Chapter 12

Mixing with the street people, Drummer in sight up ahead, they moved swiftly. Adari trailed Drummer; Brad next followed by Myra and Kumiko. Zolan and Hodak brought up the rear. Drummer successfully resisted the temptation to look back.

Zolan tensed, activating the mind-mike in his armpit. Brad acknowledged by stepping up his pace. He passed Adari and drew alongside Drummer.

“Your buddy, Scarf, must have had a friend in the bar,” he said. “We’re being tailed.”

“Another hundred meters. Cut into the alley on the left.”

Drummer responded. “It’ll take us through a maze that still confounds the street people. We’ll have a better chance in there to lose whoever is following.”

A corner loomed. They squeezed into a narrow, rubble-strewn passageway between high, rough walls. Stumbling along the barely lighted shaft they entered an alley, equally shabby, crowded with street people, refuse, and abandoned machinery.

They sped along the alley, noting its darkened, fuser-formed doorways, some empty, others clogged with trash. Inside, they saw the shadowy outlines of men, huddled women and children.

Drummer twisted from one alley into the next, and then another.

He ducked through a gap in one wall, squeezed along a narrow hallway and exited into an open space. They packed up close, running and stumbling.

Drummer slowed next to a wall of composite blocks. Several were missing, leaving a space through which they squirmed. It was tighter than they had experienced. In near darkness, they had reached a dead end.

Ahead was loose rubble forming a heap about two meters high. Drummer clawed his way around the side. He motioned the others forward and slipped out of sight.

Following one behind the other, they saw an opening in the surface. Responding to Drummer’s beckoning, they dropped into its darkness. The fall was less than a couple of meters. A light glowed from a wall to just enough to illuminate Drummer.

They were in a small, roughly rounded chamber. The walls were fused rubble, irregular and jagged. The floor was a mixture of Plutonian detritus.

Drummer knelt beside a rock that protruded from the wall. He twisted the rock, pulled, and pushed it sideways. Reaching into the vacated space, he placed his palm on a flat, smooth disk.

A low hum from the wall. A fissure formed where the wall met the trash-laden floor. The breach lengthened and curved, its ends meeting the wall. The section dropped away into darkness.

“Move, move,” Drummer snarled his impatience. “Scarf has this entire sector blocked out by now. He’ll throw his gangs into the alleys and cover every square meter. These subsurface crawl spaces and links are our only way. Feel for the ladder.”

He lowered himself through the opening and vanished.

Brad was committed. His glance ordered the others to follow Drummer. Hodak passed his light to Brad and dropped through first, then Zolan followed Myra, Adari and Kumiko. Brad dropped through and pushed the cover up until it snapped. Closed. He felt vibrations above him, then, after several seconds, silence.

“Must be spreading the dust of our tracks and the outline of the cover,” Zolan murmured, looking up from immediately below.

The ladder was rickety, and the shaft narrow and long. When Brad reached bottom, he was in a low gallery, about two meters square, hacked out of the rock. They were in the hub of a dozen passageways that led off in as many directions from low entries.

Drummer bent and disappeared through one of the entries. One after the other, they followed.

The entry led into a utility service tunnel, the walls lined with scores of braided cables and banks of wall switches and junctions. Neutro-lighted sconces glowed at intervals, providing dim direction to their flight.