Chapter 19

The light was coming through a fine grill in the floor of the duct. The yellowish glow filtering inside the air channel was causing an eerie reflection on the faces of the three explorers who had been crawling on hands and knees in the air passageway.

After his eyes had adjusted to the light, Vincent was able to distinguish, through the three square foot grill, a green carpet on the floor of the room below them. After long minutes of trying to remove the thin grill, he was finally able to pull it aside leaving a hole for them to slide through.

The distance from where they were to the floor below was more than ten feet. Vincent first got his legs through the square opening, and then, with much difficulty, he finally was able to get his hips and torso through the hole. A few seconds later he found himself hanging down holding the sides of the square hole with his hands. With his arms stretched thus, he could tell that his feet were at least four feet from the green carpet.

But he was in a perfect physical condition now. As a matter of fact he realized that never before this day, had he felt so good. His body was lean - his belly and excess fat were now all gone - and the outdoor life he had been living for the last three or four months (he could no longer tell exactly how long he had been on this new planet) had contribute a lot to the restoration of his body muscles. But more important still, it was the action of the Rad virus that kept his body healthy and free from all diseases and imperfections.

At last Vincent let go of his grip on the edges of the opening and let gravity pull him down to the carpet that absorbed much of the impact. While Nika was letting her body slip through the same opening in the duct, he had time to turn around in a complete circle and get a general idea of the size and shape of the room they were in.

It was a large room, probably a dormitory of some kind. He could see two rows of beds on opposing walls of the long room. Each bed was separated from the others by some sort of partition to allow some privacy to those who had been sleeping in them.

Now that his eyes were used to the light, he could tell that its intensity was relatively dim and it seemed to come from thin strips crisscrossing the ceiling. Soon, Nika had her body through and was hanging by her hands as he had done a minute earlier. Vincent caught her lower body in his arms and gently lowered her onto the soft carpet. Then it was Verla's turn to descend, and once the three of them were on the floor, they got busy looking around and examining their strange surroundings.

"This must be the home of another talking machine," finally said Verla.

"If by machine you mean a computer, I don't think we will find one here. If there were one, Brumelle would have mentioned its existence to us. No, I think this is something different. You see those two rows of beds along the walls? At one time there must have been a great many people living here, and judging from this room, they were either soldiers or workers."

"If these small platforms are beds, then they were meant to hold only one person," remarked Nika. "Those that lived here had no time to make love since they all slept one to each bed."

"You are right. This is why I say that they were soldiers or workers. What they were doing must have been very important and they probably had no time for anything else. As to what exactly they were doing here, I wish I knew the answer."

"Then they must have been very stupid people," remarked Verla, "and they got what they deserved."

"It could well be that they did deserve whatever happened to them. On the other hand maybe they had no other choice in the matter. We will probably never know. One thing is certain though; none of their descendants are around to tell us how it all ended. Judging by the looks of things here, and the amount of dust everywhere, there hasn't been anybody in this room for a very long time. This is what makes me say that it is safe for us to look around."

He didn't wait for the girls to react to what he had just said. Instead, he slowly began to walk toward the first of the small cubicles with its walls that went only half way to the ceiling. Except for the bed, the only pieces of furniture inside the small rectangular space were an uncomfortable looking chair made of a glass-like substance which was placed next to the bed and a small bureau also made of the same material.

Vincent soon got busy pulling open, one after the other, all six drawers of the bureau. Inside were clothing items such as socks and shirts and what seemed to be undergarments. Every piece of clothing was neatly folded as if the owner had left to attend whatever his occupation had been and had never returned to the room to claim his belongings.

Vincent then sat on the bed and examined the blanket. The only trace of the passage of time was the thick layer of dust that was everywhere. After he blew some of the dust away from the blanket, the light brown colour looked as fresh as if the blanket were new. He passed his hand over it and he was able to tell that it wasn't made of cotton or wool but of synthetic fibres that felt both soft and warm to the touch. Had it been made of natural fibres it would probably have disintegrated after all these years.

The bed itself consisted only of a thin mattress that was a little over twenty inches from the floor, and instead of resting on a spring support it was stretched on a low pedestal. Vincent then noticed that there was a panel underneath the bed. When he finally managed to open the rectangular door that went the whole length of the bed, he was pleasantly surprised to discover that it contained two pairs of boots and half a dozen light green, one piece coveralls that were neatly folded.

"Well, our days of freezing in the cold are over girls," he said while looking at his women with an expression of satisfaction on his face. "From now on we will also wear boots. And who knows, we may even find food in this place."

"I think we should take what we need and leave immediately," said Nika.

"We will, but not before we have a look at the rest of this place. We might find items that will be very useful to us as we travel."

They had to check half a dozen cubicles before Vincent found a pair of boots his size. The three of them then walked toward the doors of the dormitory, wearing boots and dressed in the light green one piece uniforms. Vincent could not help himself admiring the grace of his women wearing the long coveralls and knee length boots as they walked.

At the end of the long room, a wide pair of swinging doors opened into a brightly lit corridor that seemed to go on forever in both directions. They turned right for no particular reason. After long minutes of walking, they came to a door on their right. It gave way easily when Vincent tried to open it.

It was another dormitory, and it also looked as if the inhabitant had left with the intention of returning since everything seemed to be tidy. The few beds he could see through the open partitions were neatly made.

The next two doors they tried also led to dormitories. After that, the corridor went on for a long stretch, and then it suddenly turned ninety degrees to their left. As soon as they made the turn, they saw ahead of them two dozen glass panels with a view into a very large room. The panels proved to be doors when they were near enough to examine them more closely.

Inside the immense chamber, they could see rows upon rows of tables and chairs. Some of the tables were meant to sit four people around them while others were much longer and twenty could easily sit in front of them. Vincent reasoned that it must have been a sort of cafeteria where people came to relax as well as to eat or simply to be social.

He told himself that it was not worth investigating since any food that had been left in there would have long ago turn to dust. They kept on walking until they stood at the top of a wide stairway that went down. Everywhere he looked it was clean and tidy - except for the dust of course. Once they reached the foot of the stairs, fifty feet below, they found themselves in a giant room where strange machines could be seen everywhere. Most of them were in various stages of completion.

As to the purpose of these great machines, he couldn't even guess. Considering the size and complexity of the many circuits that could be seen everywhere, it was plain that a great many people must have been working on their assembly.

For the next couple of hours they explored the underground complex and investigated many more rooms. They discovered two other levels deeper down and both were similar to the first, with sleeping quarters, cafeterias and working places as well as storerooms.

Toward the end of their exploration they came to a sloping ramp that led to the surface at an incline of about fifteen degrees. Vincent figured that it probably had been used at one time to move the numerous machines to the surface once they had been assembled. But now the ramp was sealed tight by two immense doors halfway toward the surface.

They were about to turn back to leave the complex by the same ventilation shaft they had used to get in when Verla pointed to a door that no one had noticed before. It was situated on the side of the ramp at the end of a small platform. The instant that she pushed on the door it continued to slide into the wall and a long stairway could be seen on the other side. They all agreed that it was worth investigating since it did seem to be leading on a parallel path to the ramp and they were all hoping that it might take them to the surface.

As it had been inside the corridors, the lightning was intense in the staircase. After ten minutes of climbing they found themselves in a circular dark cave with walls of rock. A small opening to the outside world could be seen on the opposite rock wall.

Once they were out into the daylight, they could tell that it was extremely difficult to see the entrance to the cave from outside. It was well hidden by vines and numerous small trees growing very close. If someone had no previous knowledge of the existence of the entrance, it would be impossible to detect. Vincent felt positive that the cave must have been an emergency exit.

"Well it seems that we won't have to crawl back in that windy and dark passage of the ventilation shaft after all."

"Oh, I am so glad," said Nika, "I don't think that I could have made it out the same way we got in. Let us get away from this bad place."

"Not so fast. It is cold here and it will be dark soon. We will go back below and spend the night in the warmth and safety of the complex. In the morning we will leave."

He was right, and both women knew it. They went below to the first level. They ate in one of the storage rooms and afterwards they stretched out on the floor on blankets that they had taken from one of the dormitories. The room they were in was very near the stairway leading out. On three sides its walls were covered with shelves on which were stored many strange gadgets that fascinated Vincent.