Larry Niven - The Moon Maze Game

The cavern was bathed in blue, a restless wave of azure light washing across the floors and ceiling. The entire room was gray unweathered rock. He was stunned by the size… until Wayne realized that it simply couldn’t be this large. It was larger than the largest caverns on Earth, with stalactites the size of Moon missiles depending from a ceiling high enough to shelter clouds. To the sides… well, there were no limits to the sides, so far as he could see. The room’s light dwindled away to shadows long before it revealed walls. Just… rock. Spars of rock like jagged teeth, broken jaws grinning and gaping at them in all directions.

How much was illusion?

“Nervous?” Angelique heaved herself clear. Her crooked little smile had never seemed so endearing to him. She had watched him with Darla. Angelique had set the rules, from the very beginning. Had she come to regret them?

He turned to her. The others were still far enough behind that they had a moment of privacy. “Angelique,” he said. “Look. Whatever happens now… whatever happens in there, I just wanted to say… thank you.”

She seemed genuinely startled by this. “For what?”

“For the best game anyone ever played,” he said.

Their eyes held each other for a long time, and then she cupped his cheek in her hand. “Let’s play this out, partner. Time for good-byes later.”

“Not always,” he said.

A narrow rock path led up into gloom. The pirates of Neutral Moresnot must have exited the pool and entered the dome from here.

“Wow,” Ali said, rising from the water, Scotty Griffin close behind.

The pool shimmered with a deep and lovely blue light radiating up from the depths. Echoes sent wavelet sounds from every direction.

“I see something,” Maud said. And made a magical gesture with her hand. Her face blossomed into a bright, wide smile such as she had not displayed for at least twenty horrific hours. “The magic is working!”

“Holy shit!” Scotty said. Then paused. “That’s good, right?”

“When the gods are awake, please refrain from blaspheming,” Margie said piously.

Mickey waved them over to the left side, where, hidden in a tumble of rocks, they found strange-looking tumbles of steel cylinders and leather straps. It looked like a cross between traditional rebreather gear and a conch shell. And it was ruined, smashed and bent.

“What is this?” Wayne said, lifting one so that he could examine it more closely.

Scotty pulled it from his hands and examined it himself. “Well, under the plastic I think we have a local version of standard Euro Union search-and-rescue gear. The pirates found it before us, and trashed it.” He looked up. “Nobody’s using this.”

“All right… but what does that mean?”

“It means,” Angelique said, frowning, “that the way out of here is down through the pool. This gear was supposed to get us out of here. That’s why they made sure we were all certified with rebreathers.” She paused, pinched face reflecting a painful thought. “And why Asako’s pod was airtight.”

“What now?”

“Now…” Angelique pushed the red button on her belt, twice. The air above them rippled, and a visual field tried to focus. They breathed a collective sigh of relief. They seemed to have come out of a long, long shadow.

Xavier’s pinched face appeared on the field in front and above them. And for the first time that Wayne remembered, the little guy actually seemed rattled and relieved. “Angelique!” he said. “I… I wasn’t at all sure this would work.”

“What exactly is going on?” she said. “What do we do?”

“Look,” Xavier said. “Neutral Moresnot-”

“The pirates.”

“The pirates scrambled our communications, as you know. And they knocked out most of the control mechanisms. But the aquifer’s on a different grid from the rest of the dome, and they weren’t able to kill it.”

“That might come in useful,” Wayne said. “We’ve got full effects?”

“I’ve run all the diagnostics I can from here, but you’ll need to tell me what you think.”

“There’s no time for that right now. How do we get out of here?”

“There’s only one way-down through the pool.”

“Under water? Are you mad?” Maud asked.

“Opinions differ. But you can’t even do that. According to Kendra, the door is mined.”

“Mined?” Maud again. To her credit, she wasn’t whining.

“Makes sense,” Scotty said. “They’ve thought of everything. And it gets worse, Xavier-”

Scotty’s expression reminded Wayne of something from a cheesy version of the Ten Commandments, Moses staring up into a talking cloud rather than down into a burning bush.

“They’ve destroyed the rebreather gear. Even if the door was unlocked-”

“Despite any personal antipathy, we would have come to get you,” Xavier said. “Listen. We have rescue on the other side of that door. If you can find a way to defuse a booby-trap, we can open it. Wait-”

There followed a momentary pause, while the visual field blanked out. Then another face appeared. Dark hair, strong cheekbones, Polynesian eyes. A far prettier face, far more welcome.

“Kendra!” Scotty said, and Wayne could hear the naked relief in the big man’s voice.

“Scotty.” Whatever their history might have been, the affection in her voice was clear. Dammit, he wanted that for himself. If there was nothing else this adventure had taught Wayne, it was that he wanted someone to care like that.

Darla?

She was close behind him, and her hand stole into his. He pressed it.

“Scotty,” Kendra continued. “Piering and a rescue team are down in the tunnel, on the far side of the airlock. If you can disarm the bomb, they can get in. What do you think?” Her smile looked just a little desperate and sick. “Could bomb disposal be part of that wild, wide, wonderful training of yours?”

“Ah…” Scotty looked a little scared, and Wayne saw that the answer was no.

Darla raised her hand. “Listen. If this bomb is like everything else, it was jerry-rigged. Can’t be terribly sophisticated.”

“If it was made here, then…” Kendra’s eyes closed for a moment. “Maybe I have someone who can tell us what we need. Give me ten minutes, will you?”

“If we can.”

“I’ll get right back.”

The air in Toby McCauley’s holding room was stifling, almost as if it had gelled thick with fear. When Kendra entered, he was staring at his fingers.

Very slowly, he turned to look at her. That mischievous, cocky light in his eye was dead and gone. “What do you want now? I already told you everything I have to say.”

“I’m thinking that you might want to say a little more,” Kendra said. “There seems to be an explosive device attached to the airlock leading from the aquifer into the maintenance room.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” McCauley said, his long face had taken on a greenish pallor, but managed to stay neutral at the moment.

“I know, I know,” Kendra said. “But there’s something you need to know. So far, no one outside my staff knows what you have done.”

“What I’m suspected of doing,” he corrected, without much enthusiasm.

“Not to us. But here’s the thing. My husband is down there. And he is going to try to dismantle that bomb. And if he dies…” Kendra stopped herself, surprised at the lump that had materialized in her throat. “If Scotty dies, I swear that all and any evidence needed to convict you in the court of public opinion will materialize, and be mysteriously leaked far and wide. I further promise you that you will be moved, in a low-security vehicle, to a holding cell in the mining district. And there will be no pressure suit or emergency supplies in that vehicle.” She leaned closer. “I promise you that that vehicle will never make it. It will break down… or be hijacked… or spring a mysterious leak. Look at me, Toby. Look at me.”