Under the Eye of God Read Online Free PDF Page A

anticipation.”
    â€œLet’s just find the door. Then we’ll call down the floaters and use the heavy artillery.” Sawyer pointed forward. He didn’t wait for Finn’s agreement, he just headed down toward the darkness at the end of the cleft.
    â€œSure you don’t have a bad feeling about this yet . . . ?” Finn called after him one more time. Sawyer didn’t respond. Finn shrugged and followed. “Okay. Just thought I’d ask.”

The Tunnel
    At the bottom of the cleft, the ruins and the rubble became indistinguishable from one another. Clumps of dirty black brush still clung to the rocks here, the remainder of some hopeless attempt to reforest the area. Apparently, it had failed; the scrub looked dead.
    Here, at last, the wide descending avenue faded out into a pattern of broken stones, diving abruptly downward and disappearing into shadowy gloom. As the mining colony had scratched its way north, it had tried unsuccessfully to cover its past behind it. Here, the last steep tumble of slag and rocks, the endless stones and gravel and dirt, fell away into an empty dark crevasse. Above, the walls of the notch loomed ominously.
    â€œShit,” said Finn.
    â€œYou said a mouthful.” Abruptly, Sawyer pointed. “She came this way, all right.” Murdock’s glowing footsteps led down into the darkness and disappeared.
    They followed cautiously. What remained of the roadway continued steeply into the earth, slanting away into an impenetrable black murk. The huge open mouth of a deep mining tunnel lay gaping below them. Sawyer stepped down further, unclipping a hand-torch from his belt. He adjusted the beam to a stark white cone, and aimed it deep into the tunnel. Nothing. No echo, no reflection. The light simply disappeared. The darkness within gloomed total and absolute.
    â€œYou want to go back for the tank?” Finn asked.
    â€œSounds like a good idea,” agreed Sawyer; he moved forward down into the tunnel.
    â€œUh, Soy—?”
    Sawyer angled his beam up and around. The tunnel had a high bare ceiling, carved cleanly from the dark brooding rock. The giant mole that had dug this tunnel had defined its passage with tight sawtoothed chisel-bites; then it had flash-glazed and exposed surface, both for strength and efficiency. The result looked both sculpted and barren. The nakedness of the walls reflected that of the ceiling and the floor. Sawyer advanced slowly. Against his better judgment, Finn followed. He unclipped his own hand-torch and switched it on.
    Deeper and deeper, they descended in claustrophobic silence. The steepness and the unevenness of the floor made their footing uneasy. The gloom around them swallowed up even the sounds of their steps. Neither spoke. The sense of pressure in the tunnel grew unbearable. Finn glanced worriedly toward his brother, but Sawyer looked resolute. Behind them, already far above them, the pale glow of night gently faded out and vanished; the mouth of the tunnel disappeared.
    â€œSoy—?” Finn stopped his brother.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNotice anything?”
    â€œYou mean those scratches on the floor and the walls?”
    â€œUh-huh. Do they remind you of anything?”
    â€œYou gonna remind me about the tunnel worms again?”
    â€œDon’t I always?”
    Sawyer snorted and shook his head. “Uh-uh. Forget it. Not here. It wouldn’t make sense. Not even for Murdock. For one thing, the local ecology has no significant biomass. That puts a caloric ceiling on everything . This degenerate dirtball can’t support its humanoid population, let alone a colony of worms.”
    â€œOne worm then.”
    Sawyer made a sound of disgust. “Let go of it, Finn. The worm thing doesn’t apply here. Stop looking for it. You know as well as I, you can’t isolate one worm and keep it healthy. They go psychotic as individuals.”
    â€œBut look at it from Murdock’s