But when the door opened, Scientist Milik was standing there.
She entered the cell and handed me a bulky sack. "Here's some sturdier clothing for you. Get dressed, and for God's sake be quick about it."
The faded blue jeans, snaggy purlaine pullover, and tired athletic shoes and socks had too obviously been recently worn by someone else. I flung them onto the floor. "Why should I bother?" I snarled. "You're just going to kill me—or strip me and dip me in the dystasis tank."
"The situation has changed," Scientist Milik said. "Drastically."
The door was half open behind her. I couldn't see the guards in the corridor outside. Which meant that they couldn't see me.
I took a chance and jumped her, twisting one arm behind her back and hooking her delicate alien neck in the crook of my elbow. "Tell your guards to put down their weapons or I'll snap your spine!"
She went limp. "Don't hurt me... no guards... I'm alone... here to help..."
Matt darted forward to check outside the cell. "She's right. The tunnel's empty."
"I'm going to let you go," I told the Haluk. "Don't scream or try to use your wrist communicator. I'll kill you if you do."
Big bad Helly Frost. No forty-kilo alien female was going to get the best of me. She tottered as I released her. I led her to the bunk-ledge and sat her down. "Now explain."
"There's no time. Please! You must hurry and put those clothes on, then come with me." Her voice still had the grating husky quality that I remembered from our earlier encounter in the hospital, but there was something peculiar about it, apart from her facile use of human idiom.
Suddenly I knew. Scientist Milik was speaking to us with her exotic Haluk vocal organs. She wasn't wearing a translator.
"Who the hell are you?" I grabbed her inhumanly slender wrist and yanked her to her feet. "What do you want with us?"
She said calmly, "I am Milik, head of the entire Haluk genetic engineering project. What I want from you is my life... and those of all the people in the Nutmeg-414 cavern facility."
"What the fuck are you talking about!"
"The man called Commander Elgar—do you know who he is?"
"More or less. He works for Galapharma."
"He's in charge of security for the PD32:C2 operation.
About half an hour ago he received orders via subspace to destroy this installation."
'What? "
"There's some sort of explosive device in the security rooms. None of the Haluk know about this except Woritak and me. Several human troopers were careless speaking in front of us, because neither of us was wearing a universal translator. I seldom wear mine, and Woritak's had been taken away so he could assist during your interrogation—"
"The bomb!" I reminded her.
"It will detonate in less than two hours unless someone can deactivate it. No Haluk has the expertise. I hoped that one of you might know what to do."
I said, "Oh, shit."
Milik went on hurriedly. "All of the human personnel have left the cavern. Administrator Ru Lokinak was told by Elgar that the Galapharma humans were orchestrating our defense against an imminent incursion by Zone Patrol. But I believe that the commander intends to arrange the destruction of all the other secret facilities on Grant Microcontinent. Elgar's men sealed the elevator shaft and the tunnel-link to the other Nutmeg factories before they left us. They told Ru Lokinak it was a precautionary measure against discovery."
The explanation hit me like a thunderbolt. I said to Matt, "My God, Mimo must have got away in Plomazo—and now Galapharma's going for damage control!" I scooped up the clothes Milik had brought and began hauling them on over my flimsy scrubs.
"Is that what happened?" Matt asked the alien woman.
"Yes. I overheard Elgar himself say that a Haluk starship was unable to locate your vessel in orbit, or anywhere in the Cravat system."
That was a puzzler. I couldn't believe that Mimo had deliberately abandoned us, or violated my orders. But there was no time to worry about it. I finished dressing and the three of us hurried out of the cell and headed down the ill-lit corridor. Matt insisted on bringing her envirosuit, saying its built-in rescue beacon might be useful helping Zone Patrol home in on us, if Elgar's bomb didn't finish us off first.
After we'd gone a short distance, Milik said, "There are two guards lying unconscious at their post at the end of this tunnel. I subdued them with sedative injectors on the way in. You'll want to don their uniforms. We can't risk being stopped on the way to the security rooms."
"Good idea," I said."
"Woritak will be meeting us in security. You need have no fear of him. He's ... a good person. We are friends because both of us are physicians. Unfortunately, many other Haluk have a deeply ingrained distrust of humanity. Given the premeditated actions of Commander Elgar and his Galapharma superiors, I can hardly call it misplaced."
After a few hundred meters, past what Milik said were food storerooms, we came upon a startling sight. The tunnel widened, and on either side were scores of shallow rock niches containing objects that resembled dull golden mummy cases. They were of varying sizes, most over two meters high, and covered with intricate ribbing and shallow chased ornamentation.
"They are Haluk people," Scientist Milik explained, "resting in the testudinal phase. Before the race colonized the stars, the Big Change occurred simultaneously among everyone each year, when the home planet's orbit carried it into the region of intense solar radiation. Later, on other worlds where the allomorphic adaptation no longer served its evolutionary purpose, the cycles of individuals gradually varied in their timing. The synchrony no longer prevails, but the Big Change is still very inconvenient for an intelligent race. A nonmutated Haluk person can still expect to spend 140 days estivating in a chrysalis, two hundred days as a gracilomorph, and sixty as a transitional lepidodermoid."
"Humanity would have helped you cope," I said, "if you'd dealt with us in a civilized manner."
"There was fear," Milik admitted. "And an innate racial pride that shrank from altering evolutionary destiny. And above all a stubborn refusal to take the first step. To ask aliens to transmute the Haluk into others?'
Matt and I traded glances. We could understand the Haluk dilemma objectively, but not the means they had taken to amend it.
Matt spoke sadly. "Even if we do manage to save you and your people from Elgar's bomb, you won't escape our justice. The conspiracy between Galapharma and the Haluk has cost human lives and damaged human institutions. You've deliberately violated our laws and you'll pay the price."
Scientist Milik laughed. It was a rusty, pathetic sound. "I've been paying the price for years."
* * *
The small guard post was in an alcove just short of the main cavern. It took only a moment for Matt and I to strip the two unconscious graciles of their helmets, uniform jackets, and Allenby stun-guns. We opened the door leading into the cavern and continued on at a fast walk, unchallenged.
A few lepido Haluk were moving about in the huge underground chamber, apparently doing janitorial chores. We saw no other alien troopers, and there was no sign of extraordinary activity or alarm. The genetic engineering complex looked exactly as it had earlier. White-coated gracile technicians continued to hover around the gleaming tanks, tending the immersed subjects. The uncanny central jewel construct throbbed serenely, transmuting allomorphic Haluk into stable Haluk and turning Eve into one of themselves.
Outside the force-field umbrella the floor was wet from the dripping stalactites and scored with shallow drainage channels. At the far right, below the balcony where the ramp began, was a sort of loading dock. Numerous trolleys loaded with packaged PD32:C2 stood about, but there were no Haluk working at the dock. A small Homerun gravomagnetic truck was partially visible behind banks of storage modules, waiting inside the entrance to an arched passage much larger than the one on the cave's upper level that led to the elevator.
"Is that the tunnel leading to the other Nutmeg facilities?"
r />
I asked Milik. She said that it was, but it had been rendered impassable.
"Where does the truck usually take those packages of vector? Don't you use all the stuff here in the genen complex?"
"Only a small percentage of the factory output is needed for this special work. Most of the viral vector produced here— and all of it made in the other plants on Grant Microcontinent— is taken through tunnels to a depot on the north shore. Periodically a human shuttle secretly carries it into orbit for transshipment to Haluk worlds."
"I'm surprised you take the risk of doing any genetic engineering here on Cravat."
"It was not my decision."
We had crossed the cavern and were on the verge of entering the large, well-illuminated tunnel leading to the hospital and the security rooms. Abruptly, I stopped the alien female and swung her around so I could see her blue-skinned face. "Milik— are you a transmuted human being?"
"Of course I'm human!" she said, her voice breaking. Then the words poured out in a rush. "I've been waiting for a chance to escape ever since 1 found out the real purpose of the demiclones. I was such an incredible fool! Thinking I'd be the great benefactor of a worthy, misunderstood race. It was all my idea, you see. I was motivated by pure altruism, but the cost of my project made participation by the Concerns necessary—"
"What are you talking about?" I demanded. "Who the devil are you?"
Scientist Milik said, "I was Emily Blake Konigsberg."
"But... you're dead!" Matt exclaimed.
"My demiclone is dead. The one who would have returned to Earth on a Galapharma starship and—" She caught herself. "We have no time for this! Follow me."
She began to run. Matt and I did, too.
Chapter 20
Physician Woritak was sitting in a swivel chair behind a desk that bore a nameplate saying a. h. white, duty officer.
Chalky & Co. were gone, of course, and in the security office there were definite evidences of a hasty departure: an upset coffee cup on a second desk making a drying mess of some printouts, a kicked-over wastebasket, a shelf of data-dime containers wildly disarranged as if someone had rummaged among them, and a large weapons locker with the door gaping and the racks empty.
The interrogation machines were gone, too. They were probably Bronson Elgar's personal property that he carried along everywhere with him on assignment—like golf clubs.
Woritak once again wore a translator. The first thing he did when we burst into the room was ask how I was feeling.
"Scared," I said. "My health is excellent. Where's the bomb?"
He pointed economically to the communications room adjacent to the main office. I went in and winced at the smell of ozone. Someone had methodically drilled almost every piece of com equipment with a Kagi blue-ray electron zapper, isolating the facility from the external universe.
The lone untouched unit was smallish, appropriately colored black, and bore the manufacturer logo of Carnelian Concern. It squatted in a corner, looking neglected, segregated from its defunct and harmless compeers. Its telltales gleamed dully, and the screen of its integral computer badly needed a cleaning. Perhaps no one had done more than bump into the infernal machine and curse it as a useless dustcatcher from the time it had been installed.
Until today, when it finally found its use.
The display showed only the countdown: -102:33 minutes. I removed the handmike and tried to enter the computer in the conventional manner. Access denied. After racking my brains for a moment, I came up with the ICS official override for Carnelian models, tapped a few pads, and recited it.
Tah-dah! I was inside, able to ascertain the device's mode of dedication and read the directories—even though the file contents remained locked away. I studied and I frowned while Matt looked over my shoulder. Physician Woritak found another place to sit down. He ignored us, reading an alien slate and occasionally whispering into his wristcom. The once (and perhaps future) Emily Blake Konigsberg leaned against the doorframe, her bright blue inhuman eyes shuttered and one four-fingered gracile hand pressed tightly against her mouth. Perhaps she was praying.
If so, heaven wasn't listening.
"Well," I said at length, "to quote a very ancient cliche, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that there is no bomb."
Konigsberg's eyes flew open and she uttered a joyous little cry. Woritak only stared at me inscrutably.
"The bad news is that we have something worse. If I read this computer correctly, we are dealing with a contingency demolition setup called a photon-blast camouflet system. When it's triggered, multiple generating units scattered throughout the underground facility will discharge wide-angle actinic flares, vaporizing or melting down everything inside the caves. The camouflet feature means that surrounding rock strata will not be significantly damaged. Neither will the Nutmeg factory. There won't be any sort of rupture at the surface of the ground. All traces of Haluk occupation will tidily vanish, and so will we."
"Can you stop it?" Matt asked.
"I've seen a similar system just once before. It was years ago when I was a young field agent, just starting my career in the ICS. We were raiding an underground contraband depot on Gemmula-5 in the Orion Arm that reputedly belonged to a shadow division of Carnelian Concern. They were suspected of trading high-tech equipment illicitly to the Y'tata Empire. Our team had a whiz hacker, but she couldn't disarm the cam-ouflet modules or stop the countdown. We all ran for our lives."
"You're saying you can't deactivate this system, either," Matt said.
"Noway."
"It was to be feared that a dire outcome would prevail," said Physician Woritak through his translator. He rose from his seat, making a gesture toward the exit. "Let us leave this place. This one did not wish to communicate pessimism earlier to Scientist Milik, for which reason she was encouraged to release you two humans. Now, however, you might wish to consider how you will spend the time preceding your imminent death. This one has just now summoned all of the people to the main cavern, adjacent to the genetic engineering complex. After they are informed of the situation, Administrator Ru Lokinak will lead us in the ritual of docile thanatopsis, since there is no Anointed Elder in the company. Perhaps you humans will wish to participate."
"Thanks. But we're not quite ready to die yet." I was glad that the translator would extract the sarcasm from my reply. Woritak did seem to be a well-meaning soul.
I turned to Konigsberg. "You said the elevator shaft and the connecting tunnel leading to the next Nutmeg facility were sealed off. How?"
"Elgar's men used their Harvey blasters to collapse the rock, blocking the way with thousands of tons of rubble."
"I don't suppose the Haluk troopers have any heavy-duty photon weapons."
"No. Only humans were allowed to carry those. Our guards are armed with stun-guns."
Woritak said, "The blasters and other destructive weapons were kept in the locker in the next room. As you saw, that locker is now empty. Our maintenance engineers have small rock-cutting torches for repair work, but it would take many hours for those tools to burn through either of the blockages."
So much for that idea, not that I'd thought it would amount to much. "What model force-field generator forms the umbrella over the genen complex?"
Woritak lifted his wristcom. "One will consult the appropriate person." He muttered. The com emitted untranslated alien gibberish.
"Maintenance Engineer Til Iminik says that the device bears the designation Sheltok UF-90."
Another washout. That particular generator was too weak to form a shield against an actinic flare, even if we could figure out how to modify the field projection from umbrella to dome. I had one last notion.
"The tunnel leading to the other Nutmeg site: Do either of you know which direction it takes? Does it go south?"
Emily Konigsberg shook her head. "I have no idea."
"One is certain," Woritak said, "that it trends to the northeast."
"What," I asked h
im, "did you do with the belt and pouch that your orderlies took off me when I first arrived?"
"It is probably still lying in the nonsterile-materials tray in the hospital annex. This one forgot to instruct the lepido technicians to dispose of it. Because they are deficient in volition, they would not do so under their own initiative."
"Great! Emily, how long to get my sister Eve out of dy stasis?"
She was taken aback by the abrupt change of subject, and perhaps also by my use of her human name. The harsh voice faltered. "I think—less than thirty minutes. We—We would have to disconnect the apparatus, check her vital signs, and give necessary medication. But why not let the poor woman pass away peacefully?"
I ignored that, even though it was a valid question. "What kind of shape will Eve be in when she comes out? Conscious? Able to walk?"
"Semiconscious at best. She may recognize you. But she'll be very weak for several hours, until normal metabolic processes are reestablished. Certainly not able to walk. And her immune system won't be up to speed for days. We have no medicuffs available."
"You and Woritak go get Eve out of that tank. Matt, give them your envirosuit. They can dress Eve in it. At least she can breathe filtered air and stay warm and dry."
"During what?" Matt demanded.
"Our escape. Maybe." I picked up the Allenby stunner carbine I'd been carrying, in case some of the Haluk troopers weren't yet in a mood to contemplate death with docility. "Matt, you come along with me to the hospital. We're going to get the subterrain chart in my belt-pouch."
"What good will it do us?" she asked.
"Remember the half-eaten testudo Bob found? The one he nicknamed Luckless Larry? That Haluk came from here— and it didn't use the Nutmeg connector tunnel, which goes in the wrong direction. That means there's got to be another way out. Let's go find it."
Emily Konigsberg offered her alien wristcom unit to me. "Here, take this communicator. Press the black button to reach Woritak. I've also programmed it with the countdown timing."