Alan Dean Foster - Alien - 3

TOXIC WASTE DISPOSAL

THIS SPACE HERMETICALLY SEALED

ACCESS TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

PROHIBITED

That was just fine with the explorers. They had no wish to be suitably authorized.

Rains had unfolded the chart at his feet and crouched, studying the lines and shafts by the light of his torch. The map was no simple matter of vertical and horizontal lines. There were old shafts and comparatively recent ones, fill-ins and reopenings, angle cuts and reduced diametre accessways to accommodate specialized machinery only. Not to mention the thousands of intersecting air ducts. Different colours signified different things.

Numerous earlier expeditions had given the prisoners some idea of what to expect, but there was always the chance that each new team would run into something unexpected. A scrambled byte in the storage units could shift an abyssal shaft ten metres out of line, or into a different tunnel. The chart was a tentative guide at best. So they advanced carefully, putting their faith in their own senses and not in dated printouts.

Boggs leaned close. ‘How many?’ Though he spoke softly, his voice still echoed down the smooth-walled passage.

Rains checked the chart against his portable datapack. ‘This makes a hundred and eighty-six.’

His companion grunted. ‘I say we call it a vacation and start back.’

‘No can do.’ Rains gestured at the seemingly endless length of tunnel that lay before them. ‘We’ve at least got to check out the rest of this stretch or Dillon’ll pound us.’

‘What he don’t know won’t irritate him. I won’t tell. How about you, Golic?’ The third member of the trio was digging through his backpack. Hearing his name he looked up, frowned, and uttered a low, vaguely inquisitive sound. ‘That’s what I thought.’

Golic approached an ancient cigarette machine. Kicking the lock off, he yanked open the door and began loading packs of preserved narcosticks into his duffel. Naturally he chewed as he worked.

On the surface the noise would have been far less noticeable, but in the restricted surroundings and total silence of the tunnel the third man’s rumbling maceration resounded like a large, improperly lubricated piece of machinery. Boggs grumbled.

‘Can’t you chew with your mouth closed? Or better yet, swallow that crap you’re eating whole? I’m trying to figure how big this compartment is so we can decide if it’s legit toxic storage or some miner’s private stock, and I can’t think with all the goddamn noise you’re making.’

Rains rustled the chart disapprovingly. ‘Just because we’re away from the others doesn’t mean we, should ignore the precepts. You’re no supposed to swear.’

Boggs’s mouth tightened. ‘Sorry.’ He stared daggers at Golic, who quite naturally ignored them. Finally he gave up and rose to squint down the tunnel. ‘We’ve circled this entire section once. That’s all anyone could ask. How many candles, again?’

There was no reply from the floor. ‘Rains, how many candles?’

His companion wasn’t listening. Instead he was scratching himself furiously, an intense nervous reaction that had nothing whatsoever to do with the bugs, who didn’t live in the shafts anyway. It was so uncharacteristic, so 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.