As soon as I started walking though, lights came on. Motion sensors. Hopefully all they did was control the lighting. With a sigh, I accepted that I simply wasn't going to be able to plan for and control everything. As usual, winging it would form a large percentage of my strategy. I instructed my spiders to precede me down the corridor, walking along the walls and ceiling, and to warn me of upcoming booby-traps, cameras, tripwires, acid pits, hordes of goblins and/or orcs, or pretty much anything not suitable for afternoon tea.
The corridor led to an elevator bank. Of course it did. Because nothing says ‘stealth’ like taking the elevator down to the secret lair. Ding, fourth floor, evil geniuses, minions, laser weapons, and submarine platforms. Please watch your step.
On the other hand, this wasn't a secret lair. At least not in the James Bond way. Security would be more corporate than military, relying more on access cards and sensors than guards and guns. This structure would've been built according to government specs or building codes or whatever it was that the Quinlans had. The building Bridget and I had investigated on Quinn had an emergency staircase. Betcha this place did too.
And yes, there it was. But it was locked. I didn't feel like forcing it, and in fact might not be able to. The construction seemed a little more solid than my previous experience, and it was probably alarmed. In went the fleas, and a few seconds later the alarm sensor was jammed and the door sprung open. I couldn’t leave it unlatched like that, but I could instruct the fleas to permanently disable the locking mechanism.
The emergency staircase was perma-lit, as such structures always are. The sociological and behavioral parallels between totally unrelated civilizations was a never-ending source of amazement to me. I wished for a moment we could find a couple more technological species, so we’d have more samples to compare. Which was all very interesting, but maybe I should concentrate on sneaking into the evil lair for now.
I took a moment to format a report and send it off to the group. It would hopefully help Hugh to zero in on the entrance, if and when he got near the mountains. I got to the next level down and sent a flea under the door for a quick peek. No one around. Excellent.
Opening the door as quietly as possible, I stuck my head out and peered around, then stepped through. From here on, there was no point in sneaking around. Nothing says intruder like acting furtive. Nope. I belonged here. In fact, I owned the place. I stood tall, stuck my chest out, and strutted down the hall with a bounce in my step. My spiders and fleas hurriedly hopped on board.
The place had a lived-in feel. The air wasn't stale or musty. No dust. The lights were all functioning. Everything was neatly in its place. That could just be good automated systems, but if that was the case, I was back to square one. Bad news. This installation was probably huge, as it would serve many purposes relating to the care and maintenance of Heaven's River. And the Resistance would probably be using a very small part of it.
Or maybe not. I might be about to go off on another rant, but the Quinlans had good automation, as evinced by their outer space cleanup crews. Chances were that maintenance of Heaven's River would be mostly automated as well. Otherwise, the administrator would have to let too many people into the inner circle. I couldn’t see a secret ruling cabal composed of hundreds of thousands if not millions of janitors and plumbers working for long, let alone for generations. No. Most of this installation would be related to automation, storage for, and maintenance of.
The Quinlan friendly areas would be few, mostly intended for supervisory purposes and mostly near the elevators. That was the way humans would've done it, and I was pretty confident by this point that Quinlans and humans were very similar in a lot of ways.
I stopped in retrospect, but I couldn’t seem to come up with any counterpoints. Good. And as it turned out, my neurotic arguments with myself were a good thing, because as I was standing there waiting for a counter argument, I heard a noise. Not much of one. In fact, I couldn’t say exactly what I'd heard, even when I played it back. It could be nothing. Or it could be people. I voted for people.
The fleas and spiders were getting a lot of use, and I was aware that some of them required some maintenance downtime. I might need all hands on deck if things got tense, so I swallowed all but one spider, who was still in good shape, and instructed it to move ahead of me and peek around corners. I still picked up the occasional noise, which was beginning to sound more like Quinlan voices, as I zeroed in on the source.
“Hey Bob, you got a sec?”
I almost jumped on of my fur. If there been a cybernetic version of a heart attack, I’d be having one.
“Not right now, Bill, I'm kinda busy sneaking into Dr. Evil's hideout.”
“Oh, okay. Call me back when you have time.”
“Will do.”
I terminated the call, swallowed my metaphorical heart, and resumed following the spider. At the next corner, the voices abruptly became much clearer and I could now hear occasional furniture noises, feet scraping on the floor, things banging together, stuff like that. I was probably very close. I didn't want to rush in and stab
