Chapter 18

Moments later, the two groups of Masters converged at the gate, two from one direction and five from the other.

“After them!” commanded Placer. “But stay together. We’ll have to try to hunt them down in the vats, and maybe the Toughs can help us, but we don’t want to get separated so they can pick us off one by one.”

“Wait, Placer, there’s something you ought to know,” said one of the two Masters who had come from the direction of the conference room. “Greyde called out a few minutes ago to tell us he had word from Vidonati in the control room. Those groundcars that were hanging around had attacked one of the entrance buildings.”

“Space!” growled Placer. “There must be a conspiracy involved here somewhere. We’d better stay up here, then.”

He pulled the lever beside the gate to the ramp, and it rumbled down and crashed into place.

“At least, those two are trapped below,” he said with satisfaction. “We can hunt them down at our leisure when we’ve repelled this attack from outside. If we can take them alive, I’m of a mind to make them pay well for their responsibility in our losing all our experimental Jellies.”

The seven of them went on to the conference room, picking their way among the bodies of the Jellies. Placer took over the intercom from Greyde.

“Vidonati, this is Placer,” he said. “What’s the situation?”

“The groundcars attacked the south building,” replied Vidonati. “They moved in and concentrated all three car beams on the airlock and burned it through. I counted nine men in marsuits who left the groundcars and went into the building. Of course, as soon as they started blasting the airlocks, I closed the emergency barrier to block off the downward ramp.”

“Obviously, since we still have air in the place,” commented Placer dryly. “You’d better call Mars City and get them to send help.”

“I’ve already done that,” said Vidonati. “A jet squadron’s on its way.”

“Good,” said Placer. “They can be here in about five hours, and it will take those rebels, or whoever they are, two or three times that long to burn through one of the emergency barriers, even if they blast an opening and bring their groundcars into the building to bring the groundcars’ big guns on it.”

“Should I stick it out here, or seal all the barriers and come below?” asked Vidonati. The control room was in the north building.

“Stay up there so you can report on what they’re doing, unless they start to move toward that building,” instructed Placer. “If they do, seal the other emergency barriers at once and come below. We can switch to the emergency radio down here to keep in touch with the task force from Mars City, and just wait it out underground until they clean up these rebels.”

“Good enough,” agreed Vidonati. “I won’t take any chances.”

In the vats below, Dark and Maya made their way to Old Beard’s hideout, their heatguns ready, keeping a sharp lookout for Toughs. They reached it without incident.

Dark looked sadly around the little recess beneath the tangled vegetation, where Old Beard had concealed himself successfully so long from both Toughs and Masters. He had hoped that this reunion with his father would mean many years of companionship between them, once they were free of the Canfell Hydroponic Farm and had found a haven in the Icaria Desert.

But he knew that Old Beard had died in an act that had great meaning to him, a savage revenge that had wiped out the bitter memory of the loss of his wife and had repaid him for twenty-five long years of exile. Old Beard had died nobly.

Dark picked up one of the smaller marsuits.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen above, and we can’t help much by staying inside, now that we can’t hold that corridor and bottle them up in a room until Cheng and the Phoenix break in,” said Dark. “We’d best get up to one of the exit buildings, get out through the airlock and get picked up by one of the groundcars. I don’t need a marsuit, but you can put that on as soon as we get above in the building.”

“Have you been in telepathic touch with Cheng?” asked Maya.

“Yes. They’ve already broken into the south building. That’s the one I came through when I left for Ultra Vires and when I came back. But the Masters let down a heavy emergency barrier on the ramp when they attacked the airlock, and we wouldn’t be able to get through that. There’s a ramp near here that Old Beard told me opens onto the north building. We’ll go there, and I’ll send a call to Cheng to move over and meet us there.”

Dark sent out a call to Cheng and received an acknowledgement. He and Maya started for the ramp, unaware that the building which was their goal housed the farm’s control room, and the watching Vidonati.

Above, a few moments later, Vidonati called Placer on the intercom.

“Placer, they’ve come back to the groundcars and turned them in this direction,” said Vidonati. “I’m going to let down the barriers on the ramps from the east and west buildings, sabotage the controls so they can’t raise them again, and come on down. I’ll lower the barrier to this building from inside, as soon as I get past it on the ramp.”

“All right,” said Placer. “We’ll start getting the emergency radio in operation down here. Do a good job, but do it fast, and don’t get caught up there by the rebels blasting the airlock.”

“I won’t,” promised Vidonati. “It’ll only take me a few minutes, and I can be down the ramp before they can focus their beams on the airlock.”

In the lead groundcar, as the three of them wheeled around and headed slowly for the north building, Cheng turned to one of his companions with a frown.

“I’ve been trying to get through telepathically to Dark, but I can’t reach him,” said Cheng. “He didn’t give any instructions for getting into the building, but they seem to have locked these airlocks by remote control so they can’t be operated. We’ll have to blast this one as we did the other one, because I don’t imagine Dark will be able to open it from inside. He seemed in rather a hurry to be picked up.”

Dark and Maya hurried up the ramp toward the north building. Dark had been concentrating too heavily on finding his way through the vats to receive Cheng’s telepathic call.