Chase turned to the doctor. 'There's nothing seriously wrong with him, is there? Anoxia?'
'He's exhausted, that's all. Breathing in rarefied air saps all the strength. If we let him sleep undisturbed for ten hours he'll be fine.'
'Let's hope we can,' Chase said, and with a last look at his son went out.
In the corridor he found Ruth, Nick, and Jen waiting for him. From their expressions he knew that Jo too was going to be all right. Nick confirmed this by saying that her wound had been dressed and she was sleeping peacefully.
They went along the corridor and Chase discussed with them the wisdom, or otherwise, of taking the initiative and launching a counterattack.
'How dangerous are they?' Ruth asked him. 'Have they got weapons? Explosives?'
'Not according to Dan.' Chase combed his fingers through his beard. 'I'm wondering how many of them are in the tunnels. We're safe enough inside the Tomb with the access points sealed, but if we don't clear them out it's an open invitation to every mute and primitive within a hundred miles to move into the complex and set up house.' He glanced around grimly at the others. 'How do you feel about living next to a city of freaks?'
'Think we'd notice the difference?' Nick murmured.
Jen hugged herself and shuddered. 'I don't like the idea of sending somebody into the tunnels after them--I know / wouldn't go.'
They turned a corner and pushed through double doors into the
mess hall. Chase said, 'That's true, we can't order anyone to go, but we
Relief brightened the tired faces as he told everyone that the situation wasn't immediately critical. The Tomb was secure and everyone could go back to bed. There was a slight stir of unease when he mentioned the possibility that intruders had broken into the complex, and Chase had to raise his hands for silence. 'You can all rest easy; there's no way they can get in. But if any of you want to volunteer, we're sending a squad of armed people into the complex to flush them out and seal off the outer access points so they can't get in again. It's not going to be pleasant, but it has to be done. If you feel like volunteering report to the operations room at noon tomorrow.'
'You mean today?' somebody called out. 'It's five o'clock.'
'Right. Noon today.'
There was a general movement toward the door. Nick turned to Chase, smothering a yawn. 'You've got your first volunteer. But if they happen to break in before eleven, don't bother to wake me.' He put his arm around Jen and they joined the rest of the dispersing crowd.
Chase arched his head back, massaging his neck muscles. 'Get to bed,' he said to Ruth. 'I'm going up to the operations room to make sure everything's secure. I won't be long.'
Ruth eyed him critically. 'Don't be. You need to rest too.' She said with mock severity, 'Doctor's orders.'
'Yes, Doctor.' Chase squeezed her hand and went off. As he came into the corridor, worming his way through a knot of people, a distraught woman snatched at his sleeve. Her eyes were red and puffy and it took him a second or two to recognize her. It was Sonia Maxwell, Ron's wife.
'Have you seen him? Is he here?' She looked up at him and then jerkily from left to right and back again, scanning the faces.
'You mean your husband? No, not since we came down from the ops room.'
'He told me.' Her lower lip quivered as she fought to keep control. 'About Fran. That was nearly two hours ago and I haven't seen him since.'
'I'm sorry about your daughter.' It sounded so feeble, this polite phrase of condolence, so meaningless. He tried instead to reassure her by saying that perhaps Ron wanted to be alone for a while--maybe he'd gone to the lab? Sonia Maxwell nodded and wandered off in a trance.
Chase escaped gratefully. Was it right that he should feel guilty? Because there was no doubt he did. His son was alive, her daughter was dead. By some obscure association he felt shamed by his own relief that Dan had returned safely. The emotion scraped at his nerves and distracted him as he mounted the stairway to the operations room and walked into a taut silence that at first he didn't notice. All eyes were fixed on a winking red light on the wall plan of the Tomb, down on Level 4.
The duty officer held the handset in midair, arrested by Chase's appearance. He replaced it in its cradle and jumped up. '1 was just about to call you.' He jerked his head toward the light. 'Somebody's opened a sealed door on Level Four. I've already sent a couple of men to investigate.'
'From inside?'
'Must have been. The alarm sensor wasn't triggered.'
'Who'd be crazy enough to do that?'
The answer came to him even before the question was out of his mouth.
Somebody whose grief and desire for revenge would obscure every other impulse. Somebody who had no other reason for living except for his only child--a reason now annulled and made worthless. In a dying world the death of a loved one might prove to be the final blasphemy.
Somebody like Ron Maxwell.
'How long has it been open?'
'Only a few minutes. I got onto it right away. We should have it sealed tight again pretty soon.' The armpits of the duty officer's tan shirt were ringed with sweat. He wiped his mouth with a hand that was visibly trembling. 'Want me to raise a general alarm?'
'Not yet. Everyone's on his way back to bed. Let's wait for your men to report. We'll give them five minutes.'
For Chase and the others in the operations room it was the longest five minutes of their life. After two had ticked away the duty officer had to sit down. After four the tension was like a high-voltage charge, at such an unbearable pitch that one of the technical operators began to whimper through hands pressed to his face.
As the sweeping red hand ascended to the vertical, marking off five, a dozen thoughts were hammering in Chase's brain. The men had been given sufficient time to report and yet failed to do so. How many intruders could have entered the Tomb during those five minutes? Could they have infiltrated up to Level 3? Immediately above Level 3 were the living quarters, the dormitories, and the sick bay. Dan and Ruth and most of the community were down there sleeping.
The duty officer was staring at him, his white face beaded with sweat.
'Hit it!' Chase cried hoarsely and was on his way through the door even as the siren started to wail.
Dan had been wrong. They were not, as he had described them, babies, but homunculi. Tiny stunted dwarflike beings with pulpy alabaster flesh and black pinprick eyes like raisins stuck in dough.
Obeying an instinct similar to the ant's they blindly followed a trail laid by the one in front, and the one in front of that, and the one in front of that, and the one in front of that. First a few, perhaps five or six, had picked up the scent of Dan and Jo as they struggled back across the hot barren landscape. More of the creatures had joined the march, which soon became a straggling procession, dozens, scores, then hundreds plodding onward across the desert scrub and disappearing into the tunnels like a long jointed white slug burrowing underground.
Guns could kill them, though it didn't seem to matter. Instinct and hunger drove them on; death was immaterial. They were seeking food, of any kind, animal or vegetable. They ate voraciously, like a plague of caterpillars stripping a forest bare. Kill one and another climbed over the body to take its place. Kill twenty and fifty more came on with pudgy blank faces and small red gaping mouths. They were mouths on stunted legs, quite mindless, living only to eat and reproduce.
The raw sunlight with its fierce dose of ultraviolet radiation was beneficial to the species, indeed essential. It had warped their genetic structure until each successive generation adapted more comfortably to the new conditions. Even the thinning atmosphere with its low oxygen content had been assimilated and was vital to the development of their metabolic structure.
There was no way they could be stopped--as Chase soon discovered.
They packed Level 4 with their soft squirming bodies and were stumping up the stairway to Level 3, jammed shoulder to naked shoulder, as Chase hopelessly pumped shot after shot into their midst. It was like shooting at the tide. The upper levels above him were in turmoil. People grabbed the few personal effects they could carry and scurried upward, some hastily dressed, others still in night attire. The siren blare
