by Tim Sullivan
At the far end of the abattoir, Jack inserted his crystal key in the wall. A door slid open and they found themselves looking out on a corridor with a row of doors facing them.
"That one down there on the end should be his," Sabrina said.
Jack beckoned for Marie and John to follow, and the four of them made their way to Dr. Thorkel's door. Their stealth paid off; they saw no sign of any Visitors.
Jack inserted the key. The opening door revealed a balding, middle-aged man wearing heavy spectacles, sitting at a desk.
The four fugitives slipped inside his room, and the door shut behind them.
"Dr. Thorkel," Sabrina said.
The man at the desk turned. All at once, Sabrina sensed there was something wrong. Dr. Thorkel's face looked at her, and yet ...
"I knew you would come here," a rasping voice said, coming from Thorkel's mouth.
Panels opened on either side of them, and four red-clad Visitors sprang out, weapons pointed at them.
"Once a traitor ..." Jack said.
"On the contrary, Mr. Stern." Dr. Thorkel raised a hand and began to peel away his face. A few seconds later Dr. Morrow was revealed. "Dr. Thorkel turned out to be too courageous for his own good. I'm sure such stern stuff will make a delicious meal, if prepared properly."
"Then you've killed him," Sabrina said angrily.
"Crudely put, but accurate."
"You'll pay, you know," John Tiger said. "Help is on the way."
"You'll never get out of this swamp," Marie said with grim satisfaction.
"On the contrary, my dear woman." He flipped a switch on Dr. Thorkel's desk console, and a viewscreen lit up.
"This landing area is behind the inner wall of the experimental combat zone." Visitors were loading three skyfighters with scientific equipment. "Medea has sent a Mother Ship, which should be entering Earth's atmosphere very soon." Dr. Morrow clucked in satisfaction. "Any minute now, in fact. And you, Dr. Fontaine, will be accompanying me on the short journey to that Mother Ship."
"There won't be much room for these boys," Jack observed, nodding at the guards holding weapons on them. "Only a select few get to go, is that it, Dr. Morrow?"
Dr. Morrow's long tongue snaked nervously in and out of his mouth. "We will take as many as possible, and the skyfighters will return for those left behind."
"Those left behind will be dead," Jack said.
"They have the weapons to hold off the attack until the sky-fighters return."
"Bull! There's another attack squadron on the way, led by experienced resistance fighters," John Tiger said. "And they're armed with lasers."
"Nonsense." Morrow's yellow, reptilian eyes glanced at his guards. "Surely you can see what they're doing. Trying to turn you against me."
Jack noted that there were only four guards. If they turned on Dr. Morrow, all well and good, and if they didn't, they still might be confused enough to lose a fight.
One of the guards said something in the alien tongue, and Dr. Morrow responded in kind. His angry response seemed to quell the guards' rebelliousness.
It's now or never, Jack thought.
The guards weren't looking at their prisoners. They were watching the confrontation between their master and their compatriot. The lasers were leveled at the four humans, but it would take an instant for the inattentive aliens to react. Jack dove into the nearest. The Visitor crumpled and collided with the one behind him.
John Tiger sprang into action, delivering a roundhouse punch to the jaw of the third guard.
The remaining guard began to fire wildly. Marie and Sabrina were both on him, and he toppled under their weight. His laser flew from his grasp, clattering on the plastic floor.
A moment later the four guards were disarmed. John held a laser on them while Jack and Marie searched them to make sure they didn't have any other weapons.
"That's enough!" Dr. Morrow hissed. "Stand over there."
Jack spun on his heels to see Sabrina with Dr. Morrow's scaly arm around her throat. His claw held a laser against her head.
"Did you think I was totally without defenses?" he sneered. "You and your friends underestimate me, Mr. Stern."
Jack lowered his laser pistol.
"Shoot him, Jack!" Sabrina cried.
"Go ahead," Dr. Morrow said. "See if you can kill me before I kill her."
"Come on, now," John said. "It's a standoff. Let her go."
"She will die before I let her go," Dr. Morrow rasped. "As that man has just said, it's a standoff. Go, and I will spare her life."
Jack moved a fraction of an inch toward them, and Dr. Morrow jammed the laser against Sabrina's temple. "Go!"
"Do as he says, man," John said. "At least we'll all be alive."
"But you don't understand," Jack said, never taking his eyes off Dr. Morrow and Sabrina. "You don't know what he wants to do to her."
John put his hand on Jack's shoulder. "I lost a brother to this creep," he said. "But I don't want to see this girl die, as much as I'd love to blast him right now."
Jack knew he was right, but he couldn't bear the thought of leaving Sabrina with this monster again.
"I command you to leave!" Dr. Morrow shrieked.
John and Marie gently led Jack to the door. As it slid shut behind them, Jack took one last look into Sabrina's brown eyes, seeing both love and despair in them.
An explosion rocked the corridor. Screams echoed as smoke billowed through the passageways.
"They're here!" Marie shouted joyously. "Our reinforcements are here!"
Chapter 42
An immense, circular shape hovered above the holographed trees. For a moment all combat ceased as everyone, human and Visitor alike, stopped to gape at the awesome spectacle above them. A Mother Ship.
But not for long. The quicksilver sound of laser fire again alternated with the popping of gunshots, the eerie ululation of the sleep ray was punctuated by rocket explosions, and the hum of antigravity disks underscored everything.
The resistance had the compound surrounded. They poured over the mud flat like ants, only to be repulsed by the tractor beam. The swamp buzzed with the sound of hydroplanes and the droning of air boats. From the walls and towers, bright blue death rained down, but the resistance fought on, hour after hour, cheering whenever a sentry was picked off the walls or towers and silently mourning when they lost one of their own.
"Haven't been able to penetrate the walls yet," Ham Tyler shouted into a walkie-talkie. "They're seamless—impossible to tell where the entrances are."
"They can't hold out forever," Mike Donovan's voice crackled. Mike was inside the skyfighter Willie had piloted from Los Angeles. They were waiting for Dr. Morrow to try and make his escape. The shuttle craft was hidden just far enough away from the compound so it couldn't be spotted. That was going to be their final surprise. Julie and Elias were with him and Willie.
Directing the battle, Ham ordered a rocket launcher to fire straight at the center of the wall. The missile shushed across the mud flat, exploded thunderously on impact, and left not a single mark on the gleaming, white surface.
Ham noticed that the disk riders were retreating, floating behind the compound's walls. Maybe he could still nail one or two more.
"Lob one over the top!" he shouted through the din. A rocket was fired, but it exploded a few yards over the towers. Through a pair of binoculars, Ham saw a rippling force field covering the entire compound, distorting the image of the sentries as they fired their lasers down at his people.
A beam hit the gas tank of an air boat. As it blew up, the bodies of its passengers flew through the air. Ham was furious to think there was no way to shoot the sentries now that the force field was up.
"There's gotta be a way to get in there." Ham knew he was grasping at straws, but he had to try. "Maybe that field won't stay up for long—it may take too much power."
"Maybe," Chris said, "and maybe not."
"What else can we do?" Ham turned to the rocket man again, but b
efore he could order another brace to be fired fruitlessly at the wall, something happened.
A vertical line appeared right in the middle of the wall. It was about eight feet high from top to bottom. It opened and there stood Jack Stern, Marie Whitley, and John Tiger, holding off pursuing Visitors with laser pistols.
Stern glanced over his shoulder between shots and waved the resistance fighters on.
"What are you waiting for?" Ham bellowed. "Let's go!"
A flood of resistance fighters swept out from behind barricades and funneled through the open entrance into the compound. The Visitors chasing Jack and the others turned tail and ran as soon as they saw them coming.
Ham and Chris ran to the wall, ducking enemy fire as they went. As he approached Stern, Ham saw that the man was on the verge of collapse. His face was drawn and haggard, his shirt torn open, blood caked on his shoulder.
"You look like hell," Ham said. "Come with me."
"They've got Sabrina," Jack said. "I have to go back for her."
"She won't be in there by the time you ..." Ham didn't have to finish. The whine of skyfighter engines announced the departure of Dr. Morrow and his chosen few survivors.
"Sabrina!" Jack cried as the first skyfighter rose over the white towers.
"We might still be able to catch them," Ham said. "Come on, hurry."
Dodging the laser fire from the walls, they sprinted across the mud flats. Ham was amazed that Jack not only kept up, he actually had to slow his pace and wait for the others. A second skyfighter rose over the compound like an albino vulture.
"This way," Ham said, leading them to a path cut through dense undergrowth. Ahead, they heard the whine of engines cutting in.
They were there in minutes. Suddenly they were in an area where the vegetation was cut back for seventy feet. Ensconced in the secluded clearing was a skyfighter.
A hatch opened in its side, and they all clambered aboard—Jack, Chris, Ham, Marie, and John.
On the viewscreen, the third and last skyfighter rose from the compound.
"Think you can catch it, Donovan?" Ham asked.
"We'll see what we can do," Mike Donovan told him. At the controls was Willie. Elias Taylor stood by, and Julie Parrish sat at one of the big laser cannons. "Welcome aboard," she said.
The shuttle craft lifted off the ground. The moment it cleared the treetops, Willie touched a light on the console and they shot forward so rapidly it took their breath away.
The first two alien-directed skyfighters had turned and rocketed skyward toward the looming Mother Ship. The third was just in the process of turning over the compound when Julie got it in her sights. She fired a broadside and scored a direct hit on the starboard side.
A split second later, the wounded skyfighter shot off over the swamp, pointed away from the Mother Ship.
"I hoped they'd do that," Julie said. "They aren't willing to wait around long enough for us to get off another shot."
Willie piloted the shuttle craft on a direct pursuit course, the swamp racing by beneath them.
"They're hoping to outrun us," Mike Donovan said, "or lose us. But they're wounded, not us."
Their prey eluded them, moving closer to the ground, wending its way dangerously between trees. Now Mike manned the other cannon.
"Grace yourselves," Willie said.
"What?" everyone asked in unison.
"He meant, 'Brace yourselves,'" Mike shouted, but it was too late. They were slammed against the bulkheads as Willie banked the skyfighter hard.
As they veered past the enemy ship, Mike got off a series of shots with the laser cannon.
Like a crimson flower, the flaming explosion opened from inside the wounded skyfighter and grew, layer after flaming layer. Debris was thrown out, spinning and smoking over the swamp, until it splashed sizzling into the water.
"Now lets go after the rest," Elias said.
Willie banked the shuttle craft again, its nose pointed toward the sky. He ran his fingers over the console, and they were hurled upward at a tremendous velocity.
Chapter 43
The Mother Ship was immense, larger than any structure on earth. To see such a machine floating in the sky was awesome enough, but approaching it was even more startling. Jack kept thinking that they were going to dock with it at any second, but the Mother Ship proved to be much farther away— and consequently much larger—than he imagined.
Willie had communicated with it, claiming to be the pilot of the demolished skyfighter and explaining that they had been chased but the enemy vessel had been destroyed in the ensuing dogfight.
"Think they bought it?" Mike asked.
Willie shrugged. "Perhaps."
"They could be leading us on, couldn't they?" Ham said. "Waiting for us to get aboard before they let on they know who we are."
"Could be," Mike agreed.
"Do you think we should turn back?" Willie asked.
Everyone aboard the shuttle craft did a double take.
"Turn back?" Jack said. "Listen, I don't know if it means anything to you, but someone I love is aboard that ship."
Mike and Julie took Jack aside. "He lost somebody he loved," Julie said. "That's one of the reasons he's with us today."
Jack was ashamed. "I'm sorry," he said to Willie. "It's just that ..."
Willie looked sad as he sat at the controls. "I understand, my friend. We must go on."
"There's no turning back now anyway," Mike said. The Mother Ship's tractor beam was drawing them in. Willie no longer had command of the skyfighter.
The last thing Jack saw before they entered the immense docking bay was the coast of Florida, the streets of Miami and Fort Lauderdale far below, the green and yellow squares of farmland to the west melting into the lush green of the Everglades.
And then they were inside the monstrous Mother Ship. The shuttle craft settled to the floor the last in a neat row of alien vessels.
"Put these on," Mike said, watching the technicians through the viewscreen. He handed them swatches of red material. When unfolded, they turned out to be Visitor uniforms. Billed caps and dark glasses completed their disguises.
"The skyfighter next door just unloaded a few lizards," Chris said. "Your girlfriend wasn't with them."
"She must have been on the first one," Ham said. "She could be anywhere on this big mother by now."
"Find Morrow," Jack said, "and you'll find Sabrina. Let's go for it."
"Take it easy," Mike said. "I've been aboard these ships before. We'll never find anybody if we come out blasting. Just climb out and act like you belong here. Even though you won't know where you're going, act like you do. Once we get into the ship's infrastructure, we can play duck and run, but here we're stationary targets. Got it?"
Jack liked this guy. There was a tough, no-nonsense air about him that inspired confidence. Their chances were slim, but if anyone could pull it off, it was this group.
"All right," Jack said, seeing the last of the Visitors leave the skyfighter while the workers readied themselves to refuel the vessel they were in. "Let's go."
The hatch swung open and Willie hopped out first. Jack handed him a piece of equipment as calmly as possible and followed. Then came Marie, John, Ham, Julie, Elias, and Chris. When they were all on the landing bay floor, Mike swung his lithe body out of the hatch and walked behind them.
The Visitor techs handled huge hoses, steam spraying from their nozzles, as they went to work. None of them paid much attention to the group making its way to the nearest exit. They were, as far as the technicians were concerned, just the survivors of a failed mission on Earth.
Mike glanced from side to side as inconspicuously as he could. He didn't see a single green face. Everyone was wearing human makeup, perhaps in anticipation of some covert operation on the planet's surface.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he faced a Visitor who spoke to him in the alien language. Mike felt a tight knot of fear rise in his guts. He had no idea what this lizard was saying,
and his ignorance was going to become obvious in a moment.
The Visitor repeated his rasping question. Desperate, Mike pointed to his mouth and made dumb noises, making his moans and groans as scratchy as his throat could bear.
Willie stepped in, speaking quietly to the curious alien. He then grabbed Mike's elbow and led him away.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Willie said, "He was asking after a friend who was a sentry at the compound."
"What did you tell him?"
"That his friend was left behind."
"Do you think it worked?" Mike asked.
"I don't know," Willie replied. "Keep walking."
Mike felt the tech's eyes boring into his back. "He's still watching us, isn't he?"
"Yes, he—"
A bloodcurdling shout interrupted Willie's answer. Jack looked back to see the tech pointing at them, still shouting. Visitors were dropping hoses and staring at them.
"Run!" Mike yelled.
They bolted for the exit, footsteps clattering behind them and the susurrating sound of laser fire over their heads.
Chapter 44
Jack spun and pulled out his laser pistol. He saw Mike and Willie firing at the oncoming horde of techs, barely slowing them down even when bodies rolled in front of them.
"Let's get out of here!" Ham bellowed from inside the passageway. Elias and the others were right behind him.
They sprinted to the nearest adjoining corridor and turned left. At the next juncture, they made a right, then another left. Mike hoped to lose the techs in the maze of passageways, at least for the moment. The only chance they had was to make it to the heart of the ship, the command center, before the entire crew was alerted to their presence.
"We've got to split up!" he shouted. If they could confuse those pursuing them, even for a little while, he might just get to the command center. Otherwise, the humans were nothing but rats in a trap. It was up to Mike to do the job; he was the only one who could find the command center quickly enough.
He darted down a narrow passageway. Two Visitors were running toward him. He shot them down before they had a chance to level their lasers at him.
