There was nobody behind it.
Then the rock wall shattered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The first cave was a small one, with a single red-tinged biolum globe jammed up between the saw-teeth rock snags of the roof. Rosy light made it seem warmer than it was. Someone had hacked a circular depression in the floor, four metres across; it was full of some transparent gel with a tough flexible plastic sheet stretched across the top.
Greg tested it with his hand, and watched a sluggish ripple ride across to the other side. Eleanor would like to hear about this, she adored waterbeds. He smiled furtively, wondering what she was doing right now. New London was on Greenwich Mean Time, which meant they would have finished the day's picking by now. She would probably be sitting outside by the camp's range grill, supervising the evening meal.
The clump of Teresa's boots as she climbed down out of the crack broke his train of thought.
"Tol," Sinclair called. "Tol, me boy. You're all right, 'us only me." He looked at the other two openings in the cave walls, and grimaced ruefully. "Ah, well. I was hoping the lad would be down here. Your tin men, they won't be going shooting at civilians, now will they?"
"No," Greg said. "If he does wander back into the village cave, he'll be quite all right."
"That's fine, then. He's a good lad."
Julia and Rick were already down in the cave, Jim Sharman was bringing up the rear. Julia ignored the gel bed.
"Where now?" she asked.
Sinclair pointed to one of the openings. "This one. It goes into one of our storage caves."
"Carlos," Greg said. "Lead out." He could hear faint whines and thuds coming along the crack to the village cave. Melvyn getting ready. He wished Suzi had come with them.
The passage sloped downwards. Greg watched the rock grow darker, from burnt ochre at the entrance to a deep slate-grey; it was harder, too, more brittle. Almost like flint, he thought.
By the time they reached the store cave his breath had become a white mist. There was a sprinkling of hoarfrost on the walls. It was a small cave, barely more than a wider section of the passage, with an uneven floor. A rough lash up of metal shelving stood along one side. Composite cargo pods were stacked opposite them, the names of various shops and New London civil administration departments stencilled next to long bar codes. There was a weak vinegar smell coming from the apples and plums on the shelves. The globes of fruit were large, gene-tailored, their skins crinkling.
Carlos walked past the end of the shelves, helmet lights picking up the thicker rime covering the rock.
"This is it?" Greg asked Sinclair. "The drone was here?"
"That's right, Captain Greg."
"Dead end," Carlos said.
"You knew that," Julia said. "And you still brought us down here." Her mind boiled with weary frustration.
"'Tis what you wanted," Sinclair said sullenly.
"It's all right," Greg said. They were in the right place, he would have known otherwise. There were levels of intuition, and this seemed to be the most intangible, yet perversely the most resolute. He reckoned that if he shut his eyes and started walking he would wind up standing beside Royan and the alien. Close, it was close now.
"Wait there," Greg told Carlos. He ordered up a secretion, the neurohormones acting like a flush of icy spring water in his brain. His thoughts seemed to lift out of time as he walked down the cave towards Carlos, mind flicking methodically through the impressions of his sensorium, searching for evidence of Royan, that unique spectral imprint his soul discharged in its wake.
The rock walls beyond the shelves were lined with small holes and slender zigzag clefts. Tiny splinters had flaked away where water had penetrated hairline cracks and expanded as it froze; the result was as if someone had taken a chisel and meticulously chipped a million pock scars into the walls.
There was a horizontal gash, about four metres long, varying between half a metre and a metre wide, level with Greg's head. He stood squinting into it, listening to the silence it exuded. The alien's siren song. "Bring some of those pods over here," he said.
"You can't be expecting me to go in there," Sinclair said as Greg stood on the pods and shone his torch into the gash. It was flat for about five metres, then angled upwards. "'Fraid so. It must get wider past that slope. Carlos, can a suit get in there?"
Carlos sent a fan of green laser light into the gash from his shoulder sensor module. "Tight fit, but we can get through."
"Any electronic activity in there?"
"No."
Nerves fluttered back to hound him as Greg levered himself into the gash. It had an uncomfortable resemblance to a pair of lips, plates of the mouth waiting to bite down.
Stop it!
He lay on his back, and shifted his buttocks sideways, shuffling towards the slope at the rear. His breath was melting the hoarfrost on the rock above him, tiny beads of oily water flowing into droplets that fell onto his face.
When the floor began to lift he stopped and shone his torch up. It seemed to be some kind of kink in the gash, rising up a couple of metres, then levelling out. Growing narrower, though, maybe two metres long at the top. Sighing, he began to work his way up.
He could tell there was a cave just beyond the top of the kink. The air had the right deadness for an empty space, sucking up sounds. Exertion was leaving a layer of sweat all over his skin which would quickly turn clammy cold as the suit's shunt fibres kicked in and drained the heat out. The temperature palpitation was bloody irritating.
There was a shelf at the top of the slope. He rested on it, and shone his torch into the cave. The ledge was about two metres long, ending abruptly. All he could see were the nondescript curves and angles of more dark grey rock. It was too much effort to wrestle his hood into place and use the photon amp, so he inched over to the lip and shone his torch straight down. The floor was a metre below. He swung his legs out.
This cave was much smaller than any the Celestials used. He prowled round it as the others squirmed their way out of the gash. There was very little frost on the walls.
"Where now?" Rick asked. There was no scepticism in the big man's tone. He had accepted Greg's talent as genuine. Even Jim and Carlos had no qualms, but then, three of their team mates were sac psychics.
Greg led them on, down a passage whose walls slanted over at thirty degrees. Selection was automatic. Seductive whispers in his mind.
They walked for about two hundred metres. In one place the walls and floor contracted, forcing them to crawl on all fours for five metres. Then Carlos said his sensors were picking up magnetic patterns ahead.
"Can you identify them?" Greg asked.
"It's a single structure containing several processors, power circuits, and some kind of giga-conductor cell."
"The drone," Greg said.
"Could be."
It was waiting for them in the next cave. A dull-orange oblong box, with a wedge-shaped front, a metre and a half long, seventy centimetres wide. There was a sensor cluster at each corner, two man-black waldos folded back along the sides. He saw a small triangle and flying-V printed on one side near the rear.
"Its sensors are active," Carlos said. "It's seen us."
"Any datalink transmission?"
"Yes."
"Hello, Snowy," the drone said. It was Royan's voice all right, or at least a pretty good synthesis.
Julia let out a muffled gasp. There was a powerful burst of emotion from her mind—anger, but mostly worry.
"Greg, thanks for coming," said Royan. "I knew you wouldn't let me down. You never do. Good job, too. The alternative would have been dire all round."