Joe-Jim desisted and followed him. Hugh let one blade go for luck at a figure running away to the left. The target was poor, and he had no time to see if he had drawn blood. They scrambled along the passage, Bobo bringing up the rear, as if reluctant to leave the fun, and came to a point where a side passage crossed the main one.
Alan led them to the right again. “Stairs ahead,” he shouted.
They did not reach them. An airtight door, rarely used, clanged in their faces ten yards short of the stairs. Joe-Jim’s bravoes checked their flight and they looked doubtfully at their master. Bobo broke his thickened nails trying to get a purchase on the door.
The sounds of pursuit were clear behind them.
“Boxed in,” said Joe softly. “I hope you like it, Jim.”
Hugh saw a head appear around the corner of the passage they had quitted. He threw overhand but the distance was too great; the knife clanged harmlessly against steel. The head disappeared. Long Arm kept his eye on the spot, his sling loaded and ready.
Hugh grabbed Bobo’s shoulder. “Listen! Do you see that light?”
The dwarf blinked stupidly. Hugh pointed to the intersection of the glowtubes where they crossed in the overhead directly above the junction of the passages. “That light. Can you hit them where they cross?”
Bobo measured the distance with his eye. It would be a hard shot under any conditions at that range. Here, constricted as he was by the low passageway, it called for a fast, flat trajectory, and allowance for higher weight than he was used to.
He did not answer. Hugh felt the wind of his swing but did not see the shot. There was a tinkling crash; the passage became dark.
“Now!” yelled Hugh, and led them away at a run. As they neared the intersection he shouted, “Hold your breaths! Mind the gas!” The radioactive vapor poured lazily out from the broken tube above and filled the crossing with a greenish mist.
Hugh ran to the right, thankful for his knowledge as an engineer of the lighting circuits. He had picked the right direction; the passage ahead was black, being serviced from beyond the break. He could hear footsteps around him; whether they were friend or enemy he did not know.
They burst into light. No one was in sight but a scared and harmless peasant who scurried away at an unlikely pace. They took a quick muster. All were present, but Bobo was making heavy going of it.
Joe looked at him. “He sniffed the gas, I think. Pound his back.”
Pig did so with a will. Bobo belched deeply, was suddenly sick, then grinned.
“He’ll do,” decided Joe.
The slight delay had enabled one at least to catch up with them. He came plunging out of the dark, unaware of, or careless of the strength against him. Alan knocked Pig’s arm down, as he raised it to throw.
“Let me at ’im!” he demanded. “He’s mine!”
It was Tyler.
“Man-fight?” Alan challenged, thumb on his blade.
Tyler’s eyes darted from adversary to adversary and accepted the invitation to individual duel by lunging at Alan. The quarters were too cramped for throwing; they closed, each achieving his grab in parry, fist to wrist.
Alan was stockier, probably stronger; Tyler was slippery. He attempted to give Alan a knee to the crotch. Alan evaded it, stamped on Tyler’s planted foot. They went down. There was a crunching crack.
A moment later, Alan was wiping his knife against his thigh. “Let’s get goin’,” he complained. “I’m scared.”
They reached a stairway, and raced up it, Long Arm and Pig ahead to fan out on each level and cover their flanks, and the third of the three choppers—Hugh heard him called Squatty—covering the rear. The others bunched in between.
Hugh thought they had won free, when he heard shouts and the clatter of a thrown knife just above him. He reached the level above in time to be cut not deeply but jaggedly by a ricocheted blade.
Three men were down. Long Arm had a blade sticking in the fleshy part of his upper arm, but it did not seem to bother him. His slingshot was still spinning. Pig was scrambling after a thrown knife, his own armament exhausted. But there were signs of his work; one man was down on one knee some twenty feet away. He was bleeding from a knife wound in the thigh.
As the figure steadied himself with one hand against the bulkhead and reached toward an empty belt with the other, Hugh recognized him.
Bill Ertz.
He had led a party up another way and flanked them, to his own ruin. Bobo crowded behind Hugh and got his mighty arm free for the cast. Hugh caught at it. “Easy, Bobo,” he directed. “In the stomach, and easy.”
The dwarf looked puzzled, but did as he was told. Ertz folded over at the middle and slid to the deck.
“Well placed,” said Jim.
“Bring him along, Bobo,” directed Hugh, “and stay in the middle.” He ran his eye over their party, now huddled at the top of that flight of stairs. “All right, gang—up we go again! Watch it.”
Long Arm and Pig swarmed up the next flight, the others disposing themselves as usual. Joe looked annoyed. In some fashion—a fashion by no means clear at the moment—he had been eased out as leader of this gang—his gang—and Hugh was giving orders. He reflected that there was no time now to make a fuss. It might get them all killed.
Jim did not appear to mind. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself.
They put ten more levels behind them with no organized opposition. Hugh directed them not to kill peasants unnecessarily. The three bravoes obeyed; Bobo was too loaded down with Ertz to constitute a problem in discipline. Hugh saw to it that they put thirty-odd more decks below them and were well into no man’s land before he let vigilance relax at all. Then he called a halt and they examined wounds.
The only deep ones were to Long Arm’s arm and Bobo’s face. Joe-Jim examined them and applied presses with which he had outfitted himself before starting. Hugh refused treatment for his flesh wound. “It’s stopped bleeding,” he insisted, “and I’ve got a lot to do.”
“You’ve got nothing to do but to get up home,” said Joe, “and that will be an end to this foolishness.”
“Not quite,” denied Hugh. “You may be going home, but Alan and I and Bobo are going to no-weight—to the Captain’s veranda.”
“Nonsense,” said Joe. “What for?”
“Come along if you like, and see. All right, gang. Let’s go.”
