Cyber Rogues by James P. Hogan

Author:James P. Hogan [Hogan, James P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, science fiction, General, Action & Adventure, Collections & Anthologies
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2015-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

In the zero-gravity conditions of south Spindle, Dyer and Laura moved smoothly and with little difficulty along the inside of the sealed-off shaft. They had measured off nine hundred feet in fifty-foot stages and Dyer had gone ahead on the final pitch. After lying wedged across the shaft in darkness for a while, Laura realized that he had been silent for a lot longer than usual. She twisted her head and could see distant chinks of light appearing and disappearing farther along the shaft when his body moved between her and the lamp that he was holding. He took up almost the whole width of the shaft and she could see nothing of whatever was in front of him.

“What are you so engrossed in?” she asked at last.

“There’s something in here.”

“What kind of something?”

“Some kinda machine.”

Laura’s heart missed a beat.

“Spartacus?” Her voice choked as she said it.

“I don’t think so. That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but I don’t reckon it is. There are Air Force codes on it in places but everything in Janus is ISA brand except what the Army brought along. I don’t get it.”

“I thought there wasn’t supposed to be anything in here at all. You said it was supposed to have been sealed off ages ago.”

“It was. There’s something funny about this.”

“Laugh then.”

“There’s a hatch been cut right over it too. Looks fairly new. It must have been made by whoever put this thing in here. So with luck, we’ve got a ready-made way out. It’s just about in the right place.”

“Can I move now?”

“Yeah, come on up. I just wanted to make sure this thing wasn’t about to do anything nasty. It looks pretty harmless.”

Laura loosened herself from the walls and began propelling herself smoothly along the shaft with occasional light tugs on the line, gathering in the slack as she went. By the time she reached Dyer, he had wormed his way, face outward, between part of the machine and the shaft wall to begin working on the hatch. It was secured by stud-bolts carrying nuts at both the inside and outside ends—evidently the result of a job carried out in haste with little regard for elegance or permanency. There was barely room for his upper body between the hatch and the mass of tubes and electrical gear that formed the near end of the device, so Laura could do nothing but watch and steady the lamp while Dyer attacked the bolts with a wrench. Beyond him, she could now see, was what looked like the end of a domed yellow cylinder blocking the shaft almost completely, leaving only a few inches to spare around most of its circumference. Had the parts been mounted the other way around, she realized, they would never have been able to get near the hatch at all.

“Did you feel that?” she said suddenly, whispering instinctively.

“What?” Dyer stopped working and lay still. A succession of shocks was coming through the walls. They felt suspiciously like explosions, and not very far away at that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.