Larry Niven - The Moon Maze Game

“Good thinking,” Scotty said.

“Aside from that, they’re doing a standard grid search, one level at a time. But the good news is that it looks as if they have one team searching from the top down, while another searches from the bottom up.”

“Why is that… oh, I see. If they miss us, they’ll go up. If we can fool them, we still have to get past the two at the pool.”

“Yes, that’s true. And we might be able to help. We’re trying to route auxillary power, but they scrambled us pretty damned well. You’ve got about three minutes. Find a place to hide.”

“Where?”

“Here’s a hint: You see stalagmites, but not stalactites? Nothing projects from the roof?”

“… Funny,” Wayne said.

“The stalagmites are hollow. We were going to ambush you.”

Angelique stiffened. “What?”

“Well,” Xavier said, “if you look closely, those stalagmites aren’t rock. They are actually piles of mooncow dung, calcified.”

“What? And what was going to attack us?”

Xavier chuckled. “Let’s just say that mooncows have worms. With teeth. I’d suggest that you hide.”

As he finished speaking, Scotty pulled another earpiece out of the flower. “What are these?”

“Just a local network. Probably only works inside this room. There are what, three sets in there?”

“Then let’s use ’em,” he said.

There had been no sound in the cavern that had proven to be a gigantic lavatory. The door on the far side vibrated, then fountained sparks from a fist-sized hole. The door clanged open and several members of Neutral Moresnot entered, fanning the room with their flashlight beams.

“Attention!” the first one screamed into the silence. “If you are in this room, we will find you. If you give yourselves up now, there will be no repercussions. Any act of aggression against us will be met with aggressive force.”

There was no response, and Scotty wondered what they felt. Anger? Anxiety? He could imagine that things had not been going their way, but the small brown lens in the plaster dung heap didn’t give him much of a view.

“All right.” A woman’s voice. “All right. Bai Long-go left. Miller-right. Fan out. Report back in ten minutes.” Celeste left the chamber.

The men followed her orders, moving with care but no apparent wariness, like men hunting for rabbits.

Scotty spoke quietly, hoping that these guys weren’t capable of scanning multiple frequencies. “Darla. Are you there?”

“Here, Scotty. It should be safe to talk.”

He peeked out through the lens. A guy with a flashlight lashed to the underside of his crossbow walked past. As soon as he was a dozen feet away, Scotty spoke again. “These guys are good, but overconfident.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning that if the stalagmites were designed for ambush, I think it would be a shame not to put them to use.”

Scotty watched the two men Celeste had called Bai Long and Miller work their way through the room, scanning carefully. It was a nervous time: They seemed to be heading almost directly toward him.

“What is this stuff?” the shorter one said. “It isn’t rock.” Scotty labeled him Bai Long, engaging in a bit of racial stereotyping.

“Papier-mache crap,” the taller man-Miller? — said. “I’ve seen better effects in Halloween spook houses. I don’t know how these guys got their reputation.” A knowing laugh.

“Where do you think they are?”

“Hiding in a corner. Wait-what’s that?”

The beam of light focused on a hollow Selenite head. Miller picked it up and examined it carefully.

“What’s this?” Bai Long asked. “Think that someone’s in here?”

“Might have been left behind.”

Scotty cupped his earpiece. “Did someone leave that? Crap. ”

Darla’s voice answered him. “I think it might have been left by a prop team. We were supposed to have time to get everything in place. You guys wouldn’t have reached this level ’til tomorrow.”

They were heading right toward him. Had they heard him? Before sealing himself in, Scotty had tested the stalagmite’s quick-release catch. He hoped to hell it would work properly.

“Scotty-?” Darla sounded as nervous as he felt.

“It feels as if, if I flip the one catch here, this thing should just open up. Is that right?”

“Yes, but…”

“Then get ready.”

The men approached more closely, weapons at the ready. He held his breath as they paused… and then passed him. As soon as they passed Scotty, he flipped the release catch and leaped, smashing them both to the ground. A flurry of punches and kicks subdued Bai Long, but then Miller managed to scramble to his feet, swinging his weapon around.

Scotty looked up, directly into the pipe bore of an air gun, knowing that he was about to die.

Then… Sharmela broke out of her stalagmite, and hit Miller from behind. She was joined swiftly by the other gamers, bursting out of their petrified mooncow turds.

And after another flurry of blows and kicks, the two men were subdued.

As the others stood around panting and gasping for air, Scotty ripped off Miller’s headset and tried it on. Then hefted the air gun. It was the size of a sawed-off shotgun, with a tube of compressed gas as thick as his wrist beneath a length of small-bore pipe anchored to a shoulder stock. It was fairly well balanced, not at all a bad weapon. He felt grudging admiration for its fabricator.

“Well, all right,” Darla said, carefully hoisting an aluminum frame that must be a cocked crossbow. “So what do we do now?”

“Now, we talk.”

He knelt down in front of the taller man. “I assume your name is Miller.”

No response.

“Well, you look like a Miller. Miller, all we want to do is get out of here alive.”

“Then you just made a very bad move,” Miller said.

“Maybe,” Scotty said. “What’s your end game?”

The tall man’s mouth revealed no emotion. “We recapture you-and we will. We complete our contract.”

“Which is?”

Miller glared at Scotty as if he was a specimen on a slide. And remained silent.

Ali smacked his fist into his palm. “There are techniques. Palace children tell each other.”

Scotty sighed. “What? You want to torture them? You have the time and inclination? Go ahead. But I say we keep moving.”

Ali looked at him in disbelief. “They will tell others where we’ve gone! You want to fight them again?”

“Maybe,” Scotty shrugged. “What are they going to say that Moresnot doesn’t already know? Anyway, we can slow them down.”

His eyes went from Tall to Short and back to Tall again. “I don’t want to kill you, but I can’t just leave you behind us. Sorry,” he said, “but this is going to hurt.”

“What are you going to do?” Bai Long asked.

“I watched both of you. You’re both right-handed.”

“I don’t understand-”

And without further preamble, he broke first Miller’s right thumb, and then Bai Long’s.

Angelique looked pale. “I thought you said you didn’t torture.”

“Did I ask questions?” He hit Miller squarely on the point of the jaw. Then Bai Long on the base of the skull. Both folded to their sides, unconscious.

Darla chirped in excitement. “All right! Here’s the doorway to the next level!”

Scotty nodded. “Hoorah. Let’s move. And keep it quiet, if we can. And conceal the opening.”

Back at Heinlein, Kendra was growing aware that she hadn’t eaten in eight hours. She ordered in sandwiches. Coffee alone was going to burn a sour hole through her stomach.

She looked over the data for a few moments, and then addressed her crew. “We have a list now. This is everything that our NPCs saw that the members of Neutral Moresnot could not reasonably have expected to move through our security, or things that clearly were fabricated here.”