Chapter 4

The tank was certainly not sprung for maximum comfort. We bounced around all night, but it was not so bad that we could not have fun nor sleep. We woke up the next morning for a quickie and a leisurely breakfast. The scenery had not changed from the time we arrived on this God-forsaken planet. It was still sand with occasional patches of a wiry grass that I wondered if it ever turned green. The only geographical point of note was the occasional sand hill or ridge that we bumped over.

My AI had been keeping track of the distance traveled and our speed and I knew that we had been running for 9½ hours at an average of 43 MPH. That meant that we had traveled 404 miles, though not all of it in a straight line. We were still 350 miles closer than we would have been if we had tried to fly this distance, and we had been a hell of a lot safer doing it by tank. There was no way to know if we had been shot at overnight, but it was very unlikely. I'm sure that the pillboxes were not programmed to shoot at the tank, but I don't know for certain.

This would have been a very dull trip were it not for the company and the reading material that Anfon had found. She had found a newspaper and a collection of what had to be the local equivalent of Tijuana Bibles (the 8-page sex comic books of the middle 20^th century on Earth). That's what she had been giggling at while I had been programming the computer.

When I looked at the comics, I had to giggle, too. We determined that the comics were reasonably accurate drawings of the locals by comparing them to photos in the newspaper. The locals were somewhat humanoid and engaged in coitus in the positions common for humanoids. Other than a minor redrawing of the people in the comics, they could have been sold on Earth without much comment.

We got a considerable amount of information from the newspaper. There was a feature on the war that was going on. It sounded a lot like Earth's World War 2, except that it was fought with energy weapons instead of explosives. A big to-do was made of the recent discovery of the way to dampen the effect of energy weapons.

In the process of the war, so many people were being killed that the remaining population simply closed up shop on the surface and moved underground. We had no idea how long ago this had happened, but the newspaper did have what looked like an astrological chart, so some sharp astronomers might be able to put together what they had and estimate a date from that. In any case, for one reason or another, it looked like the natives had never returned to the surface.

Anfon and I were sitting on the floor since there was only one chair and it was not all that comfortable. We were bringing each other up to date on our lives prior to being recruited into the Galactic Rangers. Suddenly, the tank swerved to the right and we went tumbling. I jumped to the viewscreens to see what was the reason for this sudden change in direction, and I was surprised to see a deep gorge blocking our path. The tank had turned to run parallel to the gorge, because there was no way that it would be able to cross anywhere within sight. I stopped the tank while we considered our options.

The data that the AIs had did not show the gorge in enough detail to reach any conclusion. That left us with three alternatives. One, we could simply follow the gorge the way the tank had started out in hope of eventually finding a way to cross. Two, we could abandon the tank and go back to our flying belts to continue our trip. Three, we could use our flying belts to survey the gorge in the hope of finding a way for the tank to cross.

We discussed our options and decided on option number two. The first and third options might give us a solution, but the chances were that we would waste a lot of time and wind up using option number two anyway. We decided to leave a remotely triggered marker with the tank so that it could be found later when the follow-up expedition returned. Everything was gathered up and we took off in the direction of our quarry.

I was hoping that we could find another tank to commandeer, but I did not want to hold my breath. It was my guess that not many of the behemoths survived the war. It was almost dark by the time we came to another large town, I didn't think that anyone could have called it a city. We didn't fool around this time, but looked immediately for a place to spend the night.

Now that we could read the signs, we had no trouble finding a hotel. We moved in and found a suitable room. There was little difference between this room and the bedroom we had last occupied. We were both so tired that we just ate a quick supper and fell into bed. No sex this night, though we did cuddle for a time before we fell asleep.

We woke up at daybreak the next morning and had a quickie before breakfast. That early morning quick fuck was getting to be a most welcome habit for both of us. I was afraid to bring up the subject to Anfon on such short acquaintance, but I was beginning to consider us asking for a two-person apartment when we got back to base.

We ate a quick breakfast and rushed out to resume our trip. We had hardly gone a mile when we spied an entrance to a set of stairs going down. The stairs were protected from the sand by an enclosure made of the same plastic that had been used for windows. It was badly scratched, but otherwise in very good condition.

We were now able to read the sign which said that this was an emergency entrance to the underground bunkers reserved for use by civilians. We just had to investigate! Our curiosity would have killed us within two hours if we had not at least looked down those stairs. It took some digging, but we got one door clear enough for us to get inside. The lights were on and they still worked. These people were engineering wonders!

We cheated and floated down the stairs by means of the flying belts. The stairs were just not made for humanoids our size, and I was willing to bet that one of us would have fallen within the first hundred feet. It made no difference, and we made much better time than we would have by walking.

We must have dropped at least a mile before we came to an open space with a flat floor. I had lost track of the number of flights in the stairs, but I'll bet they were tiring for the locals, and not many people made the trip back and forth by walking. If I really wanted the number of flights, all I had to do was to dig into my AI memory. Everything I saw through my eyes was recorded by my AI for later reference, and I had laughed on several occasions when I thought of the alien technicians being bored to death as they waded through my sexual adventures with Anfon.

This floor was some sort of distribution level with passageways leading off in all directions. My first guess was that the passages led to apartments and barracks, so it did not make any real difference which one we investigated. Anfon agreed, so we blindly selected one at random and headed through its door. Through the door, we saw a very long hallway with doors on each side and what looked like parallel conveyor belts running down the middle of the hall. I assumed that they served as movable sidewalks to cut down on the amount of walking required if you lived at the far end of the hall. They were not moving at the moment, maybe they started moving if one stepped on one. I tried it, and I was right. Damn, those people built things to last!

The moving sidewalk stopped as soon as I stepped off, and I was even more impressed. We saved ourselves a lot of work by going to the second door on the right and knocking. Hell, it was the polite thing to do in case there was a living person inside the apartment.

As expected, we got no response, so we tried to open the door. Apparently it was locked, so now what? Anfon fumbled in her pouch for a few seconds and drew out a device that looked like a key blank. She pushed it into the lock and rocked it back and forth for a few moments. Lo and behold, the door unlocked and Anfon was able to open the door. I thought that discretion demanded that I not ask where she had come up with such a glorious lock pic.