, spoke her commands, and the door at the far end slid into a wall. They walked through and found themselves in a continuation of the corridor.

“Straight ahead, I presume?” said Pretorius.

“Yes,” said Kramin. “And unless I misremember, it should go uphill just a bit.”

Within fifty yards the tunnel did indeed angle up slightly. And before they'd gone another fifty, they heard two agonized screams.

“The Torquals?” suggested Snake.

“I don't think so,” replied Kramin. “Torquals have much deeper voices.”

“Then maybe they got a couple of guards,” said Ortega hopefully.

There was a third scream.

“The Kaboris,” announced Kramin. “There is no one left now except ourselves and two Torquals.”

“They're not going to prove much help,” said Pretorius. “They're as unarmed as the rest of them, and they're so tall they're going to be moving hunched over if they don't want to keep cracking their heads against the top of the tunnel.” He turned to Pandora. “A thought occurs to me.”

“Yes?”

“You're in touch with the computer that controls the cells and all these doors, right?”

“Well, with the one that's currently operative. There are backups, of course.”

He frowned. “So even if you had a way to wipe this one clean . . .”

“Another one would kick in two seconds later.”

“And if you wiped
that
one too?”

She shook her head. “It would respond to the same commands, but a different ID and password.”

“Okay. I should have known it couldn't be that easy.”

“I keep looking for those oversized rats,” said Ortega, “but the place seems to be free of them.”

“My guess is that they can smell the blood of the Denebians and the Kaboris,” said Snake. “They probably racing to the dinner table right this moment.”

“How much farther?” asked Pretorius.

“We follow a fork to the right and we should be at the second interrogation room,” answered Kramin.

They came to the fork in less than a minute, and shortly thereafter Pandora entered the code that opened the room.

“This one's a little smaller than the first,” noted Ortega.

“Still got a Neverlie Machine, though,” added Snake.

“And a pitcher of water, if anyone wants a drink,” said Irish.

“No!” said Nmumba. “Don't touch it!”

“Poison?” asked Pretorius.

“No, they don't bring you to this room to kill you. But that stuff will burn away your tonsils and half your tongue—or at least it feels like it when they force you to drink it.”

Pretorius turned to Kramin. “You had to drink it too?”

“I think drink is the wrong word,” answered the Antarean. “I've had it poured down my throat.”

“Nice playmates, your countrymen,” remarked Pretorius.

“I'm sure yours would be much the same if they had an Antarean who was on the brink of developing something even deadlier than the Q bomb.”

“I hope we never have to find out,” said Pretorius. He looked around the chamber. “I see two doors at the back of the room. Which one do we take?”

“I've only had my back to them, and I've only heard one open a single time, to allow a pilot and her crew through,” answered Kramin. “I believe they were coming from a slightly higher level, because they kept referring to being ‘down here.'”

“It's
all
‘down here' if you were above the surface until you landed,” said Pretorius. “Pandora, can you produce a diagram, a
schema
,
some
thing that you can turn into a holograph?”

She softly issued some commands to her computer, and a moment later a holograph of the interrogation room and its approaches and exits hovered a few feet above the floor.

“I think we go through the door on the left,” she said. “It leads downhill, but the one on the right doesn't lead anywhere. It's like they meant to dig or extend the tunnel that led us here, but there's the door and nothing else, as if they decided this was far enough.”

Pretorius was silent for a moment. He studied the holograph once more, and then spoke. “Open the door on the right.”

“But it doesn't lead anywhere,” protested Pandora.

“Then what harm can it do?” he asked.

Pandora shrugged. “What the hell, it only takes a few seconds.”

She uttered another command, and the right-hand door vanished, revealing a well-lighted tunnel continuing the slightly uphill curve that had led them to the chamber.

Pandora stared at her computer, even tapped it twice with a forefinger. “Something's wrong with the damned thing. It never showed anything beyond this door.”

“That's because no member of the staff here had to know about it, though obviously some did, when a pilot or a member of his crew came through here. But they made sure that if anyone ever busted out of a cell and got access to any computer in the place, the computer wouldn't show him that there was anything behind this door.” He turned to Kramin. “This leads to the ships, right?”

“I have to assume so,” answered the Antarean.

“Then let's go.”

Pretorius, screecher in hand, walked through the doorway and began the gently uphill climb, followed by the rest of his crew. The tunnel proceeded in a straight direction for perhaps eighty yards, took a hard left turn, then curved to the right again.

After they had proceeded almost half a mile the tunnel became wider and was even better lit.

Pretorius rubbed a couple of fingers against a wall, then studied them.

“Phosphorescent coating, of course,” he whispered. “We feel it's getting brighter, but if you were coming down here out of a ship, it's getting duller as your eyes begin adjusting to the darker conditions.” He wiped his fingers off on his pants leg. “It means we're going in the right direction.”

In another two minutes the lighting was brighter still, and they could hear voices up ahead. Then, finally, they could see the end of the tunnel, and a large area, perhaps a quarter mile across, where they could see portions of two ships at rest.

“Proto,” whispered Pretorius, “get rid of the image, and just slither ahead until you can get a clear view of the place. They're less likely to spot the real you than any of us.”

“Right,” said Proto as the middle-aged man vanished and the cushion-shaped alien ambulated forward some six feet past Pretorius. “There are four—no, make that five—Antareans that I can see in the open space. There seems to be an office, or some kind of room, off to the left. I can't see into it, but it's very well lit, so I assume there are Antareans in it.”

“Anyone in the ships?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“Okay,” said Pretorius. “Hold still another minute or two, and see if you can spot any movement
behind
the ships.”

Ninety seconds later Proto spoke again. “There are at least three more behind the ship, possibly as many as six. The ships are both poised under a broad shaft. I can't see more than seventy or eighty feet high, but based especially on what Kramin told us, that figures to be the shaft to the planet's surface. If it isn't, then I've no idea how the ships got here in the first place.”

“Okay,” said Pretorius. “Snake, Felix, Pandora, take everything that's left of center, for lack of a better way of describing it. Irish, you and I will take the right. Nmumba, you're in no condition to fight, and Kramin, I'm not going to ask you to kill your own species.”

“I've already killed a member of my own race,” said Kramin. “That's why I'm here, remember?”

He held out his hand for a weapon, and Pretorius handed him his burner.

“Remember,” said Pretorius, “we want to do this quick. We've got to get onto a ship before any reinforcements get down here.” He double-checked the charge on his screecher. “Let's go!”

They emerged from the tunnel, weapons blazing. Four Antareans fell instantly. A fifth one screamed for help before collapsing, and three more raced out of the office, weapons in hand.

“Felix!” yelled Pretorius. “Concentrate on the ones from the office!”

Four more Antareans fell before the barrage before they could even identify who was firing at them, but the three new ones turned their fire on Pretorius and his crew, who hit the dirt while still returning fire.

“Goddammit!” growled Ortega.

“You hit?” asked Pretorius without taking his eyes off the enemy.

“No,” said Ortega. “My burner's stopped functioning. Somebody toss me a weapon.”

Proto crawled a few feet ahead of him. “I'll buy you some time,” he said—and instantly he projected a creature out of every race's worst nightmare, some ten feet in height, half that in width, with a trio of saber-toothed heads possessed of glowing, malevolent eyes, and waving shining claws that seemed to have been fashioned for tearing its enemies painfully apart.

“Goddamn, but that's good!” cried Ortega as Snake tossed him a burner. He got to his feet behind Proto's monster. “Let me get a little closer.”

“Get down, you idiot!” yelled Pretorius, as three weapons were trained on where they thought the heart of Proto's image might be, and since it was only an image, all three shots went right through it.

One went over everyone's heads. Another was wide. But the third ripped into Ortega's neck, severing the jugular and almost decapitating him.

He flew backward and landed at Nmumba's feet.

“I . . . forgot,” he mumbled, and died.

Pretorius and Snake killed two of the three Antareans from the office, and then Kramin nailed the third.

“Choose a ship—quick!” said Pretorius.

“The one on the right,” said Pandora, running toward it.

“Irish and Snake, help Nmumba! Kramin, give me a hand with Felix.”

“But he's dead,” said the Antarean.

“He deserves better than what they'll do for him,” said Pretorius, lifting Ortega's body by the armpits. Kramin took his feet, and within a minute they had loaded his body onto the ship and were climbing aboard themselves.

“You'd better be able to work this thing!” said Pretorius.

“Not a problem, as long as there are no obstructions in this shaft,” answered Pandora.

“Has this thing got a bomb we can leave behind and set to explode?”

“Probably,” she said. “But it could take me five or ten minutes to find it and activate it. Do you want to take that long?”

“Hell, no!” said Pretorius. “Just get us out of here!”

And less than a minute later the ship emerged from the shaft and headed straight for the stratosphere and beyond.

39

They were two days out of the Antares system. Their ship had been sighted and pursued twice, but both times they were able to elude the Coalition ships that were after them.