Jutting out of the cavity was one end of a piece of predark Unistrut metal framing. About a yard of the U-shaped metal channel was showing; the rest, a slightly shorter length, was still embedded in the wall of glass. Ryan leaned closer and looked at the exposed end. Molten nukeglass had filled the inside of the two-inch-wide half tube of steel. The cave-in had fractured away most of the glass outside the free part of the Unistrut, leaving behind a three-inch, green fringe of crude, razor-edged spikes that stuck up from the channel opening like nightmare hacksaw teeth. “Poor bastard didn’t know what he was doing.”
Krysty said. “Had to be from the spores Gabhart warned us about.”
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed. “There must be some of those mushrooms around here close. Keep an eye out. We don’t want to stumble onto them by accident.”
They found the Mindbursts a bit farther on. In the green light of their rad badges, little button shapes clustered along the seam of the floor and wall. They were dainty looking, with small, rounded caps. Ryan noticed a peculiar sweet but sharp smell they seemed to give off. Holding his bandanna tight around his nose and mouth, he bent closer and saw some of the caps had been gnawed down to stumps. Scattered about were dozens of tiny, half-moon-shaped black turds.
“Like Gabhart said, the rats must eat them,” he said as he straightened.
“And their crap fertilizes the next crop,” Krysty said.
They moved past the corpse caught in the glass fall, and continued down the tunnel until they found an intersecting shaft that was stand-up height. The space inside it was much narrower. There was hardly enough room to swing their axes. But their badges glared like searchlights, so they knew they were in the right place.
Working together carefully, they excavated the base of the walls, using their axes to crack big blocks of it free. The ore wasn’t all that dense; their bags were severely stretched by sixty or seventy pounds of the stuff. With Krysty in the lead, they headed back for the sledge.
When they reached the site of the cave-in, she exclaimed, “He’s gone!”
“What?” Ryan said.
“The stoner, he’s gone!”
Ryan pushed past her. One look told him she was right. Someone or something had shifted the chunks of glass and pulled the body free. All that was left were strips of shredded clothing.
He turned to Krysty. In the glow of his badge he saw her prehensile hair drawing up into tight coils.
Then he heard soft kissing sounds from the darkness.
Chapter Twelve
It was nasty-hot underground.
Gradually, the heat of the day had built up inside the tunnel, until by late afternoon it was an airless furnace. In the greenish twilight of rad badges and glass-filtered sun, crouching human forms made animal growling sounds as they circled.
J.B. watched yet another fight unfold beside the row of sledges at the shaft’s end. The rock axes made mean hand-to-hand weapons. He wondered what one of them would do to the helmet of a battlesuit. Probably nothing, he decided, or the otherworlders wouldn’t have passed them out so freely. Probably couldn’t even get near a helmet with one; the ax head would clang harmlessly sideways before contact, just like a 9 mm slug.
The odds were stacked against the lone guy trying to protect his cart. He had three raggedy-ass thieves coming at him, taking turns ducking in and out trying to get him to commit himself and expose a weak point for the others to attack. These were the same three scumbags who had been working over the end-of-tunnel sledge line up for half an hour. They took note every time somebody dumped a bag of ore in a cart. Then they would wait until the guard was alone and close in and take some of it. Sometimes all it took was a show of force to get what they wanted; other times, like this one, it took more.
If J.B. hadn’t been charged with protecting the boy and Gabhart, he would’ve walked over and stuck his ax in, and put an end to the harassment forever. As it was, he could only be a spectator in other people’s trouble. The boy didn’t like doing nothing about it, he could tell.