_[9]_
Colonel Walther Mannheim tapped with one thick finger the map thatglowed on the wall before him. "That's his nest," he said firmly. "Rightthere, where those tunnels come together."
Bart Stanton looked at the map of Manhattan Island and at the gleamingcolored traceries that threaded their various ways across it. "Just whatwas the purpose of all those tunnels?" he asked.
"The majority of them were for rail transportation," said the colonel."The island was hit by a sun bomb during the Holocaust and was almostcompletely leveled and slagged down. When the city was completelyrebuilt afterwards, there was naturally no need for such things, so theywere simply all sealed off and forgotten."
"He's hiding directly under Government City," Stanton said."Incredible."
"It used to be one of the largest seaports in the world," ColonelMannheim said, "and it very probably still would be if the inertia drivehadn't made air travel cheaper and easier than seagoing."
"How did he find out about those tunnels?" Stanton asked.
The colonel pointed at the north end of the island. "After theHolocaust, the first returnees to the island were wild animals whichcrossed over from the mainland to the north. The Harlem River isn't verywide at this point, as you can see. There was a bridge right at aboutthis point here--the very tip of the island. It had collapsed into thewater, but there was enough of it to allow animals to cross. Because ofthe rocky hills at this end of the island, there were places which werespared the direct effects of the bomb, and grasses and trees begangrowing there. That's why it was decided that section should be left asa game preserve when the Government built the capital on the southernpart of the island." His finger moved down the map. "The upper threemiles of the island, down to here, where it begins to widen, are allgame preserve. There's a high wall at this point which separates it fromthe city, which keeps the animals penned in, and the ruins of thebridges which connected with the mainland have been removed, so animalscan't get across any more.
"Two years after he arrived, the Nipe was almost caught. He had managedto get here from Asia by stealing a flyer in Leningrad. According to Dr.Yoritomo and the other psychologists who have been studying the Nipe, heapparently does not believe that human beings are anything more thantrained animals. He was looking then--as he is apparently stilllooking--for the 'real' rulers of Earth. He expected to find them, ofcourse, in Government City. Needless to say," said the colonel with atouch of irony, "he failed."
"But he was seen?" asked Stanton.
"He was seen. And pursued. But he got away easily, heading north. Thewhole island was searched, from the southern tip to the wall, and thepolice were ready to start an inch-by-inch combing of the game preserveby the end of the third day after he was seen. But he hit and robbed achemical supply house in northern Pennsylvania, killing two men, so thesearch was called off.
"It wasn't until two years later, after an exhaustive analysis of thepattern of his raids had given us enough material to work with, that wedetermined that he must have found an opening into one of the tunnels uphere in the game preserve." He gestured again at the map. "Very likelyhe immediately saw that no human being had been down there in a longtime and that there wasn't much chance of a man coming down there in theforeseeable future. It was a perfect place for his base."
"How does he move in and out?" Stanton asked.
"This way." The colonel traced a finger down one of the red lines on themap, southward, until he came to a spot only a little over two milesfrom the southernmost tip of the island. The line turned abruptly towardthe western shore of the island, where it stopped. "There are tunnelsthat go underneath the Hudson River at this point and emerge on theother side, over here, in New Jersey. The one he uses is only one ofseveral, but it has one distinct advantage that the others do not. Allof them are flooded now; the sun bomb caved them in when the primaryshock wave hit the surface of the water. The tunnel he uses has a holein it big enough for him to swim through.
"In spite of his high rate of metabolism, the Nipe can store atremendous amount of oxygen in his body and can stay underwater for aslong as half an hour without breathing apparatus, if he conserves hisenergy. When he's wearing his scuba mask, he's practically aself-contained submarine. The pressure doesn't seem to bother him much.He's a tough cookie."
"I'll remember that," said Stanton somberly. "I won't try to race himunderwater."
"No," said Colonel Mannheim. "No, I wouldn't do that if I were you."
They both knew that there was a great deal more to it than that. Inspite of the near miracle that the staff of the Neurophysical Institutehad wrought upon Stanton's nerves and muscles and glands, they couldonly go so far. They could only improve the functioning of the equipmentthat Stanton already had; they could not add more.
His lungs could be, and had been, increased tremendously in efficiencyof operation, but the amount of air they could actually hold could onlybe increased slightly. There was no way to add much extra volume to themwithout doing so at the expense of other organs. In a breath-holdingcontest, the Nipe would win easily, since his body had evolved organsfor oxygen storage, while the human body had not.
You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear if you are limited tothe structures and compounds found in sows' ears. The best you can do ismake a finer, stronger, more sensitive sow's ear.
"I understand that the Nipe has his hideout pretty well bugged with allkinds of alarms," Stanton said. "How did you get your own bugs in therewithout setting off his?"
"Well, at first we didn't know for sure what he was up to; we weren'teven sure he was actually down in those tunnels. But we suspected thatif he was he'd have alarms set all over the place--perhaps even alarmsof types we couldn't recognize. But we had to take that chance. We _had_to watch him."
He walked over to the nearby table and opened a box some twelve incheslong and five-by-five inches in cross-section.
"See this?" he said, as he took a furry object from the box.
It looked like a large rat. Dead, stiff, unmoving.
"Our spy," said Colonel Mannheim.
* * * * *
The rat moved along the rusted steel rail that ran the length of thehuge tunnel. To a human being, the tunnel would have seemed to be inutter darkness, but the little eyes of the rat saw the surroundings asfaintly luminescent, glowing from the infra-red radiations given out bythe internal warmth of the cement and steel. The main source of theradiations was from above, where the heat of the sun and the warmth fromthe energy sources in the buildings on the surface seeped through theroof of the tunnel. But here and there were even brighter spots ofwarmth, spots that moved about on glowing feet and sniffed blindly atthe air with tiny glowing noses. Rats.
On and on moved the rat, its little pinkish feet pattering almostsilently on the oxidized metal surface of the rails. Its sensitive earspicked up the movements and the squeals of other rats, but it paid themno heed. Several times it met other rats on the rail, but most of themsensed the alienness of _this_ rat and scuttled out of its way.
Once, it met a rat who did not give way. Hungry, perhaps, or perhapsmerely yielding to the paranoid fury that was a normal component of therattish mind, it squealed its defiance to the rat that was not a rat. Itadvanced, baring its rodent teeth in a yellow-daggered snarl of hate.
The rat that was not a rat became suddenly motionless, its sharp littlenose pointed directly at the oncoming enemy. There came a noise, a tinypopping hiss, like that of a very small drop of water striking hotmetal. From the left nostril of the not-rat, a tiny, glasslike needlesnapped out at bullet speed. It struck the advancing rat in the centerof the pink tongue that was visible in the open mouth. Then the not-ratscuttled backward faster than any real rat could have moved.
For a second the real rat hesitated, and it may be that the realizationpenetrated into its dim brain that rats did not fight this way. Then, asthe tiny needle dissolved in its bloodstream, it closed its eyes andcollapsed, rolling limply off th
e rail to the rotted wooden tiebeneath.
The rat might come to before it was found and devoured by itsfellows--or it might not. The not-rat moved on, not caring either way.The human intelligence that looked out from the eyes of the not-rat wasonly concerned with getting to the Nipe.
* * * * *
"That's how we found the Nipe," Colonel Mannheim said, "and that's howwe keep tabs on him now. We have over seven hundred of theseremote-control robots hidden in strategic spots throughout those tunnelsnow, and we can put more in whenever we want, but it took time to geteverything set up this way. Now we can follow the Nipe wherever he goes,so long as he stays in those tunnels. If he went out through the oneopen-air exit up in the northern part of the island, we could have himfollowed by bird-robots. But"--he shrugged wryly--"I'm afraid theunderwater problem still has us stumped. We can't get the carrier wavefor the remote-control impulses to go very far underwater."
"How do you get your carrier wave underground to those tunnels?" Stantonasked. "And how do you keep the Nipe from picking up the radiation?"
The colonel grinned widely. "One of the boys dreamed up a real cutegimmick. Those old steel rails themselves act as antennas for thebroadcaster, and the rat's tail is the pickup antenna. As long as therat is crawling right on the rail, only a microscopic amount of power isneeded for control, not enough for the Nipe to pick up with hisinstruments. Each rat carries its own battery for motive power, andthere are old copper power cables down there that we can send directcurrent through to recharge the batteries. And, when we need them, thecopper cables can be used as antennas. It took us quite a while to workthe system out, but it's running smoothly now."
Stanton rubbed his head thoughtfully. _Damn these gaps in my memory!_ hethought. It was sometimes embarrassing to ask questions that anyschoolboy should know the answers to.
"Aren't there ways of detecting objects underwater?" he asked after amoment.
"Yes," said the colonel, "several of them. But they all require beamedenergy of some kind to be reflected from the object we want to look at,and we don't dare use anything like that." He sat down on one corner ofthe table, his bright blue eyes looking up at Stanton.
"That's been our big problem all along," he said seriously. "We have tokeep the Nipe from knowing he's being watched. In the tunnelsthemselves, we've only used equipment that was already there, addingonly what we absolutely had to--small things. A few strands of wire, atiny relay, things that can be hidden in out-of-the-way places and canbe made to look as though they were a part of the original oldequipment. After all, he has his own alarm system in that maze oftunnels, and we have deliberately kept away from his detecting devices.He knows about the rats and ignores them. They're part of theenvironment. But we don't dare use anything that would tip him off toour knowledge of his whereabouts. One slip like that, and hundreds ofhuman beings will have died in vain."
"And if he stays down there too long," Stanton said levelly, "millionsmore may die."
The colonel's face was grim as he looked directly into Stanton's eyes."That's why you have to know your job down to the most minute detailwhen the time comes to act. The whole success of the plan will depend onyou and you alone."
Stanton's eyes didn't avoid the colonel's. _That's not true_, hethought, _I'll be only one man on a team. And you know that, ColonelMannheim. But you'd like to shove all the responsibility off ontosomeone else--someone stronger. You've finally met someone that youconsider your superior in that way, and you want to unload. I wish Ifelt as confident as you do ... but I don't._
Aloud, he said: "Sure. Nothing to it. All I have to do is take intoaccount everything that's known about the Nipe and make allowances foreverything that's not known." Then he smiled. "Not," he added, "that Ican think of any other way to go about it."