“But if the Moles don’t like to stop, why was Chernick willing to send one over here for you?” Corrie had turned from the window and was looking at Rob with big, pale eyes.
“I suppose it’s all right to tell you.” Rob felt a sudden desire to impress her. “But I’d rather you didn’t talk about it to other people. Chernick feels he owes me. He uses one of my patented ideas in the Coal Moles, and he says he could never have got it from anyone else. It makes the whole idea of the Moles possible.”
He was surprised by her reaction. Corrie’s face lit with a quick flash of total comprehension.
“The Spider,” she said. “The thing that you developed for the extrusion process. I know that Regulo has been trying to decide how it works for years, and he’s failed. It’s partly biological and partly machine, isn’t it? In the same way that the Coal Moles are mainly animal but part electronic. The Spider is a machine with a biological component.”
Rob had seen that lightning flash of understanding illumine her face, and been shocked by it. He drew in a deep breath, rubbed at his dark beard and looked with new respect at those alert, pale-blue eyes.
“I’ll bet people do that all the time with you,” he said wryly. “You look about eighteen, and you stare at them with those big eyes and ask innocent questions. They want to show off a bit, the way I did a moment ago, and before they know what’s happening they’ve spilled something important. Well, the damage is done. I won’t deny it, even though it has been a well-kept secret. The Spider has a key bio component where logically there would be a computer. I suspect that Regulo’s people have been going mad trying to come up with a microprocessor with a high enough level of parallel processing — that was my bottleneck for about six months. Who are you going to tell?”
Corrie looked demure — another part of her trap, Rob thought, at the same time as he admired it.
“I wouldn’t dream of spreading it about,” she said. “Though if you don’t mind too much I’d like to tell Regulo. He’s been stewing on that gadget for years, and he’s too proud to ask when he thinks he ought to be able to deduce something for himself.”
“That’s all right.” Rob smiled. “He’ll curse himself, but he shouldn’t. All the techniques to make the Spider and the Moles were developed in the past five years. I doubt if Regulo has caught up with them yet, because a lot of them aren’t anywhere in the literature. Feel free to tell him, if you want to.”
“He won’t talk,” Corrie said quickly. “I know that. It won’t make any difference to your relationship with Regulo Enterprises, either — he told me that he wants the man who invented the Spider a lot more than he wants the use of the Spider itself. Regulo buys brains, not gadgets. You’ve seen the sign on his desk? IDEAS-THINGS-PEOPLE. He says that he’s interested in the world in that order. But he also says that only people have ideas, so I suppose his sign could just as well say PEOPLE-IDEAS-THINGS.”
“Did you ever tell him that?”
“Once. He said that people are only interesting because of the ideas they have.”
As they talked the elevator had been descending steadily. Corrie’s words were interrupted by a gentle bump.
They had reached Way Down. The natural cavern, twelve miles beneath the Yucatan Peninsula, should not have existed. Every geophysicist had agreed on that point. The pressure of surrounding rocks should have closed it instantly, even if some violent movement within the earth had led to its temporary creation. Gabry-Poussin had the same reaction, when his seismic measurements first pointed to the existence of a great chamber, half a mile across and three hundred feet high, in the basement rock of Central America. Then he had looked again at the data.
In the famous debate before the Geological Society of Punta Arenas, Kasrov had conclusively proved that the chamber was a theoretical impossibility. At the end of Kasrov’s presentation, Gabry-Poussin had confined his reply to a single sentence: “Your logic is impeccable, Professor, and proves that geophysics needs a new theoretical basis.”
Now there were new theories in plenty, about the local gravity anomalies, the peculiar plate tectonics, the inexplicable temperature inversion from depths of five to fourteen miles, the odd depth to basement of the whole region — and they added to an incomplete explanation that reinforced Gabry-Poussin’s original comment.
While the theorists pondered, the practical side of the world took over. The first shaft to Way Down had been drilled in search of scientific data. The second one, ten times as wide, aimed at commercial exploitation. It had an exotic setting, a limited capacity, a good deal of mystery, and always a hint of danger. What more could be asked for a luxury club and secret hideaway for the world’s wealthiest?
The elevator shaft that Rob and Corrie had used was a little way from the main entrance, at the very end of the vaulted chamber. They had to walk a hundred meters across the smooth basalt floor before reaching the official entry point. Above them hung the great central chandeliers, drawing their power from generators on the surface far above. Just before they reached the main reception point, Rob paused and turned again to Corrie.
“I don’t want to make the same mistake twice about what you know,” he said. “You must have a lot more scientific training than you admit to, just to see that connection so fast between the Spider and the Coal Moles. What is your real specialty?”
Corrie grinned at him. “Aw, I’m just a little old go-fer for Regulo, you know that. But I am a licensed engineer — and my graduation project was in large space structures. And I do have engineering on both sides of the family, if you believe in heredity as a major influence. One thing about me, though—”
She stopped in mid-sentence, and the smile on her lips died. Her mouth twisted as she looked past Rob, on into the main reception area of Way Down. “I’m sorry, Rob,” she said. “This is the thing that I was afraid of when you first suggested Way Down, but I didn’t expect it to happen the moment we arrived. Look behind you. There’s the reason I had my doubts about coming here. And now it’s too late to turn back.”
CHAPTER 5: “The Light of Other Days”
In front of them the cavern that was Way Down broadened to its main chamber, five hundred meters across. Smaller side chambers led off from each side, connected to the main area by a series of natural arches and tunnels. The floor was all of smooth basalt, leading in a gentle curve to the low point of Way Down, just beyond the middle of the vast dome. Rob and Corrie stood at the head of the escalator leading to the central dispersal point, from which patrons and guests could make their choices of the casinos, sensory chambers, private booths, and pleasure rooms, or any one of the six renowned restaurants that made Way Down famous throughout the System.
Corrie was standing motionless, her eyes fixed on a small group of people standing by a reception center twenty meters ahead of them. Rob followed her gaze as they moved on down the escalator. There were four people in the party in front of them, two men and two women.
As Rob and Corrie paused at the bottom of the escalator, one man in the group turned and glanced at them casually. Then he looked back again, quickly, and spoke softly to the others. They all turned to face the escalator.
There was a long and awkward pause, during which Rob had time to appraise the members of the other group. The two men were tall and slim, impeccably dressed in colorful and formal dinner wear. Rob formed the instant, negative impression that he was seeing a couple of social escorts, at the same time as he belatedly realized that his own clothes were suited to an environment less socially pretentious than Way Down. He looked at Corrie, recognizing for the first time the fine cut and elegant design of her leisure suit — she had understood the setting far better than he.