The tunnel was long and black and the air was stale and thick with the
stench of rodents. Stanton stood still, trying to probe the luminescent
gloom that the goggles he wore brought to his eyes. The tunnel stretched
out before him--on and on. Around him was the smell of viciousness and
death. Ahead ...
_It goes on to infinity_, Stanton thought, _ending at last at zero_.
"Barbell," said a voice near his ear, "Barhop here. Do you read?" It was
the barest whisper, picked up by the antennae in his shoes from the steel
rail that ran along the tunnel.
"Read you, Barhop."
"Move out, then. You've got a long stroll to go."
Stanton started walking, keeping his feet near the rail, in case Barhop
wanted to call again. As he walked, he could feel the slight motion of the
skin-tight, woven elastic suit that he wore rubbing against his skin.
And he could hear the scratching patter of the rats.
Mostly, they stayed away from him, but he could see them hiding in corners
and scurrying along the sides of the tunnel. Around him, six rat-like
remote-control robots moved with him, shifting their pattern constantly as
they patrolled his moving figure.
Far ahead, he knew, other rat robots were stationed, watching and waiting,
ready to deactivate the Nipe's detection devices at just the right moment.
Behind him, another horde moved forward to turn the devices on again.
It had taken a long time to learn how to shut off those detectors without
giving the alarm to the Nipe's instruments.
There were nearly a hundred men in on the operation, operating the robot
rats or watching the hidden cameras that spied upon the Nipe. Nearly a
hundred. And all of them were safe.
They were outside the tunnel. They were with Stanton only in proxy. They
could not die here in this stinking hole, but Stanton could.
There was no help for it. Stanton had to go in person. A full-sized robot
proxy would be stronger, although not faster unless Stanton controlled it,
than the Nipe. But the Nipe would be able to tell that it was a robot, and
he would simply destroy it with one of his weapons. A remote-controlled
robot would never get close enough to the Nipe to do any good.
"We do not know," Dr. Yoritomo had said, "whether he would recognize it as
a robot or not, but his instruments would show the metal easily enough,
and his eyes might be able to see that it was not covered with human skin.
The rats are covered with real rat hides; they are small, and he is used
to seeing them around. But a human-sized robot? Ah, no. Never."
So Stanton had to go in in person, walking southward, along the miles of
blackness that led to the nest of the Nipe.
Overhead was Government City.
He had walked those streets only the night before, and he knew that only a
short distance above him was an entirely different world.
Somewhere up there, his brother was waiting after having run the gamut of
televised interviews, dinner at one of the best restaurants, and a party
afterward. A celebrity. "The greatest detective in the Solar System,"
they'd called him. Fine stuff, that. Stanton wondered what the asteroids
were like. Maybe that would be the place to go after this job was done.
Maybe they'd have a place in the asteroids for a hopped-up superman.
Or maybe there'd only be a place here, beneath the streets of Government
City for a dead superman.
_Not if I can help it,_ Stanton thought with a grim smile.
* * * * *
The walking seemed to take forever, but, somehow, Stanton didn't mind it.
He had a lot to think over. Seeing his brother had been unnerving
yesterday, but today he felt as though everything had been all right all
along.
His memory still was a long way from being complete, and it probably
always would be. He could still scarcely recall any real memories of a boy
named Martin Stanton, but--and he smiled at the thought--he knew more
about him than his brother did, at that.
It didn't matter. That Martin Stanton was gone. In effect, he had been
demolished--what little there had been of him--and a new structure had
been built on the old foundation.
And yet, in another way, the new structure was very like what would have
developed naturally if the accident so early in life had not occurred.
Stanton skirted a pile of rubble on his right. There had been a station
here, once; the street above had caved in and filled in with brick,
concrete, cobblestones, and steel scrap, and then it had been sealed over
when Government City was built.
A part of one wall was still unbroken, though. A sign built of tile said
_86th Street_, he knew, although it wasn't visible in the dim glow. He
kept walking, ignoring the rats that scampered over the rubble.
"Barhop to Barbell," said the soft voice near his ear. "No sign of
activity from the Nipe. So far, you haven't triggered any of his alarms."
"Barbell to Barhop," Stanton whispered. "What's he doing?"
"Still sitting motionless. Thinking, I guess. Or sleeping. It's hard to
tell."
"Let me know if he starts moving around."
"Will do."
_Poor, unsuspecting beastie,_ Stanton thought. _Ten years of hard work,
ten years of feeling secure, and within a very short time he's going to
get the shock of his life._
Or maybe not. There was no way of knowing what kind of shocks the Nipe had
taken in his life, Stanton thought. Not even of knowing whether the Nipe
was capable of feeling anything like security.
It was odd, he thought, that he should feel a kinship toward both the Nipe
and his brother in such similar ways. He had never met the Nipe, and his
brother was a dim picture in his old memories, but they were both very
well known to him. Certainly better known to him than he was to them.
And yet, seeing his brother's face on the TV screen, hearing him talk,
watching the way he moved about, watching the expressions on his face, had
been a tremendously moving thing. Not until that moment had he really
known himself.
Meeting him face to face would be easier now, but it would still be a
scene highly charged with emotional tension.
He kicked something that rattled and rolled away from him. He stopped,
freezing in his tracks, trying to pierce the dully glowing gloom. It was a
human skull.
He relaxed and began walking again.
[Illustration]
There were plenty of bones down here. Mannheim had said that the tunnels
had been used as air-raid shelters when the sun bomb had hit the island
during the Holocaust. Thousands had crowded underground after the warning
had come, and they had died when the bright, hot, deadly gas had roared
down through ventilators and open stairwells.
There were even caches of canned goods down here, some of them still
sealed after all this time. But the rats, wiser than they knew, had chewed
at them, exposing the steel beneath the tin plate. After a while,
oxidation would weaken a can to the point where some lucky rat could bite
through it and find himself a meal. Then he could move the empty can aside
and gnaw the next one in the pile, and the cycle would begin again. It
kept the rats fed almost as well as an automatic machine might have.
* * * * *
The tunnel was an endless monochromatic world that was both artificial and
natural. Here, there was a neatly squared-off mosaic of ceramic tile; over
there, on a little hillock of earth, squatted a colony of fat mushrooms.
In one place, he had to skirt a pool of water; in another, climb over a
heap of rust and debris that had once been a subway car.
One man, alone, walking through the dark towards a superhuman monster that
had terrorized Earth for a decade.
A drug that would knock out the Nipe would have been useful, but that
would have required a greater knowledge of the Nipe's biochemistry than
anyone had. The same applied to anesthetic gases, or electric shock, or
supersonics.
The only answer was a man called Stanton.