Asgard's Conquerors (16 page)

We pulled our scouts back, and moved in single file across what had
once been the "farmlands" of level two. The ceiling of the level was
only fifteen metres or so here, and was ribbed with what had once been very
powerful electric lights. In the Golden Age of Asgard those lights had blazed
upon carpets of artificial photosynthetic material, interrupted by occasional
lakes of photosynthetic fluid. Underneath the carpets and around the lakes
there had been processing machinery which had accumulated the products, and
below the machinery there had been another active layer of thermosynthetic
materials. It all added up to a sophisticated organic technology, in which
real organisms had played a very marginal role. There had been no herds of domestic
animals—meat-production for the level-dwellers was entirely a matter of organic
synthesis from scratch ... if you can call the products of that kind of
synthesis "meat" in any but a metaphorical sense.

Now, of course, the whole shebang was in ruins. Most of the equipment
had been stripped before the cavies left, and the whole system had been shut
down some time before the big freeze-up. What they'd left behind was mostly
garbage, though it was still recognisable as the remains of a highly-
sophisticated biotechnological production-system. The Tetrax had much that was
similar on their homeworld, and I had heard that dear old Mother Earth was
gradually making over her useless tropical deserts for the development of this
kind of artificial photosynthetic technology. Needless to say, we were buying
some of the technology from the Tetrax, but we were having to do a great deal
of the R&D work ourselves because we didn't have much that the Tetrax
actually wanted in exchange.

On the second night we shopped around for an inconspicuous spot in
which to erect a small bubble-dome. We investigated a couple of small
"villages," where residential accommodation was organised in floor-to-ceiling
blocks four or five stories high, but I'd always found such places to be poor
camp-sites. The cavies' apartments tended to be untidy, their rooms having been
stripped and gutted like everything else, and left in a worse state of
dereliction. Opening the doors was always a problem, because the locking
mechanisms had long since set firm. I'd had many years of experience cutting
laboriously through doors, only to discover that there was nothing of any
interest on the other side.

In the end, it seemed most convenient for us to take up residence in a
building which had presumably served as some kind of barn or storehouse, where
there was a space big enough to erect a comfortable dome, but which wasn't out
in the open. We managed to find a place that was clustered around with blocks
and pillars, so that it couldn't easily be observed from a distance. Nowhere in
the caves is there any open space of the kind you'd find on the surface of a
world, because the whole structure has to be protected against the dangers of
collapse, but factory-fields are open enough to cause embarrassment if you're
trying to hide. We were careful to look for somewhere with plenty of cover.

We had power enough to raise the temperature inside the plastic bubble
to a tolerable level, but we were determined to conserve our air, and didn't
want to expend enough to give it an atmosphere. For this reason, setting up
accommodation wasn't quite like pitching a tent. We remained in our suits,
with the chemistry-sets on our backs feeding our bodies with all the
essentials.

We were still communicating with one another on an open channel radio,
so there was no real privacy (although I had agreed on a couple of secret
wavelengths with my commander, so that we could confer, if necessary, without
the Tetrax being able to overhear). It was a relief, though, to be able to lay
down the equipment and then lie down ourselves, confident that the environment
was as friendly as could be expected.

"Could the invaders track us from the point at which we triggered
their alarm device?" 994-Tulyar asked me, once we were cosily set up.

"Very unlikely," I told him. "I don't believe they could
figure out where we left the highway. We left traces, of course, but there've
been so many other galactics moving about on level one during the last twenty
years that there's no way of sorting out our tracks from the others. We're safe
here, for now. The traces we leave when we try to break into the lower levels
of the city will be a different matter. Then we'll have to take extra
care."

"We have every reason to believe that the factory-fields will be
operating more-or-less normally," Scarion pointed out. "There will be
workers there from many of the galactic races. Once we have stowed away our
cold-suits, we will not be conspicuous."

He was obviously trying to reassure himself rather than the rest of us—Tulyar
had appointed him to accompany us on our first foray into the lower levels of
the city. It was not a good time for airing anxieties, so I saved up my less
uplifting thoughts. In any case, he was probably right. All we had to do on day
one was make some preliminary contacts, try to get a message or two through to
the top men in the city, and avoid the invaders. It seemed a sufficiently
discreet programme, though there was always a danger of our attempts to communicate
being intercepted, and giving us away.

We had had a long day, and had worked ourselves pretty hard. In our
hammocks, we slept what is euphemistically called the sleep of the just. Just
what, I wasn't entirely sure.

11

We had no
trouble getting close to the city on level two. We had already picked out a
likely point of entry on the map, and our approach was untroubled.

Our means of ingress was to be a narrow corridor on level one, which
was sealed halfway along its length by a plastic plug. First we had to put in a
second plug behind us, then equalize the pressure, then cut through the
original plug. We were going through on level one because the temperature and
pressure differentials were far less sharp than on level two—which meant that
the plugs we had to deal with would be far less solid and much more easily
manageable.

This was the most hazardous part of the operation. Once we'd put a plug
behind us, we'd effectively imprisoned ourselves, along with a major part of
our equipment. If we attracted attention while we were actually at work
cutting, there was no place to go. Once we were inside, there would be a rich
selection of bolt-holes, but if we were spotted before we got through we'd be
done for. The other big danger was that while we were inside, some wandering patrol
might discover what we'd done, thus allowing them to set an ambush for us.

We had decided that four of us would make the first foray into the
city, for a preliminary appraisal of the situation. 994-Tulyar and Susarma Lear
stayed behind, on the grounds that you don't expose your top personnel on the
first run. The Turkanian was out, too, because he'd be the guy entrusted with
the task of getting them out again if anything happened to me. That put me in
command of the raiding party, with 74-Scarion, Sergeant Serne, and a trooper
named Vasari. He'd been on Asgard before, but he'd had the plum job of minding
the trucks when the rest of us went down into the levels, so he'd never
actually been under the surface.

We came back up to level one through one of the usual airlock-type
hatchways. The seals on such hatchways were simple mechanical devices, so time
and cold hadn't wrecked them, and it had been easy enough for the C.R.E. to
make them usable again. Thousands of the things had been mapped within a couple
of kilometres of the city boundary, though the vast majority connected levels
one and two— getting down into three was a slightly different matter, and in
this region it was very difficult to get down to four, because there was no
major cave-system directly below the city, and the regions of four hereabouts
seemed pretty solid, as far as the C.R.E. had been able to establish.

Plugging the corridor was quick work; we sealed ourselves off in a
chamber not much bigger than a starship cabin, where we had to jostle for the
space to use the equipment. That made it economical to equalize the pressure
and temperature, but it increased the likelihood of an accident with the
cutting gear. Serne did most of the work—he was quick and neat, and when we
were through he brought the edges of the cut back together so cleverly that
you'd have had to get very close indeed to see that anything had been done. We
worked by torchlight; the corridor was unlit. We were in what had been a
residential district when the cavies lived there, but it hadn't been colonized
by the galactics. Out in the factory-fields the lights were on right around the
clock, but this was as godforsaken a spot as the city had to offer.

We stripped off our suits and stowed them in the space between the
plugs, where we left the equipment. Taking out the tubes—especially the
drip-feed injectors—was messy and painful, and in a way it would have been more
convenient and more comfortable to keep the suits on, but without them on there
was every chance that we could pass for citizens if we were noticed by the new
overlords of the city.

We dressed in clothes that we had brought with us—nondescript khaki
coveralls, loose enough to hide the mud guns we were carrying, and brown boots.
The boots were made from Tetron artificial organics, and I was glad to find
that they were exceptionally comfortable, designed for human feet. I'd once
tried to wear boots designed for Tetron feet, and found them impossible; I'd
never seen a naked Tetron foot, but I deduced that they must have very peculiar
toes.

When we were all properly dressed, we moved stealthily through the
darkened corridor. We played the beam of a single torch along the ground ahead
of us.

We'd hardly gone thirty metres before we were startled by sudden
rustling sounds. We froze in our tracks.

"There's someone there!" exclaimed Scarion, before I could
signal for silence. Seme and Vasari, of course, knew better than to open their
mouths in such a situation.

The light failed to pick anything out as we hurried toward what seemed
to be the source of the noise. The texture of the sound suggested that to me
it was some kind of vermin. Starships are supposedly free from rats, but there
are several races in the galactic community that choose to take other lifeforms
around with them—as pets, I guess. Skychain City had been around long enough to
collect a feral population of catlike creatures, which made a living scavenging
around the factory fields, skulking at other times in exactly those forgotten
corners which had recommended themselves to our purpose.

Further on, we heard more sounds. Again we could see nothing, and I
couldn't tell whether the sound was only some small animal scurrying away, or
whether it was something—or someone—larger. It might have been a galactic
refugee, who assumed we were the invaders.

I looked at Serne for a second opinion, but he just shrugged. There was
no point in starting a chase. In the end, we moved on—we had work to do.

Finally, we came to the edge of the darkness, and I switched off the
torch. We peered out of a covert at a vast sheet of organosynthetic material,
which looked like a plain of plastic grass, cut up into diamond-shaped sections
by railways and walkways. The fifteen-metre ceiling was blazing with light.

Everything seemed to be working normally. Sections of supporting wall
interrupted our view, but in between them we could see for several hundred
metres. In the distance we could see one of the automated trains that
transported the "crops" ambling along its track, pausing occasionally
to pick up cargo. There was not a humanoid being in sight.