Mixing with the street people, Drummer in sight up
ahead, they moved swiftly. Adari trailed Drummer;
Brad next followed by Myra and Kumiko. Zolan and
Hodak brought up the rear. Drummer successfully
resisted the temptation to look back.
Zolan tensed, activating the mind-mike in his
armpit. Brad acknowledged by stepping up his pace.
He passed Adari and drew alongside Drummer.
"Your buddy, Scarf, must have had a friend in the
bar," he said. "We're being tailed."
"Another hundred meters. Cut into the alley on the
left."
Drummer responded. "It'll take us through a
maze that still confounds the street people. We'll
have a better chance in there to lose whoever is
following."
A corner loomed. They squeezed into a narrow,
rubble-strewn passageway between high, rough
walls. Stumbling along the barely lighted shaft
they entered an alley, equally shabby, crowded with
street people, refuse, and abandoned machinery.
They sped along the alley, noting its darkened,
fuser-formed doorways, some empty, others
clogged with trash. Inside, they saw the shadowy
outlines of men, huddled women and children.
Drummer twisted from one alley into the next,
and then another.
He ducked through a gap in one wall, squeezed along
a narrow hallway and exited into an open space. They
packed up close, running and stumbling.
Drummer slowed next to a wall of composite blocks.
Several were missing, leaving a space through
which they squirmed. It was tighter than they had
experienced. In near darkness, they had reached
a dead end.
Ahead was loose rubble forming a heap about two
meters high. Drummer clawed his way around the
side. He motioned the others forward and slipped
out of sight.
Following one behind the other, they saw an opening
in the surface. Responding to Drummer's beckoning,
they dropped into its darkness. The fall was less
than a couple of meters. A light glowed from a wall
to just enough to illuminate Drummer.
They were in a small, roughly rounded chamber.
The walls were fused rubble, irregular and jagged.
The floor was a mixture of Plutonian detritus.
Drummer knelt beside a rock that protruded from
the wall. He twisted the rock, pulled, and pushed
it sideways. Reaching into the vacated space, he
placed his palm on a flat, smooth disk.
A low hum from the wall. A fissure formed where
the wall met the trash-laden floor. The breach
lengthened and curved, its ends meeting the wall.
The section dropped away into darkness.
"Move, move," Drummer snarled his impatience.
"Scarf has this entire sector blocked out by now.
He'll throw his gangs into the alleys and cover
every square meter. These subsurface crawl spaces
and links are our only way. Feel for the ladder."
He lowered himself through the opening and vanished.
Brad was committed. His glance ordered the others
to follow Drummer. Hodak passed his light to Brad
and dropped through first, then Zolan followed
Myra, Adari and Kumiko. Brad dropped through
and pushed the cover up until it snapped. Closed.
He felt vibrations above him, then, after several
seconds, silence.
"Must be spreading the dust of our tracks and the
outline of the cover," Zolan murmured, looking up
from immediately below.
The ladder was rickety, and the shaft narrow and
long. When Brad reached bottom, he was in a low
gallery, about two meters square, hacked out of the
rock. They were in the hub of a dozen passageways
that led off in as many directions from low entries.
Drummer bent and disappeared through one of
the entries. One after the other, they followed.
The entry led into a utility service tunnel, the
walls lined with scores of braided cables and banks
of wall switches and junctions. Neutro-lighted
sconces glowed at intervals, providing dim
direction to their flight.
Scuttling in single file and dodging cables slung
between supporting columns, they covered distance
swiftly. Brad moved up behind Drummer, replacing
Hodak who dropped back to rear guard immediately
behind Zolan.
"Scarf knows about these utility passages, and that
we would head for them," Drummer gasped over his
shoulder. "What he doesn't know is which access and
branches we took and where we'll surface. A slight
advantage, if we act quickly."
They scampered and slithered for more than half
an hour. "Looks like we're the only ones down here,"
said Brad.
Drummer halted to recover breath. The line closed
up.
"Normal," Drummer gasped. "These passages were
abandoned years ago, after we switched to local
transmission from control modules suspended
beneath the dome. Too much trouble to collapse
the subsurface tunnels, I suppose. Also, we had
to consider the surface effects of a collapse.
Couldn't afford the chance. As you see, the
network is still useful."
He shot a quick glance at Brad, then ahead along
their route.
"Don't get the impression I've got to run from
Scarf," Drummer said, heaving another deep breath,
"or even to avoid him under ordinary circumstances.
Obviously, he was drunk. My presence in the bar-room
gave him an opportunity to enhance his image.
Your companion's intervention, I admit, relieved
the pressure, but the method he chose may prove
unfortunate."
"Why this melodramatic escape?"
"To avoid a confrontation in which Scarf, backed
up by his troops, would be in complete control; a
confrontation in which you couldn't possibly hold
your own. The encounter has already caused
me embarrassment. I don't relish a repetition."
Drummer paused. "And there's another reason."
"Oh?"
"I know who you are, and the circumstances that
brought you and your associates to Planet Pluto.
I want to know more."
"Why?"
"My answer to that depends on what I learn about
you and your companions."
Drummer slowed to a fast walk, searching spaces
between the bundles of the thick cables.
"So that you know," he said, "we're heading for my
villa-dome about five kay from the city."
Drummer grunted that he'd found what he had
searched for. Clawing under a flap, he uncovered
a depression in the wall alongside a cable junction.
He pressed himself in behind the junction and
into a cranny, motioning to Brad. One by one, they
squeezed through, and found themselves at the foot
of a flex-ladder. Drummer climbed; they followed.
They emerged through a manhole into a kiosk next
to a transit strip. Darting from the kiosk Drummer
boarded the strip and nodded back to Brad to join
him. Within moments they were all gliding toward
an air lock leading to the outside.
Entering the air lock, they hurried into space
suits from the public service rack, checked each
other's seals and oxygen reserves, tested the
communications and pressurization systems and
crowded into the pressure-equalization chamber. Air
lock and suit pressures up, balanced and checked,
Drummer jerked a lever and, a moment later, they
ducked under the rising panel to the outside.
Running along the ramp Drummer flashed his suit
lamps at a parked robo-taxi. The signal activated
the craft and it was in ready status when they
reached it. Boarding first, Drummer keyed in
coordinates. As the last Sentinel scrambled through
the hatch he hit the lift button. The taxi rose and
curved away.