Profiteer

Then a lance of pure energy sliced open the darkness, stabbing from the tripod-mounted laser and into the ground a few centimeters short of the massive outer door. Dom began to feel heat—from the laser and its target. The smell of molten metal seared Dom’s nose to the point where he turned off that sense.

 

It didn’t keep his nose from itching.

 

One second, two seconds, three seconds.

 

By now the metal floor of the recess had sprouted a bubbling black flower around the beam of light. Beyond the black, the metal was glowing red in a circle about ten centimeters in diameter.

 

Levy began counting down. “Five ... Four ... Three ... Two ...Got it!”

 

Dom heard a long whistling hiss, and the hole in the floor vomited a cloud of noxious-looking steam. The hissing decreased in volume, and the door started sinking. The descent was inexorable. It had moved three centimeters, and the hissing changed in character as the steam stopped and a millimeter wide stream of hydraulic fluid shot up and hit the ceiling.

 

“Damn it,” Zanzibar said as she stepped out of the way. “It’s pissing on me.”

 

Dom watched the door descend. Slow, too slow.

 

It seemed to take hours for the door to settle, but it was only 7:33 when the hydraulic fluid stopped leaking and the top edge of the outer door settled a half-meter from being flush with the floor.

 

Levy had three or four emergency sealant canisters— designed for spacecraft—that he had modified for this job. Instead of the bell- or fan-shaped nozzle that came with them, he had installed a hair-fine probe. Levy inserted the probe into the laser hole. He hit the button on the canister, and the can responded with an insistent hissing noise. Soon the hole overflowed with white polyceram sealant.

 

Levy left the can in place. The hissing continued for a few seconds, then stopped.

 

“So far, so good,” Dom said.

 

Zanzibar grunted and kept looking down the corridor.

 

Levy loaded all the equipment onto the contragrav sled and manhandled it over the frozen door and into the room beyond. Dom followed.

 

The room was small, and became smaller as Levy unpacked equipment from the sled. The walls and the ceiling sloped inward toward the safe door itself. The next door was a black, featureless square about three meters on a side. Green, amber, and red lights were mounted above it. The red light was flashing; there was an interlock in the hydraulic system that was supposed to prevent both doors from opening at the same time.

 

Levy unloaded three lasers and tripods. One laser was much larger than the others. The extra size was its cooling system. He also unloaded probes, hoses, and more sealant canisters.

 

“Now,” Levy said, “we come to the tricky part. Get number three pointed at the northwest corner of the door.”

 

Levy went through much the same procedure he had gone through on the outer door. Only this time he was aiming two lasers simultaneously. The number one laser, the big one, was pointed at the door itself.

 

After a few minutes of aiming, Levy gave warning, donned the goggles again, and the two lasers fired. It began as before, brilliant beams slicing into the floor at a steep angle, but after a few seconds the beams dimmed, became intermittent. One would fire briefly, Levy would take off his goggles, look at his holo, don the goggles, and fire again.

 

It took nearly five minutes for Levy to be satisfied with the holes he had made. There was no hiss of hydraulic fluid, only a pair of millimeter-diameter holes set in blackened concrete craters.

 

“Half a millimeter to go, I think it’s clean to the hoses themselves.”

 

Levy handed Dom a very fine hose. The tip was metal and Dom could see an optical fiber peeking out the end.

 

Levy went to one hole, and Dom went to the other. The probe went smoothly down the hole. Dom fed it until it met resistance about three meters down. On the black tube there was a yellow mark that was now flush with the crater in the ground. That meant it was the end of the hole, not hung up on anything.

 

Levy tossed him one of the sealant canisters. “Don’t overdo it. We just want to keep a vacuum. If the pump gets clogged, we’re in trouble.”

 

Dom knew. They had enough spare equipment to try one more pilot hole. But that probably wouldn’t work if the hydraulic system was partially and unevenly drained. The holes were at very particular points.

 

Dom inserted the needle-probe into the hole next to the tube and slowly withdrew it as he discharged the sealant. The expanding polyceram goo shoved the needle-probe out, filling the crater. In seconds there was a small rock-hard white dome holding the hose in place against the concrete.

 

Levy examined his own handiwork and then went to examine Dom’s. “Good.”

 

Levy went to the pump. “Okay, Mr. Magnus. This is it.”

 

That strange nervous exhilaration was back. He walked around so he could watch Levy at the pump. All the many readouts meant nothing to Dom—except maybe temperature and pressure.

 

Levy flipped a cover off of a red button and pressed it.