anything with him or the rest of them. He squeezed Elene’s hand, drew away, and
shouldered his way past the armored troops, tried to avoid stepping in a dark
pool of blood as he carded open the lock.
The door opened, closed behind him, started its cycle automatically. He reached
for the human breathing gear which always hung on the right of entry of such
chambers, slipped it on before the effects became severe. His breath took on the
suck and hiss he associated subconsciously with Downer presence, loud in the
metal chamber. He opened the inner door and the echo came back out of far
depths. He had a dim blue light where he was, but he paused to unlock the
compartment by the door and take out a lamp. The powerful beam cut through the
dark into a web of steel.
“Downers!” he called, his voice echoing hollowly down and down. He felt the cold
as he walked through the door and let it seal, stood on the joining platform
from which the ladders ran in all directions. “Downers! It’s Damon Konstantin!
Do you hear me? Call out if you hear me.”
The echoes died very slowly, depth upon depth.
“Downers?”
A moan drifted up out of the dark, an echoing keening which stirred the hairs at
his nape. Anger?
He went further, gripping the light with one hand, the thin rail with the other,
stopped and listened. “Downers?”
Something moved in the dark depths. Soft footfalls rang very softly on metal far
below. “Konstantin?” an alien voice lisped. “Konstantin-man?”
“It’s Damon Konstantin,” he called again. “Please come up. No guns. It’s safe.”
He stayed still, feeling the slight tremor in the scaffolding as feet trod it
far down in the dark. He heard breathing, and his eyes caught the light far
below, shimmer like illusion. There was an impression of fur, and another
glimmer of eyes, ascending by stages. He stayed very still, one man, and fragile
in these dark places. They were not dangerous… but no one had attacked them with
guns before.
They came, more distinct in his hand-held light, bedraggled and struggling up
the last stage, panting, the one hurt and the other wide-eyed with terror.
“Konstantin-man,” that one said with a quavering lisp. “Help, help, help.”
They held out hands, pleading. He set the lamp down on the grating on which he
stood and accepted them as children, touched the male very carefully, for the
poor fellow was bleeding all down his arm and drew back his lips in a fretful
snarl.
“All right,” he assured them. “You’re safe, you’re safe now. I’ll get you out.”
“Scared, Konstantin-man.” The female stroked her mate’s shoulder and looked from
one to the other of them with round, shadowed eyes. “All hide gone find no
path.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“More, more, more we, dead hungry, dead ’fraid. Please help we.”
“Call them.”
She touched the male, a gesture eloquent of worry. The male chattered something
to her, pushed at her, and she reached and touched at Damon.
“I’ll wait,” Damon assured her. “I wait here. All safe.”
“Love you,” she said in a breath, and scrambled back down with a ringing of the
metal steps, lost at once in the dark. In a moment more, shrieks and trills
sounded out into the depths until the echoes redoubled; voices woke out of other
places, male and female, deep and high, until all the depths and dark went mad.
A shriek erupted by him: the male shouted something down.
They came in the silence which followed, ringings of steps on the metal deep
below, callings occasionally echoing sharply and moanings rising which stirred
the scalp. The female came running back to stroke her mate’s shoulder and to
touch his hands. “I Satin, I call. Make he all right, Konstantin-man.”
“They have to come through the lock few at a time, you understand, careful of
the lock.”
“I know lock,” she said. “I careful. Go, go, I bring they.” She was already
hastening down again. Damon put his arm about the male and brought him into the
lock, dragged his mask up for him, for the fellow was muzzy with shock, snarling