He kept his eyes
shut as he slid several meters down the tube; he didn't like enclosed spaces.
At last his boot soles hit an obstruction. He opened an eye—useless in the
dense darkness—then fumbled for another indention. In this one, he stuck his
other thumb.
An opening beneath
his feet—light billowed up around him—Malik slid out.
The room was low and
irregular, carved from the rock of the planetoid itself. There was the faint
and ever pervasive odors of mold and fungus. Cases were stacked everywhere,
labeled food, armory, ammo in seven languages and four glyphs.
Malik filled his
pack with a selection of dried foods in polybdalloy packages, strapped a
blaster to his thigh, then walked through the cave. After several twists and
turns—the cave stretched for some distance and he descended towards the
interior of the planetoid with each step—Malik reached a clear area. No crates
littered the floor, and here the construction had been done with more care. The
walls were straight and true, and he could stand upright without the danger of
hitting his head on a jagged protruding rock spike, and walk without dodging
boulders. On the far side of the smaller cavern, a transparent cylindrical tube
rested on three heavy supports, from the center of which came the constant hum
of a life-stasis system.
Within the tube
floated the long lean body of a naked man. His russet brown hair, liberally
streaked with white, floated in an aurora around his head in the clear gel that
surrounded him.
"Good evening,
Rudof," said Malik as he checked the dials and filters. "I'm off on a
visit to the underworld. I'll send everyone your love, shall I?"
The eyes of the
floating figure blinked once, so slowly that Malik had disappeared before they'd
made one full circuit.
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