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It was blind, but it could smell, though not efficiently because of the damage to its nose; and it could hear, though no efficiently, because of the pain from the tearing off of its ears. But it located Caliban and went after him, ignoring the others. Doc, hearing the warning cries, turned and got to his feet, though not without difficulty and not without gritting his teeth to suppress a groan.
The bear charged straight into him. Doc reached out and jerked the eyes loose and cast them on the floor and then, as he went down under the beast, rammed his arm all the way into the bear's mouth. It choked, and its paws tore at his back, and then it backed away swiftly. Its jaws opened, to get rid of the object that was strangling it, and Doc's hand came out, closed on the huge wet tongue. The slipperiness almost balked him, but he managed to keep his grip. Only one other man in the world could have done what he did.
When the tongue came out by the roots, the grizzly shot blood all over Caliban and the wall of the room. And then it turned and charged blindly across the floor until it rammed its head into the bars of the i
But Doc Caliban had lost much skin and his back muscles were so torn up they were causing him intense pain.
Doc sat up and waved Barney's helping hand away. "Open the door! " he said. "We have to get out of here! "
Pauncho was there before Barney. He pulled the sliding door back and said, "No five minute wait. "
Doc Caliban tried to get to his feet, but he slipped twice. Barney, standing by his side, made no move to help him because he did not think that Doc would like it. It was Doc who always helped others; he never needed anybody else.
Doc wiped the blood from his forehead, looked at Barney with the yellow-flecked verdigris eyes, and said, "You too weak to assist me? '
"Hell, no, Doc, glad to do it!"
Barney leaned down and let Doc put a massive arm around his shoulder and then he straightened up. Doc came up slowly but not with the full weight of his three hundred plus pounds on Barney 's slim shoulder. "Now I'm up, I can make it by myself," Doc said. Then he clamped his teeth and pressed his lips together. "I think I hear something! " Pauncho said. "Yeah! And I smell something! Smoke! Hey, there's somebody down that way!"
He pointed to the left.
"The invaders," Doc said. "Anana's men. Driven here by the flowing napalm, I suppose. We'd better go the other way. Barney, check on Cobbs and Villiers. I don't think they're still here, but... "
When Barney returned he said, "Not there. And there's nothing we can use for a weapon. I didn't see our stuff either. You'd think Iwaldi wouldn't have bothered to hide it, since he didn't figure we'd even get out of the cell."
"He knew it wasn't impossible for us to get out," Caliban replied. "But he must have figured we'd never get out of the cave even if we somehow got past the bear."
They went down the runway to the nearest stone steps on the right and descended to the floor of the chamber. There were a number of exits. Doc picked the middle central one, and they went down a tu
They went down the tu
"This is the tu
Slowly, because he felt weak and because the movements pained him considerably, he let himself down the shaft and dropped. The impact almost made him faint. His colleagues dropped down, too, and they went toward the direction which—he hoped—was the right way. The lights along the tu
"Hold it a minute!" Pauncho said.
They stopped. Seemingly from faraway came voices. But if they could be heard there, they would not be too far distant.
"They've probably seen our blood by now and are trailing us," Caliban said. "If only we could ambush some of them. They have guns and they may have first-aid kits; and they must have blacklight projectors and just possibly underwater breathing plugs."
"Wouldn't Iwaldi know that and take care of that possibility?" Barney said.
"Yes. But we know the way, and we know what kind of traps Iwaldi has sprung," Doc said. He did not mention the probability that Iwaldi had closed off all exits.
They went on, splashing. The water around their feet was tinged with red. Doc suddenly stopped at a corner where the tu
They went down the tu
"There are three levels to go before we get to the exit," Pauncho said.
Doc held up his hand for silence. A splashing was coming from far around the corner.
"We can't make it unless we have breathing plugs," he said. "And there's only one source for them. Here's what we'll do."
Barney walked back to the far end of the tu
"Ten of them," he said. "Automatic rifles and pistols. Blacklight projectors on their caps but they're not using their goggles. It's impossible to tell if they have breathing plugs."
He added, "And I smelled smoke. The napalm can't be too far behind."
The invaders would not know about Cobb's markings, of course, so they would go on down the tu
He waded down the steps until the water was up to his waist and then he swam along the wall. The bulbs along the wall guided his path and enabled Barney to see him. When Doc was opposite the shaft, Barney signaled him. Doc dived, was visible in the lights until he went under the ceiling, and then popped up, in the well in the middle of the tu
In a few seconds, Barney heard the loud splashing of the ten men. He waited until he judged that the lead man was just about to come opposite the stairway, and he slid off the stairs into the water and down alongside it. When he reached the bottom, he flattened himself against the side. Now all he could do was to hold his breath and hope that the leader would take time out for a glance into this tu
Doc had submerged also and swam the few feet necessary to get to the bottom of the well.
Here he placed one hand on the ceiling next to the lip of the shaft and waited. He hoped the bleeding would slow down enough so the men would not notice that the waters were reddened. And he hoped the enemy would not loiter in that corridor. Normally, he could hold his breath for fifteen minutes if he hyperventilated for thirty minutes (the official world's record was 13 minutes, 42.5 seconds). But he had no time to hyperventilate and he was too weakened to hold his breath for much more than two minutes.