Montezuma Strip by Alan Dean Foster

in a steady stream into the vorec as he keyed different levels within the main GenDyne box.
     This time he went in fast and easy. He went wherever he wanted to without any problem—and that was the problem.After what seemed like fifteen minutes he paused to check his bracelet. Two hours gone. Soon it would be light outside.
    Hypatia had settled herself on the edge of the desk. She was watching him intently. “Anything?”
    “Not what I came for. Plenty Parabas would pay to get their hands on. I’m sure the reverse would be true if I was sponging
     their box like this.” He shook his head as he regarded the screen. “There’s got to be another box in there, somewhere. Or
     a section that’s reading out dead.”
    “Impossible. You need full cryo to keep the box wet and accessible. You can’t just set something like that up in the middle
     of an outfit like GenDyne without tripping half a dozen alarms.”
    “Alarms are usually set to warn of withdrawal, not entry.”
    “Any kind of solid insertion like that would have people asking questions.”
    “You can avoid questions if you can avoid notice. These guys were wizards at avoiding notice.”
    She crossed her arms. “I still say it’s impossible.”
    He turned back to the wall. “We’ll see.”
    He found it only because he had some idea what he was looking for. No one else would have glanced at it. There was no separate
     box. Hypatia was right about that. Instead it was buried deep within the basic GenDyne box itself, disguised as a dormant
     file for a biolight conveyor. When he sponged it Hypatia caught her breath.
    “My God. A subox tunnel.”
    “I’ve heard about them,” Cardenas murmured tightly, “but I’ve never actually seen one before.”
    “That’s as close to being invisible as you can get and still be inside a box.” She was standing close to the wall now, examining
     the holo intensely. “Whoever engineered this was half Designer and half magician.”
    Cardenas found himself nodding. “That’s our boys.” He studied the slowly rotating cylindrical schematic. “The key question
     is, where does it go?” He was set to start in whenHypatia stopped him, walking over to put a hand on his arm and block his view of the screen.
    “Maybe we better get some help. This is way over my head.”
    “And therefore mine, too?” He smiled. “You don’t have to know how to build a plane to know how to fly one. I can handle it.”
    “More psychomorphs? And who knows what else.”
    “I’m ready for it this time. Hypatia, I can intuit
fast.
Anything starts coming out of that tube I’ll just dry out.”
    “Man, I hope you know what you’re doing.” She stepped aside. Together they stared as he spoke into the vorec and started down
     the tunnel.
    They encountered no traps, no guards. Smart. Oh, so smart, he thought to himself. Make it look like an ordinary part of the
     box. Make it look like it belongs. Normalcy was the best disguise.
    They wouldn’t put him off the track with that. Because even though he didn’t understand the how yet, he knew the why.
    Hypatia asked him about it again. “I still don’t get this double suicide business.”
    “It’s what they were.” He spoke between commands to the vorec, waiting while the wall complied with each sequence of instructions.
     He was tense but in control. It was one lonnnng tube.
    “Noschek particularly. He was the key. You see, part of the tragedy was that they could never meet in person. Security would
     have found out right away and that would have finished both of them. It meant they could only communicate through the joint
     Fordmatsu link they established. Like in the old times when people sent information by personal messenger. It was too complex,
     too involved, too
intense
for it to just be business. There had to be more to it than that. And then when I couldn’t find any business at all, that
     clinched it.”
    “Clinched what?”
    “The fact that they had to be lovers. Via