“You’re crazy Bronstein, damn you! I’m not doing it!”
* * *
Well, at least he was carrying much less weight in fertilizer and less diesel because he’d argued before giving in. He’d been able to talk them down to half again because of having to carry the cans of diesel. And now that the things were set up, what was left in the fertilizer bags couldn’t weigh more than twenty to twenty-five pounds. It was nice to have insurance, even if he hadn’t agreed to that second booby trap they’d set. And at least they’d waited until dark. It did appear that Maggots slowed down at night, coming to a virtual halt in the wee small hours. But crossing the six hundred yards of mound had been scary as hell, even with the bats flying interference. Still . . . it was easier than climbing over it. He’d gotten there. He’d even gotten back.
Now he was going to have to abseil down, into the depths. Shudder. There would be no safety rope, this time. At least there would be no instructor screaming at him to stop being a wimp.
He steeled himself. The descendure had better work or he would be strawberry jam. He leaned back, knuckles white on his rope-clutching hands. . . . Through gritted teeth, he whispered: “Here goes nothing.”
He stayed dead still. He forced himself to relax his clutching hands. Still no movement. The problem eventually proved to be getting the oily old hawser-laid rope to go through the descendure to allow him to move at all. His previous experience had been on a smooth, braided-perlon sheathed rope. The descendure the rats had designed for him made the twisted rope twist more below him. That formed knots he had to spin loose before he could go down at all. His slow descent gave him plenty of time to observe his environment. He was pretty sure this was an air shaft. Little tunnels gave off it at ridges which were probably floor levels.
By the time he got down, the rest of the crew were in foot-stamping impatience. The galago had descended by calmly climbing down Chip’s rope, regarding the cursing human en route as a sort of slow-moving rest stop.
“Right. Where now?” Chip didn’t want to think about the plan for getting back up. Not so soon after that descent!
“Are you sure you wouldn’t be liking to stop for nice cup of tea then? Or maybe a nap?”
Chip was in no mood for sarcasm. “Shut up, Siobhan. Where do we go? Back to the food chamber?”
“Oh, but we need to go back up two levels,” said the galago.
Chip missed.
* * *
They crept along as silently, Bronstein acidly informed them, as a herd of dancing elephants. The galago had led them up one spiral ramp when the inevitable happened.
Either the Maggot was coming down anyway, or it had heard something.
Bronstein waved them back. They retreated into a side passage.
Scritch, scritch, scritch. It kept coming after them. And this was a dead end . . . some kind of adobe-closed store chamber. Nobody breathed. Then the galago gave a sudden squeak and skittered away up the wall.
There was a thump. Bronstein appeared. “Be using that four-pound hammer to provide us with bit of masonry, Chip. I don’t think it saw me. We better fake a natural death for it.”
Chip reached up and knocked a spur loose. “Here. But I think the shit just hit the fan. We’d better move it up. Where is that galago?”
“I am here,” replied a small voice from the roof shadows. “I was just about to strike when the wonderful Bat Lady beat me to it.”
Bronstein lifted a lip.
“Come on, Duke of Plazo-Toro,” chortled Fal. “Let’s move out.”
The galago drew himself up. “What did you call me?”
“That elevated, cultivated, celebrated gentleman, the noble Duke of Plazo-Toro,” replied Fal. His voice was perfectly level.
Bronstein shooed them along, flapping her wings. “Move, move, both of you! And leave that Maggot alone, Pistol! They’ll smell a rat for sure if the limbs are missing.”
At a dogtrot they continued. Fifteen minutes, and another successful circumvention, brought them to the place where the girl was walled in. The galago suddenly bounded ahead and bounced up to the tiny aperture near the roof.