00118





"We made it! See? There's the R and D Lab facility beneath us- And look, our aircar's still in one piece," Clyden cheerily announced. "Oh, great, and look, there's Fuzzy down below, too!"

If  Clyden didn't like the scene below him now, he surely would not like it in a few minutes, once the acid spray started!

As they neared the R and D Lab, George McCleer looked out the viewport window. He struggled to see what Clyden saw through the swirlilng flakes. A dome-like structure resisted the blizzard's furious attempts to push it into oblivion or to bury it in snow. A smaller building sat behind it. The gale winds had no effect on that one, either. No lights shone from the buildings into the gloomy snowstorm which obscured the sunhine of noon time.

And, yes, George, too, saw the blue creature, a tiny dot from up here, positioned between the two buildings.

Billy Boy said, "Mr. Clyden, you saw this place from way far back and called it out to us. You must have amazing vision!"

"You bet I do. I always did, even before I got this great, enhanced body.” It was not the first time they complimented his superior vision, but he never got tired of listening to how impressed people were. Why, he could spot those sky vehicles hunting for him before either of the other two miners. “Now hang tight, I gotta fly in low, to look for a good landing place. I used to have a nice landing spot in a nearby hollow, when I came to see Dr. Kitchen, but this skycar's too big to fit in there. With this snow it's a challenge to land an aircar this big decently anywhere."

When Clyden swooped down to scout for a place, George noted, "The windows at the R and D Lab are boarded up."

"Now who did that?" wondered Clyden. "Nobody was there when I last visited, at least no one left alive, but the windows were not covered like that. -Hey! What the-"

From their bird's eye view, they observed the whole building- both buildings- suddenly shaking wildly. The snow that had accumulated on their roofs slid off from the violent rattling. The ex-miners could almost hear the accompanying rumble, too.

"It's some kind of quake! Look, it's got Fuzzy all freaked out!" He pointed to how Fuzzy could be seen darting back and forth between the two buildings and running around and around in the gap between the main structure and the garage. "Maybe I should just land on Fuzzy and get rid of that nuisance, so we can work in peace on gathering up the doodads that the scientists had developed here. It'd serve him right, anyway, for what he did to - Whoa! Now lookit that!"

Toward the back of the R and D building, a portion of the roof collapsed inward, falling down into the facility itself.

"Whew, at least the garage hangar didn't get damaged. I don't want to see that new-fangled aircar in there get messed up!" Clyden guided their gliding vehicle to the front of the R and D Lab, to the more level land before the main entrance. He neen not worry anymore about parking out in the open where nosy guards would question him.

Clyden advised, "You guys, go get some of those blasters and have them ready so we can properly greet Fuzzy when he comes to eat, I mean meet us."

However, before the pilot had a chance to make a suitable landing, suddenly geysers spurted up all about grounds surrounding the R and D Lab and its adjacent garage. The eruptions sprayed high into the air. Several of the streams hit the descending aircar all at once with the force of the high pressure water canon Clyden had at one time used for crowd control. The spray knocked the aircar about.

"What th-" Clyden yanked the controls back and forth, trying to keep the aircar's flight stable. "Listen, we're heading back up again, out of range of those, um, whatever they are-"

A hissing sizzle sounded inside the cabin. Hungry holes devoured their way through the metal flooring.

"That spray must be some kind of acid!" George McCleer realized.

"Aw, for crying out loud-" grumbled Clyden. "The acid's eaten through something important! I can't get the aircar to do anything I want it to do now!" Clyden thumped the controls in frustration. The sky vehicle began to plummet like a stone buffeted by strong winds on its way down.

"Well, like you no doubt guessed, we're gonna crash!" said Clyden.

Billy Boy braced himself. "Yoww! Looks like this vehicle is destined to always keep crashlanding whenever it goes flying!"

Clyden grit his teeth. "This might hurt, we're still pretty high up- But hold onto those blasters best you can- Herrre weee goooo-!"

WHUuuMP!!! The impact jarred them to the bone.

The aircar skidded into the snow, inside the ring of geysers, and its momentum carried it far along the area, toward the wall of acid showers.

George's seat belt snapped under the stress of holding secure such a large body. He tumbled out of his chair. George tried to stand up and escape as the downed aircar careened across the snow toward the acid wall. He snatched up a blaster and shouted, "Hey, we gotta get out of this aircar before we slide into the geysers!"

Holding onto the control panel to pull himself up from his seat, Clyden shouted back, "We're with ya, McCleer! Move it, Billy Boob!"

Billy Boy exclaimed, "I can't believe we're still in one piece after that crash!" He also clutched a blaster, like his compatriots.

"Yeah, the snow cushioned our crash and our miner bodies probably saved our lives from the shock of impact," Clyden said. Being right in front of the window, he dove out first headlong through the viewport above the control panel. The shatter proof pane smashed out of the frame.

George McCleer and Billy Boy scrambled right after him, jumping into the deep green snow. The sliding aircar continued on its path to doom. It stopped just short of the wall of spurting acid. But the geysers were moving inward, changing their positons, getting closer, and in seconds they reached the aircar and it began to evaporate.

Clyden's eyes widened. "Great. We're trapped inside the circle of death, and the circle's closing in on us!"

"So much for a proper burial for those Security Agents inside the bin," said Billy Boy. "Too bad for their families..."

Clyden replied, "We're in the same boat as them. If we don't do something, the acid'll eat us, too, despite our fantastic miners' bodies."

George rubbed a sore shin. He looked up and saw a new arrival. "Here comes Fuzzy to investigate the crash! He's all frenetic, and he looks a lot meaner than the way you describe him!"

The running lion/dog growled and snarled like he had rabies. He bounded over the deep snow toward the three escaped ex-miners.

"Uh oh! I lost my blaster when we jumped," Billy Bob realized.

"Me, too," George echoed.

"Figgers," mocked Clyden. Fuzzy lunged at the three of them as they stood together in a group. Clyden's boot caught the animal, sending it to the side. "So, ya wanna go another round, eh, Fuzzy!" He still held onto his blaster and he fired it several times at the blue blur, but the weapon shot wildly off-target. "Mm, must have bent the blaster during the jump from the aircar-"

Fuzzy evaded further blasts without even trying. He landed on top of Clyden and knocked him down, his teeth bared. The snow cushioned Clyden's fall, but it also made it hard for Clyden in the deep fluff to twist away from the brutal animal. Fuzzy's mighty jaws dove for Clyden's throat, but all he got was a punch in the nose that veered his lunge's trajectory, and in the end, Fuzzy only got an ear.

ZAP!

Suddenly, Fuzzy had no head. Clyden pushed the body with a toasted stump for a neck from off himself. "No way I could miss you this close, eh, Fuzzy, even with a bent blaster. That's for Dr. Kitchen!"

Clyden stood up, holding the bent blaster in one hand, and his other hand cupped over the bleeding place where his ear used to be. "Now that stings! It'll take a couple of hours, maybe days, for my ear to grow back."

"What's your Plan C?" asked George. "How do we get past the acid?"

"And, why is there an acid death-trap, anyway?" Billy Boy wanted to know.

"Let's not try to figure that out right now, Billy Boob," said Clyden. "Rather, let's figure out what McCleer said, How to get out this acid ring. It's eating away at the outside walls of the front of the R and D building! We better get inside for shelter, before we catch the geyser spray. But we obviously won't have shelter in there for long, either, if the acid will continue on its path. I say we race through the lab building to the back side of the place. The acid's not yet there. We find something to use for cover, to hide under from the spreading spray while we run outside again from the back of this dome to get to the garage building. We gotta run fast, because whatever we use for a shield, the acid'll eat through it in seconds. We won't have long, either, until the acid gets to the new aircar I told ya about that's in the hangar, and if we don't get there in time, there goes Plan B, Plan C, and all the rest of the plans all the way to Z!"

"Okay, your Plan C is as good a plan as I can see," agreed George McCleer. "No way we can jump through the wall of acid itself, if we get to the aircar too late and it's already gone- The acid's spray is so wide, that if we had to go through the acid wall whatever we could use as a covering would melt before we got all the way through! Look how that acid eats so quickly!"

Clyden ushered them through the front door. "Let's go, let's go! Follow that main hall. Yeah, it's dark, but it's pretty much a straight stretch, so try not to bump into the walls too much and just keep moving!  Lots of junk cluttering the way, but don't let that stop ya! When we reach the part where the roof had caved in and blocked the path to the foyer and the exit door on the other side, we gotta hustle to clear that mess outta our way- We can do it; we're ex-miners! We can just push it aside!"

They made so much noise as they dashed through the dark hallway, tripping over clutter left from Fuzzy's rampage before, or banging into the walls (despite Clyden's advice), that even a deaf person could've hear them.

The nearer they got to the opposite end of the building, they heard shouting- voices shouting for help.

The three miners got to the fallen roof blocking their way.

"Who's out there?" a male voice called to them from the other side.

"Help us!" called a female voice. "We're trapped! Help!!"

"We're digging through this mess from the fallen roof, don't worry- We're coming," Billy Boy called back to them, whoever they were. He and the other two miners grabbed debris and heaved it aside, working at top speed, faster than any of them had ever done while digging fuel ore.

Clyden remarked to George McCleer and Billy Boy, "I can't believe any people are in here!!"

A flashlight from  the other side of the pile of junk from the caved sectiion of roof- the light shined from inside the foyer, shining out of the dark through a small gap in the rubble. In its light, Clyden saw a large section of thick metal roof, still intact, off to the side of where they had been digging. He pointed to it and said, "Let's try not to damage that- We can use it to duck under, once we're back outside. The roof materials have to be thick, you know, to keep from buckling under the weight of the snow. It should give us a few seconds before the acid eats it away."

Finally, the desperate Diggers reached the anxious, trapped people on the other side. They saw a young man holding a robot head, and a woman with him. Dim light entered the foyer through a small peep hole in the metal exit hatch situated behind these people. Not much light, but enough to see who they were--

George McCleer gasped, He immediately recognized the woman, of course. "Nina!"

She turned the flashlight onto his miner's face. With the adequate light which came in from the hole in the roof, she really did not need the flashlight, but she had been holding onto it since they had run from the electric distribution room. And immediately she recognized his face. "Goerge!"

Clyden murmured, shocked, "Mrs. McCleer- You're alive!"

She, in turn, more in shock than Clyden, realized, "Security Leader Clyden? With my George??" What a partnership!

X-9, from his place in Albert Zoeniga's arms, reminded them, "It is nice that we all know each other, and that everyone is alive, but if you don't move it, soon none of you will be alive. The acid will reach our place here in about fifty seconds."

(c) drk 2012