Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  "Will do." Bobby Joe grabbed equipment and headed back.

  Matt held the inertial navigation display where Rudy could see it as he controlled the path of the borer. They were approaching the intersection of two walls that met at about a 135–degree angle. The display showed two lines meeting at a point. Near the intersection, an orange dot with a tail like a comet showed their current position and most recent history. Superimposed on the display was a dim grid currently showing one–meter squares.

  In the upper right corner of the display were their actual coordinates relative to the ground–floor lobby of the World Trade Center, shown in rectangular and polar coordinates. One of the polar coordinates said they were 48,912 meters from home. One of the rectangular coordinates said they were 17.4 meters below where the inertial navigation box had been zeroed out.

  They slowly moved another four meters as the range gradually slowed and the angular displacement crept up in very small increments. The comet–tail image on the display confirmed that they were curving left toward the wall. Matt looked behind him and saw Abby, Julie, and Richard walking slowly behind them in the gently curving tunnel. Just before Matt looked forward, Richard stumbled, then caught his balance again.

  Soon the tunnel straightened out as the borer moved next to the wall, closer and closer to the intersection. Occasionally the borer's whine would increase in pitch as it dragged against the wall. A lighter gray streak at about waist height on the right wall showed where the borer had scraped against it.

  Finally, as the borer neared the intersection, Rudy turned it away from the surface, curving its path more to the left so that minutes later, according to the display, the borer was going parallel to the adjacent wall.

  "That should about do it," Rudy said. He shut off the borer and for an instant all was quiet in the tunnel.

  "Good," Matt said. "Before we do anything else, let's make sure we've got a good seal."

  Under Matt and Rudy's direction, the team retrieved tape from the trailer and applied sections of tape wherever the borer had come close enough to the wall to leave gaps or thin sections of solidified goo, just to make sure no goo leaked into the chamber. Bobby Joe got back in time to help them finish.

  "What next, boss?" Bobby Joe asked.

  Matt rubbed the back of his neck. "The next order of business is to dig the goo away from the intersection of these two walls. Rudy thinks wherever there's a seam might be the easiest place to try to get through the wall, and that will also let us find out if that elevator shaft or whatever it is will be useful."

  "We're not going to just blast our way through?"

  "Nope. This wall might be a divider between our compartment and the bridge, or it might be a hull between us and the outside. If we don't use a little caution, we could all wind up sucking vacuum."

  "It could be this chamber isn't actually in the ship any longer. We could be hidden away on the back side of the moon or something."

  "That's possible, but their pattern seems to be pick up a city, add it to the collection, and move on. Anyway, even if we were on Luna, we could still be a meter from vacuum."

  "Okay. I just thought if we were ready to use some explosives, then Richard would get a chance to talk."

  "I am quite able to carry on a conversation when it's appropriate, thank you very much," Richard said. Suddenly everyone was looking at him.

  "Dick, it's really great to hear you talk," said Bobby Joe.

  "People call me Richard." His tone almost made his breath frosty.

  "How can you be sure?" Bobby Joe asked innocently.

  Richard's eyes narrowed, and Matt moved in to divert the energy into something useful. "All right. We need to clear the goo away from the wall, especially near the corner. Bobby Joe, you and I will take the first shift."

  Matt and Bobby Joe attacked the goo, both cautious not to let their shovels clang against the wall. As they worked, the other four used the borer to make a small side tunnel to use for storage of discarded goo. The soft clattering noise from the borer's treads was comforting in its regularity.

  In an hour they had exposed the intersection between the walls. The walls did in fact meet at a 135–degree angle, but two short walls jutted out from the two long walls and met in a vertical seam, as though a diamond–shaped shaft ran vertically along the intersection.

  Matt finished installing another ventilation tube as Rudy played a torch over the rough edges of the goo left after the excavation. Behind Rudy, Richard, Julie, and Abby sealed strong tape over the junction between hardened goo and the wall surface now revealed, so no goo could leak in. The team had cleared an area about a meter high and eight meters wide. The walls around the elevator shaft, if that's what it was, didn't look any different than the other walls.

  Rudy came back from the trailer with a stethoscope connected to an amplifier and headphones. "If everyone can be quiet for a minute, I'd like to see if I can hear anything from the other side."

  Rudy knelt on the tunnel floor and stuck a suction cup against the cleared wall surface. He put on the headphones and turned on a small switch on the amplifier.

  He turned a dial on the amplifier, then scratched again, then listened intently for fifteen seconds. Finally he took off the headphones and said, "Nothing." He moved to retrieve a drill from the trailer.

  Rudy put a bit into the drill and said, "Let's start small. If it is vacuum on the other side, or if there are people close enough to notice, this probably makes the most sense. Plus, we can stick a small fiber–optic probe through and do some snooping before we decide what to do next."

  "Sounds good to me," said Matt.

  The wall looked like brushed aluminum or steel in the glare of the hardhat lamps. Faint lines defined large equilateral triangles, a meter on each side, as though the wall had been built from triangular plates that had then been welded together, or molecularly bonded. Rudy positioned the drill at the center of one of the triangles and pulled the trigger.

  At first the bit just spun on the surface, like a spinning toothpick held against a plate of glass, but then it started to form a dimple in the metal.

  An extremely fine powder sparkled in the light from the hardhats as the tiny particles slowly fell away from the bit. After a minute or so, Matt could tell that the bit had moved slightly into the surface.

  Rudy leaned on the drill for several minutes. Matt's mind had begun to wander, and he was unsure whether they might break through in seconds, hours, or days.

  The drill suddenly lurched forward several centimeters. At the same time, a red gas began to escape from around the perimeter of the bit.

  "Everyone but Rudy, get out of here!" Matt shouted. "On the other side of the barrier. Now!"

  As Abby, Julie, Bobby Joe, and Richard scrambled to get away, Rudy pulled the drill bit out of the hole and Matt stuck his thumb over the opening.

  "I've got some tape," Rudy said. "Just a sec."

  Rudy scattered small tools as he pawed through the tool box. A moment later, he and Matt were alone in the tunnel and he pulled out a roll of tape.

  "Okay," Rudy said. "Move it."

  Matt pulled his thumb away, and Rudy slapped a piece of tape against the wall surface, cutting off the tiny jet of red gas. Both he and Matt held their heads as far away from the opening as they could. Matt tried not to breathe.

  #

  In the East Village, a small group of Hindus gathered for mutual solace in the apartment shared by two of the group.

  Gerard Ghendl desperately wished that if he were near death that somehow he could travel to Benares to bathe in the sacred river Ganges to cleanse himself of his sins.

  Gerard knew the trip was impossible, though, so he tried not to think about it. Instead he thought about karma, and wondered what, as a group, the inhabitants of Manhattan had done to deserve this.

  #

  Matt held the ends of the tape in place as Rudy stuck several more pieces over it. When they pulled their hands away, the tape held, and they couldn't
see any gas leaking out.

  "Let's move away," Matt said.

  The two men came to a stop about ten meters from the taped hole. Rudy coughed a couple of times.

  "You feel okay?" Matt asked. He looked closely at his thumb but saw no indication of damage.

  "Yeah. Nervous, but okay. You?"

  "I'm okay. At least that apparently wasn't some fast–acting poison."

  "Not that affects us anyway."

  "Can you hook up the gas analyzer?"

  "Right away." Rudy went to the trailer and retrieved equipment. Minutes later he had an intake tube positioned near the taped hole, and the sampler pump was running.

  "It'll need to sample for about ten seconds," Rudy said. "I can hold the tube."

  "No. I've already been exposed. No point in risking both of us."

  Rudy shook his head, but went back to the pump. "Any time you're ready.

  Matt peeled edges of the tape back until he had exposed the small hole again. He put the end of the tube over the spurting red gas.

  "Okay, that's enough," Rudy said finally.

  Matt pushed the tape back into place, sealing the hole, and put another couple of strips over the rest. He went over to watch over Rudy's shoulder. "So, what have we got?"

  Rudy was silent for a moment. "Mostly oxygen. Some nitrogen. And a smaller amount of some compound I can't identify. That has to be what's coloring the gas. But I can only hope it's not harmful in the quantities we inhaled. It probably wouldn't be much good for our lungs, though, if we had to breathe a lot of it. The good part is that nothing in this stuff is emitting radiation."

  "Right," Matt said. "I'm going to call the others back. We need to talk."

  Minutes later the six of them were once again near the cleared portion of the wall.

  "So, what was that stuff?" Julie asked.

  Matt looked at Rudy, who explained.

  "Is that what our captors breathe?" asked Bobby Joe. "Maybe we need to go back and get scuba gear."

  "That's not the only problem," Abby said. "I don't know if we'd be able to see through that stuff."

  The group was silent for a long moment.

  Finally Matt said, "I'm not sure our captors breathe that stuff."

  "I may be thinking the same thing you are," Rudy said.

  "A fence?"

  "Could be."

  "What are you talking about?" Richard asked.

  Matt turned to Richard. "When Rudy was drilling, the bit cleared the wall, and the drill pushed forward several centimeters, and it stopped again, but the bit wasn't sunk in all the way. There's another surface just behind the one Rudy drilled through. This red gas may be confined to the gap between these two layers."

  "For what purpose?" Julie asked.

  "To make it easy to find out if anyone breaks out, and exactly where it happened. If we had used explosives just now, we might easily have blown a hole so large and jagged that we couldn't seal it. If we'd been using a really high–power laser, we could have drilled right through the second surface at the same time, and that gas would be filtering out the other side even though we patched this side."

  "That seems kinda low–tech," Bobby Joe said.

  "Maybe," Rudy said. "But the advantage is that it's very easy to implement. They've got hundreds of square kilometers to protect, and instrumenting the entire surface with sensors or setting up enough lasers and mirrors to let them check for breaks that way would be a hell of a lot of work. This way they just build two boxes, one inside the other. They periodically measure the pressure of the gas between. Easy."

  "It makes a lot of sense to me," Matt said. "But what other theories should we explore? One possibility that's been mentioned is that it's our captors' natural atmosphere. What else?"

  "Maybe we drilled into a duct," Bobby Joe said. "A duct that's carrying this stuff to a particular location. Or we hit a tank of the stuff."

  "A tank would probably be at a lot higher pressure," Rudy said. "And a duct going from somewhere to somewhere implies some other need for red air."

  "Any other possibilities?" Matt asked. After a moment of silence, he said, "The first theory still makes the most sense to me. So what do we do next?"

  Julie said, "Well, if we can't get through here, maybe we can get through someplace else."

  "I bet the whole perimeter is protected this way," Rudy said. "But I think maybe we can get through anyway."

  #

  Abby watched nervously as Rudy used the saw to cut slowly through the wall panel. The job was complicated by bad visibility and the layer of plastic.

  On Rudy's suggestion, they had taken a large sheet of the clear plastic material used for tunnel air barriers and taped it over the triangular panel Rudy intended to cut loose. The sheet of plastic ballooning out from the wall was significantly bigger than the proposed opening, and they had taped it so that several of Rudy's tools were on the inside. Rudy gripped the saw through the plastic, as though he were operating some equipment in a sealed environmental chamber. The red air filling the balloon made it hard to see what was going on inside. They had installed a blower pump in the tunnel ceiling to keep the pressure on this side of the plastic as high as possible.

  "I want your hardhat for just a second," Abby said to Rudy. She took it, replaced the lamp battery with a freshly charged battery, and put the hardhat back on Rudy's head. "Okay."

  "Thanks," Rudy said.

  Abby had just finished trading recharged minivid batteries when Rudy said, "That's almost got it. I need help holding the cut–out so it doesn't fall between the two walls."

  Matt and Richard moved closer. Matt reached through the plastic and maneuvered a screwdriver up to where he pried out one edge of the cut–out. Minutes later Rudy completed the cut and, hampered by the plastic barrier, Matt and Richard lowered the plate against the wall.

  In the large triangular opening the red air made visibility difficult, but there did indeed seem to be another surface just centimeters away.

  Rudy and Matt reached through the bottom of the plastic and grabbed some of the goo they had put there before taping the plastic in place. Slowly they pushed pieces into the gap around the triangular opening.

  "I think we're just about ready," Rudy said finally.

  "Okay," Matt said, turning toward Abby. "We're going to need to move quickly. "Abby, you and Bobby Joe get your torches ready. Rudy and I will cut out the center of this plastic. Richard, you and Julie are ready with tape?"

  Julie said, "Yes," for both of them.

  Abby and Bobby Joe started their torches.

  "All right. Take your last few breaths," Matt said. "Three—two—one." With their knives, Matt and Rudy quickly cut out the center of the taped plastic and forced the edges into the gap with the goo, being careful to stay out of the way of the torches. Red air swirled into the room, and Abby could see a few tiny jets of red air escaping from leaks between the wall and the goo stuffed into the gap around the perimeter of the cutout.

  Abby moved forward and quickly played the flame over the goo. She watched with relief as it darkened and expanded to seal the gap. A couple of small red spurts of air cut off. She choked as she finally had to breathe, but by then the red cloud was dissipating.

  As soon as Abby finished a section with the torch, Richard slapped some tape over the gap as an additional barrier.

  Everyone in the chamber was coughing for several minutes as they raced to complete the seal. Even after they finished, it took a while for Abby's breathing to return to normal. She wasn't sure if the problem was just the red air or if her adrenaline reaction might have made it worse, but finally she felt all right again.

  Matt surveyed the sealed gap around the edge of the triangle. "Looks good. Everyone did a great job."

  The view was clear now, and the tinge of red in the air finally vanished. Beyond the triangular opening was indeed another similar surface, as though they had just cut through the first wall of a car door.

  Rudy held up his drill. "Shall I?"


  Matt grabbed a roll of tape and said, "Go ahead. I'm really curious. Let's play a little safer this time, though. Everyone but Rudy, please go back down the tunnel. Richard, you lead the way back. Be cautious."

  Abby didn't like this part much better than the earlier wait. As she walked down the tunnel with the others, she realized that she didn't mind taking a risk along with Matt, but that she didn't like the idea of him taking a risk that she didn't share.

  Abby, Bobby Joe, Julie, and Richard reached the air barrier, took it down, and then put it back up when they were on the other side. Abby sat down on the tunnel floor, leaned back against the curved wall, and flipped her hardhat light off to conserve the charge. The business end of the borer sat facing them only a couple of meters away, and she felt nervous to be on this side of it.

  Bobby Joe stood and paced. After a couple of minutes, he said, "So, Richard. What's a bomb guy do?"

  "I am not a 'bomb guy.'"

  "Oh, sorry. Demolitions expert. So, what's your background?"

  "Twenty years in the real world. In the world where if you make a mistake, someone scrapes the pieces of your body into a cigar box and buries you like a pet in the back yard."

  "You sound a little bitter. Why do you do the work if you hate it so much?"

  "I don't hate it. I love it. I just don't like people to trivialize it."

  "You love it?" Bobby Joe said.

  "Yes." At first Abby thought that was all Richard was going to say, then he added, "Perhaps it's like a drug addiction, but I feel so alive when I'm working. The rest of the time, I'm just waiting to get back to work. Like right now."

  "They're coming back," Julie said.

  The hardhat light on the far side of the air barrier came closer, and Rudy called out, "All right. It's safe to come back."

  In the chamber everything looked much as it had before except that now a small hole penetrated the second wall.

  "The other side is air, just about like here," Matt said. "And the pressure is about the same. But we can't see much; it's dark."

  Rudy proceeded to use the saw to cut a triangle slightly smaller than the one cut in the first wall. As he finished the cut, Matt and Richard maneuvered the piece of metal into the tunnel and set it on the floor. Beyond the opening was nothing but blackness.