He hung there, waiting, for what seemed an absurdly long time. His on-board chronometer gave him a precise report on how long he waited there, but somehow the number of minutes and seconds that flickered past was no proper measure of his situation. There was something more to it, for the odds were very good that these were the last minutes and seconds he would ever experience.
What was taking them so long?
At last there was a clang and a thump. Caliban cocked his head cautiously down to peek around the support beam that hid him from view. He turned his head toward the access hatch. “Damnit,” a voice called out. “He must have knocked all the lights out.” Caliban saw the beam of a handlamp stab out from the building side of the hatch. Like most lamps designed to give off visible light, this one cast a fair amount of infrared as well. A human figure, and then another and another and another, came through the hatch, plainly visible in infrared.
“Well, at least we know he’s still in here,” one of them said as a light beam played across the floor, revealing the smashed glow lamps. “He wouldn’t have hung around smashing the lights if he could’ get out one of the hatches.”
“Ready to do some damage, Spar?” one of the others asked with a low chuckle.
“Capture only, Jak,” a third one, the only woman, said. “Try to keep that in mind, okay?”
“Don’t like tunnels,” the one called Spar announced. “This gives me the creeps. Can’t we pull in some real lights before we go searching around in here?”
“Galaxy’s sake, it’s just one lousy robot in an H-tunnel,” the one called Jak replied. “Don’t you get all jumpy on me now.”
Suddenly the hatch behind them swung shut again, to the obvious discomfort of the four deputies. “Well, if he can’t get out, neither can we,” the woman said, her voice a bit low and nervous.
“I don’t like it,” Spar objected. “Can’t we reopen the hatch and just post a guard on it?”
“Yeah, and let the rogue punch out the guard and make a run for it,” the first voice said. “Look, Spar, the manual keypad combo for all the hatches is 274668. You get antsy, you get out that way. Just don’t get crazy on us. Come on, let’s move out. Mirta, you and me will take the east side; Spar and Jak, you take the west.”
These humans weren’t thinking clearly. Did they assume that if they could not see him, he could nothear them? But that keypad combination. That was the information he needed. Caliban drew his head back in and remained motionless as two of the deputies went past, directly below him.
Listening carefully, he judged that the other pair of deputies had indeed gone the other way, to the western leg of the “H.” He could hear them turning the corner and moving up one arm of the tunnel.
Moving as silently as he could, Caliban worked his way back down the wall, stepped down onto the floor, and turned in the direction the two male deputies had gone. He was tempted to use the keypad combination on the building access door, but no doubt there were any number of police waiting just behind it. No. His one hope was to get past these deputies, punch in the keypad combination, and hope it worked. He made his way down to the intersection between the cross tunnel and the side tunnel and peered cautiously around the corner. There they were, on the north end. Caliban backed into the crosswise leg of the tunnel again. He braced his arms and legs against the walls and worked his way back upward to hide against the ceiling again.
After a few moments, the two deputies walked past him in the central connecting tunnel, headed toward the southwestern end of the H-tunnel, making a fair amount of noise as they kicked past the debris of the ruined glow lights. Caliban once again let himself down from the ceiling and moved silently in the direction the two men had come from. There it was, the tunnel hatch, the control panel next to it. Suddenly he had a most disturbing thought. Suppose they were playing games withhim now? Suppose they had meant for him to hear their discussion, and they had deliberately spoken loudly enough for him to hear? Suppose the combination was false?
But it didn’t matter. For if the combination did not work, he would in any event have no other way out. He was locked in here, and that combination was the only key that might open the way. Caliban punched in the keypad combination, moving his fingers as rapidly as possible.
A light stabbed down on him from the opposite end of the tunnel, bright enough to dazzle his infrared vision. “There he is!” Spar’s voice shouted from behind the blinding light. There was a roar, and a whoosh, and Caliban threw himself to one side of the tunnel. There was a violent impact, dead on the center of the hatch. A roaring explosion tore through the reinforced hatch and ripped it to shreds, littering the tunnel with shrapnel and smoke. Debris ricocheted off Caliban ‘ s body case, knocking him down. He scrambled back to his feet. The impact had blown a hole clear through the armored door, just big enough for Caliban to get through. He scrambled through it, the white-hot armor plate hissing and popping, sending his thermosensors into maximum overload. But then he was through, and out into the tunnels, and gone.
12
“I have had my fill and more of shambles, Donald,” Alvar Kresh said as he read the action reports over a belated breakfast at his desk. A breakfast he had been looking forward to since the early hours of the morning, and one he was now not enjoying at all.
He had wanted to eat in the privacy of his own home, not at his desk at headquarters. Circumstances dictated otherwise, to put it mildly. Nor did the circumstances of the situation improve his mood.
Minutes after he came out of the Governor’s office, he learned that his officers had lost the leading suspect in the case that might literally decide the fate of the world. This did not make him a happy man.
“We go for a nice, quiet chat with the Governor, you and I,” Alvar said, in a voice that was low and reasonable, in a tone of patently false calm. “I am out of contact with the force for perhaps all of an hour, and come back to find that my deputies have been using the airspace over downtown to practice their aerobatics and scare the hell out of half the population.” Alvar’s voice started to get louder, angrier. He stood and glared at Donald. “I find that one of my officers disregarded all orders and made a creditable effort to kill that suspect before he could be questioned and examined. Instead he made a good start toward blowing up half the city tunnel system.”
He knew it was unfair and illogical to yell at Donald, but he had to take his anger out onsomeone. And there Donald was, right in front of him, an easy target for his fury, and one that would not fight back.
But even in the depths of his fury, Alvar knew that he was playing to the squad room outside his office as well. It was not by chance that his office was not well soundproofed. Some times it did the force some good to hear the Old Man blow up. By now Alvar was shouting out loud, deliberately shouting not at Donald, but at the thin walls and the men and women outside.