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terminal. The wash of light from the VDT gave Whitey's skin a sickly green
appearance. The neanderthal, plus a mean-looking black man in worn leathers,
stood to either side of him, their riot guns resting in the crook of their
arms. "All right.
Mendez, tunnel four. Riker, tunnel two. Mugabe, tunnel twenty..."
As Whitey read off their names and tunnel assignments, the men reluctantly
trudged off, presumably heading for their particular tunnels. McCade had no
idea how they knew which tunnel was which.
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"McCade, tunnel thirty-four."
"Just follow me, Sam." It was. Spigot. He had a water container in each hand
but no tool. McCade followed, as Spigot wound his way around piles of fallen
rock and pools of water, to the far side of the cavern. As they approached the
dark mouth of a tunnel, McCade saw there was a small sign over the entrance,
and sure enough, it read "34."
"They're numbered one through one hundred and forty-six, starting back where
the entrance meets the cavern, and moving from left to right," Spigot
explained.
He stepped into the tunnel, and motioned for McCade to follow. As McCade
stepped inside, the walls seemed to close in on him, and suddenly he could
feel the tons of rock pressing down on him. The passageway was barely six feet
tall, and in places he had to stoop to pass. He knew it shouldn't bother him,
after all he'd spent months at a time in some very small ships, but that was
different somehow.
Outside there had been the vast emptiness of space, not ton after ton of solid
rock, and while that shouldn't make a difference, it did. Taking a deep
breath, he forced the fear into the back of his mind, and followed Spigot's
bobbing light.
Suddenly he slipped and almost fell down. Tilting his head forward to throw
some light on the tunnel's floor he saw some sort of glistening substance.
"Hey, Spigot, what's this stuff?" he asked, pointing down.
Spigot turned to see what McCade was referring to. "Worm slime," he answered
matter-of-factly.
"Some say they use it to lubricate their way through the tunnels." He smiled a
toothless smile. "Others say it's how they shit. Personally I figure it don't
make much difference."
McCade nodded at Spigot's obvious wisdom, and they moved farther into the
stygian blackness. Every now and then, Spigot would stop to explain a fine
point of egg hunting, or tunnel survival. Once he pointed out a small
hollowed-out space just off the tunnel, and declared that a prisoner named
Hagiwara had found two prime eggs in it. Scooping up what looked like crumbled
rock, he held it out for
McCade's inspection. It had a slightly reddish hue. "That's what you look for,
Sam. It's what their sealer looks like when it's all dried out. As you can see
it's a different color than most of this rock."
And about ten minutes later, Spigot stopped again, to point out the side
tunnel in which Samms had died.
McCade shuddered as Spigot described Samms' death, how the worm had taken him
feet first, and how he'd screamed forever.
"But," Spigot added cheerfully, "don't let it worry you, Sam. It actually
improves your odds some. I can't remember the last time we lost two in a row
in the same tunnel. Anyway, this is where I leave you. Gotta make my rounds.
It's all virgin territory from here out. Keep an eye out for color changes in
the rock and watch for worms. There's a buzzer built into your headlamp. When
you hear it, head back." And with that the little man was gone.
The next four hours were very strange. McCade had decided to approach the
situation systematically.
For the first four hours he would examine the right wall, and then he'd turn
around, and spend the next four hours on the left wall. That should put him
back at his starting point with only an hour or so left to kill. As he moved
cautiously down the tunnel, there was an eerie silence, broken only by the
sound of his own footsteps and the occasional dripping of water. Every now and
then, he came to intersections where other worm tunnels crossed his, or
passageways had been carved out of solid rock by a thousand years of running
water. He ignored them. One tunnel was plenty, without adding the additional
hazards of more.
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