Tritium Gambit

  Chapter 27. Max

  John was wearing a long sleeve red and black flannel shirt over a white T-shirt, jeans, and a Green Bay Packers hat.

  “Baseball fan, I see,” I said.

  “It’s football. It helps me blend in with the locals,” he said.

  I nodded. “I can see that. Green seems like a real Minnesota color.”

  John shrugged. “I have no idea why there’s yellow on it though.”

  Wendy rolled her eyes. “Let’s go before a Viking fan clubs you over the head.”

  John gave her a look of confusion. “Vikings were in Norway. I don’t believe there are any left.”

  Miranda brushed past us and led the way from cabin thirteen into the woods. The rest of us followed. Miranda and I threw our baggage in the back of Wendy’s pickup. In less than an hour, we were back at Miner’s Lake.

  “I am not jumping back in that lake, especially not without a rebreather,” I said.

  Miranda shook her head. “We shouldn’t have to get wet. There must be another way in. Somehow Tyler launched a spaceship from that cave. He might have found the cave initially by swimming, but I don’t think that was the main entrance.”

  “Maybe we should search in pairs,” I suggested. “Maybe we’ll find the entrance faster.”

  “We don’t have any com links,” Miranda pointed out.

  “We’ll meet back here in an hour,” Wendy suggested.

  “Fine. Max and I will search the hill. Sheriff, would you mind going with Wendy?” Miranda asked.

  John nodded. “That’s fine. Remember to keep an eye out for the spiders.”

  Wendy looked like she might object to the pairings, but then she appeared to change her mind, as if a thought had occurred to her. I wondered what that thought might have been. “Let’s go then,” she said to John.

  Miranda and I started scouring the hill above Tyler’s secret cave as Wendy and John walked toward an abandoned taconite processing plant.

  It occurred to me that both Wendy and John were armed but neither Miranda or I had even a sharp rock between us. Fortune might favor the bold, but Fate liked to kill the unarmed.

  “Did Wendy seem to be acting weird to you?” Miranda asked.

  I shrugged. “A little, but she was never that socially adept.”

  Miranda laughed. “And the pot fires a shot at the kettle.”

  “What pot?”

  She grinned at me. “Never mind. Let’s look over here. That rock sticking up can’t be natural.” She was pointing to an up-thrust piece of granite.

  Natural or not, the outcrop didn’t budge when we pushed, shoved, or kicked it. We looked for hidden buttons and panels, but we came up with nothing. The hour continued that way as we rushed to different boulders, circling them looking for a button or a lever, and funny looking trees upon which we pressed on various knots. But if there was a secret button or lever or knot that opened a doorway to the Pit of Despair, it was not among the options we tried. We even cleared away fallen leaves and debris when a portion of ground seemed unnaturally flat, but all we found were rocks and dirt.

  Our hour was nearly up when I heard clicking sounds from the trees around us. I froze, and I could tell by Miranda’s reaction that she heard them, too.

  “More robot spiders,” I whispered.

  “They must still be following the last orders Tyler gave them,” Miranda whispered.

  We walked as quietly as we could, and after a few long minutes, we hadn’t seen the spider robots yet and I reasoned that they must not have seen us either.

  “When I say ‘go’, you run for the lake. I don’t think they can swim,” I whispered.

  “What about you?” she whispered.

  I picked up a fallen branch and snapped off the extra limbs. “I don’t swim much either.”

  The first spider leapt from a tree and landed in front of me with a digital scream that reminded me of a circular saw. More spiders landed on the ground near us, perhaps thirty of them.

  “Go!” I shouted, and I walloped the robot with my big stick using all the force I could muster. Then I hit it again and again. As the little robot’s legs buckled under the onslaught, Miranda bolted away. I stood ready with my stick as more spiders jumped toward me. I never played the game of baseball, but I knew hitting, and I swung the stick like I was at batting practice. There were way too many, though, and soon I had little mechanical spiders clawing up my legs and biting into me. I knew they had toxins that might eventually knock me out if they got in enough bites.

  I had given Miranda a head start, but I had to yield ground. It was time for a strategic regrouping. I dropped my stick and ran after her. Spiders leapt onto my back and bit me over and over. When I reached the top of a cliff, I leapt off with all my might, swatting spiders as I fell the fifty yards to the water. I landed with a painful splash that knocked the wind out of me.

  I flailed and kicked as I tried to reach the surface. Whatever air I had in me before I hit had been knocked out of me. I felt hands grab me and drag me up. As I gasped for breath, I wiped the water from eyes and saw Miranda.

  She wiped water off her face. “Are you okay?”

  I looked down at my damaged clothing. My injuries were already healed. I smiled at her. “Never better.”

  “Well, if the entrance is on that hill, it’s not only very hidden but protected by a bunch of robot spiders. Maybe we should see how Wendy and the sheriff are doing,” Miranda suggested.

  Miranda swam a perfect front crawl toward shore while I did a more modest doggy paddle. She was toweled off and waiting for me when I finally was able to touch the ground and wade out of the water. I pulled my towel from my back pocket, rang it dry, and then dried my hair and exposed skin too. My high tech clothes evaporated dry very quickly, but I still felt very cold.

  “Maybe we should jog to warm up,” Miranda said between chattering teeth.

  I tucked my towel away. “Good idea.”

  We jogged casually toward the abandoned taconite processing plant, which looked mostly like a series of steel beams and conveyor belts with other steel structures jutting out from random places. The facility was rusty and didn’t look like it had been used in years. There were huge piles of crushed rock at one end of the structure. Wendy and John were walking toward us.

  “I take it that you found nothing,” Wendy said.

  “Just a bunch of angry spiderbots,” Miranda answered.

  “I noticed you took the time to go swimming,” Wendy said. “I saw you come out of the lake.”

  “Not so much on purpose,” I said. “The robots seem to like the water less than I do.”

  Wendy nodded. “Well, while you guys were playing around, we might have found something, a new tunnel over here that appears to lead in the direction of the hill you were investigating. We knocked down the first door, but about a hundred feet inside is a second locked door made of more sturdy material that might be worth investigating. Our time was up, and so we came back to meet up with you two. Of course, if I’d have known you guys were at recess, we probably would have continued our investigation.”

  “We weren’t playing around,” Miranda said.

  I could see Miranda clenching her teeth. I was pretty sure it was only a matter of when she was going to deck Wendy.

  “We may need to use explosives to break the door down,” John said. He looked hopeful, like nothing could brighten his day more.

  “Lead the way,” Miranda said.

  Wendy and John led us through the maze of steel beams and falling-down tin structures, around a pile of taconite tailings, and to a door that had been knocked off its hinges.

  “The door was of standard, human construction, but it was the only door we’ve seen that wasn’t rusty and old. We thought we’d investigate,” Wendy explained.

  She led the way into the tunnel. When we reached the second door, I noted that it was obviously not human made. The door was round and about five feet in diameter, and it was made of a polymer humans
might not discover how to make for centuries.

  I touched the smooth surface of the door. It was warmer than the outdoor temperature, which must have meant energy on the inside must be making it warm.

  “Feel it,” I suggested, and the others put their hands on it.

  Miranda nodded. “I feel it, too. It’s warm.”

  “Stand back,” Wendy ordered. Nobody hesitated to back up.

  She pulled out her molecular destabilizer and zapped the door six times. It quivered, creaked, and fell onto the floor with a crash. The opening was smaller than the door that had been covering it, roughly a four-foot wide, round hole extending into darkness.

  “Why do you think it’s so small?” I asked.

  Miranda shrugged. “Probably so that nothing big can fit.”

  “Does anybody have a light?” I asked.

  Wendy pulled out a thin green glow stick and handed it to me. I bent it until it made a satisfying popping sound and then wrapped it around my wrist.

  I crawled into the narrow space. “Well, let’s see what’s in this hole.”

  The tunnel made two bends before it widened out into a full-size hallway. When I stood up, lights along the walls and ceiling flickered to life. “That’s handy.” John emerged behind me, followed by Wendy and then Miranda. Miranda’s normally bright and cheery expression darkened whenever she looked at Wendy. I wondered what that was all about.

  John put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t move!” I stood stock still, as did the others. “There might be traps,” John whispered.

  Wendy sighed and walked down to the end of the corridor. “I think it’s safe.”

  John followed, but he moved more cautiously. Miranda and I walked behind him, figuring that if anybody knew traps, it was John.

  “Seriously, people. Nobody would booby trap their own hallway,” Wendy said.

  “He might have traps. I mean, why did he have a polymer door and a weird tunnel?” Miranda asked.

  “I agree,” I said. “Tyler has robot guards that look like spiders. Traps do not seem farfetched at all.”

  Wendy looked irritated. “Sure, but he didn’t expect anybody to find this entrance. As you said, that weird little tunnel was probably only to keep out something big.”

  “I wonder how long it took him to build this place,” I said.

  “With a handful of robots and the necessary materials, it might have taken months,” Miranda answered. “There’s plenty of metal in the ground here, and so he probably didn’t need to worry about more than the starting materials. He simply made what he needed.”

  “There are two doors here,” Wendy said at a junction in the hallway. “I suggest we split up again. Max and I will take the right door, and you and the sheriff can take the other,” she said to Miranda.

  Miranda frowned slightly at Wendy, and then she looked at me. Finally, after what seemed an inordinate pause, Miranda nodded. “At least then somebody with a weapon will be on each team, but maybe I should go with Wendy and you should go with the sheriff.”

  Now it was Wendy’s turn to frown. “We’ll be fine. Come on, Pooh Bear. Let’s look for honey in Rabbit’s hole,” she said in a seductive voice.

  Wendy pushed the only button on the wall and the door on the right slid open. She took my hand and led the way through. I glanced back at Miranda, who was still frowning.

  “Be careful,” I said as I slipped through the door.

  Miranda looked torn for a moment, but then she turned to John and said, “All right, let’s do this Rosco P. Coltrane.”

  When the door slid shut behind me, I gently disengaged my hand from Wendy’s. I didn’t want her to get angry, but I didn’t want to hold her hand either. She led the way down the new hallway.