Farley looked skeptical. They went on. Another overhead light came on. The one behind them went out.
“Okay, that’s just spooky,” said Farley.
Wennda smiled. “I won’t let it hurt you, Joe.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
The farther they went, the more Farley felt like an archeologist exploring some buried tomb built by an unsuspected civilization. Ancient, mysterious, indecipherable. Haunted. He became aware of faint thrumming, some vast dynamo spinning beneath the ground for centuries.
Soon the sporadic parade of repair drones veered to the right, down a lighted corridor between two repair bays.
“Where do you think they are going?” Yone asked.
“Some kind of fabrication shop?” said Farley. He indicated the few bugs headed their way from the corridor. “Something’s making replacement parts for the Typhon.”
Yone looked worried. “Then there are people here?”
Wennda shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. She smirked at Farley. “But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing alive down here.”
“Gotta love an optimist,” said Farley.
A mile later the repair bays ended. The maglev launchway tunnel continued smooth and featureless until it ran into a blunt white wall a quarter-mile ahead.
“End of the line,” said Farley.
“It didn’t occur to me that the launch tube would have a door,” said Wennda.
“Gotta keep the bad typhons from getting in somehow.”
“There has to be some way to open it,” said Yone.
Farley nodded. “Or a people-sized way out.”
Past the final repair bay was another lighted corridor, plenty large enough for human beings, but looking like a gopher hole beside the enormous hangar. Empty, motionless, with evenly spaced doors. It curved slightly to the left. Across the launchway another corridor led in the opposite direction, curving to the right.
Farley frowned at the launchway door. “The well’s on the other side of that?” he asked.
“There’s every reason to think so,” said Wennda.
“I think this corridor circles it.” Farley indicated the curving corridor on the other side of the launchway. “That’s the other end.”
“This facility is a wheel,” Yone realized. “We are in a spoke, and that corridor is the hub.”
“I’ll bet the important stuff’s in the hub,” said Farley. “Command and control, communications, administration.”
“Power,” Wennda added.
Yone closed his eyes. “The vibration is stronger,” he said. “Can you feel it?”
Farley could. The thrumming hummed through him now like engines oscillating in unison. He could not tell whether he was hearing it or feeling it.
He didn’t realize he had shut his eyes until he opened them. Wennda and Yone stood facing the corridor with their eyes closed, mouths open, faces relaxed. Wennda looked peacefully asleep, her face free of worry for the first time Farley could remember. There was something lulling in the thrum. Despite his urgency Farley thought how easy it would be to close his eyes again and bathe in that sound. To rest. He was so tired.
He opened his eyes again. What the hell?
“Wennda,” he said. She didn’t move. Farley grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Wennda!”
Her eyelids fluttered open. “Joe,” she said, and looked surprised. “I was—was I dreaming?”
Farley pointed at Yone. The sleeping man’s eyes were moving beneath the lids.
Wennda frowned. “I think we should keep moving,” she said.
THIRTY-TWO
Wen still wore his grease-smudged fatigues and his beat-up A-3 cap and a pissed-off expression. A filthy rag flopped in his back pocket and a smoking Lucky drooped from the corner of his mouth. He looked for all the world as if he were at home in a hangar at Thurgood, and he looked completely unsurprised to see the crew.
“You knew we’d be here?” Broben asked, after the arm-punches and insults subsided.
Wen took a deep drag of his Lucky. “’Course I knew,” he said. “Cap’n wouldn’t just leave her here.” He looked around at the crew, paused at Sten, pulled the cigarette from his mouth, and waved it. “Where is the captain, lieutenant?”
The men glanced at each other and looked down.
“He didn’t make it, Wen,” Broben said.
Wen nodded slowly. All that showed on his face were lines where his mouth went tight.
“Sten here is from—you know about the Dome?”
Wen nodded again.
“He helped us get here,” Broben said. “He’s on the level. He lost people too.”
Wen took one last laconic pull from his Lucky, then dropped it and ground it out with his boot. “We should get on the ship,” he said, and turned toward the bomber.
“Hey,” Broben called. “Where the hell is everybody here?”
Wen stopped and looked up at the distant grid of roof. He took a deep breath and turned back around. “Ain’t that many,” he said. “Three, four hundred maybe. They got a lotta gizmos, but they’re barely holdin’ on here.” He squinted at the scaled-down city in the distance. “What works here works great, but half of it don’t work at all. Everything’s all patches and spare parts. Including them. They’re a pretty scary bunch.”
“So they leave you alone with a bomber?”
“Hell no. I’m chaperoned like a church dance.” Wen put index and pinkie fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. The enormous spider-like creature on the wing scurried down the engine cowling with a multi-legged determination that creeped Broben the hell out. It dropped to the ground beside Wen.
“They call these things biobots,” Wen said. “They all over the place. This here’s Abbott. That one that run off is Costello. Mostly they do repairs, but if I try to escape or sabotage the bomber, they’re s’posed to stop me.” A corner of his mouth drew up. “Something still goes wrong every time I about get her going, though.”
Broben’s heart sank. “You’ve been putting off fixing her,” he said resignedly.
“You kidding? These little jaspers are the best grease monkeys you ever saw. They spoiled the hell outta me. You gotta train ’em up, but they learn pretty good.” He fished the battered pack of Luckies from his shirt pocket and shook out a last cigarette. The spider extended a supple foreleg toward him and the tip glowed yellow-white. Wen bent and lit the cigarette against it. He straightened and blew smoke and turned to Broben. “I ain’t been keeping ’em from fixing her,” he said. “I been keeping ’em from knowing she’s fixed.”
Broben stared. “She can fly?” he said.
“Milk truck coming our way,” Plavitz announced.
They all looked to see a large square vehicle like a delivery truck headed their way from the direction of the little city.
“Everybody on the bomber,” Broben ordered. He looked hard at Wen as the crew ran for the main door and the bomb bay. “She can fly,” he said again.
Wen nodded.
“Okay,” said Broben. “Okay.” He ran to the main door and hurried into the bomber and pulled up short. Another spider was perched on top of the ball turret’s hydraulic assembly.
“Rochester won’t bother you,” said Wen.
“He bothers me now,” said Broben.
Wen waved it off as if a yard-wide spider on a Flying Fortress were something you saw every day. Broben tried to press himself flat as he sidled by the bug without taking his eyes off it. When he was past it he ran past Shorty at his seat in the radio room and hurried toward the cockpit.