J.B. laughed at the recollection. “Wouldn’t have been so bad in there if it hadn’t been for all the blind eels and the giant rats.”
“Eels weren’t so hard. Learned from experience to open our mouths and stand real still. They got curious and stuck their heads in and you could bite them off, clean as whistling. The rats were tougher.”
“Tell us, Dad,” Dean said, almost jumping up and down with excitement.
“Big as cats. They somehow sensed that we were pretty well helpless. Particularly when the water was high, and they could swim at us and avoid our kicks.”
J.B. carried on the story. “The little devils went for our ears, using their claws to climb onto our heads, pulling themselves up on our hair. What they were after most was our eyes. Very tasty that would’ve been.”
“That’s disgusting, John,” Mildred said, pulling a face. “Disgusting.”
“It would’ve been,” Ryan replied. “But we found a way of dealing with them. We had to, or we’d have been blinded and the rats would easily have stripped all the flesh off our faces. No problem for them.”
“So, what did you do, Dad? Bite off their heads, like with those eels?”
“Too big. And much too strong and active. Let a rat’s head inside your mouth, Dean, and it’d be Brother Rat doing all of the biting and eating. No, we had to try and get a good grip on them with our teeth, and then take a breath and drop our heads into the filthy water.”
“Drown them!” Jak exclaimed with immense satisfaction. “Hot pipe!”
“Wasn’t simple.” J.B. shook his head at the memory. “Hard to hold your breath when you had a huge mutie rodent wriggling and scratching and trying to take off half your face.”
“But we made it.” Ryan grinned. “Left the corpses floating so that their friends could come and feast. Made them less interested in us.”
“Next evening Trader tracked us down and blew the cages apart. Baron Kagan regretted that he’d chosen to go against Trader and the war wags.”
“What did he do?” Dean asked.
“Look, we’re wasting time standing around here and jawing,” Ryan said. “We should be moving on.”
“Oh, Dad”
J.B. answered the boy. “Trader stripped Kagan and staked him out. Got an iron bowl and strapped it around the baron’s belly and balls. But first he put a couple of the biggest rats under it. Started a fire and laid some of the red-hot embers on top of the iron bowl.”
“Wow! Triple ace on the line,” the boy breathed. “Trader was the hardest.”
“Had to teach the lesson that his people couldn’t be touched without someone paying a big blood price.”
“And the rats ate down into the baron to get away from the heat.” Dean grinned. “Real good story.”
Ryan nodded. “And now I think it’s time that we moved on from here.”
Chapter Five
” ‘Emergency Escape Stairs,’ ” Ryan read. “Haven’t come across that in a redoubt before.”
The sign was in blue, block-printed letters on a white plastic board. The notice looked remarkably unfaded, as sharp and pristine as the day it was painted, probably some months before skydark.
Beside it was a heavy steel sec door, with a simple push-bar release.
“Think that only opens from this side?” J.B. queried. “Best be careful we don’t go through it and then find there’s no way back here.”
“Could be.” Ryan examined it carefully. “Air seems fresher here. So it could be that whoever opened up the redoubt beyond this door couldn’t find any way of getting it open.”
“Take load plas-ex,” Jak said, tapping it with his knuckle. “Triple solid.”
“Implode might rock it.” The Armorer considered the door. “Buried deadlock hinges. Gren might move it, but it’s designed to jam solid if anyone tries to force it.”
“Can I open it, Dad?”
“No!” Ryan spoke louder and fiercer than he’d intended, making the boy jump. He continued in a gentler tone. “You should know better than to ask that kind of question, son. The door could’ve been boobied on the other side. Trader used to say that a man who rushes in gets himself carried out.”