they sent a snooper in first; it picked up faint radiation leakage from inactive power units of overhead lights, and nothing else. the tunnel stretched ahead of it, empty, and dark beyond its infrared vision. after it had gone a mile without triggering anything, the jeep followed, anse dawes[pg 79] piloting and conn at the snooper controls watching what it transmitted back. the two lorries followed, loaded with men and equipment, and another jeep brought up the rear. they had cut screen-and-radio communication with the outside; they weren't even using inter-vehicle communication.

at length, the snooper emerged into a big cavern, swinging slowly to scan it. the walls and ceiling were rough and irregular; it was natural instead of excavated. only the floor had been leveled smooth. there were a lot of things in it, machinery and vehicles, all battered and in poor condition, dusty and cobwebbed: the spaceport junkheap. a passage, still large enough for one of the gunboats, led deeper into the mountain toward the crater. they sent the snooper in and, after a while, followed.

they came to other rectangular, excavated caverns. on the plans, they were marked as storerooms. cases and crates, indeterminate shrouded objects; some had never been disturbed, but here and there they found evidence of recent investigation.

beyond was another passage, almost as wide as the mall in litchfield; even the lester dawes could have negotiated it. according to the plans, it ran straight out to the ship docks and the open crater beyond. anse turned the jeep into a side passage, and conn recalled the snooper and sent it ahead. on the plan, it led to another natural cavern, half its width shown as level with the entrance. the other half was a pit, marked as sixty feet deep; above this and just under the ceiling, several passages branched out in different directions.

the snooper reported visible light ahead; fluoroelectric light from one of the upper passages, and firelight from the pit. the air-analyzer reported woodsmoke and a faint odor of burning oil. he sent the snooper ahead, tilting it to look down into the pit.

a small fire was burning in the center; around it, in a circle, some hundred and fifty people, including a few women and children, sat, squatted or reclined. a low hum of voices came out of the soundbox.

"who the blazes are they?" anse whispered. "i can't see any way they could have gotten down there."[pg 80]

they were in rags, and they weren't armed; there wasn't so much as a knife or a pistol among them. conn motioned the lorries and the other jeep forward.

"prisoners," he said. "i think they were hauled down here on a scow, shoved off, and left when the fighting started. cover me," he told the men in the lorries. "i'm going down and talk to them."

somebody below must have heard something. as anse took the jeep over and started floating it down, the circle around the fire began moving, the women and children being pushed to the rear and the men gathering up clubs and other chance weapons. by the time the jeep grounded, the men in the pit were standing defensively in front of the women and children.

they were all dirty and ragged; the men were unshaven. there was a tall man with a grizzled beard, in greasy coveralls; another man with a black beard and an old space navy uniform, his head bandaged with a dirty and blood-caked rag; another in the same uniform, wearing a cap on which the terran federation insignia had been replaced by the emblem of transcontinent & overseas shiplines and the words chief engineer. and beside the tall man with the gray beard, was a girl in baggy trousers and a torn smock. like the others, she was dirty, but in spite of the rags and filth, conn saw that she was beautiful. black hair, dark eyes, an impudently tilted nose.

they all looked at him in hostility that gradually changed to perplexity and then hope.

"who are you?" the tall man with the gray beard asked. "you're none of this gang here."

"litchfield exploration & salvage; i'm conn maxwell."

that meant nothing; none of them had been near a news-screen lately.

"what's going on topside?" the man with the bandaged head and the four stripes on his sleeve asked. "there was firing, artillery and nuclears, and they herded us down here. have you cleaned the bloody murderers out?"

"we're working on it," conn said. "i take it they aren't friends of yours?"[pg 81]

foolish question of the year; they all made that evident.

"they took my ship; they murdered my first officer and half my crew and passengers...."

"they burned our home and killed our servants," the girl said. "they kidnapped my father and me...."

"they've been keeping us here as slaves."

"it's the blackie perales gang," the tall man with the gray beard said. "they've been making us work for them, converting a blasted tub of a contragravity ship into a spacecraft. i beg your pardon, captain nichols; she was a fine ship—for her intended purpose."

"you're captain nichols?" anse dawes exclaimed. "of the harriet barne?"

"that's right. the harriet barne's here; they've been making us work on her, to convert her to an interplanetary craft, of all idiotic things."

"my name's yves jacquemont," the man with the gray beard said. "i'm a retired hyperspace maintenance engineer; i had a little business at waterville, buying, selling and rebuilding agricultural machinery. this gang found out about me; they raided and burned our village and carried me and my daughter, sylvie, away. we've been working for them for the last four months, tearing captain nichols' ship down and armoring her with collapsium."

"how many pirates are there here?"

that started an argument. nobody was quite sure; two hundred and fifty seemed to be the highest estimate, which conn decided to play safe by accepting.

"you get us out of here," yves jacquemont was saying. "all we want is a chance at them."

"how about arms? you can't do much with clubs and fists."

"don't worry about that; we know where to get arms. the treasure house, where they store their loot. there's plenty of arms and ammunition, and anything else you can think of. they've used us to help stow the stuff; we know where it is."

"anse, you remember those scows we saw, in the big room before we came to the broad passage? take four men in the jeep; have them lift two of them and bring them here. then,[pg 82] you get out to the end of the tunnel and call the lester dawes. tell them what's happened, tell them they can get gunboats all the way in, and wait to guide them when they arrive."

when anse turned and climbed into the jeep, he asked yves jacquemont: "why does this perales want an interplanetary ship?"

"he's crazy!" jacquemont swore. "paranoid; megalomaniac. he talks of organizing all the pirates and outlaws on the planet into one band and making himself king. he's heard that there are space navy superweapons on koshchei—i suppose there are, at that—and he wants to get a lot of planetbusters and hellburners and annihilators." he lowered his voice. "captain nichols and i were going to fix up something that'd blow the harriet barne up as soon as he got her out of atmosphere."

he talked for a while to jacquemont and his daughter sylvie, and to nichols and the chief engineer, whose name was vibart. there was evidently nothing else at the spaceport of which a spaceship could be built, but there were foundries and rolling-mills and a collapsed-matter producer. the harriet barne was gutted, half torn down, and half armored with new collapsium-plated sheet steel. it might be possible to continue the work on her and take her to space.

then the two scows floated over the top of the pit and began letting down. they got the prisoners into them, the combat-effective men in one and the women and children in the other. at the top, he took over the remaining jeep, getting jacquemont, his daughter, and the two contragravityship officers in with him.

"up to the top," jacquemont said. "take the middle passage, and turn right at the next intersection."

as they approached the section where the pirates stored their loot, the sound of guns and explosions grew louder, and they began picking up radio and screen signals, all of which were scrambled and incomprehensible. the pirates, in different positions, talking among themselves. with all that, it ought to be safe to use their own communication equipment; nobody would notice it.[pg 83]

the treasure room looked like a giant pack rat's nest. cases and crates of merchandise, bales, boxes, barrels. machinery. household and industrial robots. the prisoners piled out of the two scows and began rummaging. somebody found a case of cigarettes and smashed it open; in a moment, cartons were being tossed around and opened, and everybody was smoking. the pirates evidently hadn't issued any tobacco rations to their prisoners.

and they found arms and ammunition, began ripping open cases, handing out rifles, pistols, submachine guns. the prisoners grabbed them even more hungrily than the cigarettes. sylvie jacquemont took charge of the ammunition; she had three men opening boxes for her, while she passed out boxes of cartridges and made sure that everybody had ammunition to fit their weapons. a ragged man who might have been a farm-tramp or a rich planter before his capture had gotten a bale of cloth open and was tossing rags around while the chief engineer inspected weapons and showed people how to clean out the cosmoline and fill their spare magazines.

conn collected a few of his own party.

"let's look these robots over," he said. "find about half a dozen we can load with blasting explosive and send ahead of us on contragravity."

they found several—an electric-light servicer, a couple of wall-and-window washers, a serving-robot that looked as if it had come from a restaurant, and an all-purpose robo-janitor. in the passage outside, they began loading the lorries with bricks of ionite and packages of cataclysmite, packing all the scrap-iron and other junk around the explosives that they could. as soon as they had weapons, the prisoners came swarming out, making more noise than was necessary and a good deal more than was safe. sylvie jacquemont, with a submachine gun slung from one shoulder and a canvas bag of spare magazines from the other, came over to see what he was doing.

"well, look what you're doing to him!" she mock-reproached. "that's a dirty trick to play on a little robot!"

he grinned at her. "you and my mother would get along. she always treats robots like people."[pg 84]

"well, they are, sort of. they aren't alive—at least, i don't think they are—but they do what you tell them, and they learn tricks, and they have personalities."

that was true. he didn't think robots were alive, either, though biophysics professors tended to become glibly evasive when pinned down to defining life. robots could learn, if you used the term loosely enough. and any robot with more than five hundred hours service picked up a definite and often exasperating personality.

"i've been working with them, and tearing them down and fixing them, ever since i was in pigtails," she added.

the half-dozen natural leaders among the prisoners—jacquemont and his daughter, the two harriet barne officers, and a couple of others—bent over the photoprinted plans conn had, located their position, and told him as much as they could about what lay ahead. sylvie jacquemont could handle robots; she would ride in the front seat of the jeep while he piloted. vibart, the chief engineer, and yves jacquemont would ride behind. nichols would ride in the scow with the fighting men. one lorry of his own party would follow the jeep; the other would bring up the rear.

he snapped on the screen and punched the ship combination. stefan jorisson appeared in it.

"hi, conn! you all right?" he raised his voice. "conn's on-screen!"

his father appeared at jorisson's shoulder and, a moment later, klem zareff.

"well, we're in, all right," he said. "we just picked up an army, too." he swung the jeep to get the crowd in the pickup, explaining who they were. "did you hear from anse?"

"yes, he just screened in," rodney maxwell said. "he said a gunboat can get in."

"that's right; clear into the crater."

"well, we're going to put three of them inside," zareff told him. "werewolf, zombi, and dero. and a troop carrier with fifty men; flamethrowers, portable machine guns, bomb-launchers; regular special-weapons section. what can you do where you are?"

"here? nothing. we're going to work around to the other[pg 85] side of the crater, and then find a vertical shaft and go up topside and make as much disturbance as we can."

"that's it!" zareff approved. "pull them off balance; as soon as we get in, we'll go straight to the top. look for us in about an hour; it's going to take time getting to the tunnel-mouth without being spotted from above."

he lifted the jeep and started off; the lorry, and the scows and the other lorry, followed; the snooper and the bomb-robots went ahead like a pack of hunting dogs. they went through great chambers, dark and silent and bulking with dusty machines. jacquemont explained that the prisoners had never gotten into this section; the harriet barne was a mile or so to their right. conn turned left, when the noise of firing from outside became plainer. a foundry. a machine-shop which seemed to have been abandoned in the middle of some rush job that hadn't really been necessary. they came to a place even the snooper couldn't enter, choked to the ceiling with dead vegetation, hydroponic seed-plants that had been left untended to grow wild and die. they emerged into outside light, in vast caves a mile high and open onto the crater, and looked across the floor that had been leveled and vitrified to the other side, three and a half miles away.

he didn't know whether to be more awed by the original eruption that had formed the crater or by the engineering feat of carving these docks and ship-berths, big enough for the hugest hyperspaceship, into it.

at first, he had been afraid of getting into position too soon before the task force from outside could profit by the diversion. then he began to worry about the time it was taking to get halfway around the crater. he could hear artillery thundering continuously above. except at the very beginning of the battle, there had been little gunfire. he wondered if both sides were running out of lift-and-drive missiles, or if the fighting had gotten too close for anybody to risk using nuclear weapons.

he was also worrying about the women and children among the released prisoners.

"why did the pirates bother with them?" he asked sylvie.

"they used the women and some of the old men to do[pg 86] housekeeping chores for them," she said. "mostly, though, they were hostages; if the men didn't work, perales threatened to punish the women and children. i wasn't doing any housework; i'm too good a mechanic. i was helping on the ship."

"well, what'll i do with them when the fighting starts? i can't take them into battle."

"you'll have to; it'll be the safest place for them. you can't leave them anywhere and risk having them recaptured."

"that means we'll have to detach some men to cover them, and that'll cut our striking force down." he whistled at the sound-pickup of his screen and told his father about it. "what do i do with these people, anyhow?"

"you're the officer in command, conn," his father told him. "your decision. how soon can you attack? we're almost through to the crater."

"there's a vertical shaft right above us, and a lot of noise at the top. we'll send up a couple of bomb-robots to clear things at the shaft-head and follow with everything we have."

"noncombatants and all?"

he nodded. "only thing we can do." an old quotation occurred to him. "'if you want to make an omelet, you have to break eggs.'"

he wondered who'd said that in the first place. one of the old pre-atomic conquerors; maybe hitler. no, hitler would have said, "if you want to make sauerkraut, you have to chop cabbage." maybe it was caesar.

"we'd better send gumshoe gus up, first," sylvie suggested.

"you handle him. take a quick look around, and then pull him back. we'll need him later." it was the first time he'd ever caught himself calling a robot "him," instead of "it." he thought for a second, and added: "give your father and mr. vibart the controls for the two window-washers; you handle the snooper."

he gave more instructions: yves jacquemont to turn his bomb-robot right, vibart to turn his left; the two lorries to follow the jeep up the shaft, the scows to follow. then he leaned back and looked at the screens that had been rigged under the top of the jeep. a circle of light appeared in one,[pg 87] growing larger and brighter as the snooper approached the top of the shaft; two more came on as the bomb-robots followed.

"all right; follow me," he said into the inter-vehicle radio, and started the jeep slowly up the shaft.

the snooper popped out of the shaft, onto a gallery that had been cut into the solid rock, fifty feet high and a hundred and fifty across, with a low parapet on the outside and the mile-deep crater beyond. there were a few grounded aircars and lorries in sight, and a medium airboat rested a hundred or so feet on the right of the shaft-opening. fifteen or twenty men were clustered around it, with a lifter loaded with ammunition. they looked like any crowd of farm-tramps. suddenly, one of them saw the snooper, gave a yell, and fired at it with a rifle. sylvie pulled it back into the shaft; her father and the chief engineer sent the two bomb-robots up onto the gallery. the right-hand robot sped at the airboat; the last thing conn saw in its screen was a face, bearded and villainous and contorted with fright, looking out the pilot's window of the airboat. then it went dead, and there was a roar from above. on the other side, several men were firing straight at the pickup of the other robot; it went dead, too, and there was a second explosion.

in the communication screen, somebody was yelling, "give them another one for milt hennant!" and his father was urging him to get in fast, before they recovered.

in peace or war, screen communication was a wonderful thing. the only trouble was that it let in too many kibitzers.

the gallery, when the jeep emerged onto it, was empty except for casualties, a few still alive. the side of the airboat was caved in; the lifter-load of ammunition had gone up with the bomb. he moved the jeep to the right of the shaft and waited for the vehicles behind him, suffering a brief indecision.

never divide your force in the presence of the enemy.

there had been generals who had done that and gotten away with it, but they'd had names like foxx travis and robert e. lee and napoleon—napoleon; that was who'd[pg 88] made that crack about omelets! they'd known what they were doing. he was playing this battle by ear.

there was a lot of shouting ahead to the right. that meant live pirates, a deplorable situation which ought to be corrected at once. the communication screen was noisy, now; his father had gotten to the top gallery with the three gun cutters, and was meeting resistance. he formed his column, his jeep and one of the lorries in front, the scows next, and the second lorry behind, and started around the gallery counterclockwise, the snoopers and the three remaining bomb-robots ahead. they began running into resistance almost at once.

bullets spatted on the armor glass in front of him, spalling it and blotching it with metal until he found that he could steer better by the show-back of his view-pickup. he used that until the pickup was shot out. then his father began wanting to know, from the communication screen, what was going on and where he was. a bomb or something went off directly under the jeep, bouncing it almost to the ceiling; he found that it was impossible to lift it again after it settled to the floor of the gallery, and they all piled out to fight on foot. sommers and his gang from the number one lorry were also afoot; their vehicle had been disabled. he saw them lifting wounded into one of the scows.

they blew up the light-service robot to clear a nest of pirates who had taken cover ahead of them. they sent the robo-janitor up a side passage and exploded it in a missile-launching position on the outside of the mountain; that produced a tremendous explosion. they began running out of cartridges, and had to stop and glean more from enemy casualties. they expended their last bomb-robot, the restaurant server, to break up another pirate resistance point.

at length he found himself, with sylvie and her father and one of the home guardsmen from sommers' lorry, lying behind an aircar somebody had knocked out with a bazooka, with two dead pirates for company and a dozen distressingly live ones ahead behind an improvised barricade. behind, there was frantic firing; the rear-guard seemed to have run into trouble, probably from some gang that had[pg 89] come down from the upper level. he wondered what his father was doing with the gunboats; since abandoning the jeep, he had lost his only means of contact.

suddenly, the men in front jumped up from their barricade and came running toward him. been reinforced, now they're counterattacking. his rifle was empty; he drew his pistol and shot one of them, and then he saw that they were throwing up their hands and yelling for quarter. this was something new.

he looked around quickly, to make sure none of the liberated prisoners except jacquemont and his daughter were around, and then called to a couple of his own men to come up and help him. while they were relieving the pirates of their pistol belts and cartridge bandoliers, more came up, their hands over their heads, herded by a combat car from which tom brangwyn covered them with a pair of 12-mm machine guns. tom hadn't put in an appearance before he had taken his commando force into the tunnel; he hadn't even known the chief of company police was on barathrum.

"well, nice seeing you," he greeted. "how did you get in?"

"over the top," brangwyn told him. "everything's caved in on the other side. we have a quarter of the top gallery, and half of this one. your father's cleaning up above. klem's got some men working along the outside."

sylvie was tugging at his arm. "hey, look! look at that!" she was clamoring. "who's she belong to?"

he looked; the lester dawes was coming over the edge of the crater.

"she's ours," he said. "it's all over but the mopping up. and counting the egg breakage."