The moon was still visible after a fashion in spite of the brightening sky. Its image was distorted and swung back and forth by the swell, but it gave some guide to direction. Kahvi stayed below the surface — entirely-charged breathing cartridges were much denser than water, and she needed no effort to stay down — until she felt sure that she had swum farther out than the raft. Then, still very carefully, she raised her head. The swell alternately lifted and lowered her nearly a meter, but she caught glimpses of shore and raft.
She was still well north of the latter, and somewhat farther from shore. She was tempted to stay on the surface for easier navigation, but the six Hillers were now outside the jail. Even though they were moving rapidly toward the fire — the crimson glow and rising column of smoke made her feel sick again for a moment — and seemed to be paying no attention to any other direction, Kahvi decided to play it safe and submerged again. The next time she came up to check she was almost directly out from the raft, about a hundred meters, and people were all out of sight. She finished her journey on the surface until she had to go down again to get to the entry hatchway. She climbed in as quietly as she could, but it wasn’t quietly enough; the child felt the change in motion of the floats.
“Mother, is that you? Where were you? There’s another fire, and I’m scared. Should we go out with the buckets again?”
“No, dear. This is just a little fire, and it won’t come close. You may watch it or go back to sleep, whichever you want.”
“Which will you do?”
“I’ll watch for a while. Do you want to come over here with me?”
There was no verbal answer, but the floats changed their rhythm again and a moment later her daughter’s tiny form was cuddled against her.
No more words were necessary, and Kahvi carefully refrained from using any. Danna helped remove her mother’s outdoor gear without asking again where she had been — after all, there was nothing unusual about either of her parents’ going out to check anchors or other things even at night.
Several silent minutes passed, and Kahvi began to hope that the little one had gone back to sleep.
But she hadn’t. She saw the figures in the growing light as quickly as her mother, and felt Kahvi stiffen at the sight.
“Who are those people, Mother? Are they coming here?”
“They may be. Get your outdoor gear on, Dan, but don’t connect cartridges until they really come into the water. Be quick.”
X
Contretemps, Confused
It was brighter after passing the air lock. The lighting system of the city could not compete with daylight, but was better than moon and comet together. Earrin had intended to emerge from the water very carefully, but realized in time that this would be more likely to attract attention than a casual entrance. As it happened, his attempt at nonchalance was wasted, since no one was inside the cavern which held the air lock. This was hardly surprising in view of the hour, but Fyn still felt relieved.
That lasted for only a moment, until he suddenly realized that he had no real plan of action. The two main needs were obvious: he had come to find the captive native, and he would of course have to get his breathing cartridges recharged.
The latter would take care of itself if he could leave them exposed to city air for enough hours, but itwould be better to get them into the full-pressure oxygen of a life-support bubble. How the captive could be found when Fyn had not the slightest knowledge of the city’s layout, beyond occasional details mentioned by his wife, was far from obvious. Earrin began to suspect that he was not being very realistic, or even very sensible. Presumably the life support area would be at the top of the city, since it would need sunlight — Kahvi had, in fact, said as much. About all that could be done, therefore, was to take every opportunity he could find of going upward. He started along the first corridor which caught his eye, out of the dozen which opened into the cave.
Within fifteen minutes he was hopelessly lost. The tunnels were not straight, as Bones was to discover some hours later. However, he kept on. Presumably the higher he got, the smaller would be the city area; it was quite likely that life-support took up the whole top level. He was not using his own air — this would have bothered his conscience as a rule, but at the moment the city owed him — and there were plenty of hours available.
It was not entirely luck which kept him from being identified as an intruder for all those hours. He had come in at a seldom-used lock above the heavily populated levels; and even though most of the people lived and worked out of sight of the sun, the city was mainly active by day and asleep at night. There was nothing like a regular police or guard force. Like the Nomads, the citizens had to follow rather strict natural laws in order to survive, though the laws were not quite the same as those needed outdoors. The city-dwellers had their own standards of righteousness, and a few generations of enforcing these by firmly Nomadding offenders, combined with the fact that it was difficult for social parasites to get away with their life-style for very long in such a confined area, had made police activity superfluous. There were exceptions, of course; crime waves followed by spells of vigilante activity occurred more or less regularly, but Fyn had made his entrance at a relatively safe part of the cycle.
In better light, his outdoor coloration might have caught attention. However, the pseudolife plates which provided illumination were dim by electrical age standards even where they were regularly fed and watered. Elsewhere they sufficed to keep pedestrians from collision.
Fyn, therefore, had no trouble travelling, even though he had no idea where he was going horizontally. It took him more than an hour to find a stairway going up, though he had encountered two heading downward in that time. He judged, correctly, that this was support for his higher-the-smaller hypothesis. The stairway took him up some twenty meters, passing several levels, before it ended and he had to seek another. This didn’t take so long to find, but gained him much less height. It did gain him, though he didn’t realize it for some time, a follower; a slender, tentacled form which looked like a fish walking on its tail.
He never knew just how long it took him to find the air center, but the sun was high when he finally did. Golden daylight, visible at a distance along a new corridor, was in fact the final guide. By this time he was meeting people fairly often, but no one paid him much attention in the biolit tunnels. His act of nonchalance had been perfected by practice, and he no longer felt the urge to duck into a side tunnel whenever someone appeared ahead. His follower was doing this, so far in time to have avoided notice.
There was more system to these upper corridors; the Observer had worked it out, and succeeded in getting back on Earrin’s trail each time it had been necessary to hide. Actually the being did not regard the concealment as really essential, but wanted to keep track of Fyn without compromising him.
With the increasing number of people around, Earrin was feeling less and less sure of himself as the minutes wore on. When the sunlight appeared ahead, his spirits revived a little; this had to be the air and food supply region, and he could recharge both air cartridges and stomach in a short time if he weren’t recognized in the brighter light. How many attendants would there be on hand? How preoccupied would they be with their routine work? Could anyone come in, eat, and exchange or renew cartridges without any formality? Kahvi had never told him.
His tension mounted again as he approached the daylit end of the tunnel and a figure appeared there a few meters ahead of him. Fortunately this one, a woman who looked a good deal older than Kahvi, had just been in full sunlight and for the moment could see scarcely anything. She did detect Earrin’s presence and nodded indifferently as she passed him, but that was all. That left the man five meters from daylight with no obstacles in sight.He did not, however, reach full sunlight just then. A sudden shout of surprise in a female voice sounded from behind him and caused him to swing about sharply. A few meters away was the woman who had just passed him; about as far beyond her, another shape was disappearing into a side passageway. The Observer had run out of luck. Fyn, his eyesight already affected by the brightness he had been approaching, was not sure of details, but he saw enough to tell why the woman had shrieked.