“Two troopers,” he hissed to Koril in a voice barely audible to me in the middle of the group. “Repeaters with exploding bullets. Power’s still off.”
Koril nodded to him and appeared to be satisfied. Then, as Ku went on ahead once again, the man who used to own both cave and troopers stepped forward, almost to the open door itself, and raised his hands in what I knew was a power gesture. He seemed immobile, frozen but majestic, and yet the index finger of his outstretched right hand wriggled, telling us to proceed.
One at a time, as silently as we could, we approached Koril, then the door, then passed it, walking right under Ku. We could see the two men in the room, looking bored and occasionally glancing up at some device beyond our gaze. Neither seemed to notice us.
Once Darva was past, Koril himself finally moved, retaining his outstretched form and moving first sideways, then back to the far cave wall, past the door, under Ku, and to the rest of us waiting on the other side. Only then did he relax, move forward, and allowing Ku to go ahead once again, he led us down the tunnel and around another curve, back into the darkness once again. There was no need to explain what he had done. We all knew he had maintained the illusion of peace, quiet, and no intruders for the two men while we all passed.
We continued another forty or fifty meters when the cave opened up into a large, circular area—an obvious junction point. The trouble was, once you stepped into it the wa glowed brightly all around, indicating solid rock. We couldn’t even tell where we’d entered. This, then, was the first of the maze traps, and a very good one it was.
The tunnel system had the intricate workings of a circuit diagram, as I knew from my earlier sessions with the diagrams and floor plans. It would be obvious to anyone getting this far that the solidness of the chamber was a blind, but you had no real clue as to which opening to take, even if you found it. Of the five tunnels that actually fed into the place, only one led towards the Castle. Another, of course, led back the way we had come. The other three were laced with very nasty traps and ultimately led to storage areas away from the Castle itself.
I slipped back to Darva. “How’re you holding up?” I whispered.
“Fine, except I feel like I have to pee,” she responded just as quietly. I patted her comfortingly and retook my position.
Koril looked around, then urged us back and again stretched out his arms. He began to turn, slowly, for more than a minute, making three complete circles before he stopped. Finally he said, in a very low voice, “Somebody very good’s done a nice job. They’re all badly booby-trapped, and they’ve added a new cross-tunnel about ten meters out Okay—follow me closely and don’t get ahead of me. Ku, no more than a couple meters at a time.”
With that he made his decision, pointed his finger, and some of the if a to his left dissolved a bit He walked cautiously through it allowed Ku to go on, then waited for the rest of us. The wa curtain, made of some thin strands of something or other that simulated rock but were easily penetrable, slid back into place.
Slowly, cautiously, we reformed and started down the new path. After only two or three meters, though, Koril gestured for us to stop.
“Dumb shits,” Koril mumbled. “They ought to know better than to use offworlder traps.” He pointed to the floor, and we all could sense what he meant. All around us was wa—in us, in the walls, floor, and roof. Everything shone with its distinctive wa pattern—except an area four meters long that ran the width of the cave on the floor right in front of Koril. Inert matter meant Medusan metal, and its very lack of any sight, including wa, outlined it perfectly.
Ku needed no prompting; he was already on the roof of the cave and working. I saw a small laser drill snap into place, and, soon after, he was affixing a ring to the roof with an instant-bonding cement. Darva and I, being the largest, carried the miscellaneous packs, and she was already ahead of me. The rope, made from some really nasty jungle vines in Koril’s shops, tested out at over 500 kilos. For our sake I hoped it still did.
Kindel was nearest me, and I whispered to her, “What would we do without Ku?”
“Why, we’d turn another of us into something like him,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“Oh,” was all I could manage, and turned back to watch the work. The system was simple enough—grab the rope and swing across the pressure-sensitive floor plate to the other side. It wasn’t quite as easy as all that though—the roof of the cave was less than three meters high, while the plate was four across. Since the rope couldn’t touch the plate, that meant you needed good speed and a slight jump at the end. It would be tricky indeed.
It was a nervous eternity as each of us made our crossing, but we were all trained professionals. We had only one close call, and no other problems. I made it very easily, almost to my surprise, and the thought struck me that, if Kara were a double agent, primed to betray us, she could do so very convincingly now. She didn’t, though, demonstrating that nice timing and power she tried so hard to hide.
In fact, only the tiny Kindel needed several swings until she felt confident enough to let go, and, even then, only fast action by the Ku overhead pushed her the last few precious centimeters.
We all waited while Ku used Ms little laser tool to cut the knot and retrieve the rope, then return, cut off and bring back the ring also. Again, anyone who passed by would have to be looking for something to find any sign that we had been here.
Much of the rest of the tunnel was arranged with other traps, some easier to spot than others. A few were actually powered and thus not active, but most were basic, mechanical types that were bad enough. Each caused a little heart trouble but each had its answer in our packs, and none deterred us.
We found countless blind junctions too, and in each we had to rely on Koril’s old experience and the probing sense of the top sores. Approaching one, though, we were held up by Koril from entering. We had reached areas close to the Castle—and now we were going to face the real problems.
For one thing, this junction had traffic; a fair amount by the sound of it. Troopers and maintenance personnel pushing dollies of various things to and fro, or so it seemed. There was never a lag of more than a minute or so between such sounds, hardly enough time to enter, determine the right path, and move on through.
Koril was still deeply in thought when the power returned. A band of light came alive all up and down the corridors, illuminating us dimly but completely—and illuminating the junction as well. We moved quickly back into the tunnel, just in time to miss four red-clad people emerging from another tunnel mouth on the run, pushing a large yellow cart filled with cases of something or other across the open space, and into another opening. They never glanced in our direction.
“Well, we made it a lot farther than I thought, thanks to the tabarwind,” Koril sighed. “Now the real fun begins. We’re less than fifty meters from the bottom floor of the Castle right now. These tunnels lead to the art storage rooms, the precious metals rooms, and the like. That one to the right, there, at two o’clock, leads to the Castle.” He stopped, and we all froze as yet another team came through, this time with what sounded like a powered vehicle of some kind. As the last sounds were receding, he continued.
“The booby traps have got to be down by now. I’m not sure anybody ever expected anyone to get this far undetected. I’m not sure I ever did, I’ve had an education in security myself these past hours. Now, I know you’re all tired but we have to push on. I’m sure all this fuss is over the attack that has surely been launched by now, and all hell is breaking loose. That means they’ll be coming up or down here any moment now. We can’t stay here and we can’t go on. I think—”