Dykstra's War by Jeffery D. Kooistra

Author:Jeffery D. Kooistra
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0671319582
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 2000-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

VI

The lights of the power suit were adequate to illuminate the sides of the shaft as Pops and Rick continued their descent. The hole remained twelve meters in diameter, more or less, as far down as they could see, and the walls were rough-hewn out of the cometary ices.

They had only gone down five meters when they encountered the first side tunnel. By the time they had gone down a hundred meters, they had seen dozens, going off in all directions, ranging in size from three meters across to less than one.

The two hovered in front of one cross-tunnel and Pops directed a spotlight inside.

"I think that's a door," Rick said. There was a hinge mechanism visible on the side.

"It's probably the outer door to an airlock," Pops said. "Since there isn't an interior door to go along with the one laying on the surface, that means that this tunnel had to be open to vacuum when the outer door was opened. So unless these critters are really off the wall, they must have airlocks in each of these cross-tunnels. We do that ourselves in asteroid installations, but it's for emergencies. We always have one big one at the top of the tunnel. I wonder why they don't?"

The two continued down. More than 150 meters below the surface they came to a cross-tunnel much wider than the shaft they'd come down in, and set down on a closed door much like the one on the surface.

"Well, we can go in deeper by opening this door, or we can see where this big corridor leads," Pops said.

"Open the door? How?" Rick asked. "It's probably locked and the mechanism isn't powered."

"No, but my suit is," Pops replied.

"Oh."

"But I don't see any reason for going deeper. We're ignorant of the damn comet so we might just as well try the easy route. So—this way or that way?" he asked, pointing to their two options.

"To the right," Rick said.

It was easier for Pops to use his suit jets and carry Rick than to walk in the trivial gravity with gripfields. They had just started off when they got a call from the ship.

"What are you guys doing?" Bob asked. "I gather you haven't seen any Phinons."

"Not yet," Rick said. "These tunnels give me the feeling that I'm in some kind of abandoned mine."

"Reminds me of looking through a microcamera while it threads through an ant colony," Pops added. "A dead ant colony, though. I don't think anyone's been living here in a good long time."

As they proceeded through the big tunnel, they noted that the sides were dotted with many doors, identical except for diameter. They were ready to pick one at random when the tunnel ended in a hemisphere, also dotted with doors, all of them closed except for one, standing open like an invitation.

Without comment, they went through.

Just inside was a second door, opened inward. "Told you they were airlocks," Pops said.

The door led into a large chamber, one side roughly a

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.