Asgard's Conquerors

11

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.

We came back up to level one through one of the usual airlock-type hatchways. The seals on such hatchways were simple mechanical devices, so time and cold hadn’t wrecked them, and it had been easy enough for the C.R.E. to make them usable again. Thousands of the things had been mapped within a couple of kilometres of the city boundary, though the vast majority connected levels one and two— getting down into three was a slightly different matter, and in this region it was very difficult to get down to four, because there was no major cave-system directly below the city, and the regions of four hereabouts seemed pretty solid, as far as the C.R.E. had been able to establish.

Plugging the corridor was quick work; we sealed ourselves off in a chamber not much bigger than a starship cabin, where we had to jostle for the space to use the equipment. That made it economical to equalize the pressure and temperature, but it increased the likelihood of an accident with the cutting gear. Serne did most of the work—he was quick and neat, and when we were through he brought the edges of the cut back together so cleverly that you’d have had to get very close indeed to see that anything had been done. We worked by torchlight; the corridor was unlit. We were in what had been a residential district when the cavies lived there, but it hadn’t been colonized by the galactics. Out in the factory-fields the lights were on right around the clock, but this was as godforsaken a spot as the city had to offer.

We stripped off our suits and stowed them in the space between the plugs, where we left the equipment. Taking out the tubes—especially the drip-feed injectors—was messy and painful, and in a way it would have been more convenient and more comfortable to keep the suits on, but without them on there was every chance that we could pass for citizens if we were noticed by the new overlords of the city.

We dressed in clothes that we had brought with us—nondescript khaki coveralls, loose enough to hide the mud guns we were carrying, and brown boots. The boots were made from Tetron artificial organics, and I was glad to find that they were exceptionally comfortable, designed for human feet. I’d once tried to wear boots designed for Tetron feet, and found them impossible; I’d never seen a naked Tetron foot, but I deduced that they must have very peculiar toes.

When we were all properly dressed, we moved stealthily through the darkened corridor. We played the beam of a single torch along the ground ahead of us.

We’d hardly gone thirty metres before we were startled by sudden rustling sounds. We froze in our tracks.

“There’s someone there!” exclaimed Scarion, before I could signal for silence. Seme and Vasari, of course, knew better than to open their mouths in such a situation.

The light failed to pick anything out as we hurried toward what seemed to be the source of the noise. The texture of the sound suggested that to me it was some kind of vermin. Starships are supposedly free from rats, but there are several races in the galactic community that choose to take other lifeforms around with them—as pets, I guess. Skychain City had been around long enough to collect a feral population of catlike creatures, which made a living scavenging around the factory fields, skulking at other times in exactly those forgotten corners which had recommended themselves to our purpose.

Further on, we heard more sounds. Again we could see nothing, and I couldn’t tell whether the sound was only some small animal scurrying away, or whether it was something—or someone—larger. It might have been a galactic refugee, who assumed we were the invaders.

I looked at Serne for a second opinion, but he just shrugged. There was no point in starting a chase. In the end, we moved on—we had work to do.

Finally, we came to the edge of the darkness, and I switched off the torch. We peered out of a covert at a vast sheet of organosynthetic material, which looked like a plain of plastic grass, cut up into diamond-shaped sections by railways and walkways. The fifteen-metre ceiling was blazing with light.

Everything seemed to be working normally. Sections of supporting wall interrupted our view, but in between them we could see for several hundred metres. In the distance we could see one of the automated trains that transported the “crops” ambling along its track, pausing occasionally to pick up cargo. There was not a humanoid being in sight.

Although we were carrying flimsies with messages in Tetron script, which we were to pass on to any apparently trustworthy person, I was not at all dismayed by the absence of friendly natives. The longer we had to look around, the better.

“Any chance of hopping on a train?” asked Serne.

“Sure,” I said, “but a train might carry us straight into trouble. We have two choices—we can set off on foot along the walkways, which might make us a little conspicuous, or we can go under the carpet, into the tunnels that cut through the thermosynthetic feedways. I favour the walkways—there are plenty of places to duck out of sight, as long as we see the opposition before they see us.”

We began to make our way across the food-producing region, heading toward the centre of the city, although we had no intention of getting too close. It wasn’t long before we caught glimpses of other people. They were workers, servicing the automatic machinery. They looked like galactics—a couple were Zabarans—but I wasn’t entirely prepared to take appearances for granted. We didn’t know for certain that all the invaders looked like human beings. It had crossed my mind that maybe only the shock troops were human, doing the dirty work for paymasters whose appearance we couldn’t know.

We stayed out of sight until we reached a position from which we could see a roadway curving around the outer city limits. It was heavy with traffic—mostly automated transports, but with a number of military vehicles thrown in. We saw armoured cars go past at irregular intervals, but whether they were patrols or part of some desultory troop- movement we could only guess.

We moved a little closer, and then, as we moved past a section of wall, we saw a single humanoid standing on a railway, checking the engine of a broken-down train. We studied him from hiding, and 74-Scarion identified him as a Ksylian. I’d seen the species before—brown-skinned and big-eared, with dark eyes that seemed to be forever mournful—but I didn’t know much about them.

“You’d better let me approach him,” said 74-Scarion. “He’s certain to take you for invaders.”

“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”

The Tetron moved from hiding and climbed up on to a walkway that took him across to the tracks on which the train ran. The moment the Ksylian saw him, he stopped work and looked furtively around. 74-Scarion talked to him for about fifteen minutes, while I bit my lip impatiently— then he turned to beckon us over. There was no way to judge from the Ksylian’s alien expression what his reaction was to the sight of us.

We were able to crouch down beside the train, so that we were virtually invisible to anyone else who might happen by, while a rapid exchange of information took place.

“He says that everything is quiet in the city,” said 74- Scarion. “When the invasion first occurred there was momentary resistance, but the peace officers were ordered to surrender by their commanders, and the killing soon stopped. At first, the invaders brought all the galactics from their homes, lining them up in the streets, but then they allowed almost everyone to return to their ordinary work. They stopped the moving walkways, though, and closed down some of the city’s other systems. He says that there must have been at least ten or twenty thousand of the invaders—an enormous force—involved in the initial attack. Since then, he thinks they may have moved another ten or twenty thousand up into the city, but I don’t think we can rely on his judgment. They have taken over some of the living-accommodations, and he says that many of the citizens are now living three or four to a room.

“The language barrier was very difficult, he says. It still creates many problems. The aliens need him and others like him, because they don’t understand the machines, but he’s very uneasy about the fact that they can’t tell him what they expect. He says that the invaders have not really managed to figure out who does what, and what kinds of work are essential to the running of the city. He says that they’re stupid, and don’t understand Tetron technology at all—the Tetrax apparently won’t co-operate with them, and they’re having great difficulty in keeping things going. He says that their own technology is very primitive.”

That seemed puzzling. I’d been assuming that although they looked like Neanderthalers, these Asgardians must be at least as sophisticated as the Tetrax. If the Ksylian was right, it was sheer weight of numbers that had allowed the invaders to overwhelm the city, and now that they had it they didn’t know how to run it.

“He thinks that the loss of life was greater than necessary,” Scarion went on. “He has heard that thousands of people were shot, though he does not know how much rumour to trust. He says that many citizens, especially Tetrax, have been taken down into the lower levels—no one knows where. This exodus is continuing, although it would take years to transport the whole population of Skychain City. He thinks that the invaders would like to take over the city entirely, but that the galactics are indispensable because they know how things work. He says it doesn’t much matter to him whether he works for the Tetrax or the invaders, but he’s scared of the invaders.”

“What sorts of equipment are they bringing up?” I asked, addressing my question directly to the Ksylian. His parole was oddly accented, but we had no difficulty understanding one another.

“Armoured vehicles, many guns. They are working hard, trying to understand our machinery. They have many men learning parole, and are using many citizens as language teachers.”

“Do they all look like me, or are there different races?”

“All those I have seen are your kind. I have heard, though, that they have other peoples working for them as slaves.”

“Humanoid?”

“Yes, but I do not know which of the galactic races they resemble most. I have not seen any of these slaves—not knowingly.”

“How easy is it to move about on the surface? Could we get up into the streets under the dome without being apprehended?”

“It is very difficult. They try to keep people off the streets. They issue passes, in their own writing—because no one understands their language, such passes are hard to forge.”

“Would it be safe for us to use the telephones, or would they be able to monitor our calls?”

“I do not know. They are not clever with the Tetron communications systems, but they do have telephones of their own.”

We had already figured that the phones were a bad risk.

“Is it safe for us to move around down here?”

The Ksylian shook his head, but I wasn’t sure what the gesture meant in his terms. “Perhaps,” he said, noncommittally. “They allow the workers to do their jobs— they are desperate to maintain and improve food production. They have found out which food is best for them, and they are trying to produce more, but they do not know how. The Tetrax will not help them.”

Most of the food produced in the factory-fields consisted of different varieties of “manna”—compounds precisely matched to the nutritional requirements of particular groups of galactic humanoids. There were enough different kinds of humanoid in Skychain City to necessitate production of eight or ten brands. If appearances were anything to go by, the invaders would need my old brand, which had been produced in much less quantity than the brands preferred by the Tetrax—or, for that matter, the brands marketed for specialist carnivores like the vormyr or the brands designed for specialist vegetarians like sleaths.

“There’s one way we might get a close look at the streets on the surface,” said Serne.

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“Stop an armoured car, zap the guys inside, and steal their uniforms. Then we could drive around to our heart’s content.”

“It’s a bit too melodramatic,” I told him. “Maybe later.”

“Please go now,” said the Ksylian, obviously thinking that if we’d reached the stage when we could talk among ourselves, we could take off and stop making him nervous.

“Can you get a message to a Tetron on the surface?” I asked him. “Preferably a high-number man.”

The Ksylian thought about it. I think he wanted to say no. But his first loyalty was still to the Tetrax, and he probably figured that there was an even chance that the Tetrax would one day be back in charge. When that time came, it would be a lot healthier to be the guy that had helped out than the guy who had refused.

“Perhaps,” he said, shaking his head again.

74-Scarion produced the written text that we already had prepared. It was written in a Tetron language, so the Ksylian couldn’t read it any more than the invaders would be able to. We figured that it was safe—the Ksylian could probably think up a dozen excuses for having an incomprehensible bit of paper in his possession, if he was asked. He had nothing to lose by trying to deliver it.

I couldn’t read the paper either, but Tulyar had told us that it was an invitation to a rendezvous and a request for detailed information about the situation in the city. We were assuming that the Tetrax in Skychain City had continued to gather intelligence even though their ways of beaming information out had been blocked.

The Ksylian pocketed the paper, knowing that it was the price of being left alone.

We didn’t want to put all our eggs in one basket, so we went on to make a couple of further contacts in much the same fashion. We didn’t find out much more, save for a few items of hearsay that were blatantly untrustworthy, but we did get corroboration of the Ksylian’s impressions. Everyone we spoke to was agreed that the invaders seemed to be technologically primitive, and that they were having one hell of a time trying to figure out how to take over the machinery the Tetrax had used to run the city. We were told that the invaders were not pleased with the Tetrax, because of their unwillingness to help.

This information worried me. The Tetrax who’d briefed us must have suspected this, but hadn’t mentioned it. I’d assumed that they were frightened of the invaders because of their probable technological supremacy, but now it looked as if they might be worried because their people were in the hands of reckless barbarians. I’d also assumed that the invasion was a response to my penetration of the lower levels, but there seemed to be no evidence of any connection between these invaders and the biotech-minded supermen who’d taken Myrlin in. Maybe the invaders were just the pawns—but if so, why hadn’t the players come forth to help them with their technical difficulties?

We had too much work to do, though, to allow me to spend time pondering such questions. We handed out a couple more invitations for delivery to Tetrax in the city— one to a Zabaran, one to a Turkanian. We didn’t see any Tetrax, nor did we get close enough to any invaders to be seen by them.

By the time we set off for home we figured that we could count the day a modest success. We’d spent about six hours in the paddy-fields—during which time we failed to find anything much that Serne, Vasari, and I cared to eat, though 74-Scarion picked up a couple of snacks.

Once we were on the way back we didn’t expect that anything much would go wrong. I was already thinking ahead to the next danger point—when we turned up for the meeting we’d arranged, to see what transpired.

As I’ve observed before, though, plans have a terrible tendency to go wrong.

When we got back to the broken seal through which we’d entered, two of the four cold-suits had vanished.