I grumbled in frustration, shifted position in a vain attempt to relieve my increasing discomfort, and wished that my conveyance didn't smell quite so strongly of spice.
Then I forgot the cave problem entirely ... because once again the nutmeg odor had triggered an extraneous thought. But this time it was not a memory but a shocking realization.
The bin of our yaga was full.
It was the first piece of concrete proof that illicit activity of some kind was taking place. The descriptive holovid had clearly shown that off-season sampling operations involved gathering only small amounts of diseased fruit. And Bob Bas-combe had expressed surprise at the quantities he'd seen on the ground, since resumption of harvesting on Grant Micro-continent had been postponed because of presumed crop failure.
The conclusion was obvious: data feedback from Nutmeg-414—if not from all ten Grant sites—had been faked.
I shared the brainstorm with my companions over the intercom. We speculated on how long the Haluk might have been working on Cravat and how much PD32:C2 they'd managed to churn out. The consensus on the first query was at least two years, maybe as long as four. On the second: maybe a lot, if the fruits had been well and truly virus-infected and the crop a bumper.
1 also wondered whether Galapharma had played a role in setting up the operation in the first place. The more we discussed the matter, the more that scenario made sense. In fact, it seemed the only logical way the rip-off could have been accomplished.
I assumed that the aliens had demanded more and more of the genen vector for their alleged planetary modification projects back in the Haluk Cluster. Gala and its partner Concerns could purchase only so much PD32:C2 on the open market for their impatient client without causing a noticeable blip in the product's sales figures, which might have attracted unwanted scrutiny at Rampart Central. After all, the stuff was supposed to be only of minor use in human biotransform schemes.
If the Haluk had been desperately insistent on obtaining more of the vector—and their unprecedented collusion with the Qastt pirates proved that they were—then Gala and its allies might have been forced into the Nutmeg finagle on pain of having the "mutually beneficial" arrangement disrupted.
Galapharma agents, with access to information dating back to the Concern's former occupation of Cravat, could have helped the aliens select an appropriate area to plunder. Teaching them how to use the automated production equipment would have been child's play. Gala might have put moles in place to expedite illicit shipments of supplies to the clandestine operation. Its agents would certainly have bribed the Dome engineers in charge of Nutmeg sampling to ensure that the Grant facilities stayed "inactive" as long as possible.
Sooner or later, of course, an inspection team would come to the remote, marginal microcontinent to do an eyeball evaluation of the crop—at which point the secret operation would be forced to shut down.
Unless Galapharma owned the planet again by then.
* * *
Nutmeg-414, identical to other facilities of its type, was constructed of slick polymeroid that discouraged jungle life from growing or roosting on it. Its gated compound, which included a hopper-pad, was ringed by a tall electrified mesh fence and spindly armed Kagi units on posts. The six hexagonal building modules were put together like a mosaic-tile flower with one fat petal missing. The central ops unit contained the main computer, communications equipment, robotic control, and the refrigerated vector-storage vaults. Its single outer wall also provided the principal "human" entrance to the facility—the most likely place for setting up an intruder-alert monitor.
The other hex modules were attached at the five sides of central. Four adjoining sections contained the production facilities; the fifth, at the far left, was our initial goal—receiving and maintenance—where all robot equipment entered and exited. Its entrance was undoubtedly monitored to detect larger animals, but we didn't give a damn. No one would see us hidden inside the chicks.
Below the antenna cupola on the central module were three photon guns designed not only to defend the place from larger aggressors but also to perform yardwork and all-around tidying. One of them began zapping away prissily in our wake as the gate swung wide and we passed through onto the paved apron, sterilizing the organic matter our yaga had tracked into the compound. A sweeperbot vacuumed up the leavings.
Ahead of us the iris door of the decon chamber opened. I called over the intercom to the others, "Visors down and fastened, nightsights into neutral. Be ready to switch off your ventilator intake and close your eyes when we get inside."
Bob Bascombe had laughingly called it the carwash from hell—but assured us that a properly suited human would survive it. It was a cramped place barely large enough to hold a standing yaga, and its walls were studded with arcane gadgetry. When the iris-door closed and the lid of my chick-container popped wide open, I hastily shut down my suit's air intake, squinched my eyes, and braced myself. A thundering deluge of chemical solution crashed onto my prostrate form, bouncing me around as though I were in some monstrous Jacuzzi. It was followed by a series of gentler alternating detergent baths and rinses, which washed away the liquefied remains of stowaway life-forms. The water drained through scuppers in the chick's floor. Banks of brilliant actinic lamps switched on, drying the machinery and us and killing whatever hardy microorganisms had survived the wash cycle. Then the lids of the chicks closed once again.
I turned on my air, cracked open the container so I could peer out, and unholstered my stun-pistol. The decon chamber was now normally illuminated, and it was unnecessary to activate my goggles. I discovered that our yaga was a vivid chartreuse color, while the chicks were cherry-red.
"Get your Ivanovs ready," I said softly. "You spot any aliens, give 'em at least three darts." That dosage was enough to kill an adult human being. The Haluk were supposedly tougher than us, especially in the lepidodermoid phase, and I wanted to be sure that anybody we hit stayed down for the count.
The inner door opened and our yaga walked through into the main receiving area, a windowless room some thirty meters wide. The floor, walls, and ceiling were aseptic white. Bob had told us that there were no overhead surveillance cams in the fully automated Nutmeg factories. Trouble-shooter robots that patrolled the interior, alert for malfunctions, were equipped with sensors that might conceivably have been programmed to detect intruders. Odds were, however, that the Haluk hadn't bothered.
Two other yagas were already inside the receiving module. One, opposite the entry door, was having its fruit unloaded through a rumbling power evacuator sealed to its rear end. The second stood patiently in a bay to the left while blue and gold fixbots made repairs to its leg. Tall shelves flanking the maintenance bay held spare parts in transparent pods and myriad coded supply containers. A flock of inactive chicks was parked to the right of the entry. A sweeper scouted the gleaming floor for litter, and a few other small industrial robots rolled hither and yon on unfathomable errands. Our harvester clanked across the room to wait its turn at the unloader.
When it stopped moving, I whispered, "Seems clear. You two see anything?"
The responses were negative.
"Okay. Everybody out of the tubs. Make it quick. Into the rear of the maintenance bay, behind the bank of blue cabinets. Ivor, give me a hand. I'm stiff as a plank."
Matt covered both of us, her Ivanov stunner held at the ready, as the powerful young man helped me to alight and half dragged me into the shadows. Two hours of travel in the chick along with the carwash pummeling hadn't done my injuries any good. The analgesic I'd swallowed earlier had worn off and now every movement was agony.
I stood next to the wall, swaying, hands trembling as I retracted my visor, dragged off my hood, and unzipped the front of my suit to get at the medicuff armlet.
"Is that safe?" Ivor asked me anxiously.
"The factory interior is okay," I told him. "Nearly sterile. No telling about the caves, though. We'd better keep our suits on, but there's no reason why
we can't breathe the ambient air... aaah!" I'd found the cuff's dose pads, hit myself with max painkiller, and experienced blessed relief. For good measure I added a stimulant jolt.
Matt watched me, frowning. "You can't just keep taking that stuff. Sooner or later you'll crash." She had flipped back her hood and headset. The dark curls were damp, the pressure of the goggles had made marks around her nose and eyes, and her cheeks were streaked with sweat. She looked adorable.
"I'll be fine once we get moving," I told her. "Stiff muscles are the worst of it."
"No—your bruised kidney is the worst of it," she contradicted me. "You'd better check your urine for blood, and I want to see your back injuries, too."
"I'm in charge of the Boy Scout troop again, Matt."
"Only if you're fit! Take off your suit."
We argued. She won. While she and Ivor sorted through our equipment, deciding what we'd take with us, I retired discreetly behind the bank of parts cabinets and divested.
Underneath our suits we wore polypro turtleneck sweatshirts, pull-on baggy pants, and soc-moc bootees with contour soles. I used one of the scalable defecation pouches to collect some precious bodily fluid and checked it out. There was an abnormal pinkness, but not too much. The dull internal ache of the damaged organ bothered me a lot less than the residual pain in my bashed upper back and rump. Leaving the souvenir for the sweeperbots, I shambled back to join my companions.
"Any blood?" Matt was brisk.
"The vintage was not quite fumé blanc. I'd call it a negligible rose."
"Let's see your back," she ordered. Muttering, I hiked up my shirt and turned around, and damned if the woman didn't pull open the elasticized band of my pants, sneak a peak at my bruised buns, and let go with a sharp snap. I yelped, and my heart gave a little leap.
Purely clinical... or curious?
"Colorful," she diagnosed, "but at least the skin is unbroken. There's nothing to be done about your cracked ribs outside of a hospital. The first-aid manual says they'll heal without treatment. You should take an antibiotic for the kidney. Does that armlet thing of yours have any in stock?"
"No." I was still rapt in speculation over the waistband snap.
"Never mind. We'll get some from the meds box." She punched the appropriate code on the sealed container and it delivered two little pill-popper units designed to be used with the sippers of envirosuits.
She shot the AB perles directly into my open mouth. I swallowed them, gave her a manly chin-up smile, and started pulling my envirosuit back on.
"Ivor and I have sorted through the equipment," Matt said. "His pack is too bulky and conspicuous, so we'll leave most of the survival gear and food behind. The Ivanov stun-guns should be our weapons of choice from here on in. I'll bring one of the Claus-Gewitters on a shoulder-sling and Ivor will take Bob's Harvey. He's also got the utility buoy and its corn-unit in his small pack. Your sore back won't tolerate any weight, so we'll hang a canteen and a carry-pouch with rations and TP and a few other small items of equipment on your belt. Is that acceptable?"
"Perfect." I struggled to get my stiff right arm into the suit sleeve. Ivor silently helped me. I zipped up, fastened the belt and secured the stun-gun holster, and put on the headset with the goggles retracted. "Where's the subterrain chart?"
"I have it." She spread it on top of one of the parts cabinets.
"About three hundred meters southeast of the factory is a sizable cavern that looks promising." I pointed it out on the map. "If the Haluk are using it, they'd most likely have cut a connecting tunnel to the closest hex module. Unfortunately, that would be on the opposite side of the building." I showed them how we would have to pass through the central ops unit to reach the module that housed the end of the vector-production line and the presumed tunnel. "Any questions?"
They looked at me in silence, Ivor's eyes full of eager excitement, Mart's ojos negros somber and troubled.
I stowed the chart in my belt pouch, drew my Ivanov, and selected the three-dart option. "Let's go. Ivor, you're tail-gunner again. Keep checking our rear. Matt, stay beside me whenever you can. Let's try to move as quickly as possible."
The door to the ops module was to the right of the un-loader. It was a conventional manual slider with a recessed latch. I did a countdown to three, then whipped it open. We discovered a vestibule that was devoid of life. An airlock with exit above it obviously led to the compound outside. Two switch-off loaderbots flanked it. There were no surveillance devices visible.
Other doors on our left were labeled cryostore and operations. I slid open the first with great caution. When the room proved to be unoccupied, I motioned the others to follow me inside. We checked the cold lockers where packages of PD32:C2 would ordinarily be kept until collection. Every compartment was empty.
"Funny," I said. "They must keep the stuff down in the caves." We moved on, giving the ops room a miss since it was the most likely place to be infested with supervisory Haluk. The last door at the far end of the vestibule had a sign saying production 4.
"Heads up," I whispered. "This could be it. I'm gonna take a peek first. Stand out of range."
I sat down creakily on the floor beside the door, opened it an exiguous crack and looked in. No human being ever expects to be spied on at knee-level, and I hoped the Haluk were similarly constrained.
At first I saw very little. The room was much more dimly lit than the vestibule, and a bulky piece of orange-painted equipment was parked almost directly in front of the door. I finally identified it as a roboporter, probably intended to carry packages of PD32:C2 from the end of the production line to the cryostore. It was deactivated. I motioned for Matt and Ivor to wait and crawled into the production room, pistol in hand.
The robot was large enough to hide me from the view of the five Haluk at work out on the factory floor.
They were in the asexual lepidodermoid phase, thick-limbed, barrel-bodied, tridigital, their swollen heads riding neckless on broad shoulders. The leathery skin was a dark indigo color, having a rough, pebbly texture. The five individuals were in differing stages of the allomorphic cycle. Each one varied in the number of dull golden scutes scattered on its trunk, upper arms, and thighs. Those having the fewest dermal plates were most agile, while their more pachydermatous mates toiled in ponderous slow motion. The large eyes beneath sheltering brow ridges were masked by a dark pig-mented protective epithelium and resembled gleaming balls of jet. Their noses were mere horizontal slits and their mouths tightly pursed sphincters. The heads of all five were densely scaled, an evolutionary device that had once been essential, eons ago on their appalling home world, protecting their brains from increasing solar radiation as the planet raced in its elongate orbit toward perilous perihelion.
Four of the alien workers were hauling containers from the terminus of an elaborate packaging machine and clumsily stacking them on two simple wheeled hand trolleys. Low-tech carts for low-mentality porters. The fifth, a minimally scaled being wearing a utility belt, whom I took to be the foreman, stood at the machine's manual control panel starting and stopping the flow of containers for the convenience of the others.
I crept back into the vestibule to Matt and Ivor. He helped me to my feet. "They're in there," I whispered. "Five lepidos. Come ahead slowly. There's a big robot just inside the door that we can hide behind."
We watched for about ten minutes until both trolleys were stacked head-high. Then the foreman shut down the line and spoke a few guttural words in the alien language to the laborers, who clapped their hands listlessly in what must have been a gesture of assent. They paired up and began pushing the two heavily laden carriers toward the far side of the room, where other machines and storage racks loomed in semidark-ness. About three meters from the wall the sluggish procession halted. The leading Haluk spoke again and the others shoved the trolleys close together. All five gathered around them and the foreman touched one of the controls on its belt.
We heard a whirring sound. The aliens and their loa
d of PD32:C2 began to sink very slowly on a circular platform.
"It's an elevator!" I hissed. "Shoot! Take 'em out right now!"
Matt and Ivor surged past me, firing the stun-guns as they ran. The foreman fell first, uttering a faint wail. The others folded apathetically one after another, probably too dull-witted to realize what was happening.
With the descending elevator still less than a meter below the floor, we jumped down onto it. Packages of viral vector went flying, some rumbling down the shaft. I landed on top of the foreman's body with a painful jolt and nearly slipped off the unguarded edge of the platform. Ivor seized my arm in a steely grip and hauled me back aboard. I still clutched my Ivanov, even though I hadn't gotten off a single shot.
An alien moan sounded. It was the most thick-skinned Haluk of the bunch, still moving. Matt clambered over the fallen and I heard zzzt-zzzt-zzzt as she fired one last triple-dart burst, then curtly announced, "All zonked now. Or dead."
I thrust my pistol back into its holster and knelt beside the foreman, unfastening its utility belt. We were moving down through a roughly cut shaft with walls that gleamed with seeping water, passing nooks and crevices and one big unlit side tunnel fanged with dripstone.
"This gadget is probably the elevator control," I said, studying the belt. "Let's see if I can manage an emergency stop." There were three studs—white, black, and green, labeled with alien hieroglyphs. I hit white, since it would be brightest for lepido eyes with built-in sunglasses.
Bingo! The whirring sound cut off and we juddered to a halt. I listened intently, but all I heard was the tinkle of dripping water and a very faint rushing sound.
"Ivor, put on your goggles, go to long-range IR, and see if you can spot anything live moving around down at the bottom."
He flopped onto his stomach and did a scan. "No one below, Helly. The remaining depth is 172 meters, according to my optical rangefinder. Well below the area scanned in the subterrain chart. All I can see is the base of the elevator mechanism and several empty handcarts. There's light coming from a tunnel at the left."