That, and the most bloodcurdling scream I had ever heard.
Chapter 22
Air Ducts
When I heard that scream, I did what I generally do: acted first, and thought later.
It was simple, really. Someone was in trouble. And when someone’s in trouble, you help. That’s what I was always taught. That’s what Macdonald of Terra always did.
Except he was usually a little brighter about it than I am.
But really, I couldn’t help myself. When that scream came stabbing through the intercom, it seemed like there was only one thing to do.
So I did it. Dashing past Cassie, I jabbed the Open button at the side of the door. Then I stood there waiting for it to slide into the wall so I could rush through and help whoever was in trouble.
Fortunately for the White Knight of the BS Factory, the door was locked.
“Nice work, boy wonder,” said Cassie after a moment or so. “Are you sure you’re not secretly harboring some kind of death wish?”
“Someone’s in trouble!” I said, still not thinking entirely clearly.
“I can think of at least three people who are in trouble,” she replied. “And two of them are you and me.”
She had a point.
“Maybe we should take this a little more slowly,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Your brilliance outshines the sun.”
I walked back to Dr. Twining’s desk. “We’ve got to find out what’s on the other side of that door,” I said, tapping a command into his computer. “I know there’s another door just like it in Dr. Durkin’s office. Probably in all the offices. But I don’t know where they lead. Could be anything back there.”
The machine began to beep. “Access denied,” read the screen.
I stood up and headed for the lab. “Come on,” I said to Cassie. “And bring your magic card with you.”
The computer in Dr. Twining’s office was for his use only, as were most of the computers in the lab. They operated strictly on personal passwords. But each lab also had at least one computer that could be accessed by means of an ID card. I headed for ours.
“Log on,” I said to Cassie, standing aside and gesturing toward the seat.
She did. The computer acknowledged her existence and the extremely high level of her access code.
“What do you want me to look for?” she asked, once she was into the system.
“The plans for this deathtrap,” I said. “I want to know what’s behind that wall and if there’s any way we can get there.”
She furrowed her brow and tapped in a command. It brought up some generally useless information. She tried again. We got a twenty-item menu that looked like it might possibly lead us where we wanted to go.
Tracking down something like this on a computer can be like trying to find one specific apple on a tree. You start out on the trunk. As soon as it starts to branch, you have to make a choice about which way to go. Using whatever clues you’ve got, you take the path that makes the most sense. More branches, more choices. Maybe you make six different choices before you get to the end of a branch. If when you get there you find the wrong apple, which is to say if you’ve taken the wrong path, you go back and start again.
Sometimes you go back just a few branches; sometimes you have to go all the way back to the trunk.
That was basically the process we were following now. It’s a good thing the computer was relatively fast. Otherwise I might have gone out of my mind before we found the path that led us to something useful. More than once I wanted to push Cassie aside and attack the keyboard myself, though I knew that wouldn’t really speed things up any.
“Air ducts!” I shouted as she pulled up another submenu.
“What?”
I pointed to the menu. “Try the air ducts!”
It was just what we needed. With a tap of a key she called up a map of the air-duct system for the entire BS Factory.
“Now pull up the specs,” I said eagerly.
She did. We were in luck. About half of the ducts were large enough to crawl through.
I don’t know how long we spent going over the system. With the memory of that scream echoing in my head, it seemed like hours. In reality, I doubt it was even ten minutes.
The computer was being very obliging about showing us close-ups and cutaway sections. What it wouldn’t do was provide an accurate label of what was behind Dr. Twining’s wall, even when we found a clear diagram of the complete BS Factory. Most of what the diagram showed I already knew. The bulk of the facility was divided among the seven major labs, which formed a circle around the perimeter of the station. Other areas were set aside for storage, for meetings, even guest rooms where visiting officials could spend the night if they wanted.
All these were clearly marked.
But the central area, which could be accessed from all seven labs, and which I had never seen before, was labeled “Storage.”
I didn’t believe it for a minute. That area was being used for something besides storage.
Even Cassie-the-cynic agreed that must be the case.
Once we finally had a good sense of the system, Cassie had the computer print out a couple of maps for us.
Then we returned to Dr. Twining’s office.
“There,” I said, pointing to the wall opposite his desk.
The air vent, which was located near the ceiling, was easily two feet on each side. Climbing into it would be no problem at all, if we could just get the baffle off.
That was a fairly big if. Depending on the construction techniques that had been used, it might be held on with nothing but snaps, or it might be bolted in with fasteners that required a special tool to undo.
I was hoping for the former.
With Cassie’s help I maneuvered the large treatment table underneath the vent. In the low gravity, it was easy to climb up on the thing without straining my bum hip.
I stuck my fingers through the grating and yanked.
Nothing happened.
Flexing my arms, I pulled myself up so that I could look through the vent. I was so light I could probably have held myself straight out from the wall if I had wanted.
The vent was locked in place by simple bracket fasteners, one at each corner. Holding myself up with my left hand, I put my right-hand fingers through and twisted them.
Once the fasteners were loosened the vent slipped out as easily as a watermelon seed slips between your fingers.
Hanging from the edge of the vent, I glanced down at Cassie. “You coming? Or would you rather stay here?”
She looked around the office and through the door to where Dr. Twining’s body lay in a pool of blood, then flexed her legs and jumped up beside me.
“You’re better than no company at all,” she said curtly.
I hoisted myself into the air shaft. Cassie’s sharp words would have bothered me, except that I chalked them up to fear. That, and the fact that I knew she was being driven crazy by the same question that was ripping at me: Who had we heard screaming?
Or, to be more specific: Had that scream come from Dr. Elmo Puckett?
Chapter 23
Dr. Durkin
Traveling through the air ducts would have been all right, if not for the corners. The smooth plastic surfaces were clean, and large enough so that we could move through them fairly rapidly. The low gravity helped, of course; instead of crawling along on our bellies as you normally would in a situation like that, we were able to do a kind of fingertip walk that positioned our bodies in the center of the ducts and let us move through them while barely touching them.
But the corners nearly did me in. Every time I had to go around one, I ended up twisting my bad hip in a way that made it feel like it was going to come out of my body. Even so, after we turned the second one, I stopped feeling bad for myself because we could hear the screaming again. Whatever was going on up ahead of us, someone was experiencing a kind of pain and/or fear that made what I felt rounding those corners insig
nificant by comparison.
“What can it be?” hissed Cassie, a few seconds after we had made the second corner.
I did a kind of push-up, pressing my entire body against the top of the duct. This let me look back underneath myself so that I could see her.
“I don’t know,” I whispered as softly as I could. Then I held a finger to my lips to caution her against any more talking, since I also didn’t know how far sound would carry through these plastic passages.
We came to a branch in the ducts. I took out the map to see if I could figure out which way we should go, then decided I didn’t need it. All I had to do was listen. The screamer would be my guide.
Or would have been, except that, as it turned out, the duct leading most directly to the sound was one of the ones that narrowed as it approached the room. That would have been clear enough if I had stuck with the map, instead of being so confident about following the sound of the scream.
By the time we had traveled another ten meters it became clear anyway. I simply couldn’t go any farther. I had felt the plastic walls closing in on me, of course. But I had assumed that I was going to be able to make it to the end.
Wrong.
My shoulders jammed against the sides of the duct, and I just couldn’t go any farther. My hip was starting to throb. And the screaming, which still hadn’t let up, was beating around my ears.
The only good thing about the whole mess was that with the amount of noise coming into the duct, I figured no one would notice a little coming out of it. I pushed myself backward.
I heard a muffled curse from behind me. I had run into Cassie.
She grabbed my leg and gave it a yank, to warn me to slow down.
Generally, foolish pride has kept me from telling people about my hip. But when that lightning bolt of pain shot up my leg and through my skull, I did two things. First I bit my thumb to keep from screaming. And second, I promised myself not to be so secretive in the future. Pride has its price, but this was ridiculous.
We backed slowly down the tunnel. If I thought making the corners had been a problem when we were going forward, I should have reserved judgment until I had a chance to try it backward. The memory of it makes my leg twitch even now. I would have given almost anything to be able to turn around and go frontward. But the very thought of trying it made the duct seem twice as narrow as it really was.
A hiss from behind indicated that Cassie wanted to talk to me.
For a glorious instant I thought maybe I should push myself against the wall and let her work her way up so that we were face to face. It would be delightfully cozy. But we had work to do, and we might get stuck that way. Though I could think of worse ways to die, I wasn’t ready to cash in my chips for the sake of a good snuggle. Yet.
I pushed against the top wall as tight as I could and looked back at her.
“What now?” she whispered.
I pressed a finger to my lips. Then I took out the map and waved it at her, so she would know I was trying to solve the problem.
The answer was fairly simple in print, though I could tell it was going to be hard on my hip. We had to go back about thirty meters, then make a sharp turn that would take us to a wider duct than the one we had first tried.
I folded the map and started moving again.
The corner was worse than I expected. The fact that once I got my head around it I could hear the screaming again didn’t help matters any.
Though she didn’t make a sound, I could sense Cassie’s impatience. I crawled faster, trying to ignore the fire in my hip.
I could see a square of light that marked the end of the duct. Feeling a sense of relief that we were almost there, I hurried forward.
The relief died as soon as I was close enough to the baffle to see through it. The scene in the “Storage Area” was like something out of a nightmare. Five upright tanks stood at the right side of the room. Four of them held nude bodies that were exact duplicates of Hank Smollin. A maze of wires and tubes ran from each tank to a console about ten feet away.
That was the good part. Bizarre as it was, at least it verified my theory.
Much worse was the glass cage in the center of the room.
Inside it was Dr. Pieter Durkin. As I watched, he flung himself from side to side, smashing into its unbreakable walls and screaming in rage and fright. He was bleeding from at least a dozen places, and his pale blond hair was matted with blood. As I watched him tear at his own arms and legs, I realized with horror that his wounds were self-inflicted.
Standing in front of the cage were three of the remaining “Mad Scientists” of the BS Factory. I recognized the short, stocky figure of Martha Collins, the tall, distinguished-looking Charles Hulan, and the even taller Virginia Jefferson.
Dr. Collins was the first to speak after I reached the vent. “I think we should kill him now and get it over with,” she said.
I’m surprised they didn’t hear my gasp of shock, even over Dr. Durkin’s screams.
I started to undo the fasteners at the corners of the vent (a task that was considerably easier from the inside than it had been from the outside). I wasn’t sure what I was going to do once I had the thing off; I just wanted to be ready in case I figured something out.
As it turned out, the situation was taken out of my hands. After I loosened the fourth fastener, I braced my hands against the floor of the duct and pulled myself forward as far as possible, in order to hear what Dr. Jefferson was saying in her low, competent voice.
It was about then that Cassie got impatient and gave my leg a tug, just to remind me she was still there.
It was the last straw for my hip. I felt as if someone had poured liquid fire into the socket. Bellowing in pain, I involuntarily stiffened my arms beneath me. The action caused me to shoot forward. My face smashed against the vent. With the clips undone, it easily gave way.
I tumbled out of the vent.
The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor, looking up at three very surprised, very angry scientists.
Chapter 24
Forbidden Research
For a moment we all just kind of stared at one another.
Dr. Collins was the first to speak.
“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” she asked.
I wanted to come up with some sizzlingly brilliant answer. But it was hard to think with a lump of fire where my hip should be and Dr. Durkin gibbering and screaming like a madman while he slammed himself against the glass walls of his cage.
I settled for moral outrage. “Why don’t you help him?” I cried, pointing at the cage.
“Don’t you think we would if we could?” said Dr. Jefferson. She reached down to give me a hand up. As soon as she let go of my arm, my hip gave way and I crumpled to the floor again. I waved her off. “Never mind,” I gasped. “It’ll be better in a while.”
I looked around. To say I was confused would be putting it mildly. I thought I had finally found the villains of the situation. But all three of these people gave evidence of being genuinely concerned about what was happening to Dr. Durkin.
I nodded toward the cage. “What’s going on?”
The scientists exchanged glances. “He might as well be told,” said Dr. Hulan. “He knows this much, and the whole thing is coming unraveled anyway. There’s not much point in covering up now, because no matter what we do, it won’t stay covered.”
Dr. Collins sighed. “I think you’re right, Charles. The game is over.”
“Some game,” I said, glancing at Dr. Durkin.
Dr. Hulan shuddered. “Cruel as it is to say, Pieter brought that on himself. The rest of us tried to tell him that he wasn’t taking sufficient precautions. Of course, that’s part of the problem when you’re doing research under these conditions.…”
“What conditions? This is one of the most advanced research facilities in the world!”
“Certainly it is,” said Dr. Collins. “For approved projects. But if you want to work at the real cutting edg
e of things, if you want to push toward something beyond what the bureaucratic imbeciles that license these facilities are willing to approve, then you end up cutting some corners.”
“You were all doing bootleg research?” I cried in surprise. “I thought it was just Dr. Twining.”
I had figured out what Dr. Twining was up to when I realized what had bothered me about Dr. Puckett’s hands. But even then it hadn’t occurred to me that the entire staff of the BS Factory would be up to their necks in the stuff.
“Not all of us,” said Dr. Collins. “Dr. Gomiri kept her nose clean. Virginia, here, did, too. The only reason she’s here now is because I asked her to help us. Considering the number of times she’s tried to warn us about something like this, it was pretty big of her to come.”
I turned to Dr. Jefferson. “If you’re here to help, why don’t you?” I glanced at Dr. Durkin and shuddered. “Who put him in that cage, anyway?” I demanded angrily.
“He locked himself in there,” said Dr. Hulan. “As soon as he knew he’d been infected. We can’t anesthetize him because the last two times we tried it, the victim died immediately.”
I wondered who the last two victims had been.
Dr. Hulan continued his explanation. “And we can’t take him out because we don’t know how contagious he is. That cage is completely sealed. If we’re lucky, what he has will stay in there with him. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible this room is already contaminated—which would mean that all of us, including you, my brash young friend, could end up like that.”
“Don’t be unnecessarily cruel, Charles,” said Dr. Collins.
Dr. Hulan shrugged. “It’s true, and you know it.”
“It’s possible. But so far as we know right now, the thing is transmitted only by direct contact with the bloodstream.”
I remembered the scene in Dr. Durkin’s lab that morning.
“He’s got what Ron had!” I cried. “Ron and Nancy were the last two victims!”
“Brilliant deduction,” said Dr. Hulan acidly.
I remembered that he had participated in the fight. I didn’t think he had been scratched. Even so, I could imagine that he was pretty nervous about now. I would have been, in his situation. Now I understood why they had been so adamant about getting Cassie and me out of the room during that fight!