I looked ahead into the depths of the tunnel. The smell of rotting carrion wafted out of it, and the dim yellow lights winked rhythmically as though something swayed in the draft, covering and uncovering them periodically. My nerves gave way. I felt that this was nothing more than a stupid joke, but I couldn’t control myself. I squatted down and looked around. I soon found what I was looking for — a yard-long piece of reinforcing rod. I stuck it under my arm and went ahead. The iron was wet and cold and rough with rust.
The reflection of the winking lights glinted on slippery wet walls. I had noticed some time back the round, strange-looking marks on them, but at first did not pay them any attention. Then I became interested and examined them more closely. As far as the eye could reach, there were two sets of round prints on the walls at one-meter intervals. It looked as though an elephant had run along the wall — and not too long ago at that. On the edge of one of the prints, the remains of a crushed centipede still struggled feebly. Enough, I thought, time to go back. I looked along the tunnel. Now I could plainly see the swaying curves of black cables under the lamps. I took a better grip on the rod and went ahead, holding close to the wall.
The whole thing was getting through to me. The cables sagged under the arch of the tunnel, and on them, tied by their tails into hairy clusters, hung hundreds upon hundred of dead rats, swaying in the draft. Tiny teeth glinted horribly in the semi-dark, and rigid little legs stuck out in all directions. The clusters stretched in long obscene garlands into the distance. A thick, nauseating stench oozed from under the arch and flowed along the tunnel, as palpable as glutinous jelly.
There was a piercing screech and a huge rat scurried between my feet. And then another and another. I backed up. They were fleeing from there, from the dark where there was not a single lamp. Suddenly, warm air came pulsing from the same direction. I felt a hollow space with my elbow and pressed myself into the niche. Something live squirmed and squeaked under my heel; I swung my iron rod without looking. I had no time for rats, because I could hear something running heavily but softly along the tunnel, splashing in the puddles. It was a mistake to get involved in this business, thought I. The iron rod seemed very light and insignificant in comparison with the bow-tied rails. This was no flying leech, nor a dinosaur from the Kongo… don’t let it be a giganto-pithek, I thought, anything but a giganto-pithek. These donkeys would have the wit to catch one and let it loose in the tunnel. I was thinking very poorly in those few seconds. And suddenly for no reason at all I thought of Rimeyer. Why had he sent me here? Had he gone out of his mind? If only it was not a giganto-pithek!
It raced by me so fast that I couldn’t discern what it was.
The tunnel boomed from its gallop. Then there was the despairing scream of a caught rat right close by and… silence. Cautiously I peeked out. He stood about ten paces away directly under one of the lamps, and my legs suddenly went limp from relief.
“Smart-alec entrepreneurs,” I said aloud, almost crying. ‘They would dream up something like this.”
He heard my voice and raising his stern legs, pronounced: “Our temperature is two meters, twelve inches, there is no humidity, and what there isn’t is not there.”
“Repeat your orders,” I said, approaching him.
He let the air out of his suction cups with a loud whistle, twitched his legs mindlessly, and ran up on the ceiling.
“Come down,” I said sternly, “and answer my question.”
He hung over my head, this poor long-obsolete cyber, intended for work an the asteroids, pitiable and out of place, covered with flakes of corrosion and blobs of black underground dirt.
“Get down,” I barked.
He flung the dead rat at me and sped off into the dark.
“Basalts! Granites!” he yelled in different voices. “Pseudo-metamorphic types! I am over Berlin! Do you copy! Time to get to bed!”
I threw away the rod and followed him. He ran as far as the next lamp, came down, and began to dig the concrete rapidly, like a dog, with his heavy work manipulators. Poor chap, even in better times his brain was capable of performing properly only in less than one one-hundredth of a G, and now he was altogether out of his mind. I bent over him and began to search for the control center under his armor. “The rotters,” I said aloud. The controls were peened over as though battered with a sledge. He stopped digging and grabbed me by the leg.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Desist!”
He desisted, lay down on his side, and informed me in a basso voice, “I am deathly tired of him, Eli. Now would be the time for a shot of brandy.”
Contacts clicked inside him and music poured forth. Hissing and whistling, he gave a rendition of the “Hunters’ March.” I was looking at him and thinking how stupid and repulsive it all was, how ridiculous and at the same time frightening. If I had not been a spaceman, if I had been frightened and run, he would almost certainly have killed me. But nobody here knew I had been in space. Nobody. Not one person. Even Rimeyer didn’t know.
“Get up,” I said.
He buzzed and started to dig the wall, and I turned around and went back. All the time while I was returning to my turn-off I could hear him rattling and clanging in the pile of contorted rails, hissing with the electrowelder and ranting nonsense in two voices.
The anti-atomic door was already open, and I stepped over the sill, swinging it shut behind me.
“Well, how was it?” asked roundhead.
“Dumb,” I replied.
“I had no idea you were a spaceman. You have worked out on the planets?”
“I have. But it’s still dumb. For fools. For illiterate keyed-up boobs.”
“What kind?”
“Keyed-up.”
“Well — there you got it wrong. Lots of people like it. Anyway, I told you to come at night. We don’t have much amusement for singles.” He poured some whiskey and added some soda from the siphon. “Would you like some?”
I took the glass and leaned on the railing. Eli gloomily regarded the screen, a cigarette sticking to his lip. On the screen careened shifting views of the glistening tunnel walls, twisted rails, black puddles, and flying sparks from the welder.
‘That’s not for me,” I announced. “Let barbers and accountants enjoy it. Of course, I have nothing against them, but what I need is something the likes of which I have not seen in my entire life.”
“So you don’t know yourself what you want,” said roundhead. “It’s a hard case. Excuse me, you aren’t an Intel?”
“Why?”
“Well, don’t take offense — we are all equal before the grim reaper, you understand. What am I trying to say? That Intels are the most difficult clients, that’s all. Isn’t that right, Eli? If one of your barbers or bookkeepers comes here, he knows very well what it is he needs. He needs to get his blood going, to show off and be proud of himself, to get the girls squealing, and exhibit the punctures in his side. These fellows are simple, each one wants to consider himself a man. After all, who is he — our client? He has no particular capabilities, and he doesn’t need any. In earlier times, I read in a book, people used to be envious of each other — the neighbor is rolling in luxury and I can’t save up for a refrigerator — how could you put up with that? They hung on like bulldogs to all kinds of trash, to money, to cushy jobs — they laid down their lives for such things. The guy with a foxier head or a stronger fist would wind up on top. But now life has become affluent and dull and there is a plenty of everything. What shall a man apply himself to? A man is not a fish, for all that, he is still a man and gets bored, but can’t dream up something to do for himself. To do that you need special talents, you need to read a mountain of books, and how can he do that when they make him throw up. To become world-famous or to invent some new machine, that’s something that wouldn’t pop into his head, but even if it did, of what use would it be? Nobody really needs you, not even your own wife and children if you examine it honestly. Right, Eli? And you don’t need anybody either. Nowadays, it seems, clever people think things up for you, something new like these aerosols, or the shivers, or a new dance. There is that new drink — it’s called a polecat. Wanna me knock one together for you? So he downs some of this polecat, his eyes crawl out of their sockets, and he’s happy. But as long as his eyes are in their sockets, life is just as dull as rainwater for him. There is an Intel that comes here to us, and every time he complains: Life, he says, is dull, my friends… but I leave here a new man; after, say, ‘bullets’ or ‘twelve to one,’ I see myself in a completely new light. Right, Eli? Everything becomes sweet all over again, food, drink, women.”