So now Batista was calling him James. Which meant, very likely, that they thought he was going to get himself killed.
“Two booze rations, Fidel,” he said grimly. “One for insubordination and one for anticipated disobedience.”
Before he put on the visor of his protective suit, Conrad removed his silver eye-patch and instantly closed both eye lids for ten seconds. During which time he replaced the patch over his good eye. None of the Expendables had ever seen him do this trick. He felt peculiarly naked.
He remembered when the surgeons had offered him the choice. A transplant of one bio-eye or an implantation of one infra-red eye. It had seemed to the surgeons that any ordinary man would have taken a normal human eye. But Conrad was a spaceman. A man who, at times of emergency, had to work in total darkness. What would he not have given for an infra-red eye that time when, as a junior lieutenant, he was doing hull inspection on the old Lavoisier and all his suit circuitry failed and his support pack folded when he fell against the antenna. Three minutes of air left, and he had to feel his way back to the lock. With an infra-red eye he could have seen that it was only ten or twelve steps away. But he had spun in the darkness on the end of his line before his magnetic shoes made contact, and he had lost all sense of direction. He never did make it back to the air-lock. He died.
But the bright boyo on the monitor was a fast mover. The moment he stopped getting signals from life-support, he hit the panic button. And the emergency squad broke records going through the lock to pull in Conrad before death was irreversible.
So Conrad took some pride and pleasure from the fact that he now possessed an infra-red eye. He would never be lost in the darkness again.
He opened his eye and adjusted to a world that was, illusorily, red, black, blue, white in the oddest places. James and Batista looked like bizarre colour picture negatives, Matthew was black. And everything glowed far too brightly. Conrad gasped, and blinked once or twice. Then he was O.K. He glanced at James, and grinned. Her eyes, mouth, breasts, crotch were all brighter than the rest of her. Evidently, the night with Andreas had been successful. He thought of making some sly comment, but wisely decided against it.
“Give me the nitro bombs, Fidel.” They were black, being very cold, despite the vacuum cladding. Conrad hooked them on to his belt. Then he turned to Matthew. “How much nylon cord have you got?”
“Four hundred metres, Commander. I also have a reserve coil of two hundred metres, breaking strength two, five, zero kilos.”
“That should be more than enough. Let’s go.”
“Good luck, James,” said Batista. “I’ll borrow from someone else to drink your health tonight.”
“Try not to be a bloody hero,” said Liz.
The shaft was open, unlike some that had been discovered. No doubt Kwango would eventually offer some perfectly logical explanation why some were sealed and some were not. Maybe it had to do with the change of seasons.
Conrad let out a sigh of relief when Matthew began to lower him into the dark. With infra-red vision, the surface world was too bright, too disturbing, too full of heat.
The coolness of the shaft was pleasant. Matthew had been instructed to lower him at the rate of ten metres a minute. The strata through which the shaft passed had subtly different and interesting glows. It was, thought Conrad, like being lowered through a hole in a layer cake.
When he hit the bottom, Matthew radioed: “Descent time four point two nine minutes. Depth: four two point nine metres. Do you read me, Commander? Do you have instructions?”
“I read you. Instructions as follows: One: remain ready to retrieve from three hours from now. Two: If retrieval not accomplished within time limit, return to hovercar. Three: report to Mr. Batista that my instructions are that he return to base. Four: if Mr. Batista objects, neutralise him with minimum force and proceed as instructed. If Miss James objects, neutralise her with minimum force and proceed as instructed. Execute.”
“Instructions received. Execution proceeds.”
Conrad unhooked the nylon cord. Having assured himself that the three nitro bombs were O.K., he entered the tunnel that led to the hive.
It was a long, uphill walk. He had plenty of time to wonder what he would do if he encountered a death worm coming out of the hive. There would only be one thing to do. He couldn’t retreat fast enough. He would just have to go with a bang.
He soon discovered that his hypersensitive infra-red vision wasn’t the total answer to darkness. He could “see” the walls of the tunnel but as through a thick blue-black fog. Twice he almost fell into small cavities he hadn’t seen. He was thankful that the cold nitro was stable. The old conventional nitro-glycerine would have blown him to glory.
He knew that he was near the hive when he felt and heard the strange regular throbbing he had experienced on first discovering Mount Conrad. Soon, perhaps, he would find out what it was.
His environment evaluation unit, a small pack clipped on his right forearm, told him that temperature and humidity were rising, that air pressure was falling, that he was approaching ground level and that there was slight but insignificant radioactivity. His electrochron told him that more than forty-five minutes had elapsed since project commencement. Clearly, he wasn’t going to have too much tune for exploring the hive, allowing for the return journey.
Suddenly, the tunnel debouched into a huge chamber, in the centre of which was a great, flat-topped mound, round which a spiralling track ran. Conrad stood still for several minutes, peering through the misty gloom, his brain consciously and laboriously translating the faint infra-red radiation into a coherent picture.
The ground shook beneath his feet. It shook because lying around the vast chamber were the male death worms, apparently dormant or sleeping. Now he knew what the throbbing was caused by. It was caused by a faint unified rippling of those immense bodies, which resulted in their heads being lifted perhaps half a metre from the ground and then slamming down. Perhaps the action was connected with respiration or some necessary muscular activity.
He wished very much that it had been possible for him to use normal vision and a lamp. It was very hard translating the faint patterns of infra-red radiation into a meaningful image. But all the evidence so far indicated that these dreadful creatures were extremely light sensitive. So he would just have to do the best he could.
Presently, he was able to construct a fairly clear picture in his mind. The sleeping male death worms were ranged—almost protectively—around the great central mound. Their vast, pulsating, horrific bodies glowed dully in the foggy darkness. There was no sign of the monstrous queen. Maybe she lay on top of the miniature mountain that dominated the interior of the nest. It seemed a reasonable supposition. The surviving males were doubtless protecting her during gestation.
The miniature table mountain in the centre of the nest seemed to be above five hundred metres high. The prospect of climbing it was daunting. But it looked as if it would have to be done.
Later, Conrad would have time to marvel at the mindless engineering talent that enabled the death worms to construct a nest that was one kilometre high, provide an efficient ventilation system and construct a redoubt where the queen would be safe.
But, for the time being, he had to concentrate on his mission of destruction. He glanced at his electrochon. Forty-eight minutes had already elapsed. There was no time to waste.
He had already noticed that tunnels abounded at the base of the hive. He could only “see” about a hundred and fifty metres to right or left. But he registered eighteen circular blacknesses spread at regular intervals and deduced that tunnels existed all round the perimeter.
The big problem was: when he left his own tunnel, how would he find it again? Fortunately, the problem had been anticipated—not by Conrad but by Kurt Kwango. And it had been solved by Lou Andreas.
Andreas, engineering genius that he was, had constructed ten hot “marbles” which now lay in Conrad’s thigh pocket. The marbles, powered by ti
ny mercury batteries, would radiate black heat for six hours. For Conrad with his infra-red vision, they would glow like ancient aircraft landing-lights on a runway.
He took one out and pressed it experimentally into the wall on the right hand side of his tunnel. It shone like a beacon. He pressed another one on the left hand side. Now he would know where to aim for, how to get the hell out, if he was lucky enough to be able to plant his nitro bombs under the queen.
Eight “marbles” left. Every twenty-five paces, as he threaded his way cautiously towards the huge, slumbering mass of death worms round the central mound, he dropped one of the marbles, glancing back to check that his line of approach remained straight.
As he came near to the creatures, he was glad once more that he was on infra-red vision. He could see nothing in detail, only the heat shimmer radiated from the pulsating, supine monsters. But in imagination he could see—he clamped down on that. To hell with imagination. With iron self-discipline he temporarily abolished it. Otherwise, he would have thrown up, passed out or run for his life. There would be time for nightmares later. If he lived…
The next problem was: how to pass the creatures and scale the mound on top of which, he was certain, the queen lay in gestation? Sweat began to form on his forehead. There was no way round. He would have to climb over them. Even with his prosthetic arm, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to toss the nitro bombs on top of the small mountain. And even if he succeeded, how could he be absolutely sure that the queen was there and that she would be destroyed? Quite possibly, she might be nestling in a chamber inside the mound.
He would simply have to go and find out. And fast. The electrochron told him that sixty-nine minutes had now elapsed.
He summarised the relevant facts in his mind. Small brains, rudimentary nervous system, low skin sensitivity. If he could climb over the bastards it would surely provide no more irritation than a mouse crawling over a sleeping anaconda.
Would the anaconda wake? Now was the time to find out.
There were three death worms between him and the gouged out spiral track at the base of the mound. No doubt that track was the route by which the queen descended when she was ready to come out and play.
Biting his tongue to distract him from thinking about the consequences, Conrad put out his prosthetic arm, reached high and took a grip on the thick soft skin of the nearest death worm. His timing was bad. The creature’s body rippled as he grasped. He was lifted clear of the ground, then flung down. He lost his grip and his balance, falling heavily. The breath was knocked out of him. Rivulets of sweat trickled down his face. He put his hand on one of the cold nitro-bombs. Any moment, he expected to see a fearsome, glowing head strike at him. Well, he would at least take a few of the bastards with him.
But nothing happened. Conrad got to his feet shakily. He tried again, waiting till another ripple had passed the segment he was hoping to climb. He took a firm grip once more and hauled himself up the creature’s side, using his bio-arm to hold him while the prosthetic arm reached higher. He had hauled himself up on to the death worm’s back before the next ripple came. He immediately lay down and hung on for dear life.
When the ripple had passed, he stood up and tried to decide if he could jump on to the back of the next one. The gap was at least four metres. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. If he fell and hurt himself or disturbed the bloody things, that would be the end of the operation. There was two more death worms between him and the base of the mound. He wished, uselessly, that he had Indira’s thin legs. She would have cleared the three bodies in one magnificent leap.
But he didn’t have tin legs. So he had to climb laboriously down and up, down and up, and down, timing his movement to avoid the steady rippling.
He was amazed to find that he had reached the base of the mound without rousing the creatures whose bodies he had crawled over.
Now all he had to do was march up the spiral track. Seventy-four minutes had elapsed. Therefore, assuming his return journey would take the same time, he had sixteen minutes to get up there, plant the bombs and start back.
Puffing, aching and with his heart pounding painfully, he reached the top of the mound—having made himself walk twenty paces then run twenty paces—in eleven minutes. The top was not flat as he had supposed. It was concave. Just like a shallow nest.
And there in the nest was the immense, fantastic coil of the queen’s body. It glowed. It throbbed. All two hundred metres of it exuded heat and intimations of developing life. Each segment of that opulent body contained a womb wherein a new death worm waited to be born.
Conrad recalled the fertilisation procedure and was again moved to wonder. For a precious three minutes he stood on the edge of the nest, marvelling at the fecundity of nature. Then he shook himself out of his semi-trance and scrambled down the gently sloping side of the nest. The slumbering queen ignored his presence with regal indifference.
He armed the first nitro bomb, setting it for detonation at one hundred minutes from arming; and placed it under her head. He nerved himself to lift folds of flesh with his prosthetic arm so that he could be sure the bomb was centrally placed. The second one he pushed under her centre segments. The last one he placed under the tail/second head.
The lady did not notice. He was immensely grateful. He scrambled back up the side of the nest.
He glanced at his electrochron. One hundred and nineteen minutes had now elapsed. He was in trouble.
He made good time getting down the spiral track, though he stumbled twice and, on the second occasion, did some damage to his ankle. Now he was limping. That was bad.
Again he had trouble climbing over the quiescent death worms. He lost his balance when he was on the back of the middle one and fell down its slippery side. He did more damage to his ankle, and had to bite his tongue so that he would not cry out with the pain.
He had fallen in a bad place. At that point, the body of the middle death worm was less than half a metre from the outside one. He was jammed between them. Each time the ripples passed through the parallel segments, he was lifted clear of the ground and slammed back. Yet more damage to the unfortunate ankle.
Somehow, he managed to ease his prosthetic arm free, reach up the side of the last one, dig his metal fingers into its flesh and haul himself up. Crazily, he didn’t seem to care any more if he disturbed the creature. The pain in his ankle was agonising. What the hell! If the bastard woke up, it didn’t bloody matter. The queen would be blown. Mission accomplished. No doubt Lieutenant Smith would analyse the debris; and Kwango would sift the evidence and conclude that it was no longer necessary to do it the hard way.
He fell off the back of the third death worm and hurt himself some more. This time, it was his arm.
“Jesus,” he thought. “I’ve made a real bloody mess of this little exercise.” Through mists of pain he saw that one hundred and thirty eight minutes had elapsed.
He turned from the glowing and pulsating death worms and looked for his flare path in the apparently infinite blackness of the huge chamber. For a while he couldn’t find it. Evidently he had come back over the death worms at a different place. Cautiously he limped ten paces to the right, peering out into the darkness. Still no hot marbles. He gave himself the horrors briefly by thinking that he might have to spend what was left of the hundred minute fuse trying to find his exit tunnel. Then he pulled himself together and limped twenty paces to the left. And found it.
Eight bright shiners, leading in an almost straight line to the ones that shone on each side of the tunnel. He looked once more at his electrochron. One hundred and forty seven minutes elapsed. Twenty-three minutes to get back down the bloody tunnel to the shaft. He had taken much longer than that to get from the shaft to the chamber. He wasn’t going to make it.
But he did make it.
He was nineteen minutes late, and he had passed out twice in the tunnel because of the pain his ankle.
And he survived only because Matthew was a very logical ro
bot.
When Matthew had hauled him to the surface, he stayed conscious long enough to register—even with the limitation of infra-red vision—that the armoured hovercar was a wreck, having been half smashed into the ground, and that there was no sign of James or Batista. But he did see the burnt and fragmented remains of a death worm.
“What happened?” he demanded thickly.
“Sequence of events is as follows,” began Matthew.
But Conrad had used up all his energy, all his courage, all his staying power. He gave a great sigh, his knees became rubber, and he passed out once more. And stayed out.
Matthew surveyed his inert form, checked pulse, breathing and temperature. Then, very gently, he lifted Conrad up, cradled the limp body in his arms and began to march back to Base One.
Presently, the ground shook with a great triple explosion. Matthew swivelled his vision system and looked behind him. Mount Conrad had disappeared. Where it had stood, a mushroom shaped cloud of dust and debris rose.
The robot observed the phenomenon for a few moments, having decided that the event had significance. But Conrad, mercifully, remained uninterested.
Presently, Matthew renewed his march. He left a thin trail of blood all the way back to Base One. It dripped from where splintered bone stuck through the flesh of Conrad’s leg.
PHASE SIX Consolidation
The first thing Conrad saw when he opened his eyes was the face of Lieutenant Smith. He thought she looked entirely beautiful—white hair and all. He had been having nightmares. Bad ones. His body was dripping with sweat. He had dreamed he was back in that dreadful chamber, that the hot marbles had disappeared, that he had roused one of the death worms when he climbed over it, that the nitro bombs were ticking thunderously like surrealist clocks…
He looked gratefully at the calm face and the silvery hair. It was soft, lovely hair… Suddenly, he realised he was getting normal colour register. Someone had put the patch back over his infra-red eye. Strangely, he felt embarrassed.
The Deathworms of Kratos [The Expendables 1] Page 12