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.Maybe there was still hope.Maybe there was something moving in the shadows just beyond that pillar.Miles's breath froze, then eased again, as the movement materialized into a fat albino rat the size of an armadillo.It shied as it saw him and waddled rapidly away, its claws clicking on the rock.Only an escaped lab rat.A bloody big rat, but still, only a rat.The huge rippling shadow struck out of nowhere, at incredible speed.It grabbed the rat by its tail and swung it squealing against a pillar, dashing out its brains with a crunch.A flash of a thick claw-like fingernail, and the white furry body was ripped open from sternum to tail.Frantic fingers peeled the skin away from the rat's body as blood splattered.Miles first saw the fangs as they bit and tore and buried themselves in the rat's tissues.They were functional fangs, not just decorative, set in a protruding jaw, with long lips and a wide mouth; yet the total effect was lupine rather than simian.A flat nose, ridged, powerful brows, high cheekbones.Hair a dark matted mess.And yes, fully eight feet tall, a rangy, tense-muscled body.Climbing back up the ladder would do no good, the creature could pluck him right off and swing him just like the rat.Levitate up the side of a pillar? Oh, for suction-cup fingers and toes, something the bioengineering committee had missed somehow.Freeze and play invisible? Miles settled on this last defense by default—he was paralyzed with terror.The big feet, bare on the cold rock, also had claw-like toenails.But the creature was dressed, in clothes made of green lab-cloth, a belted kimono-like coat and loose trousers.And one other thing.They didn 't tell me it was female.She was almost finished with the rat when she looked up and saw Miles.Bloody-faced, bloody-handed, she froze as still as he.In a spastic motion, Miles whipped the squashed ration bar from his trouser thigh-pocket and extended it toward her in his outstretched hand."Dessert?" he smiled hysterically.Dropping the rat's stripped carcass, she snatched the bar out of his hand, ripped off the cover, and devoured it in four bites.Then she stepped forward, grabbed him by an arm and his black T-shirt, and lifted him up to her face.The clawed fingers bit into his skin, and his feet dangled in air.Her breath was about what he would have guessed.Her eyes were raw and burning."Water!" she croaked.They didn't tell me she talked."Um, um—water," squeaked Miles."Quite.There ought to be water around here—look, up at the ceiling, all those pipes.If you'll, um, put me down, good girl, I'll try and spot a water pipe or something."Slowly, she lowered him back to his feet and released him.He backed carefully away, his hands held out open at his sides.He cleared his throat, and tried to bring his voice back down to a low, soothing tone."Let's try over here.The ceiling gets lower, or rather, the bedrock rises.over near that light panel, there, that thin composite plastic tube—white's the usual color-code for water.We don't want grey, that's sewage, or red, that's the power-optics." No telling what she understood, tone was everything with creatures."If you, uh, could hold me up on your shoulders like Ensign Murka, I could have a go at loosening that joint there." He made pantomime gestures, uncertain if anything was getting through to whatever intelligence lay behind those terrible eyes.The bloody hands, easily twice the size of his own, grabbed him abruptly by the hips and boosted him upward.He clutched the white pipe, inched along it to a screw-joint.Her thick shoulders beneath his feet moved along under him.Her muscles trembled, it wasn't all his own shaking.The joint was tight—he needed tools—he turned with all his strength, in danger of snapping his fragile finger bones.Suddenly the joint squeaked and slid.It gave, the plastic collar was moving, water began to spray between his fingers.One more turn and it sheared apart, and water arced in a bright stream down onto the rock beneath.She almost dropped him in her haste.She put her mouth under the stream, wide open, let the water splash straight in and all over her face, coughing and guzzling even more frantically than she'd gone at the rat.She drank, and drank, and drank.She let it run over her hands, her face and head, washing away the blood, and then drank some more.Miles began to think she'd never quit, but at last she backed away and pushed her wet hair out of her eyes, and stared down at him.She stared at him for what seemed like a full minute, then suddenly roared, "Cold!"Miles jumped."Ah.cold.right.Me too, my socks are wet.Heat, you want heat.Lessee.Uh, let's try back this way, where the ceiling's lower.No point here, the heat would all collect up there out of reach, no good." She followed him with all the intensity of a cat tracking a.well.rat, as he skittered around pillars to where the crawl space's floor rose to genuine crawl-height, about four feet.There, that one, that was the lowest pipe he could find."If we could get this open," he pointed to a plastic pipe about as big around as his waist, "it's full of hot air being pumped along under pressure.No handy joints though, this time." He stared at his puzzle, trying to think.This composite plastic was extremely strong.She crouched and pulled, then lay on her back and kicked up at it, then looked at him quite woefully."Try this." Nervously, he took her hand and guided it to the pipe, and traced long scratches around the circumference with her hard nails.She scratched and scratched, then looked at him again as if to say, This isn't working!"Try kicking and pulling again now," he suggested.She must have weighed three hundred pounds, and she put it all behind the next effort, kicking then grabbing the pipe, planting her feet on the ceiling and arching with all her strength.The pipe split along the scratches.She fell with it to the floor, and hot air began to hiss out [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]