"Take off your helmet," the radioed voice behind him ordered. Steel took it off. When he turned, facing the man and the gun, the man had removed his own helmet. He was smiling, a thin tight-lipped smile with no humor in his eyes. "You seem surprised," he said. "You really didn't expect a bear's den, did you?"
"This is your show," Steel said quietly. "What comes next?" The man held his helmet in one hand, his pistol in the other—both hands full. Steel thought of his own helmet, a mighty handy weapon. If he got a chance—Then suddenly he noticed something else, something that gave him a chance cops dreamed about. The guy's pistol—the safety was on!
"Okay," the man said, "if this deer hunting trip of yours turns out to be faked, you'll soon learn what's next." A quick motion of the pistol ordered Steel around on the belt that led down the shaft.
Steel went. As he went, he shot quick glances into the rooms they passed, waiting for the right moment to whirl around and knock that pistol away.
The rooms they passed were filled with workers. There were drafting stalls where scores of men—and women—bent over blueprint tables and charts. There were plastic workshops where people operated compression molds and lathes. Where did The Bear get all these workers! They all couldn't have come from the upper levels! There were glittering laboratories where white-aproned technicians huddled around distillation vats and rows of test tubes. Steel thought of that stolen cargo of tungsoid. Suffo-gas...?
A few yards ahead, on the left, he saw they were approaching an empty room. On the right, a deserted tunnel branched off into whatever labyrinth the place possessed. Okay, this was as good as anywhere else! Wherever he was being taken, they'd be there shortly. Then it might be too late.
Steel crouched slightly, ready to whirl on the fellow behind him.
Then—
"Step off!"
Behind him, the man's hand suddenly grabbed his shoulder and shoved him off the belt into the tunnel.