IN SOME CENTERS, THEY WERE CALLED CATACOMBS: those endless miles of maintenance corridors, air shafts, storage areas, and the like hidden behind the smooth and polished exterior walls.
Vulture walked down a narrow corridor and stopped at a small door with a press-plate. He lightly rapped three times, then opened the door. “It is time,” he said softly to the creature within.
“About time,” Ikira Sukotae snapped irritatedly. “I feel like I’ve been cooped up in this thing forever.”
To the eyes of an Earth-human, she looked much like a young, extremely voluptuous woman—beautiful, sexy, and overbuilt. She was not Earth-human, however, which was made clear by the fact that she was not quite a hundred centimeters tall. Her eyes, which looked more Earth-human than Vulture’s, caught the added light of the corridor and seemed to flash like diamonds in the sun.
Closer inspection would reveal tiny, shell-like ears with pointed tips, two tiny hornlike protuberances sticking up out of her short hair, and other subtle differences. She was a colonial and, like Janipurians, her ancestors had been designed for a particular kind of world.
Normally she was nude, since her natural defenses included the ability to change her skin color to blend in with almost any background, but that was less relevant here. Unlike the predators of her own world, Janipurians could see into the infrared; although her body temperature was constantly being adjusted to match that of her surroundings, she always gave off heat and, while she might not be noticed in a grove of trees or a field, to a Janipurian eye she would stand out like a flaming candle against sterile walls. Still, she had real advantages on this world: the Janipurian brain would not recognize stationary objects a few meters away but could zero in on any motion, and Ikira could be still as death for hours if need be. Hers was a rough world.
Vulture thought that to Janipurians she would appear at a distance like a monkey, and there were a lot of those about. Close up, however, her hairless body and curvaceous shape would mark her as an alien.
With a little help, she climbed onto Vulture’s back and rode him, clinging low as he made his way to a different assembly point. He knew all the corridors and catacombs well, and although they passed a great deal of automated machinery and countless robots, nothing paid attention to them. Vulture had the right security clearances, and, matching her temperature and color to his and riding low, a Janipurian would have to be closer than three or four meters to even notice that something was on his back.
Getting Ikira to Janipur with the aid of the transmuter hadn’t been all that difficult; getting back out might be. Vulture had kept the Thunder’s fighter that contained the transmuter in the mountains well away from Center, but his access to flyers would be useless now. Center’s sophisticated tracking could pinpoint any flyer anywhere on the continent and, if necessary, seize control and bring it down wherever security wanted it.
The alien captain was essential to Vulture’s plan, not only in the theft but also in the getaway. Janipurians could see in the infrared, but at night they could see little else; Ikira, on the other hand, had some trouble with direct bright light but could see perfectly well in the dark so long as there was any light source, however dim. Her people lived underground.
Neither Vulture nor Hawks had ever had the intention of sending anyone else down on this mission unless it failed, but Ikira Sukotae had proven to be the easiest solution to some of their problems. At least the captain hadn’t had to be transmuted into Janipurian form; she would have had to have been transmuted as about a year-old Janipurian, which would have been no help at all.
Sabir and the Chows were waiting. Although they now all knew the plan intimately, they had not had any contact with the captain until now and there was little time for reunions. Vulture wore a small watch strapped to his lower arm, as did Sabir.
“It is now eleven past one,” Vulture whispered. “I will need twenty minutes to get down to security central and in monitoring position. Give me the four extra minutes to activate my patches into the audio-visual system. You can observe the door from this service exit, but be careful not to be seen. Any time after one thirty-five, then, wait for the guard to make his rounds and get clear, then go. You must all cross the common, unlock the main door, get through, and close it behind you in three minutes. If there’s any doubt, stay here or get back here and try again a couple of guard cycles later. Once inside, if you don’t trip any alarms, take all the time you need. When you’ve got it, come back to the main door, close the others, and press the watch stud. That will send a little shock to me through my watch, and I’ll come up and clear things for you to get out. If the alarm doesn’t work or I’m not there within one hour, I will come for you at, let’s say, three-thirty.”
Ikira looked at him. “And if you don’t come for us?”
“I’ll come. Now, you all know what to do and how to do it. Let’s give it a shot!” He turned and left down the corridor.
“The wait is the hard part,” Chow Dai sighed.
For Ikira, it was worse, although after five days down on this world, most of them cooped up in what was little more than a closet, she was ready to get it over with, as well. While the Janipurians were oblivious to it, to the alien captain the place stank. It smelled, in fact, like a barnyard, and even five days had not dimmed its unpleasantness. And she would have to endure it for some time to come. She wished, at least, that they’d let her have a cigar.
They couldn’t even talk, since there were guards about and possibly unjammed sensors as well. She had been somewhat surprised that these catacombs common to all Centers were not heavily monitored by security, but the fact was that they opened only onto monitored public areas, the main power room, and three service exits that were well covered. This was a largely nonviolent culture that experienced much petty crime but little more than that. The museum was guarded only because it provided too much potential temptation to someone on the downward path of reincarnation. Still, it was clear security hadn’t changed the combinations, modified the locks or in any way varied the system since it had been built centuries earlier. That was working to their advantage.
They took peeks at their destination through a grating. There was only one guard, as usual, but there was definitely something different about him. To the Janipurian women, he was almost an idealized male, with thick muscles, an unnaturally handsome face, and a powerful and confident walk—and he wore a very nasty-looking laser pistol that was beyond Janipurian technology. He was most certainly SPF. The regular guards didn’t look that good and weren’t in that kind of condition, and tended to carry only a ceremonial dagger.
This guard was also military in his precision. Such discipline and organization was not characteristic of the Janipurian race. Exactly five minutes later another guard appeared looking just as perfect, and five minutes after him another. Then, at twenty minutes, the first guard was back. It was somewhat unnerving, but it actually served their ends. If any guard didn’t show up on the dot, they would know something was wrong. If they did, all was clear.
“Sedowa—you have the main key?” Sabir whispered.
“Here. We go now?”
“One minute after the next guard leaves.”
Down in security center, the duty CQ was sitting back reading and barely glanced at the monitors. Had he been staring at them, he would have noticed that, one at a time, their images shifted just a bit before showing the old familiar scene. Had he or his colleagues playing chess in the back been as militarily precise as the SPF, they might have noticed that the guard’s rounds were now almost a minute off. There was, in fact, an SPF sergeant who might have noticed this as well, but he was busy arguing with Deputy Chief of Security Boil, who was duty officer.
Up on the main level, their hooves masked in velvet pads, and with Ikira atop Chow Dai, the four pirates watched the guard around the corner, then they all seemed to take a collective deep breath and emerged and made for the great red door to the museum. Chow Mai stood up and, seeming very calm and professional, inserted the duplicate key and turned it in the right-left combination. They held their breath but the door clicked, and they hurried inside, quietly closing it behind them. It was now locked once again, but as a safety measure there was an override bar on the inside.
There was absolutely no light in the space between the outer and inner doors, but they had to feel confident that Vulture had bypassed the audio and visual monitors with his own recordings. Sabir, the gadget-bearer, stood up and reached into the bag and felt for the light. It was unnerving being totally in the dark, and he felt a real sense of relief when he flicked on the light.
Because she was more mobile, Chow Mai was doing as much of the work as possible, allowing her sister to oversee and comment but mainly to stay on all fours. A small rectangular magnetic stone, procured locally and shaped by the two women, was removed and placed over the keypad. The entire switch was magnetic, including the alarm. All of the keys were now stuck in their raised position, along with the switches. The Chows had seen this switch many times before and wondered why nobody ever varied it. It was very easy to bypass.
The door itself, however, required a proper handprint I.D. A piece of stiff, coated paper was removed from the bag and brought very close to the handprint plate itself, until it was mere centimeters away. The pixels in the door plate began to glow, activated by the weak magnetic field on the coated paper Chow Mai held much as they were activated by a hand pressing on the plate. Centuries of palms pressed into the plate had smoothed the area and revealed the pattern they were looking for. Chow Mai, without actually contacting the plate itself, used a thin marker to outline the print pattern, then, using scissors, cut the pattern out of the coated paper. They had learned this trick at China Center from a junior security man who was on the make and wanted to impress them.
Now she carefully lined up the paper with the hand cutout, steadied herself, and pressed it onto the plate. The incredibly good close-up vision of the Janipurian eye was paying off.
The door hissed slightly but did not move. Sabir was disturbed by that. “It didn’t work!”
“Yes it did,” Chow Dai whispered back. “Push it—push hard to the right.”
He got up, put both hands on the door, and pushed. It was harder than he’d expected, but the door moved, slowly, into its recess until it was open wide enough for them to get through.
The museum lay before them, vast treasures on all sides and a direct corridor to the big main case in the back. It was not totally dark, although they had expected it might be, but the main lights were off leaving only dim emergency lighting on. It was more than adequate.
Ikira, however, saw far more. Her eyes saw the crisscrossed beams of light that went at angles from the walls and ceiling. The grid they created was not dense; she could have avoided them, but no Janipurian-sized body more than five years old could have.
“If those beams turn on anything more than the cameras we’re sunk,” she said in a low whisper.
“You can see them?”
“Yes. But you can’t get around them. I can, though. Let’s test out the main plan while you’re still outside the room. I’m going to go and step on that pressure plate. If the bell goes, don’t worry about me—just get back out the front door.”
Sabir reached into the bag and removed a semiautomatic security machine pistol provided by Vulture. There would be no time to wait for a guard to pass; the bell would be heard. If it went off, they would have to shoot anything that moved outside.
The captain climbed down from Chow Dai’s back and walked into the room. She dodged the light beams even though it was unnecessary; she had more sense than to test two systems at once. If the plate didn’t work, the rest didn’t matter.
Watching the tiny alien, Chow Dai remarked, “She moves like a hundred-yen prostitute.”
Ikira reached the edge of the plate, examined it, wished she could see under the carpeting as to whether edge contact also would set it off, then stepped up and on. It went down a bit, but there were no bells. She simply didn’t have enough weight to trip it, although she was determined to walk softly and slowly to avoid any excessive vibration.
Sabir was to remain in the doorway and cover the outer door as well as watch the time. Now it was the Chow sisters’ turn to enter and test the light beams.
The moment the first one entered there was a click and the four security cameras came on. There was no attempt to conceal them; they were there as a deterrent. They fixed on the pair and followed them in, but there were still no alarms. Down in security, the monitors did come on, and the duty CQ gave a cry that brought the others there. He manipulated some of the camera controls and finally they saw it.
Two large, hairy shapes darted across the field of vision and they all laughed and relaxed. Some rats had gotten in again.
“This’ll be all night unless somebody wants to go up and in there and chase ’em out,” the CQ said in disgust. “Any volunteers?”
Nobody seemed particularly eager to go chasing rats after midnight.
Deputy Chief Boil sighed. “All right, then. Since we have no mighty hunters, I don’t want to look at that all night.” He reached over and flipped the cameras and monitoring system tied to the beams off. Nobody, not even the SPF sergeant, objected. The event was standard procedure these days, common enough that Vulture’s tapped-in recorders had had no trouble at all getting a copy of a previous rat invasion.
“You should fumigate this damned place and get rid of those monsters,” the SPF sergeant said.
The others viewed him with contempt. “They don’t harm us, we don’t harm them,” one of the duty officers responded. “They might well be your relatives, sarge.”
The sergeant fumed but knew better than to argue with these people. The more he saw of the ancient culture of his ancestors, the more thankful he was that he was SPF and not Janipurian, even if he was racially the same. The cultural contempt was mutual.
In the museum, the Chows were now on either side of the case. They could see the ring in the darkened case but there was no way to turn both keys and also reach it. That was Ikira’s job.
Chow Dai got up on her feet with obvious effort, took the key, and nodded to her sister. They both inserted their keys as one, then the two were turned in opposite directions. The case clicked, then rolled back just as it should.
Although the case was low, Ikira took hold of the edge and pulled herself up and into it. She was now standing amid the richest splendor of Janipur—precious jewels, intricate sculptures of gold and other precious metals, and other valuable artifacts. She bent down, grasped the ring, lifted it off its peg and then back into her hand. It was heavier than she’d thought, and large for her tiny hands. “I will have to toss it on the floor and get it later,” she whispered. “I have to lower myself back down carefully without bumping the platform.”
She picked a spot, then threw the ring underhanded with all her strength, which was not great. It struck the edge of the platform, then rolled off it and under a display case.
She turned her back and, grabbing the sides of the case, lowered herself gently back onto the platform. She then turned and very softly and slowly walked away and off the raised area. The Chows released their keys and waited until the case lid whirred back down and clicked once again into place.
Ikira went to the spot where the ring had rolled and wound up on the floor reaching under the case. For a moment, she was afraid that the thing had rolled too far under the case, which had only ten centimeters or so of clearance, but she managed. Even so, it took her more than a minute to finally locate it and bring it back out.
She got up and looked at it. It was a beautiful work of art, pure gleaming gold with a shiny jet-black stone of some sort, on which were embossed in gold the two birds on a branch. The interior had been coated with some sort of lining, apparently to make it fit a specific finger. The lining did not look original to the ring.
All three made their way back to the entrance and into the passage between inner and outer door where Sabir waited. “You have it?”
“We have it,” Chow Dai responded, feeling very satisfied. “Any trouble here?”
“One of the guards might have been suspicious or just extra dutiful. He tried the door and almost gave me a heart attack, but he seemed satisfied.”
“It was almost too easy,” the captain noted. “If I hadn’t almost lost it under that case, it would have been perfect. I would not have expected a harder time if it were just Janipur involved, but I am very surprised that Master System and the SPF didn’t add to the system. They do tend to be arrogantly overconfident, but I still think we missed something.”
“If they knew, they would be here by now,” Chow Dai pointed out.
“Maybe. But perhaps we haven’t fallen into the trap yet. Perhaps they want us to get away and lead them to the Thunder. We will see.”
It had taken them less man an hour and a quarter. They spent much of the time resetting the locks, removing the coated paper and the magnet, and making certain the inner door shut tight once again. Now they had only to wait for Vulture. Sabir triggered his signal, and down in security central Vulture stiffened.
“Something wrong, Chief?” one of the deputy officers asked.
He rubbed his arm. “No, nothing wrong. Just a muscle pain, I guess.” He sighed. “I’m going to go and make my rounds,” he told them, a phrase that was a well-known euphemism among higher-ups for goofing off. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. Call me if there are any problems.”
“Yeah, sure, Chief,” the SPF sergeant growled. He’d been there six months and in that time not a single actual event requiring security action had occurred, only a couple of false alarms such as the rats. This had to be the most boring duty station in the entire universe.
Vulture made his way back up to the main level. He didn’t care if anyone spotted him; the deputy chief could go anywhere he wanted to. He passed one of the guards just before turning into the corridor for the museum and they exchanged nods. “Any problems?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Terminal boredom,” was the response, and the guard, continued on. After all, he had a schedule to keep.
Vulture went immediately to the red door and knocked twice, then once. The door opened from within, causing a louder sound than any of them would have liked, and he held it open while those inside scampered back across the corridor and into the service area. He then gently closed the door and joined them.
“Any problems?” he asked.
“None. Piece of cake,” Ikira responded. “Too easy.”
“You’ll never know how much work and sweat and technology went into making it that way,” he responded. “Still, let me see it.”
Sabir reached into the bag, brought out the ring, and handed it to him. He inspected it carefully, close up. “So that’s what one of the buggers looks like. Fancy, but somehow I expected more. Hmmm . . . This lining looks new. I don’t like that. I wish there was a way to test this sucker and make sure we haven’t stolen a ringer.”
That startled all of them. “Is that possible?”
“Sure. Always was. I didn’t like the fact that it was missing for four days, and there are a lot of really fine craftsmen on this world. The stone looks right, though. I can’t think of any way they could duplicate that synthetic stuff here. Well, if this is the real one, that suggests something else.”
Janipurian nails were almost like claws, thick and nasty unless trimmed for detail work. Vulture never trimmed his unless it was to sharpen them. He dug into the lining, straining, and finally got it slightly open. He then just as carefully began prying up the tiny clasps that held it and removed the insert. “Let’s move down the corridor a bit. I want to check this out under a strong light.”
They reached a branch of the tunnel, and Vulture took the electric light from the gadget bag and held the insert against it. The insert appeared to be polished obsidian, but it was not. As the light shone through, Vulture could see a tiny mass in the insert, no larger than the head of a pin, with three or four hairlike extensions. “So that’s what they’re up to!”
“What?” they all asked almost at once.
“A tiny transmitter. Very clever. They took out the old lining and got their SPF shops or whatever to replace it with this one. Looks the same. They could follow us anywhere with this, even into space. It doesn’t look very powerful but it’s probably specifically tuned.”
“Then they could track us here now,” Sabir said nervously. “This must mean they know we’re here.”
“I doubt it. They don’t know it’s stolen yet. They’ll have it on automatic monitoring so if we take it out of the Center they’ll know immediately, but not right now. I suspect that they had this made at some Master System location and flown in, using the festival to unobtrusively replace it. They don’t know we’re here, they just expect us sooner or later.”
“What will you do, then?” Chow Dai asked, sounding worried in spite of the reassurances. Master System wasn’t the only one who could get overconfident. They had been caught long ago in China Center because they committed that sin. They also understood full well that Vulture was even now in less danger than they; it would take far more than even laser pistols to stop him, and in a pinch he could simply become someone else.
“We will need some time to let things blow over,” he told them. “You know the plan. The festival is winding down but there are still many people out there, and Center is still on a holiday schedule. It will take them quite some time to track down everyone who lives here permanently and count heads to discover who is missing and who they are after. By that time we must be well away, overland, and if possible at the first of the hideouts I have prepared. Make your way down to the service entrance and wait for me. I must get a few things to cover our exit.”
Sabir looked at him hard. “And what is to prevent you from hanging us out to take the punishment? You have what you want.”
He gave the Janipurian grin, tossed the ring up, and caught it again in his hand, then flipped it to Sabir. Keeping the liner with its track device, he headed off toward the security section.
His first task was to switch off the recordings that had hidden them from the gaze of security central. The more time they had, the better it would be, and if one of those watchers down there happened to get disturbed that the sun was coming up but their monitors still showed darkness, or if one or more of the guards got off shift and showed up down there to watch himself on the monitor, it was all over as well. He had prepared for all this well in advance; he’d had months to get ready and the aid of Star Eagle’s maintenance robots and data base. He wished that he could just check out a flyer as usual, load the others in it, and head for the fighter still hidden in the hills, but that was no way out. It would take more than four hours to fly there, during the whole of which he would be at the mercy of anyone should the theft be discovered. Even if he got down, SPF troops would know his location and could get there quickly, mobilizing local guard as well. They would never make it that way.
He cut the recordings out in sequence, hoping that they would be as ignored as their emplacement had been, then set a large explosive device at the small crawlway he’d used to tap in and hold his equipment. Once he left and shut the door, anyone opening it would blow up the device and themselves as well—and probably cut off security center from its monitors for some time. Then, using the audio link for the last time, he called Thunder.
“This is Vulture. No time to talk. We have the prize, no casualties. Am proceeding to Pickup One with the group. Will risk brief five-second transmission from there on arrival, five seconds on permanent departure from that point for Pickup Two. Hope to see you sooner than later.”
He signed off, not waiting for a reply, crawled back out, and closed the door, feeling somewhat relieved when it hadn’t exploded on him right then and there. He headed back to his quarters, thinking all the time. He had anticipated that they might try some sort of tracking device and had prepared for it. His secret weapon, Durga, was sound asleep, but that was fine with Vulture. It made the great black falcon easier to carry.
Falconry was a popular sport among the security people, although most Janipurians considered it barbarous since the falcons hunted and killed living animals. The security men, with their own spiritual leaders, merely saw it as a close study of natural order. The bird made a few loud protests when it was moved to a portable case and the case strapped around Vulture’s middle so it would ride on the Janipurian’s back, but this was the way it usually traveled, and it soon settled down. With her hood on, Durga wasn’t very wide awake.
Vulture went down to join the others who, he hoped, had already exited and were awaiting him outside. It was now approaching four-thirty; the sun would be up in less than ninety minutes, and the museum staff would arrive in three and a half hours or less. He wanted to be well away from the crowd and the company of Center people by dawn, even though they would have to make some of the distance in daylight.
There was no one on duty at the entrance at this hour, and they all had valid access cards for the computer, except Ikira, who would be in her defensive mode atop Chow Dai’s back. He inserted his card and gave his handprint, and the doors slid back. He walked out into the night.
The night was a fearsome time for a Janipurian, so the records of the exits would be noted, and the Peshwar family, at least, would come under suspicion. But Center wouldn’t know until they did a head count later and made a real effort to find the four missing ones.
They waited in the shadows just beyond the light reflecting from the Center entrance. The area immediately around them was dimly illuminated by the glow from the great dome, but once beyond the encampment they would be effectively blind and that didn’t make for good speed. Vulture had covered this route a hundred times in the dark, though; he felt he knew it as well as any, and he had a set of eyes along to help guide him and the others.
But first he set Durga down, removed the bird from its cage in the semidarkness, and set her on her perch. He prepared a banded holder and strapped the ring lining with its locator to her leg, then freed her of all restraints, even removing the hood.
The bird seemed puzzled and tried to look around for a moment, before settling back and seeming to go to sleep. There wasn’t much difference to the falcon between the real darkness and the darkness produced by the hood.
“There!” he said. “At sunup she will awaken and decide to fly and find to her amazement and pleasure that there is no tether tied to her. I don’t know where she will go—perhaps only to the top of the roof, perhaps half a continent away, but where she goes, so goes the tracker.”
Next came a very long coil of silk cord. He tied it around his thickly muscled neck and then around Chow Dai, Chow Mai, and Sabir. “Keep the cord relatively tight and keep a pace that maintains that, if you can,” he instructed. “Do not worry about where you step, focus only on the person ahead of you. Captain, you come to my back and be my eyes. I know the route by touch, feel, and scent, but you never know what surprises might come up.”
It was a peculiarity of the way a Janipurian brain processed information that the entire world seemed to be nothing but darkness, yet if they looked directly and only at the one in front of them they saw the whole column in shimmering infrared. There was some Janipurian instinct to follow the leader when this occurred, and match the pace of the group, temporarily imposing a herd mentality. The instinct could be ignored if necessary, but in this case, it meant survival.
Once they were into the darkness beyond the encampment, Vulture stepped up the pace to a trot, which was about as fast as he dared risk. He would have liked to have made twelve kilometers or more by first light, but he would settle for six to eight.
The predawn light revealed a desolate landscape: barren mountains, rocky desert, and only occasional scrub brush. They were all tired, hungry, and thirsty—particularly thirsty—but only Ikira could see and appreciate the entirety of the landscape. A small gully about nine kilometers from Cochin Center had shallow water in it, and Vulture risked allowing them all to stop and drink. In spite of their protestations, though, he told them, “We cannot linger or rest, and there is little to eat here. All that we need is in a cave in the low Yiabinnas to the southwest. Draw upon your inner strength. Say your mantras and follow.”
“But I am Chinese,” Chow Dai grumpily reminded him. “A Hindu body does not make a Hindu mind.”
They all groaned but they followed him through the stream and off into the distance. Within a few minutes, though, it was light enough for them to dispense with the rope, and Vulture took the precise time to curl it back up and stuff it into a pack. The ground was barren, but hard, and there would be no tracks from this point on, and he wanted to leave no artifacts, either. Durga would be up and about by now, and if there was any sort of automatic monitoring of that tracking device, the alarm would even now be going up, and they were painfully exposed and without cover. There was no way around it. Short of the actual theft itself, this was to Vulture the most dangerous part of the entire exercise, and, with light, he could pick up the pace.
By eight in the morning, when the curators would be opening the museum, they were over thirty kilometers from Cochin Center. Entirely on all fours, even when pregnant, Janipurians could really make time. The last part, however, was slow and involved some climbing. It was not difficult, but they were dead tired and missteps could still happen.
Suddenly there was an increasingly loud sound, like that of an incredibly huge flying insect, gaining on them. They all heard it, but Vulture called out, “Lie down on your bellies and flatten out and be still! That’s a flyer!”
Soon there was not just one flyer, but two, looking to Ikira like huge dragonfties. She had rolled off of Vulture and lay face up at a slight angle, watching the sky. The Janipurian bodies blended well with the gray-white of the hills, and she could be whatever coloration she had to be.
“They are criss-crossing most of the plain,” she told them. “I think we left it just in time.”
“Do you think they will see us?” Chow Dai asked worriedly.
“I would doubt it. I have done aerial surveillance myself and it is very, very difficult to spot anything from the air that does not panic or want to be spotted. Often it is difficult to see people who are trying to be noticed. Just lie still. How far is your cave, Vulture?”
“Not far now. Just a kilometer or so over the crest, no more.”
“We may have a long wait before getting to it.” She was looking at an angle from the rising sun and the bright light was nearly blinding her, forcing her to shut her eyes. “Just relax and wait it out. We might as well get some rest.”
One of the flyers approached and flew almost directly over them at an altitude of perhaps a hundred meters, but it was going very fast.
“Think they saw us?” Sabir asked.
“Just relax,” Ikira said again. “They do not know where we are or even if we are here. They are trying to panic us just in case.”
It seemed as if she were right, for after twenty minutes, the flyers began to move away, first parallel to the ridge line, then back in a reversal of their initial search pattern. When they had gone far enough that the noise of their engines were but a faint echo, Vulture decided to move. “Let’s try for the cave. We need it.”
It was definitely more than a kilometer, over terrain not well suited to the Janipurians, but at last they arrived.
The place didn’t look like much from the outside. In fact, it was difficult to tell that there was a cave there at all; some fair-sized rocks masked the entrance.
The area immediately inside wasn’t much to look at, and they had to go to the back to discover that there was a small passage off to the right that led farther. It was pitch-dark inside but there was no danger of getting lost; if the passage didn’t open up into a larger cave, there would be no way to even turn around.
It did open up, of course, although Vulture had to feel for some lanterns and then light them before they could tell where they were. Even Ikira hadn’t been able to see anything until then; there had been no light at all.
The cave was irregular, about six by nine meters, and it was cool and seemed somewhat damp, incongruously so considering the desert they were in. Almost half of the space was covered with straw mats and blanketing; the rest was piled high with boxes and barrels, each of which was small enough to fit the passage but had obviously been carted in one at a time. Other than the matting and containers, there were just gourd cups and bowls and very little else.
“I stumbled on the geological survey of the region,” he told them. “I saw that there were a number of caves in these hills and checked them out until I found this one. It’s not great but it’s the best of the lot. This chamber and a few others showed up on the early surveys—no way to tell the size, though—but weren’t connected to the outside. I dug the passage here, bit by bit, with an industrial laser. It was a pain to get all this stuff in here—a pain just to get it without somebody noticing in the first place—but the passage is nearly impossible to see from the outside and it’s strictly one at a time in and out.”
Sabir looked it over. “Yes, and it is also a very neat trap should they discover us.”
“Uh uh. I’ve interconnected this cave with several other passages including some that lead upward, and covered the drilled openings with wood and mats. The idea is that if they come at us from the entrance, it’ll take only one person to hold ’em off while we duck out, and I can blow the whole entrance with explosives if I have to. It’s not very comfortable, and the cuisine will be strictly raw and natural, but it’ll do. The barrels mostly contain water, but a few are soma and a couple of cheap but palatable wines. The boxes are airtight containers with basic foodstuffs. Sorry, no spices, and we can’t risk fires. Captain, I’m sorry but I couldn’t plan for you months ago, and I couldn’t risk coming back here with extra supplies in the last couple of weeks. There is a box of ova fruit there, similar to apples, that we’ll have to dedicate to you.”
Sukotae shrugged. “Does anything live in these rocks?”
“Oh, yes. A fair number of insects, some small rodents that I was concerned about with the stores here, and things like that. Also you may have noticed that some birds nest in these rocky crags.”
She nodded. “I’ll forage, then. I think I can avoid their detectors, and, if need be, I have other defenses that might work on anything short of a Val. I’ll manage.”
Sabir stared at the tiny captain. “You eat . . . birds?”
“Oh, yes. Or rodents or insects. So long as they’re alive or freshly killed.”
“You are a—carnivore?” He made the term sound like something very unpleasant, like a vampire or ghoul.
“Omnivore, but I cannot survive forever without meat. The women of my world are not hunters, but when you’re freebooting you learn survival skills. There hasn’t been a freebooter freighter since the start that didn’t somehow pick up some kind of rats or roaches. I’ve been getting by with decent synthetics on the Thunder, and I’ll survive here.”
The sudden thought of this tiny woman prowling the corridors of Cochin Center and then catching and eating rats and insects turned Sabir’s stomach. It just showed how deceiving appearances were. The Janipurians looked very alien to Earth-humans, and Ikira Sukotae looked like a tiny human, yet inside, where it mattered, the captain was far less human than they. Sabir had always been pretty much of a vegetarian, but he understood and accepted those who bought or hunted and then prepared and cooked meat, but catching and eating raw, perhaps squirming, bloody animals . . .
Vulture unsealed a box of fruit and another of what looked like a variety of oats or barley, and tapped a barrel at random. It was red wine, and everyone had some. “I think you should eat and drink as much as needed, then get as much sleep as you can,” he told them. “I’m going to do the same, but first I have something to take care of.” He rooted around in the stockpile and came up with a small rectangular box with an antenna and connectors. “We can receive and send, within limits, and I must risk sending a five-second tone. That is the only way Thunder will know that we’re at this position. I doubt that it’ll be intercepted. None of the others have been, and my main equipment back at Center’s now a mass of molten junk.”
He took the transceiver and went out into the forward cave to do it. Chow Dai watched him, then looked over at the stores. “There is enough here for many weeks,” she noted. “And I wonder how many more of these he has set up elsewhere?”
“Sometime tonight Thunder’s gonna issue a recall on that fighter he’s been using out in the sticks,” Ikira told them. “It’ll almost surely get blasted out of the sky or else it’s gonna lure a bunch of the enemy into a nasty little trap. If they don’t blow it away, they’ll track it to Pirate One, which will punch as soon as it’s aboard. If they follow, they’ll punch out into most of the fleet. The hope is that they’ll think that’s us and wind down the search parties here. Our job is just to hang on and stay clear until our people can come in and get us.”
“And if they don’t ‘buy it,’ as you say?” Sabir responded nervously. “What then?”
She sighed. “Then they have to bring in the whole fleet to get us, and that will cost.” She paused a moment. “Ship-to-ship combat. Now that would be something! And here I am stuck down here!”
That, too, was disconcerting for a moment, sounding more like Manka Warlock, but they let it pass. The tiny captain was, after all, a freebooter. She might sneak up and kill small rodents or buds if they were smaller than she, but if one of the Janipurians just rolled over on her, she’d be crushed. She was, in fact, in a position of little power and it must have grated on her all along.
Outside, Vulture first listened carefully, then tested the air, but found nothing close by. He connected the transceiver and pushed the send button for five seconds, then released it. In a few minutes he’d know if their communications frequency had been discovered. He settled back to listen.
“Thunder to Vulture. Good work. All hell is popping loose down there from what our monitors tell us. Troops and security are out scouring the area, so lay very low. A Val ship is now in orbit, and we believe the Val is down as well. There are also two automated fighters that punched in out of nowhere. Hold tight for at least three days. Repeat, three days. We will broadcast after that at nine at night and three in the morning your time. Do not attempt to make Pickup Two unless we so instruct. Good luck.”
Vulture sighed and came back into the cave. He didn’t like being the hunted, not a bit, but for now he could only sit and wait.
The Val ordered a series of new satellites placed into orbit in interlockinig geosynchronous orbits, giving the SPF and Cochin Center a complete and instantly updated map of the entire continent. The continent, however, was thickly populated a hundred and fifty kilometers or so from the Center, and individual surveillance was simply not possible or practical. The searchers showed up the same as the quarry.
At two-seventeen in the morning, the fighter that had served Vulture so well as a supply and support system powered up and immediately rose into the sky. It was instantly noted by the new satellite network and tracked, and the automated fighters were placed on instant call. They recognized the craft and realized that it most likely could not contain the people they sought, but it might contain the ring. The Master System craft never even allowed Pirate One to show itself; they blasted the tiny pirate ship as soon as it cleared the atmosphere.
Master System’s logic was clear. Transmuters required murylium, and murylium could be detected by the satellite net. Since none had been, the odds were that even if the tiny craft carried a transmuter, it was not used, nor was there any ship in orbit that could have received such a transmission—it would have been easily detected from the start and dealt with. Therefore, the fighter was a diversion or an attempt to get the ring away. Either way, it wouldn’t lead the searchers where they wanted to go.
The Val back at Cochin Center now faced Colonel Privi, the commander of the Janipurian SPF detachment.
“The three locals I can accept,” the Val said icily. “Two of them pregnant yet! What a bold stroke! I forgive you missing them. Did you know that the sister, Sedowa, does not even exist? Her records are all very complete and very thorough—I can tell you her whole life’s story—but when the family is asked, they acknowledge no such daughter?”
“I have heard. They are clever.”
“I suspect, then, that the two females are probably Chow Mai and Chow Dai, on the original list. We will update our data on them to reflect that they are now Janipurians. Certainly the best choice—ignorant peasants, not even with very high IQs, but they have one of those inexplicable inborn talents for locks. Very well. The male could have been any one of them. It doesn’t matter. For all that, they have succeeded! And in the one way you did not anticipate, Colonel. A leak, a mole, right here in security!”
“Yes, but Deputy Chief Boil! The second in command of security here for the past five years! How did they do it? How did they even get to such a man, let alone corrupt him like this? The others might be switched, duplicates, but none of it would have been possible without the aid of a known and established official of the highest rank. They did not switch him, I will stake my life on it! As is the case of many high officials including myself, Boil could not be mindprinted without an elaborate code known only to the chief administrator and Master System. It would have killed him instantly otherwise. Also, he is a lifelong friend of the chief of security and many others of the highest levels here and continued to socialize with them. That was Boil!”
“Impossible. Boil was always in and out of here, often for long periods and often alone. Who knows how long he has been setting this all up? They could have pulled the switch at any point. How they got around the codes and the nuances is disturbing, but it is the only possible explanation. Men like Boil do not simply go over any more than SPF officers could! Why, to even harbor such a thought would be to undermine the very basis by which our system of civilization operates! No, there had to be a switch, and early on. His duties often took him out alone before they could possibly have targeted him. They just took a man with a flyer assuming he was high echelon and got lucky, that’s all.”
“As you say,” the colonel responded in a tone that indicated that he did indeed continue to harbor such thoughts. “However, I wish it on the official record that I recommended that we substitute a duplicate for the ring, and I was overruled.”
The Val sighed a very human-sounding sigh. “Colonel, what is on the record is beside the point. You feel yourself blameless and your advice untaken and you wish to defend your reputation and that of your men. I accept that. The fact is, we could not substitute a false ring for the real one. It is impossible. Please don’t ask me why, but it is. Otherwise I’d have all the other rings rounded up and locked inside Master System itself. We did think the tracker would do the job.”
“We weren’t even fully set up to monitor it. Damn it, we only just put it in! Boil stuck it on his pet falcon. We shot it down more than two hundred kilometers east of there thinking it might be trained to transport the ring, but it was only the lining. That sort of trick wouldn’t fool someone for ten seconds if he could pull off a crime of this enormity in the first place. Impostor or not, this Boil is highly competent and dangerous.”
“I agree, and it is good that we must face him only here; I would not like such a one planning future operations. From the start we have vastly underestimated these people. Ten people with little combined space experience break out of a maximum security prison on an asteroid and somehow get around all the automatic defenses, commandeer, then steal a universe ship. The head of security of the prison gives chase and vanishes with them. Months later he appears leading the escapees. They are cornered in space by one of my brethren, and manage to outmaneuver and vanquish him. They escape a second by a cleverness approaching the diabolical. They manage to find and then seize a hundred tons of murylium and the ship carrying it, and now this. It leads to startling conclusions.”
“It certainly means that these are the most extraordinary people we have come across in centuries,” the colonel agreed. “And the most dangerous.”
“True, but it is more than that. It appeared at first to be a petty plot by Earth’s chief administrator. We suspect it but can not prove it, and we prefer to keep him in place as he has a ring himself.”
“Ah!”
“It is now clearly more than that. Somewhere out here, and it cannot be by accident, all of them met a higher power, someone who saw their tremendous genius and elaborated on Chen’s plot to make it very possible and very real. The system has met its first worthy opponent. The first one that can give us a real challenge. We must assume that they are now fully in league with the enemy no matter whether they did it voluntarily or not.”
“I have been aware of an enemy and a war, but the SPF was never committed to it, so I know nothing else about it.”
“Nor I. It is being fought on a plane and in places where such as you and I are useless. Clearly up to now it has been a stalemate, and the enemy is trying to get around the stalemate using humanity. Whether this whole business was instigated by the enemy from the start or merely co-opted as a target of opportunity is beside the point. We are now in the war, and the enemy has discovered a weak link in our armor. Colonel, we must have these people. Any and all resources are at the disposal of the SPF, and all Vals have been redirected to this task.”
The colonel threw his hands in the air. “Take a look at the maps. It’s been three days now. Even assuming no ground transportation—and considering the skill of these people, I would not be shocked to find a continental railway system buried deep underground just for their use—they could be anywhere in a ten-thousand-square-kilometer grid from here. That begins to include some relatively dense population areas, and they will most certainly be in disguise and following a prescribed route.”
“You forget that the two women are pregnant. Increasingly so. There is good reason to deduce that they acted when they did because in a few weeks neither of the Chows would have been in any condition to help.”
“A Janipurian woman can move quite well even when extremely pregnant. And it’s no special thing here. The average colonial world has a population of a half to three quarters of a billion people, many much less. This one has a higher death rate than average—and the inhabitants a shorter life span—and nonetheless it has almost two billion people. About one in six Janipurian women of child-bearing years seems to be pregnant at any given time.”
The Val had not been briefed to this degree, and it startled the great hunting machine. “Well, they are Brahmans, a very small percentage in the field. That narrows it somewhat.”
The colonel sighed again. “Sir, may we assume that none of these people were born and raised in the Hindu faith, and none have accepted it?”
“A reasonable assumption. If the Chows are anything they’re Buddhists, and we have no idea who the other two are, but there were no Hindus in the group.”
“Then I submit that anyone this clever would store away a supply of hair dye sufficient to treat all four. Change their caste and you change everything.”
“Hmmm . . . A point well taken. And what caste would you suspect they became?”
“Offhand I would make myself a Ksatriya—the secular leadership, with a fair amount of freedom of actions and movement. However, they could just as easily be Vaisyas, which would have them as skilled laborers or artisans. If they wanted to blend in and had good cover and information, even a Sudra would do. In short—any color but black.”
“I see. Then you are saying it is hopeless?”
“Not at all. We will keep up the search for a while just in case, but I have little hope here. However, we can keep them bottled up on this world until they settle down and grow old and die. I would wager, however, that that fighter was nothing more than the ship they used to get in here and contained nothing of value. I would bet they still have the ring. If the pirates had the ring they might be content to leave them here—they are, after all, permanently fixed as Janipurians. But I don’t think the ring has left Janipur. If not, then we need only sit and wait for however long their patience lasts, and my troops have nothing else to do. If we wait, sooner or later they will have to make a move, either down here or from space. We don’t have to find them. We need only wait until they are forced to expose themselves.”