atypical, that it even managed the daunting task of drawing Golic’s attention away from his food. Boggs found himself staring fixedly back the way they’d come.
One by one, the candles which traced their path back to the surface were going out.
‘What the shit is doing that?’
Golic pursed his lips, wiping food crumbs from his mouth with the back of one hand. ‘You’re not supposed to swear.’
‘Shut up!’ Not fear — there was nothing to fear in the tunnels — but concern had crept into Boggs’s voice. ‘It’s okay to say “shit.” It’s not against God.’
‘How do you know?’ Golic muttered with almost childlike curiosity.
‘Because I asked him the last time we talked and he said it was okay. Now shut up.’
‘Dillon’ll scream if we don’t come back with anything,’ Golic pointed out. The mystery was making him positively voluble.
Boggs decided he preferred it when the other man did nothing but eat.
‘Let him scream.’ He waited while Rains lit another torch.
Reluctantly, Golic repacked his remaining food and rose. All three stared back down the tunnel, back the way they’d come.
Whatever was snuffing out the candles remained invisible.
‘Must be a breeze from one of the vent shafts. Backwash from the nearest circulating unit. Or maybe a storm on the surface. You know what those sudden downdrafts can do.
Damn! If all the candles go out, how’re we going to know where we are?’
‘We’ve still got the chart.’ Rains fingered the sturdy printout.
‘You want to rely on that to get us back?’
‘Hey, I didn’t say that. It’s just that we’re not lost. Only inconvenienced.’
‘Well, I don’t wanna be inconvenienced, and I don’t wanna be stuck down here any longer than absolutely necessary.’
‘Neither do I.’ Rains sighed resignedly. ‘You know what that means. Somebody will have to go back and relight ‘em.’
‘Unless you just want to call it quits now?’ Boggs asked hopefully.
Rains managed a grin. ‘Huh-uh. We finish this tunnel, then we can go back.’
‘Have it your way.’ Boggs crossed his arms and succeeded in projecting the air of a man intending to go nowhere fast. ‘It’s your call; you get to do the work.’
‘Fair enough. Guess I’m nominated.’
Boggs gestured at Golic. ‘Give him your torch.’
The other man was reluctant. ‘That just leaves us here with the one.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’ Boggs waved the light around to illustrate his point. ‘And we have the rest of the candles. Besides, Rains’ll be right back. Won’t you, buddy?’
‘Quick as I can. Shouldn’t take too long.’
‘Right, then.’
Reluctantly, Golic passed the taller man his light. Together, he and Boggs watched as their companion moved off up the line of candles, pausing to relight each one as he came to it.
Each rested where it had been set on the floor. There was nothing to indicate what had extinguished them.
Just a sudden downdraft, Rains told himself. Had to be.
Boggs’s voice reverberated down the passageway, faint with increasing distance.
‘Hey, Rains, watch your step!’ They’d marked the couple of vertical shafts they’d passed, but still, if the other man rushed himself in the darkness, disaster was never very far away.
Rains appreciated the caution. You live in close quarters with a very few people for a comparatively long time, you learn to rely on one another. Not that Boggs had reason to worry. Rains advanced with admirable care.
Ahead of him another candle went out and he frowned.
There was no hint of a breeze, nothing to suggest the presence of the hypothesized downdraft. What else could be extinguishing the tapers? Very few living things were known to spend much time in the tunnels. There was a kind of primitive large insect that was big enough to knock over a candle, but why a whole row? He shook his head dolefully though there was no one near to observe the gesture. The insect wouldn’t move this fast.
Then what?
The tapers he’d reignited burned reassuringly behind him.
He straightened. There were no mystical forces at work here.
Raising the torch, he aimed it up the tunnel, saw nothing.
Kneeling, he relit the next candle and started toward the next in line. As he did so the light of his torch bounced off the walls, off smooth-cut rock. Off something angular and massive.
It moved.
Very fast, oh, so very fast. Shards of reflection like chromed glass inlaid in adamantine black metal. It made an incongruously soft gurgling sound as it sprang soundlessly toward him. He was unable to identify it, had never seen anything like it, except perhaps in some especially bad dreams half remembered from childhood.
In an instant it was upon him, and at that moment he would gratefully have sought comfort in his worst nightmares.
A hundred metres down the tunnel Golic and Boggs listened to their companion’s single echoing shriek. Cold sweat broke out the back of Boggs’s neck and hands. Horribly, the scream did not cut off sharply, but instead faded away slowly and gradually like a high-pitched whistle receding into the distance.
Suddenly panicked, Boggs grabbed up the remaining light and took off running, down the passageway, away from the scream. Golic charged after him.
Boggs wouldn’t have guessed that he could still move so fast.
For a few moments he actually put some distance between them.
Then his lack of wind began to tell and he slowed, the torch he clutched making mad shadows on the walls, ceiling, floor. By the time Golic ran him down he was completely exhausted and equally disoriented. Only by sheer good luck had they avoided stumbling into an open sampler pit or down a connecting shaft.
Staggering slightly, he grabbed the other man’s arm and spun him around.
Golic gaped in dumb terror. ‘Didn’t you hear it? It was Rains!
Oh, God, it was Rains.’
‘Yeah.’ Boggs fought to get his breath. ‘I heard it. He’s hurt himself.’ Prying the torch from the other man’s trembling fingers he played it up and down the deserted passageway.
‘We’ve got to help him.’
‘Help him?’ Golic’s eyes were wide. ‘You help him. I wanna get out of here!’
‘Take it easy. So do I, so do I. First we’ve got to figure out where we are.’
‘Isn’t that a candle?’
Turning, Boggs advanced a few cautious steps. Sure enough, the line of flickering tapers was clearly visible, stretching off into the distance.
‘Damn. We must’ve cut through an accessway. We ran in a circle. We’re back—’
He stopped, steadying the light on the far wall. A figure was leaning there, stiff as anything to be found in cold storage.
Rains.
Staring not back at them but at nothing. His eyes were wide open and immobile as frozen jelly. The expression on his face was not a fit thing for men to look upon. The rest of him was. . the rest of him was. .
Boggs felt a hot alkaline rush in his throat and doubled over, retching violently. The torch fell from his suddenly weakened fingers and Golic knelt to pick it up. As he rose he happened to glance ceilingward.
There was something up there. Something on the ceiling. It was big and black and fast and its face was a vision of pure hell.
As he stared open-mouthed, it leaned down, hanging like a gigantic bat from its clawed hind legs, and enveloped Boggs’s head in a pair of hands with fingers like articulated cables.
