To one side, as they flew "over" Vulcan, was the great rip in the planet's skin where the laboratory that was Bravo Project had been until Kilgour's bombs went off.
That also meant that somewhere below Sten was the cramped apartment he had grown up in. For all he knew, the muraliv that haunted him might still be mounted on the wall, the snowy landscape on a frontier world that his mother had sold six months of his life for, a muraliv that had broken in less than a year. Sten had unconsciously duplicated that scene in reality on Smallbridge—a cluster of domes sitting in his planet's arctic regions.
No. He would not—could not—go there. It would be too much.
He shut that part of his mind off. They were closing on Vulcan.
Sten landed on a bare stretch of hull. Finger-point. Make me a door, Alex.
Kilgour took a prepared charge from a carrying case, extended its small legs, and clipped the charge to Vulcan's skin. He started a timer, then motioned Sten away. Alex, demolitions expert that he was, pushed off into space unhurriedly and hovered a safe few meters away.
The timer went to zero, and the charge blew, blasting a stream of molten metal through the hull in a widening cone. It was a violent but relatively silent way to B&E. No air whooshed out. Vulcan—or at least this part of it—had lost its atmosphere.
Kilgour the perfectionist then trimmed a few ragged edges, ripping them off with his hands. Massively strong heavy-worlder that he was, he almost certainly could have done it without the suit's pseudomusculature cutting in. But he felt lazy.
They winkled through the hole.
Blackness. Both of them turned on their helmet spotlights. They were in some kind of machine shop.
Sten pointed himself back through the hole.
"Inside," he broadcast back to the Victory. "No prob. Tag on. Moving."
He set his suit's inertial navigation system as a guide toward the Eye, in the probable event of Vulcan's twisting corridors getting them lost, and they started out. His "tag"—a transmitter broadcasting on an unlikely freq—would tell the Victory where, in this metal maze, they were.
Zero air, zero gravity.
It was quicker to use the suit's drive and "fly" toward the Eye. Sten wondered what the seventeen-year-old Delinq that had been Sten would have thought, given a bit of clairvoyance, seeing somebody actually fly inside Vulcan.
He would probably think it wonderful and then promptly figure out how to use the newly accessed dimension in a raid.
It was tempting to increase their speed, particularly when their course led through some of the huge open assembly lines. Tempting—but that could be quickly fatal if there was a trap. Or if something jagged lurked at the end of an insufficiently braked swoop.
They moved on, "up" into the docking area. Huge ship-size airlocks yawned into vacuum, and fittings had been roughly cut or blasted off. The scavengers hadn't bothered to close the doors behind them.
A slideway—or where a slideway had been. Someone had ripped the alloy top away, exposing the aircushion plates below. The slideway led due "north"—toward the Eye.
Suddenly there was a great gap, a rip of metal extending through several decks directly out into space. Here was where one of the Imperial assault ships had deliberately smashed into
Vulcan's skin, making a breach for the Imperial Guardsmen to pour through.
"You should be within range of that broadcast," Preston's voice whispered. ‘Tune Six-Three-Kilo-Four." Sten obeyed on a secondary com. He heard it. A whine that broke off now and again, and whose note rose and fell. It did, indeed, sound like a search-and-rescue transmitter whose power was about dry.
Now they were close to the "top" of the Eye, close to Thoresen's dome.
Even though he wanted to go faster, Sten forced himself to slow. Ahead was a great door. One of the periodic emergency barriers—airlocks—intended to keep an accidental rupture from dumping Vulcan's entire atmosphere into space.
Alex started to push on it, then caught himself before Sten could warn him.
Resistance. How interesting. That probably meant there was atmosphere on the other side.
And then Six-Three-Kilo-Four fell silent.
The link to the Victory opened, and Freston began a transmission, probably to tell Sten what had just ceased happening.
"Received," Sten said in a whisper. "Break ‘cast. Monitor. Do not transmit. Click code."
He'd always known it couldn't be this easy.
Kilgour curled his hand, and his willygun slid down on its harness. A lifted eyebrow. Shall I blow the door, boss?
Headshake no. Motion—back.
Sten hit the cycle button.
Grindingly, the lock emptied its air back into the main chamber. He started forward, and Kilgour waved him back. Cover... and Sten did. Alex moved forward and ripped the door open, spinning back flat against the corridor's wall.
Nothing. Inside. They forced the outer door closed again.
Now they were well and truly trapped. Both of them shut off their helmet lights. Being an obvious target was one thing— there was no necessity to put a spotlight on the bull's-eye.
Cycle.
The grinding stopped, but the light that would signal ATMOSPHERE EQUALIZED did not go on. Burnt out. Possibly.
Nor did the inner door open automatically.
Sten pushed at it, and it reluctantly slid aside.
They were in Thoresen's dome.
Both men were crouched on either side of the lock, weapons ready. Sten could feel his suit press against him from atmo-spheric pressure outside before it adjusted. So where had the atmosphere come from? Was Thoresen's dome built so well that it held air after being abandoned all these years? Not clottin‘ likely.
He looked at a gauge. Neutral gas, 75 percent; oxygen, 18 percent; garblegarble trace gases. Oh really. Half a percentage of carbon dioxide. Exhalations from an oxygen-breathing creature? Possibly.
Breathable—no gases analyzed.
Pressure half E-normal.
There was enough light from the stars and a far-distant sun through the dome's skylights for Sten to see without needing his helmet light.
Kilgour pointed and Sten saw the piled racks of empty oxygen containers. That was where the atmosphere had come from—a hand-carried flask at a time.
Thoresen's dome was huge. Envision a jungle, now petrified when it lost atmosphere sometime ago. A garden. Up ahead would be Thoresen's office/living chambers. Sten and Alex would have to fine-comb the dome, their task complicated because they had no idea what they were looking for—nor if it was even there.
Sten turned on an outside microphone and listened. Nothing. He of course did not chance opening his faceplate and breathing the dome's atmosphere, no matter what his suit's analysis told him.
He went into the chamber.
In front of him was the twisted, desiccated drought nightmare that had been Thoresen's lush forest.
Very strange, trying to move silently, as if he were walking point for an infantry patrol, deep in a planetary jungle. In a space-suit. Toe first... touch, test the ground under you, heel down, full weight down, other foot lifted straight up, brought forward slowly, close to Sten's center of gravity... toe touching...
The dead boughs twisted up around him, agonized arms stretching for, never to reach, the far-distant stars.
A crunch. Sten tensed and looked down.
Gleaming bones.
He remembered. One of Thoresen's "pet" tigers. The one he'd killed with a desperation thrust-kick with both legs, crushing its throat. Sten shivered. He was the one who should have died.