“There’s a locking control,” said Carrie, sounding amazingly calm. “Red lever on the right.”
Mac threw it down, and the sign above flashed “Manual control operated.”
It was suddenly silent. Two more shots rang off the other side of the door, but the noise was strangely muffled, like the tolling of a bell far under the sea.
“Is there another entrance?” Jeff Thomas was on his feet, grinning like a maniac, fresh blood seeping from the deep gash across his cheek. “Come on…you guys know this fucking warren better than I do. Is there another way in or out?”
Jim answered him. “Emergency exit. We’re fifty feet under the base here. There’s an air lock and ladder to a heavy steel cover. Hand-operated ring lock on it. Be almost impossible to break in that way unless you nuked it.”
“So we’re safe. For a while.”
Jim nodded. “Yeah, for a while. Might as well make the most of what we got while we’re in here. Looks like none of the raiders made it inside. The generator’s still doing its stuff. We got light and heat, fresh air and water. Should be plenty of processed food. Baths. Beds.”
Jeff Thomas gave Steve Romero a high five. “All right!”
“Guns?” asked Pete Turner. “Don’t remember seeing any around.”
Jim nodded slowly. “Had my own automatic in my locker. If it’s still safe there. But it won’t carry us very far against a dozen men with rifles and 10-gauge shotguns.”
“Least they can’t break in here after us.” Mac said.
Jim nodded. “Just for a few hours, I’d settle for being where we are. Think about crossing any bridges later.”
AFTER THEY’D TAKEN BATHS, they dug into the living quarters. Each of them went to their own personal lockers, coming across clothes and other items that they hadn’t seen for over two years.
Jim looked around at the shocked and strained expressions on everyone’s faces. “Listen up. We all got small cabins. Take what you got and get some privacy. Then we can meet up again in the dining section in an hour.”
Each of them found the process of going through their possessions almost overwhelmingly painful. Normally, after a mission, it would have been sheer delight, a pleasure to come across the souvenirs of family and friends, knowing that they would soon be seen again.
But after the spilled-blood look of the planet when they’d broken through into the atmosphere and the discovery of the inexplicable destruction and deaths around Stevenson base, the anticipatory pleasure had been replaced by fear.
A gut-churning, cold fear.
Jim found the drawings of himself and the Aquila that Heather and Andrea had drawn for him. Heather’s was neat and linear, in black and white. Andrea’s was in bright colours, shaded and blurred. Both had written their messages of love to him. They’d been nine then. Now they were both eleven.
If they were alive.
Steve had a postcard from Leadville in Colorado, showing a crazy old crone peeking from a log cabin. Baby Doe Tabor. With its sad little tale of family tragedy and death. It was from his son, Sly, posted a week before the Aquila had taken off for deep space. The boy had been just sixteen, still living in Aspen with his thrice-married mother.
“Hot and high here, Dad. Hiked some good trails on my own. Mom seems—” something was thickly crossed out, “—and sends all her love. Let the eagle fly high, Dad, and come back safe to your son. Lotsalove from Sly.”
Steve sat on his narrow bed in his cramped quarters and cried.
Jeff Thomas flicked through a small folder of family pictures. His father, frail and pale, standing and blinking at the camera, outside the Madonna Inn, in San Luis Obispo. Various girls, some bumping and grinding for the snapshots.
There was a tiny round mirror, with raised edges, and an engraving of a dew-tipped rose below its surface. Jeff could see the faint residual traces of white powder crusted around the lip of the mirror and he wished, profoundly wished, that he had a little brown glass vial of coke to carry him along the next few hours. But drugs on the space-research base was almost the ultimate crime.