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| - The current temperature was constantly being projected into Nadie Jaci's left eye. 6 C. The temperature had not changed since she had entered the network of corridors and chambers below the surface of Osiris IV. She pulled at the hood of her jacket and again thought about putting her gloves back on. Reaching a T-intersection at the end of a corridor, Jaci turned the corner and stopped. The two Marine Corps privates under her command nearly ran her over. They all looked up and down the new corridor and transmitted what they saw back to the command post. They were far out of range for radio contact with the Elephant or any of the other search parties, but Private Latty had been feeding out a fiber that allowed them to keep in contact with the command post and the rest of the crew. The growing computerized map of the underground base quickly updated to include the new corridor as it came into range of their cameras. Jaci placed her electromagnetic field sensor against the wall of the new corridor and then marked a small rectangle with her pen. Jaci had always enjoyed solving puzzles and she was feeling something like rat in a maze...a rat with an IQ of 150. She was sure that there must be hidden doors and unseen rooms along these corridors. By guessing where the doors should be, she was having some luck finding what seemed to be a specific type of control circuit. However, she had no means to reveal the function of the circuits that she had found inside the walls. The circuits themselves looked like nothing known to Earthly electrical engineering. She turned to Private Uranch and ordered, "Blast it." Uranch stuck a thin strip of explosive to the wall then returned around the corner to join the others. He said, "Cover!" The detonation bounced some fragments of steel around the corner, but in a harmless way that was now routine, boring and expected by all to be fruitless. Jaci returned to the rectangle that was now a hole, exposing the odd contents of the wall. Already the damaged circuits inside the wall and the jagged edges of the hole were shimmering with the nanoscopic repair substance that seemed to exist in every part of this underground complex. Jaci was able to record some week electromagnetic signals in the hole before it was healed over with a new solid layer of steel. In less than 5 minutes there was no remaining trace of the hole and most of the fragments of the wall that had been scattered around the corridor had already been cleaned up by roving swarms of nanoscopic scavengers. Jaci had yet to find a speck of dust in this spotlessly clean base. Apparently the base had been abandoned by its inhabitants and only automated systems remained, endlessly cleaning and repairing. Private Latty asked, "Which way now?" Jaci looked at the growing map of the underground base and was about to announce her choice of which direction to continue their search when Private Uranch said, "I heard something." Jaci turned and saw that Uranch had moved about thirty meters down the corridor and had his weapon pointed ahead of him. Jaci pulled the hood off of her head and listened. She heard nothing, but she ordered, "Pull back. Get back here, Uranch." Latty turned and pointed the other direction along the corridor, "Now I heard something." Jaci still had heard nothing except for the noises they were making themselves. "Pull back into the last corridor. Move!" Latty was not happy about being under the command of a woman, particularly one who seemed enthralled by the power to order that ridiculous little holes be blasted in walls. Latty raised his gun and covered Uranch while he retreated back along the corridor. Latty complained, "We spend all this time looking, finally find something and now we run away?" Uranch was almost back to the T-intersection of the two corridors when he suddenly crouched and pointed his gun towards Latty and Jaci. Uranch screamed, "Down!" While Jaci dove to the floor she saw a blur of motion behind Uranch. Latty was already on the floor, firing rounds past Uranch towards that blur. Her mind struggled to identify what was coming up the corridor behind Uranch and her conscious mind only managed to produce a question: Cats? Jaci turned her head to see what Uranch was firing at behind her, but before she could see anything, a heavy body landed on her, smacking her head against the floor. For a moment she thought about lifting her head, but then her consciousness faded away.
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