"What do you mean, 'All things considered'?"
"The very fact that the Nipe exists, and that this is the only method of
dealing with him that is even remotely possible would certainly
influence my opinion," Farnsworth said. "I might not be so quick to go
through it, frankly, if it were not for the fact that the future of the
entire human race would depend upon my decision." He paused, then added:
"I would hesitate to go through with it if there were no Nipe threat,
not because I would be afraid that the operations might fail, but
because of what I would be afterward."
"Um. Yes." The young man caught his lower lip between his teeth and
thought for a moment. "Yes, I see what you mean. Being a lone superman
in a world of ordinary people mightn't be so pleasant."
Colonel Mannheim, who had been sitting silently during the discussion
between the two men, said: "Look, Stanton, I know this is tough.
Actually, it's a lot tougher on you than it is on your brother, because
_you_ have to make the decision. _He_ can't. But I want you to keep it
in mind that there's nothing compulsory in this. Nobody's trying to
force you to do anything."
There was a touch of bitterness in the young man's smile as he looked at
the colonel. "No. You merely remind me of the fact and leave the rest to
my sense of duty."
Colonel Mannheim, recognizing the slightly altered quotation, returned
his smile and gave him the next line. "'Your sense of duty!'"
The bitterness vanished, and the young man's smile became a grin.
"'Don't put it on that footing!'" he quoted back in a melodramatic
voice. "'As I was merciful to you just now, be merciful to me! I implore
you not to insist on the letter of your bond just as the cup of
happiness is at my lips!'"
"'We insist on nothing,'" returned the colonel; "'we content ourselves
with pointing out _your duty_.'"
Dr. Farnsworth had no notion of what the two of them were talking about,
but he kept silent as he noticed the tension fading.
"'Well, you have appealed to my sense of duty,'" the young man
continued, "'and my duty is all too clear. I abhor your infamous
calling; I shudder at the thought that I have ever been mixed up with
it; but duty is before all--at any price I will do my duty.'"
"'Bravely spoken!'" said the colonel. "'Come, you are one of us once
more.'"
"'Lead on. I follow.'"
And the two of them broke out in laughter while Farnsworth looked on in
total incomprehension. His was not the kind of mind that could face a
grim situation with a laugh.
Even after he quit laughing, the smile remained on the young man's face.
"All right, Colonel, you win. We'll go through with it, Martin and I."
"Good!" Mannheim said warmly. "Do you have the papers, Dr. Farnsworth?"
"Right here," Farnsworth said, opening a briefcase that was lying on the
table. He was glad to be back in the conversation again. He took out a
thick sheaf of papers and spread them on the table. Then he handed the
young man a pen. "You'll have to sign at the bottom of each sheet," he
said.
The young man picked up the papers and read through them carefully. Then
he looked up at Farnsworth. "They seem to be in order. Uh--about Martin.
You know what's the matter with him--I mean, aside from the radiation.
Do you think he'll be able to handle his part of the job after--after
the operations?"
"I'm quite sure he will. The operations, plus the therapy we'll give
him afterward should put him in fine shape."
"Well." He looked thoughtful. "Five more years. And then I'll have the
twin brother that I never really had at all. Somehow that part of it
just doesn't really register, I guess."
"Don't worry about it, Stanton," said Dr. Farnsworth. "We have a complex
enough job ahead of us without your worrying in the bargain. We'll want
your mind perfectly relaxed. You have your own ordeal to undergo."
"Thanks for reminding me," the young man said, but there was a smile on
his face when he said it. He looked at the release forms again. "All
nice and legal, huh? Well ..." He hesitated for a moment, then he took
the pen and wrote _Bartholomew Stanton_ in a firm, clear hand.
_[21]_
Captain Davidson Greer sat in a chair before an array of TV screens, his
gray-green eyes watchful. In the center of one of the screens, the
Nipe's image sat immobile, surrounded by the paraphernalia in his hidden
nest. Other screens showed various sections of the long tunnel that led
south from the opening in the northern end of the island. At the
captain's fingertips was a bank of controls that would allow him to
switch from one pickup to another if necessary, so that he could see
anything anywhere in the tunnels. He hoped that wouldn't be necessary.
He did not want any of the action to take place anywhere but in the
places where it was expected--but he was prepared for alterations in the
plan. In other rooms, nearly a hundred other men were linked into the
special controls that allowed them to operate the little rat spies that
scuttled through the underground darkness, and the captain's system
would allow him to see through the eyes of any one of those rats at an
instant's notice.
The screen which he was watching at the moment, however, was not
connected with an underground pickup. It was linked with a pickup in the
bottom of a basketball-sized sphere driven by a small inertial engine
that held the sphere hovering in the air above the game sanctuary on the
northern tip of Manhattan Island. In the screen, he had an aerial view
of the grassy, rocky mounds where the earth hid the shattered and
partially melted ruins of long-collapsed buildings. In the center of the
screen was a bird's-eye view of a man holding a rifle. He was walking
slowly, picking his way carefully along the bottom of the shallow gully
that had once been upper Broadway.
"Barbell," the captain said. A throat microphone picked up the words and
transmitted them to the ears of the man in the screen. "Barbell, this is
Barhop. There are no wild animals within sight, but remember, we can't
see everything from up here, so keep your eyes open."
"Right, Barhop," said a rather muffled voice in the captain's ear.
"Fine. And if you do meet up with anything, shoot to kill." There were
plenty of wild animals in the game sanctuary--some of them dangerous.
Not all of the inhabitants of the Bronx Zoological Gardens had been
killed on that day when the sun bomb fell. Being farther north, they had
had better protection, and some of them, later, had wandered southward
to the island. Captain Greer knew perfectly well that Stanton,
bare-handed, was more than a match for a leopard or a lion, but he
didn't want Stanton to tire himself fighting with an animal. The rifle
would most likely never be used; it was merely another precaution.
It would have been possible, and perhaps simpler, to have taken Stanton
to the opening by flyer, but that would have created other
complications. Traffic rules forbade flyers to go over the game
sanctuary at any altitude less than one thousand feet. One flyer, going
in low, would have attracted the attention of the traffic police, and
Stanley Martin wanted no attention whatever drawn to this area. Even the
procedure of instructing the traffic officers to ignore one flyer would
have attracted more attention than he wanted. They would have remembered
those instructions afterward.
Stanton walked.
Captain Greer's eye caught something at the edge of the screen. It moved
toward the center as the floating eye moved with Stanton.
"Barbell," the captain said, "there's a deer ahead of you. Just keep
moving."
Stanton rounded the corner of a pile of masonry. He could see the animal
now himself. The deer stared at the intruder for a few seconds, then
bounded away with long, graceful leaps.
"Magnificent animal." It was Stanton's voice, very low. The remark
wasn't directed toward anyone in particular. Captain Greer didn't
answer.
The captain lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, his eyes on
the screens. The Nipe still sat, unmoving. He was apparently in one of
his "sleep" states. The captain wasn't sure that that was the blessing
that it might have seemed. He had no way of knowing how much external
disturbance it would take to "wake" the Nipe, and as long as he was
sitting quietly, the chances were greater that he would hear movement in
the tunnel. If he were active, his senses might be more alert, but he
would also be distracted by his own actions and the noises he made
himself.
It didn't matter, the captain decided. One way was as good as another in
this case. The point was to get Stanton into an advantageous position
before the Nipe knew he was anywhere around.
He looked back at the image of Stanton, a black-clad figure in a
flexible, tough, skin-tight suit. The Nipe would have a hard time biting
through that artificial hide, but it gave Stanton as much freedom as if
he'd been naked.
Stanton knew where he was going. He had studied maps of the area, and
had been taken on a vicarious tour of the route by means of the very
flying eye that was watching him now. But things look different from the
ground than from the air, and no amount of map study will familiarize a
person with terrain as completely as an actual personal survey.
Stanton paused, and Captain Greer heard his voice. "Barhop, this is
Barbell. Those are the cliffs up ahead, aren't they?"
"That's right, Barbell. You go up that slope to your left. The opening
is in that pile of rock at the base of the cliff."
"They're higher than I'd thought," Stanton commented. Then he started
walking again.
The tunnel entrance he was heading for had once been a wide opening,
drilled laterally into the side of the cliff, and big enough to allow
easy access to the tunnels, so that the passengers of those old
underground trains could get to the platforms where they stopped. But
the sun bomb had changed all that. The concussion had shaken loose rock
at the top of the cliff and a minor avalanche had obliterated all
indications of the tunnel's existence, except for one small, narrow
opening near the top of what had once been a wide hole in the face of
the cliff.
Stanton walked slowly toward the spot until he was finally at the base
of the slope of rock created by that long-ago avalanche. "Up there?" he
asked.
"That's right," said Captain Greer.
"I think I'll leave the rifle here, Barhop," Stanton said. "No point in
carrying it up the slope."
"Right. Put it in those bushes to your left. They'll conceal it, won't
they?"
"I think so. Yeah." Stanton hid the rifle and then began making his way
up the talus slope.
Captain Greer flipped a switch. "Team One! He's coming in. Are those
alarms deactivated?"
"All okay, Barhop," said a voice. "This is Leader One. I'll meet him at
the hole."
"Right." Captain Greer reversed the switch again. "Are you ready,
Barbell?"
Stanton looked into the dark hole. It was hardly big enough to crawl
through, and ended in a seeming infinity of blackness. He took the
special goggles from the case at his belt and put them on. Inside the
hole, he saw a single rat, staring at him with beady eyes.
"I'm ready to go in, Barhop," Stanton said.
He got down on his hands and knees and began to crawl through the narrow
tunnel. Ahead of him, the rat turned and began to lead the way.
_[22]_
The big tunnel inside the cliff was long and black, and the air was
stale and thick with the stench of rodents. Stanton stood still for a
minute, stretching his muscles. Crawling through that cramped little
opening had not been easy. He looked around him, 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_.
The rat paused and looked back, waiting for him to follow.
"Okay," Stanton muttered. "Let's go."
The rat led him down the long tunnel, deep into the cliffside, until at
last they came to a stairway that led downward into the long tunnels
where the trains had once run. They came to the platform where
passengers had once waited for those trains. Four feet below the edge of
the platform were the rusted tracks that had once borne those trains.
He lowered himself over the edge to stand on the rail.
"Barbell," said a voice in his ear, "Barhop here. Do you read?"
It was the barest whisper, picked up by the antennas in his shoes from
the steel rail that ran along the floor of the dark 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 Greer
wanted to call again. As he walked, he could feel the slight motion of
the skin-tight woven suit that he wore rubbing gently against his skin.
And he could hear the scratching patter of the rats.
Mostly they stayed away from him, avoiding the strange being that had
invaded their underground realm, but he could see them hiding in corners
and scurrying along the sides of the tunnels, going about their
unfathomable rodent business.
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, he knew, taken the technicians 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, controlling the
robot rats or watching the hidden cameras that spied upon the Nipe.
Nearly a hundred. And every single one of them was safe.
They were all outside the tunnel and far away. They were with Stanton
only by proxy. They could not die here in this stinking hole, no matter
what happened. But Stanton could.
There was no help for it, no other way it could be done. Stanton had to
go in person. A full-sized robot proxy might be stronger, although not
faster unless Stanton was at the controls, than the Nipe. But the Nipe
would be able to tell that the thing was a robot, and he would simply
destroy it with one of his weapons. A remote-control robot could never
get close enough to the Nipe to do any good.
"We do not know positively," 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 would be able to tell him that the machine
was not covered with human skin. The rats are small enough so that they
can be made mostly of plastic, and they are covered with real rat hides.
In addition, our friend, the Nipe, is used to seeing them around. But a
human-sized robot? Ah, no. Never."
So Stanton had to go in person, walking southward along the tracks,
through the miles of blackness that led to the nest of the Nipe.
Overhead was Government City.
He had looked out upon those streets only the night before, and he knew
that only a short distance away there was an entirely different world.
Somewhere up there, his brother was waiting, after having run the gamut
of publicity. He was a celebrity. "Stanley Martin, the greatest
detective in the Solar System," they'd called him. Fine stuff, that.
Stanton wondered what the asteroids were like. What would it be like to
live out in space, where a man still had plenty of space to move around
in and could fashion his life to suit himself? Maybe there would be a
place in the asteroids for a hopped-up superman.
Or maybe there would 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 in one way, but, in another way,
Stanton didn't mind it. He had a lot to think over. Seeing his brother's
image on the TV had been unnerving yesterday, but today he felt as
though everything had been all right all along.
His memory was still a long way from being complete, and it probably
always would be, he thought. He could still scarcely recall any real
memories of a boy named Martin Stanton, but--and he smiled a little at
the thought--he knew more about him than his brother did, even so.
It made very little difference now. 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, it was highly probable that the new structure was very like
that that would have developed naturally if the accident so early in
Martin Stanton's life had never occurred.
Stanton kept walking. There was a timeless feeling about his march
through the depths of the ground, as though every step through the
blackness was exactly like every other step, and it was only the same
step over and over again.
He skirted a pile of rubble on his right. There had been a station here,
once; the street above had caved in and filled it 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
125TH STREET, he knew, although it was hard to make it out in the dim
glow. He kept on walking, ignoring the rats that scampered over the
rubble.
A mile or so farther on, he whispered: "Barbell to Barhop. How's
everything going?"
"Barhop to Barbell," came the answer. "No sign of any activity from
Target. So far, none of the alarms have been triggered."
"What's he doing?" Stanton whispered. It seemed only right to keep his
voice low, although he was fairly certain that his voice would not carry
to the Nipe, even through these echoing tunnels. He was still miles
away.
"He's still sitting motionless," said Captain Greer. "Thinking, I
suppose. Or sleeping. It's hard to tell."
"All right. Let me know if he starts moving, will you?"
"Will do."
_Poor unsuspecting beastie_, Stanton thought. _Ten long years of hard
work, of feeling secure in his little nest, 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 the course of his life, Stanton thought. There was no way
of knowing whether the Nipe was even capable of feeling anything like
shock, as a matter of fact.
It was odd, he thought, that he should feel a strong kinship toward both
the Nipe and his brother in such similar ways. He had never met the
Nipe, and his brother was only a dim picture in his old memories, but
they were both very well known to him. Certainly they were better known
to him than he was to them.
And yet, seeing his brother's face on the TV screen, hearing his voice,
watching the way he moved about, watching the changing expressions on
his face, had been a tremendously moving experience. Not until that
moment, he thought, had he really known himself.
Meeting him face to face would be much easier now, but it would still be
a scene highly charged with emotional tension.
His foot kicked something that rattled and rolled away from him. He
stopped, freezing in his tracks, looking downward, trying to pierce the
dully glowing gloom. The thing he had kicked was a human skull.
He relaxed and began walking again.
There were plenty of human bones down here. Mannheim had told him that
the tunnels had been used as air-raid shelters when the sun bomb had hit
the island during the Holocaust. Men, women, and children by the
thousands had crowded underground after the warning had come--and they
had died by the thousands when the bright, hot, deadly gases had roared
down the ventilators and stairwells.
There were even caches of canned goods down here, some of them still
perfectly sealed after all this time. The hordes of rats, wiser than
they knew, had chewed at them, exposing the steel beneath the thin tin
plate. And, after a while, oxidation would weaken the can to the point
where some lucky rat could gnaw through the rusty spot and find himself
a meal. Then he would move the empty can aside and begin gnawing at the
next in line. He couldn't get through the steel, but he would scratch
the tin off, and the cycle would begin again. Later, another rat would
find that can weak enough to bite through. It kept the rats fed almost
as well as an automatic machine might have.
The tunnel before him was an endless monochromatic world that was both
artificial and natural. Here was a neatly squared-off mosaic of ceramic
tile that was obviously man-made; over there, on a little hillock of
earth, squatted a colony of fat mushrooms. In several places he had to
skirt little pools of dark, stagnant water; twice he had to climb over
long heaps of crumbling rust that had once been trains of subway cars.
He kept moving--one man, alone, walking through the dark toward a
superhuman monster that had terrorized Earth for a decade.
A drug that would knock out the Nipe would have been very useful, but to
synthesize such a drug would have required a greater knowledge of the
biochemical processes of the Nipe than any human scientist had. The same
applied to anesthetic gases, or electric shock, or supersonics. There
was no way of determining how much would be required to knock him out or
how much would be required to kill. There were no easy answers.
The only answer was a man called Stanton.
_Boots! Boots! Boots! Boots! Marchin' up and down again!
And there's no discharge in the war!_
Stanton hummed the song in his mind. It seemed that he had been walking
forever through the Kingdom of Hades, while around him twittered the
ghosts of the dead.
_Poor shades_, he thought, entertaining the fancy for a brief moment,
_will I be one of you in a short while?_
There was no answer, though the squeaking continued. The sound of his
feet and the snarling chirping of the rats were the only sounds in the
world.
"Barhop to Barbell," said a voice suddenly, sounding very loud in his
ear, "this is where you have to make your change to the other tunnel."
"Barbell to Barhop. I know. I've been watching the markers."
"Just precaution, Barbell," Captain Greer said. "How do you feel?"
"I'd like to rest for a few minutes, frankly," Stanton said.
"Feeling tired?" There was just the barest tinge of alarm in the
captain's voice.
"No," Stanton said. "I just want to sit down and rest my feet for a few
minutes."
There was a pause. Then the captain's voice came again. "Okay, go ahead
and relax, Barbell. Take ten. But be ready to move fast if I yell. These
alarm systems are tricky things to hold. And don't start moving again
without letting me know."
"Right."
Stanton lifted himself out of the trench in which the tunnel ran and sat
on the edge of the boarding platform. It wasn't far now. There was only
one more of the old entranceways between himself and the Nipe. This
particular one was a transfer point, where two different parts of the
tunnel network met and it was possible to transfer from one to another.
It required going up a couple of flights of stairs to the next higher
level, and changing to another tunnel going southward.
There were other ways. This tunnel, the one he had been following for so
long, branched a little farther south. If he took one branch, he would
end up to the east of the Nipe; the other would bring him to a point on
the west. From either, he would have to travel laterally through
another set of tunnels, but neither route offered anything that this
one didn't have, and the most direct route would be best.
"Barbell to Barhop," he whispered, "I'm ready to go."
"It's only been five minutes."
"I know. But I rest pretty fast, too. Let's move out."
There were a few seconds of silence, then Captain Greer said: "All set,
Barbell. Move out."
Stanton got to his feet and walked toward the stairway that led up to
the next level. Minutes later, he was in another tunnel exactly similar
to the first one, walking southward again.
But now he was more careful. He watched the ground carefully, making
sure that he didn't step on anything that would snap or rattle. The Nipe
was still quite a distance away--three-quarters of a mile, or so--but
taking the chance that the beast couldn't hear him might be deadly
dangerous. The robot rat that he was following led him along a path that
had been unobtrusively cleared of rubble by the robot rats over a period
of months, but the robots weren't the only rats in the place. He kept
his eyes on the path.
A while later, the voice in his ear said: "A hundred yards to go,
Barbell."
"I know," Stanton whispered. "He hasn't moved?"
"No. I'll yell if he does. You don't need to talk any more. His ears
might pick up even that whisper."
_He hasn't moved_, Stanton thought. _Not for all this time. Not since I
came down into his private domain. All this time, he has been sitting
motionless--waiting. Wouldn't it be funny if he were dead? If his heart
had stopped, or something. Wouldn't that be absolutely hilarious?
Wouldn't that be a big joke on everybody? Especially me._
Ahead was the large area that had been one of the major junction points
of the tunnel network. This was the area that the Nipe had taken over to
build his home-away-from-home. Here were his workshops, his
laboratories, his storerooms.
And somewhere here was the Nipe.
He came out of the tunnel into another passenger-loading area. Just to
his left was another short stairway that led up to a slightly higher
level. He moved slowly and quietly. He didn't want to fight down here on
the tracks, and he didn't want to be caught just yet.
Cautiously he lifted himself to the platform where long-gone passengers
had once waited for long-gone trains.
The quality of the illumination at the head of the stairs was different
from that which he had been used to for the past three hours. He lifted
off the infra-red goggles. Enough light spilled over from the Nipe's
lair to give him illumination to see by. Silently, he put the goggles on
the floor of the platform. He wouldn't need them again.
Then, step by step, he walked up the concrete stairway.
At the head of the stairs, he paused to get his bearings.