The Outposter

  "Just stand here, both of you," Mark mur­mured from under the blanket. Easing out from beneath Spal's legs, he opened the blanket a crack. One of the barriers, and the dark stretch of barred-off walkway beyond, was inches from him. The barred-off walkway did not glow, and its shape seemed to vanish in the gloom less than a dozen feet from where he squatted.

  "Stand here for fifteen minutes after I go," he whispered. "Then go back to the room and lie down. Come back out here three hours from now, and if I'm not here, wait for me. Did you get that?"

  Spal grunted affirmatively, overhead. Cling­ing closely to the shadow of the barrier itself, Mark slipped out from under the skirt of Spal's blanket and through a small gap be­tween the barrier and the railing into the darkness of the barred-off catwalk. He con­tinued to crawl forward on his stomach down the dark catwalk floor until he had covered some distance. Then he paused and looked back.

  Spal and Lily were twenty feet or more behind him, two disparate, blanket-wrapped shapes, staring out over the railing of their little catwalk at nothingness. Mark checked his wristwatch. The glowing hands stood at 1:17. He got to his feet and ran softly forward another fifty feet before he straightened up. Then he slowed to a rapid walk.

  Slowly thereafter he came to a circular stairway, coiling downward. For a second he paused at the head of it, looking tensely in all directions about him. From below came the faint, distant, momentary sound of metal against metal.

  Then he took hold of the railing of the stair and went down into darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  As he descended, he counted the steps. When he had reached the number of sixty-seven, his descending foot jarred on a different surface. Looking down and around, he saw that he had reached an intersection with another catwalk which soared off into the darkness on either side of him.

  It was almost completely dark here—but not quite. A vague general illumination from somewhere prevented total obscurity, so that he was surrounded by a sort of heavy twilight. Farther below, there was an additional, vague glow of illumination, but either the atmos­phere was naturally misty or the lower light was baffled in some fashion, because he could not see much beyond thirty feet in any direc­tion. His nose was all but numb to the Meda V'Dan odour now, but it seemed to Mark that here the air felt thicker in his lungs than it had been above.

  He continued downward. Another sixty-seven steps of descent brought him to a second catwalk. He paused and calculated. The steps were nearly eight inches apart. One hundred and thirty-four steps that far apart would place him one thousand and seventy-two inches, or roughly ninety feet below the level of his starting point, which was level with the entrance from the city platform through which they had entered the building earlier. He should now be, therefore, some ninety feet underground—if that term applied here—but still almost seventy feet above the level of the fused-rock area on which their scout ships had been escorted to a landing.

  Obscurity still yawned below him, but the occasional sounds of heavy weights dragging on a coarse surface, or of metal shivering against metal, were much louder now. The stairs continued downward, and so did he.

  But now, as he descended, the illumination from below grew stronger, and gradually he began to make out shapes in the darkness below him. These grew from vague outlines to reveal themselves as tall stacks of various objects, like crates and materials in a ware­house, and with the last of another set of sixty-seven descending steps he set foot finally on a solid floor, surrounded by high piles of things.

  The floor was metallic, and his first step onto it rang more hollowly than his next as he moved away from the stairs. He looked back to examine the foot of the staircase and saw that below the bottom tread was what seemed to be something like a trapdoor with a circular handle. Presumably the staircase con­tinued on down. He took hold of the handle and tried to lift the door, but it was either locked or too heavy for his strength. He gave up the effort and turned away to examine the nearest stack of objects.

  These turned out to be a set of oblong shapes about the size and general appearance of coffins. But when he reached out to lift one from the top of a stack, it nearly floated into the air at his touch. The objects, whatever they were, were almost as light as air-filled balloons. But he could find no seam or crack in them to suggest that they might be opened, and their use as objects in themselves was un­guessable.

  He moved on, finding each stack made up of different cases or objects and equally in­comprehensible, until he came unexpectedly upon a small pile of the same white Navy-issue blankets that had been provided above for their bedding. As he was making a rough estimate of how many blankets there might be in the pile, there was the shivering sound of metal on metal right behind him.

  Turning sharply, he was just in time to step back as one of the miniature platforms float­ed by him, either towing or being pushed by a low, treaded vehicle with what seemed to be a number of long, jointed, grasping arms sprouting from its top surface. The platform was already carrying several small objects, and as it passed, one of the jointed arms from the treaded vehicle picked something more from a stack opposite the pile of blankets.

  Then both platform and treaded vehicle moved on.

  Mark followed them. Their pace was not slow, and he had to jog to keep up with them. Together, they collected and loaded on the platform several more objects before steering away among the stacks to come up against the wide, soaring surface of a wall in front of which some sort of conveyor lift-belt was in continuous upward motion.

  The burden of the platform was transferred to the steadily upward-moving arms of the conveyor lift, and the two automated vehicles moved off. Mark stepped closer to examine the lift.

  Like the staircase, it too went down through the floor of this warehouse area in which he stood. But here there was an opening through which the belt and arms rose. Mark got as close to the belt as he could and gazed down­ward.

  He stared into a vast, brightly lighted area equal in size to the warehouse floor on which he stood and possibly a hundred feet deep within its massive circular wall. Half a dozen incredibly massive, metal shapes were held in the midspace of this chamber by massive gir­ders. The appearance of these metal shapes was unfamiliar, but everything about them, the strength of the girders supporting them as well as the thickness of the obvious power leads leading from their lower ends into the floor beneath them, identified them as power source engines. But where was the machinery that required such power? Nothing anywhere else in the building had signaled the presence of such machinery.

  Mark looked at his watch. Incredibly, the hands stood at two minutes to four. The three hours he had mentioned to Spal and Lily were almost up.

  He looked about him. He was not lost with respect to his starting point, which had been the foot of the staircase, in spite of his round­about movements in pursuit of the platform and the loading vehicle. Part of memory train­ing at Outposter's Academy had been the en­visioned reference grid on which, in unfam­iliar territory, a graduate automatically counted his steps and turns by mnemonic device. Standing by the conveyor now, he summoned up the grid image in his mind and ran mentally through the chart of numbered steps and turns he had taken since leaving the ladder's foot.

  Envisioned, his path built itself as a white line by jogs and turns and loops from centre point A1 to an ending at square MNP93. The direct line between those two points would lay out a route of two hundred and eighteen feet at twenty degrees inclination to the base line of the wall now at his back.

  There was no doubt he could find his way back to the staircase. But in routing himself around the stacked materials, he would take time, and then there would be the slow, hard climb up two hundred and one eight-inch steps to where Spal and Lily waited. At a rough estimate he would be close to forty minutes overdue by the time he reached them, and he did not have confidence in the level­headedness of either one of them that would ensure their not becoming impatient and doing something foolish that would attract the at
tention of the audio and probably visual monitors the Meda V'Dan obviously had on their human guests.

  Mark looked at the steadily rising arms of the conveyor belt. Then he turned about and caught hold of a rising arm, stepping with both feet onto the one below.

  The belt carried him upward. In a moment, the scene of the warehouse section floor was lost in obscurity once more below him. He was enclosed in grey twilight, moving up through nothingness beside an endless wall-surface that vanished in the darkness above, below, and on both sides of him.

  The ride seemed to go on an interminable time. He glanced at his watch, at the glowing second hand sweeping its dial, and it seemed to him that the hand was moving very slowly.

  Then there was a glimmer of light—a small spot of yellowish illumination directly above him. He approached it rapidly, and it grew in brightness until he saw it as a manhole-shaped opening in a darkly solid floor above, through which the conveyor belt was carrying him.

  He crouched down, tensing himself for quick action in the face of whatever he might find in the light above.

  The conveyor belt lifted him through. He had a glimpse of a reasonably lighted room as he leaped clear of the belt and landed, ready, with his back to the wall. But there was no one in the room, only a floating platform and a loader standing motionlessly by. Mark breathed deeply. Whatever activated the auto­mated vehicles, it was not simply a matter of weight on the conveyor belt.

  He straightened up and took a closer look at the room. It was almost more a passage than a room—long and narrow, reaching to a white-painted door at the far end. Toward the door end was either a small window or a vision screen pickup. He went toward it.

  It was a vision screen, all right, with a con­trol knob below it. Currently, it showed only darkness, and from somewhere about or behind it, an audio pickup brought him the sound of someone, undoubtedly human, breathing slowly and deeply, just on the verge of snoring.

  He reached out and turned the knob. The darkness gave way to the view of a short, empty passageway leading to a green door. He turned the knob again and saw the end of a lighted catwalk leading from a door. He con­tinued to turn the knob and the view moved along the catwalk until it reached an inter­section with an unlighted catwalk, where two figures, one large, one small, wrapped in white blankets, stood waiting. This, then, was the observation room from which his actions and those of the others had been watched earlier by the Meda V'Dan. But there was no alien on watch now. Mark's subterfuge with the blanket, Spal, and Lily to hide his leaving of their common room had been unnecessary.

  Mark shrugged. Alien psychology and reac­tions were unguessable. He turned the screen back to its view of the dark room and turned toward the door at his left. It slid open, re­vealing what was apparently a section of blank wall. But this, too, slipped aside, and he stepped through into the same corridor he had been viewing a second before on the screen.

  He turned about in time to see the wall sec­tion close behind him once more. Closed, it looked as immovable as any other wall part in the passage. He turned and walked openly out onto the dark catwalk and along it until he came up behind Spal and Lily.

  "Time to get back to sleep," he said.

  Lily gasped. Spal did not start, but he turned about with a swiftness that was surprising.

  "Mark!" Lily said. "How—"

  "We won't talk here," he said, interrupting her. "Come on, both of you."

  He led the way back to the room, and paused inside to dial the lighting up to the minimum level of illumination necessary for them to find their way back to their blanket pads on the floor. As he reached his own corner, Mark looked over at Paul. Paul lay breathing the calm, heavy breaths Mark had heard over the audio pickup connected with the vision screen, but his eyes were open and steady with question.

  Mark shook his head imperceptibly, shook out the blanket he had bunched up to make it seem that he was still on the pad beneath, and settled himself seriously for sleep.

  And in remarkably short time, actual sleep found him.

  He woke with a start to the sudden glare of light in his eyes and the sight of Fifty Names —or at any rate, some Meda V'Dan wearing the same black and white shirt that Fifty Names had worn when Mark had last seen him—standing over them. Mark came to his feet by reflex, swiftly followed by Paul, and more slowly by Spal and Lily.

  [By fortunate and unusual chance,] said Fifty Names, [He of Most Importance will face you briefly now.]

  "We'll be right with you," Mark said. "It'll take us perhaps five minutes to get ready. Wait outside—and turn off your sight and sound surveillances of this room."

  [Now is now,] said Fifty Names. [There is not time to wait.]

  "Meda V'Dan," said Mark. "We'll come when we're ready—in five minutes or not at all. Wait outside and turn off your surveil­lance."

  [If He of Most Importance knew of this, I could not do it,] said Fifty Names. [At my own risk I give you the time you ask for.]

  He turned and rode out on the platform on which he had entered.

  "Only," said Mark, looking after him, "I'll bet they go right on watching and listening to us."

  He stepped to the table holding the remains of last night's meal and poured himself a cup of the bottled water that remained.

  "Now's your chance to freshen up if you want to grab it," he said to the others. "And you'd better grab it. No telling when the next chance is coming. Lily first."

  Lily went off into the adjoining lavatory room and the door closed behind her. The two men joined Mark at the table. Paul filled him­self a cup of water. Spal reached out to close his fist on the brandy bottle, then hesitated, glancing at Mark. When Mark said nothing the ex-Marine put the bottle to his lips and swallowed three times.

  They were sharing some of the rolls and butter left over from the package meals when Lily rejoined them. Mark nodded Paul toward the lavatory.

  Five minutes later, they stepped through the door of the room to find Fifty Names waiting in the passageway. An extra, empty floating platform nuzzled one on which the Meda V'Dan himself stood.

  [The Commander will ride with me,] Fifty Names said. [Others, on the second vehicle.]

  Once aboard, the platforms skimmed through an opening that unexpectedly ap­peared in a wall of the passageway—oppo­site the section of the wall that had moved aside to let Mark back into the passage the night before. They found themselves in a long, curving passage, down which the platforms slid with increasing speed until they were forced to decelerate so as to stop before an opening in a vertical shaft.

  One by one the platforms floated up the shaft to a higher level. Then followed a quick, dizzying trip through several intersecting passageways and short changes in level until they floated at last through a final opening into an enclosure the size of a large ballroom. At opposite ends of this room were what looked like two daises about fifteen feet square and six feet high supplied with metal chairs with harp-shaped backs and saddle-shaped seats. The platforms floated to the nearest of these daises.

  [You will rest here, all of you,] said Fifty Names. He waited until they had stepped up onto the dais, then swept away on his plat­form to the dais at the opposite end of the room, and stepped up to seat himself in one of the metal chairs there.

  Mark himself sat down and the others followed his example. The metal chairs were not as uncomfortable as they had looked at first glance.

  "Now what?" asked Paul.

  "I guess we wait," said Mark, "after all."

  But the wait was not long. Within a few minutes, the wall behind the other dais slid aside to reveal a Meda V'Dan wearing boots, loose pants, and shirt all of pure white, with­out ornament or design of any kind upon him. He took the chair beside Fifty Names and stared across the perhaps eighty feet of dis­tance at the humans.

  There was a moment of silence and still­ness. Then the walls of the room opened in a dozen places, and several dozen Meda V'Dan ran out, one of them carrying what looked like a silver rod, pointed at bot
h ends. Shouting, the one with the rod tossed it to another, who fended off the approach of a third and tossed the rod again. They ran back and forth in the space between the two daises, yelping, strug­gling for the rod, and throwing it to one another. Gradually, the struggles for the rod became more violent. Scratches from the pointed ends brought blood to the faces and hands of the players. Then, without warning, the activity ceased. The shouting stopped. In a moment the players had all returned within the walls and the walls themselves had closed up again.

  Abruptly, the dais under Mark and the others began to move. It slid forward toward the other dais, which was also in movement now, approaching from the other end of the room. The two heavy-looking structures swept toward each other until they were no more than twenty feet apart, then stopped. Mark squinted a little at the face of the Meda V'Dan in white. They were not quite close enough for him to make out details in the other's features, and it struck him that, even if he had been able to read expressions on the face of a Meda V'Dan, the distance was just enough to prevent this also.

  The Meda V'Dan in white turned his head toward Fifty Names and his lips moved. There was no sound to be heard on the human dais, but Fifty Names tilted his head as if listening, then straightened and looked across at Mark.

  [He of Most Importance,] said Fifty Names, [says that your unfortunate circumstance is known to him. If the renegades who destroyed the station of your parents at your birth and destroyed your parents also are ever discover­ed, they will be severely punished.]

  "Thanks," said Mark dryly. "I take it, then, that this search has been going on ever since?"

  [I am the voice of He of Most Importance,] said Fifty Names. [It has been without cease.]

  "I'm glad to hear it," said Mark. "But that isn't what we came here to talk about."