Brian Stableford - Asgard's Conquerors

For me, the return to a world of silvery walls and icy floors was almost like coming home. I felt more relaxed on level two than I had aboard Leopard Shark. Joxahan also felt comfortable, and did his bit to jolly along the troopers who found it all very alien and very disturbing. You’d think that anyone who spent the greater part of life aboard a starship couldn’t possibly be claustrophobic, but the levels can engender their own special unease. Oddly enough, the person who seemed most uneasy was 74-Scarion, who had spent many years in Skychain City, including the underground parts of the city, but who had never been out in the deep cold.

We pulled our scouts back, and moved in single file across what had once been the “farmlands” of level two. The ceiling of the level was only fifteen metres or so here, and was ribbed with what had once been very powerful electric lights. In the Golden Age of Asgard those lights had blazed upon carpets of artificial photosynthetic material, interrupted by occasional lakes of photosynthetic fluid. Underneath the carpets and around the lakes there had been processing machinery which had accumulated the products, and below the machinery there had been another active layer of thermosynthetic materials. It all added up to a sophisticated organic technology, in which real organisms had played a very marginal role. There had been no herds of domestic animals—meat-production for the level-dwellers was entirely a matter of organic synthesis from scratch ... if you can call the products of that kind of synthesis “meat” in any but a metaphorical sense.

Now, of course, the whole shebang was in ruins. Most of the equipment had been stripped before the cavies left, and the whole system had been shut down some time before the big freeze-up. What they’d left behind was mostly garbage, though it was still recognisable as the remains of a highly- sophisticated biotechnological production-system. The Tetrax had much that was similar on their homeworld, and I had heard that dear old Mother Earth was gradually making over her useless tropical deserts for the development of this kind of artificial photosynthetic technology. Needless to say, we were buying some of the technology from the Tetrax, but we were having to do a great deal of the R&D work ourselves because we didn’t have much that the Tetrax actually wanted in exchange.

On the second night we shopped around for an inconspicuous spot in which to erect a small bubble-dome. We investigated a couple of small “villages,” where residential accommodation was organised in floor-to-ceiling blocks four or five stories high, but I’d always found such places to be poor camp-sites. The cavies’ apartments tended to be untidy, their rooms having been stripped and gutted like everything else, and left in a worse state of dereliction. Opening the doors was always a problem, because the locking mechanisms had long since set firm. I’d had many years of experience cutting laboriously through doors, only to discover that there was nothing of any interest on the other side.

In the end, it seemed most convenient for us to take up residence in a building which had presumably served as some kind of barn or storehouse, where there was a space big enough to erect a comfortable dome, but which wasn’t out in the open. We managed to find a place that was clustered around with blocks and pillars, so that it couldn’t easily be observed from a distance. Nowhere in the caves is there any open space of the kind you’d find on the surface of a world, because the whole structure has to be protected against the dangers of collapse, but factory-fields are open enough to cause embarrassment if you’re trying to hide. We were careful to look for somewhere with plenty of cover.

We had power enough to raise the temperature inside the plastic bubble to a tolerable level, but we were determined to conserve our air, and didn’t want to expend enough to give it an atmosphere. For this reason, setting up accommodation wasn’t quite like pitching a tent. We remained in our suits, with the chemistry-sets on our backs feeding our bodies with all the essentials.

We were still communicating with one another on an open channel radio, so there was no real privacy (although I had agreed on a couple of secret wavelengths with my commander, so that we could confer, if necessary, without the Tetrax being able to overhear). It was a relief, though, to be able to lay down the equipment and then lie down ourselves, confident that the environment was as friendly as could be expected.

“Could the invaders track us from the point at which we triggered their alarm device?” 994-Tulyar asked me, once we were cosily set up.

“Very unlikely,” I told him. “I don’t believe they could figure out where we left the highway. We left traces, of course, but there’ve been so many other galactics moving about on level one during the last twenty years that there’s no way of sorting out our tracks from the others. We’re safe here, for now. The traces we leave when we try to break into the lower levels of the city will be a different matter. Then we’ll have to take extra care.”

“We have every reason to believe that the factory-fields will be operating more-or-less normally,” Scarion pointed out. “There will be workers there from many of the galactic races. Once we have stowed away our cold-suits, we will not be conspicuous.”

He was obviously trying to reassure himself rather than the rest of us—Tulyar had appointed him to accompany us on our first foray into the lower levels of the city. It was not a good time for airing anxieties, so I saved up my less uplifting thoughts. In any case, he was probably right. All we had to do on day one was make some preliminary contacts, try to get a message or two through to the top men in the city, and avoid the invaders. It seemed a sufficiently discreet programme, though there was always a danger of our attempts to communicate being intercepted, and giving us away.

We had had a long day, and had worked ourselves pretty hard. In our hammocks, we slept what is euphemistically called the sleep of the just. Just what, I wasn’t entirely sure.

We had no trouble getting close to the city on level two. We had already picked out a likely point of entry on the map, and our approach was untroubled.

Our means of ingress was to be a narrow corridor on level one, which was sealed halfway along its length by a plastic plug. First we had to put in a second plug behind us, then equalize the pressure, then cut through the original plug. We were going through on level one because the temperature and pressure differentials were far less sharp than on level two—which meant that the plugs we had to deal with would be far less solid and much more easily manageable.

This was the most hazardous part of the operation. Once we’d put a plug behind us, we’d effectively imprisoned ourselves, along with a major part of our equipment. If we attracted attention while we were actually at work cutting, there was no place to go. Once we were inside, there would be a rich selection of bolt-holes, but if we were spotted before we got through we’d be done for. The other big danger was that while we were inside, some wandering patrol might discover what we’d done, thus allowing them to set an ambush for us.

We had decided that four of us would make the first foray into the city, for a preliminary appraisal of the situation. 994-Tulyar and Susarma Lear stayed behind, on the grounds that you don’t expose your top personnel on the first run. The Turkanian was out, too, because he’d be the guy entrusted with the task of getting them out again if anything happened to me. That put me in command of the raiding party, with 74-Scarion, Sergeant Serne, and a trooper named Vasari. He’d been on Asgard before, but he’d had the plum job of minding the trucks when the rest of us went down into the levels, so he’d never actually been under the surface.