Torry tightened visibly. "I don't know. Or maybe I just don't want to
face it yet. We hate each other as only brothers can. You'd better know
that before you take me to him. I may have to kill him."
Tharol Sen sneered. "I don't think you can kill him. I'll take you to
him because both Roper and my grandfather wanted me to. Roper can deal
with you as he sees fit. But if I think you're a danger to him, I'll
kill you. Understand that."
Torry shrugged. "On that basis I'll accept your help. Now you'd better
find that transmitter. I suspect that the explosions were the police or
the goon squads breaking in."
"They were," she said nastily. "They ran into booby traps in the upper
levels. It will take them a while."
"I wouldn't count on too much time," warned Roper. "Grannar is a smart
policeman, and the goon squads seemed to know their work."
"This way."
Tharol Sen was coldly aloof, and seemed both preoccupied and depressed,
which was natural. She went ahead, wordlessly, and Torry followed,
lost in his own reflections. At the far end of Sen Bas' wrecked garden
was a steel-arched doorway, high, sombre and gothic. Beyond, and
below, lay the sprawling vastness of vaults and caverns which was the
Martian underworld. Long, curvings ramps led downward into a complex of
subsurface workings far below New Chicago.
They descended and slipped quietly across large, echoing platforms
whose dimensions were lost in gloom. Metal-shod stairways spiraled
upward and downward into invisible infinities. Deep shafts vibrated
with strange sounds the ear could not catch or identify. Freight
tunnels were yawning maws of darkness, like the staring, sightless
eyes of some mythical monster created on too large a scale for man to
understand.
Torry grew tense and nervous. He began to sense patterns of shivering,
eery movement about him. Walls and ceilings closed in suddenly, and
he could make out vague, monstrous forms set into niches within walls
carved of bedrock. Old-Martian gods in sculpture--leering stone
spectres, goblin-like, and subtly obscene.
Tharol Sen paused. Her hand sought Torry's and drew him close, but not
in friendliness. She whispered harshly, warning him to silence and
extreme caution.
"I was wrong. The police have broken through. Some are already in the
vaults."
She followed a maze of barely visible threadlike guidelines of
luminosity set into the metallic tiling. A few steps more brought them
to a wide platform, from which many tunnel mouths opened. Along one
wall ranged banks of elevators. Beyond were ranks of empty pneumatic
tube cars on tracks which angled in sharp descent into wells a level
below the platform. Spidery Martian hieroglyphs labeled various shafts
and the tube terminals. Tharol Sen studied the markings closely before
making her choice.
"I have been here only once before," she complained. "It is not easy to
find the way. But I think the police will have more trouble."
She selected a pneumatic tube car. Torry boosted her to the door flap.
She settled herself in the tiny seat cradle, then from inside, extended
him a helping hand. For the first time she noticed his blistered palms
and raw fingers. He grunted painfully as she drew him up beside her.
"I should have bandaged your hands," she mused.
Torry snorted. "Can you drive this shuttle? It has more gadgets than a
space ship."
"One way to find out," murmured Tharol Sen icily, poking a slim
finger at a keyboard of colored studs. Distant machinery whirred and
whined. Flaps banged shut and the shuttle car shot forward and down at
sickening speed. Tharol Sen laughed, and the sound was of ice chips
trickling on metal foil.
Air whipped angrily about the shell of thin metal. There was no gut
wrenching nausea of acceleration, only sharp awareness of speed.
Movement became a blur streaming past the transparent plastic cartop.
It was like being part of a hollow missile fired from an air gun. As
the car's original impetus diminished, speed dwindled. The car dipped
and slowed, then ran into a stop valve, like a piston in a closed
cylinder, and stopped on a dense cushion of compressed air.
Another vista of platforms radiated away from the terminal.
Gripping Torry's hand, Tharol Sen dragged him firmly along the
platform, then down a steep slant to the lowest levels. At intervals,
radilumes provided glaring light, but shadows of raw fantasy lingered
curiously near the walls. Tomblike oppression gathered around them.
Panic grows quickly underground; weight of rock pressing overhead
translates itself to the brain in terms of claustrophobia.
* * * * *
Metallic decking became raw stone floor, and an endless tunnel unwound
before them. Torry lost all track of direction, even the primary up
and down. They went through underground workings like city streets
lined with open front factories. Gray, barren vistas of workrooms were
relieved by the stark symmetries of sleek machines, shielded atomic
converters, and patiently revolving turbines. Here was the marvelously
efficient underground economy of the old Martian civilization, still
functioning and serving the remnants of a great race of builders and
scientists.
On soaring cantilevered balconies and in alcoves, Torry glimpsed cliff
like structures of offices and dwellings. Giant compressors labored to
force a mighty pulse of breakable air--but the atmosphere was warm,
dry and stifling. Runnels of sweat ran down Torry's body and vanished
in quick evaporation; fever and exertion alternated in him; he blew
hot and cold as energy burned away too quickly, and as drying sweat
produced intense, quick chills. Temperatures dropped. Air seemed denser
and was poisonously clouded with dust, but it was cool. Slowly it
became chill and depressing with a hint of dampness in it. They came
into a maze of galleries and pits, tunnels and vaults, less used and
uninhabited portions of the deep-workings.
It was like a world apart, a place of dim storage bins with natural
refrigeration, of packing sheds piled high with mountains of commercial
molds, bales of dry, compressed and packed mushrooms. It smelled stale
and foul, the air hideous with a powdery mist of mold dust and spores,
and the incredible mustiness of mushroom spoilage. These caverns were
empty of life, as if the troglodyte Martians had long ago joined their
mummied dead.
Weakness suddenly caught up with Torry. Dizzy, he caught in panic at
Tharol Sen for support. Grudgingly, after a moment's hesitation, she
granted the help.
"I'm sorry," Torry apologized. "It's been a rather active three days. I
guess Ferax and his boys hurt me more than I had thought."
"They are good at hurting people," admitted the girl. "You still want
to go on in this condition?"
"Don't mind me. Just give me a minute." Torry was painfully aware of
her strong, slender body beneath the filmy garments of spidersilk. To
change the subject, he said, "Don't tell me you're planning to venture
out to Pluto or Triton in that costume?"
Tharol Sen made a face. "Hardly. There are spacesuits ready. We'll need
them, don't worry. Roper says Triton is hardly livable at all, even
protected. You'll find out if you've the nerve to go through with me."
"So Planet X is not even a planet, just one of Neptune's moons?"
"Perhaps it was a planet once. Both Pluto and Triton are not like the
rest of the solar system planets. They may have been two stray worlds
from outer space, captured long ago by our sun. For their size they
have mass out of all proportion. The quantities of heavy metals beyond
uranium give them extreme weight and density. Pluto has a density of
over fifty times that of water. Triton not so much, but still greater
by far than Earth's density, which is roughly five or six times that of
water. Though smaller than Mercury or Ganymede, Triton has a gravity
only slightly less than Earth's and a far denser atmosphere blanket."