Chapter 10

We could smell the ammonia, but it was not uncomfortably strong. We simply stopped breathing, since we did not need to talk. The roof was only about four and a half feet high, so none of us was going to be able to stand up straight in our normal shape. Honeybunch suggested that we assume the general body shape of a dog so that we could fit easily in the sewer tunnel. I shifted first to show the girls what was needed, and there was some fumbling around before the girls got it right.

On our last trip to The Center, we had all been fitted with a new skeleton that was infinitely malleable. Our bones were made of a special metal alloy that was liquid except when an electric current was run through it. Our built in AI could cut off the current to any part of our skeleton and reshape it any way we wanted before reapplying the current and making the bones rigid again.

I led off with Honeybunch continually sampling the air to be sure that we didn't overshoot. We passed drain after drain with the ammonia level holding steady. Suddenly, Honeybunch called for us to stop. The ammonia level had suddenly fallen well below what it had been, so we must have passed the house that was the source of the ammonia.

We backed up to the first previous drain and Honeybunch determined that this was definitely the house that was the source of the ammonia. Now we had another problem. The sewer drains were so small in diameter that there was no way that I could shrink enough to fit through them. Possibly, Osso could fit, but she was the only one.

We discussed the problem through our AIs and concluded that we had no real option. Osso was going up the pipe as far as she could, hopefully far enough to exit into the house. Once there, she was to escape the house and meet us back at our room so that we could organize an invasion of this house. We figured that the only way for her to go was through the toilet.

This toilet was undoubtedly of the old Roman design where waste just fell through into the running water of the sewer and was carried away by that. The good point was that the pipe was very unlikely to get any smaller in diameter than its current five inches, but the bad point was that she might stink like hell of shit when she came out. I cautioned her not to be so concerned about washing off after she got out of the toilet, but to escape the house as soon as possible. If she was caught, we might not be able to rescue her, so she had to get out of the house as soon as she could. She could wash off after she got back to the room. I was going to order a bath for our room, so it would be ready for her when she arrived.

Osso was able to shrink her body down to about 4.5 inches, so she could make it all the way if I was right about the diameter of the pipe. We helped her to get started and waited until she disappeared. Once she was out of sight, we ran as fast as we could to where we had left our clothes. We decided, on second thought, to leave them for the time being and fly home, trusting our chameleon skin to get us back without being observed. We got back just as Osso arrived, much to the relief of all of us.

It turned out that we were all cleaner than expected, so I shouted for a bath to be sent up, and, once that was acknowledged, we all jumped into the bed and covered up to wait for the delivery. The bath showed up eventually, and we let Osso use it first, reasoning that she had earned it. Hula went next, and I went last. We dried off, and I called for the tub to be removed.

As soon as we were alone again, I asked Osso if she could find the house again from outside. She assured me that she could with her internal inertial navigation system, so we decided to plan from that. Osso had followed my directions, so she had not taken time to investigate the house. She had escaped by going out the roof trapdoor, and we decided to go back in by that route.

For convenience's sake, we decided to wait until dark before returning to the house. The dark would make it easier for us to fly unseen, and there was less likelihood for people to be wandering around after bedtime. We reduced our weight and flew out the window. It took only a few minutes for Osso to lead us to the house in question. We went through the roof trapdoor and paused in the attic.

All three AIs boosted our hearing to the maximum gain and we listened for sounds of activity within the house. Hearing nothing significant, we dropped through the access trapdoor to the top floor of the house. The house was permeated with the odor of ammonia, too strong for any local being to tolerate it; therefore, we were sure that only aliens lived here. The Urthlings were not xenophobic, simply because the average person had never considered the possibility of there being aliens from other planets. For that matter, what was a planet?

This floor seemed to be empty of everything but junk. If we were going to discover anything useful, we had to descend to lower floors. I asked Osso to show us the stairs, and she led us to a peculiar looking door. It had some buttons and other stuff on it, but their use was not obvious. I could not find any operating instructions, so I asked Osso how she had come through it.

"I couldn't get it to open when I tried the doorknob, and I had no idea what the fancy buttons and lights meant, so I just used my plasma jet to burn away the lock so that I could push the door open."

I almost burst out in laughter. She had apparently burned away the sealing system for an airlock. The fit was so good that there was little leakage after her act of vandalism. We went through the door and closed it. Osso had treated the inside door the same way, so I cycled the air (the instructions were now visible) and we went through the inner door.

We switched to mental communications because we were now in an ammonia atmosphere and saw no reason to risk damaging our breathing passages. We had hardly stepped through before we found ourselves facing two of the aliens from the ammonia planet Nasfor. They were more surprised than we, so we were able to dispose of them quickly with our plasma jet set for short range and small diameter. It was pretty obvious that we would break up the attempt to capture Urth if we killed all of the invading aliens, so I was not reluctant to start on the ones in this building.

There was a utility closet opening off the hall, so we dragged the two bodies into it and continued on our way. This was no longer a scouting mission, but one of destruction and elimination of the alien influence on Urth. All three of us were ready to pounce as soon as we caught sight of an alien, so the aliens were in a lot more trouble than they could have possibly imagined.

Our next stop was in a room filled with communication equipment. There were three operators sitting at consoles, and we eliminated them with quick decapitating sweeps of our plasma jets. Fortunately, the jet was so hot that it cauterized the cut edges of the flesh so quickly that there was no splash of body fluids to get in the way or to be cleaned up. I had learned the aliens language during my excursion to Texas, so I could read everything that I could see. Since Honeybunch knew it, then Harlo and Ona knew it, too. We read through all of the messages that we could find, but they were all routine logistics and other such items that were of no immediate concern. Our AIs photographed the messages and sent them back to The Center for the intel people to look over—we would hear if there was anything that we should follow up on.

A few quick blasts with the plasma jet destroyed this equipment, and we were ready to continue on. The rest of this level appeared to be living quarters for the staff, so we were soon ready to go down one more level. We did learn that there were at least 20 enemy aliens occupying the house.

We were going down the stairs when Hula let out a scream of pain and fell down the stairs. She had been shot in the right leg by some sort of liquid that had solidified around her leg and amputated it by squeezing. Shit, that must have been painful. Apparently, Harlo called for help immediately, because Hula disappeared. She reappeared within a few seconds standing at the the bottom of the stairs and firing her plasma jet all around her.