Redline the Stars sq-5

by Andre Norton

  Someone near her laughed. "That kindergarten! Are they walking two by two with their fingers on their lips?"

  She glared frigidly in the direction of the speaker, whom she could not actually identify. "This is a real evacuation, not a drill for which he planned well in advance. What in all the hells do you think it's doing to his business opera- dons? People like Mr. Macgregory don't throw that Volume of credits away unless they believe there's a damn good reason for doing so. — He called it right on target the last time he gave a similar order if I heard the story correctly." Her audience greeted that with silence. Many looked uncomfortably over their shoulders. The storm to which she referred was recent enough history to still be sharp in the memories of all of them.

  Miceal's eyes glittered coldly. Most of the watchers were inclined to move, but it would require some effort to push their way back, to reverse the general pressure of the crowd, and they were not sufficiently concerned to make the start.

  Suddenly, he caught hold of the fire gun and whipped it

  around, depressing the nozzle as he did so. The powerful stream hit the pavement at the feet of the spectators with the force of a sledge, and those nearest it leapt back, cursing, as splintered pieces flew up in every direction.

  "Get moving, now, or by all the Federation's gods, I'll give you a blast of this across the shins. If you're going to stay here and die, you might as well have a good excuse for doing it. I'm prepared to accommodate you and supply it."

  The nearer fireman started to shove him aside, but the other, who had just closed their transceiver, intervened.

  "Let him be. They're right." His voice dropped. "Except if the Mans blows, it won't be a small, contained blast affecting only the ship and this dock. It'll take out just about the whole Cup and maybe a great deal more besides."

  His voice rose again as he took the mike from Rael. "All right, folks, move along. Leave the Cup area entirely. We've just been informed that there is still some danger of a detonation. If one occurs, we'll have to be able to get medical help in quickly for any of our people who're hurt. —

  Get going, now. You're blocking ground traffic and making it hard to bring in anything by air."

  The onlookers muttered but slowly began to disperse. By now, most of them were upset enough by the talk of explosions to be grateful for the excuse to leave the threatened

  area without having to appear panicked themselves.

  "Quick thinking," the fireman told the two spacers. He shuddered. "It's almost over, but I wouldn't have been very happy working here all this time had I known what was actually shadowing us." He eyed the retreating civilians. "You two had best join them," he added sternly.

  "That's our intention," the Captain assured him as he slipped over the side of the vehicle and lightly dropped to the ground. He gave his hand to steady Cofort while she followed suit.

  With much of the pressure of the throng easing up around them, they experienced little difficulty in working their way back to their machine.

  Rael opened the door but paused beside it. Her eyes were dark, troubled. "If something goes wrong, they'll be needing Medics."

  "Only live'ones. — Move!"

  She wasted no more time but sprang into the flier even as Jellico himself did.

  The vehicle rose until it was a couple of feet above the heads of the pedestrians and started toward one of the narrow side streets leading into the open dock area.

  "Wouldn't we make better time higher up?" the Medic asked.

  "We'd also fall a heck of a lot farther if we got thrown down by a blast concussion."

  Rael made no comment. She fixed her attention on the street along which they were traveling.

  All the structures lining it appeared to be old. They had been constructed of Canuchean stone rather than the metals and synthetics of a later stage, more prosperous colony, and all of them obviously had been put up at the same time from a single set of plans. One was the image of all the others.

  Each of the buildings had an underground story, or maybe several, perhaps devoted to storage or deliveries. At least, the entrance was invariably a broad, steeply sloping ramp leading into an attractively arched, covered loading dock.

  To Cofort's surprise, Miceal did not turn onto the avenue when they reached it. "Why are we sticking to the back roads?" she asked curiously, knowing there was probably an excellent reason for taking the slower, more irregular route.

  "Maybe for no purpose," he responded grimly. "I hope we won't have to find out." His mouth compressed into a hard line. "I should be sent to the Lunar mines for criminal neglect. As soon as we reach the Queen, give your friend Colonel Cohn another call and have her order the Regina Man's towed out to sea for the final cleanup. There would be no danger to the city now if I'd thought of it sooner."

  The woman frowned. "Neither did I. Power down, will you. We couldn't work out everything. We're just Free Traders, not a pair of professional disaster planners."

  She glanced up at him, mischief suddenly lighting her eyes as she laughed softly. "You'd make one fine tyrant, Captain Jellico," she told him. "That was a masterful stroke with the fire gun."

  "One needs a variety of abilities in Trade . . ."

  Whatever else he might have said was silenced as light avoid the chance of chain-reaction disaster but still close enough to offer a comforting sense of community. Most of their crews were also assembled beside their vessels, staring intently eastward.

  "I could try to talk those port guys into bringing a flier out to us," Rip ventured. "They're probably not so mad that they wouldn't do it for a share of the news. I could fly over the city ... "

  "You'll keep your scrambled-circuited fins planeted where they are!"

  Shannon was not the only one to stare at Alt. The Engineer-apprentice gripped himself. He resumed his normal casual manner, but the deadly serious note did not leave his voice. "You'd be looking for a quick ride on Sanford Jones's comet, my boy. I saw fighters, big ones, blown out of the sky by the concussion of a major blast, never mind one of those little civilian bubbles. I wouldn't want to be in the air in one of them even this far out, much less hovering over Canuche Town, if that accursed ship blows."

  "Is the Queen safe?" Jasper asked in concern. "And these others who followed us?"

  "Out here, aye." It was Johan Stotz who answered for his

  apprentice. He and the Cargo-Master had just come out of the ship to join them. "Van and I've been running a series of possibility scenarios on the computer. We're well away from triple the blast we could expect even if two or more freighters went up, and shrapnel definitely won't reach us, which was our biggest danger at the spaceport."

  "That's over four miles from the coast, closer to five, in fact!" exclaimed Weeks.

  "Not an impossible distance for a big explosion," Kamil said tensely. "It wouldn't take much. All you'd need is for a single piece of red-hot metal to pierce the liquid fuel reservoirs and none of us would have anything more to worry about, provided we'd led virtuous lives." He turned to his chief. "A fire storm could travel this far. So could gas."

  "That's why Jellico insisted that we go south as well as inland. We're not in easy line with the city, and the winds're blowing toward it, not us. They're also augmented by the thermal breeze as long as the daylight and heat hold."

  Thorson looked eastward again, then back to his shipmates as an idea came to him. "Could we try to focus the near-space viewer on the town?"

  "Probably!" Tang agreed eagerly. "Devices designed for use in space don't work perfectly in an atmosphere, and we'll have to play with the magnification, but we should be able to get something. It'll be better than nothing, at any rate."

  The Solar Queen's bridge was even smaller than her mess, but none of them grumbled about the lack of space as they gathered around the big screen while their Com-Tech adjusted one after the other of the controls directing its operation.

  Gradually, fhe image of Canuche Town appeared before them, at first hazy to the poi
nt of uselessness, then as clear as if they were spying on it through impossibly powerful but otherwise standard distance lenses. Deftly, Ya depressed the focus until it rested right on the eastern horizon.

  "We can't see the docks," Karl Kosti said, voicing the disappointment of all.

  "Hardly," Tang told him. "The whole seaport area is on a significantly lower level than the rest of the city. The viewer can't penetrate solid rock or bend around it. We'll know it if that ship explodes, but we won't be able to observe the blast itself or its effects on its immediate, environs. — Sands of Mars! Look at all those people! There are thousands of them, and they all seem to be heading this way."

  "Macgregory's staff and their families probably," Van Rycke deduced. "He's ordered evacuations before. The Captain or Rael will have warned him, too."

  "I could check, see if there's something coming over the civilian waves or if the Patrol's broadcasting anything on the public channels ... "

  Ya shook his head even as he finished speaking. It would not be well to have any auditory equipment actively receiving if a major explosion occurred. As an added precaution, he increased light and radiation screening on the visual receptors.

  For a few minutes, he kept the lines of moving people on the screen, confirming that they were indeed making for the hardpan, then switched back to scanning the serene infinity of roof-fringed sky on the horizon.

  More minutes went by. The tranquility of the unchanging scene began to draw some of the tension out of the spacers.

  A burst of light ruptured the field of blue. A vast sound followed it, loud and sharp even at this remove.

  As the first great flash of brilliance faded, a column of brown smoke clawed its way some six hundred feet into the air. Several dark specks seemed to balance for a moment on it, then fell back into it and plummeted to the concealed ground.

  "Her hatches," Dane heard someone, Shannon maybe, say.

  Soon, in nearly the same instant, more debris shot into view, some of it dark, a lot glowing red. Much of what they saw was clearly discernible, stark proof of the sizes involved. Thorson gaped at it. That stuff was not just big. It was enormous, great pieces of what had moments before been the Regina Marts.

  One sight, rather pretty in itself, puzzled him, as it did most of his comrades. Burning spheres accompanied by equally brilliant sparks and streamers filled one portion of the sky, held there a fraction second, and dispersed as would a burst of demoniac fireworks.

  The Cargo-Master again supplied the explanation.

  "Rope. The Man's was shipping a load of it. The balls are aflame and are casting off fragments as they burn. — The Spirit of Space help the places where they land. They'll be more than hot enough to torch anything flammable that they touch."

  Van Rycke's grim prediction was not long in finding fulfillment as explosion after explosion followed that first mighty detonation. They did not have to actually see the stricken area to know what was happening, not with computer-generated possibility and probability scenarios to augment their own knowledge and imagination.

  Many buildings collapsing under the awesome force of the blast wave took fire directly from the explosion's heat as particularly volatile contents ignited or detonated. Others began to burn when flaming or blazing-hot shrapnel slammed into the rubble that was all that remained of many or through roof, walls, or splintered windows of those still partly standing, starting smaller fires that soon reached vulnerable materials. The exposed fuel tanks were almost immediate casualties, breaking and falling at once when the blast's fist slammed into them or crumbling and exploding when struck by flying material that made them out as accurately as would missiles shot by a sentient foe. Escaping chemicals, alone or in bastard combinations, released deadly gases. Others created corrosive pools or added still more fuel to the hellish caldron the seaport area had become.

  The topography of the region magnified the effects of the already awesome disaster. In dooming its own, however, it to a great extent shielded the rest of Canuche Town as the high, sharp slopes deflected much of the force of the explosion back down on the already shattered communities below and caught the bulk of the debris it had set in deadly flight.

  Pieces thrown high enough did get through, bringing fire, destruction, and terror wherever they came to ground. Jan, who was senior officer in Jellico's absence, at last turned his back to the screen, unconsciously straightening his powerful shoulders as he did so. "There may be some new fires or an odd blast or two, but I'd say the worst's over. Those people need all the help they can get and need it fast if a lot more aren't going to die who should make it.

  — Steen, Johan, Tang, stay with the Queen. Keep her ready to lift fast again if you must, though I doubt that'll be necessary now, and hold the transceiver open. The rest of us'll see if we can't make ourselves useful."

  The Canuchean refugees had set up their camp, a small city in itself, a good half mile north of the starship's emergency berth.

  The spacers found little confusion there, and Dane Thor- son had not been long within its bounds before he felt a fierce pride in these people.

  He was seeing the spirit that had carried Terra's offspring to the stars and won them their place there, on planet after planet where survival itself should have been inconceivable. The refugees had a headstart in that everything was well ordered thanks to Adroo Macgregory's preparations, the training he had insisted upon giving his people, who, with their households, made up the vast majority of those currently assembled here. Those who had actually endured the blast itself had not yet begun to arrive in number. There was grief and fear, but the Canucheans were responding with the determination to fight, not permitting themselves to sink into despair. The very young and those otherwise unable to give aid were gathered together in the keeping of appointed caregivers. The rest were already heading back to their stricken city and seaport.

  The Stellar Patrol was visibly active. Rael's warning had reached them in time. They, too, along with the city's police and emergency services whom they, in turn, had alerted, had evacuated and gotten far enough out that they now had personnel and gear to send back in.

  The Queen's crew found Ursula Cohn at a makeshift command post seemingly surrounded by communications equipment and an ever-changing sea of grim-faced men and women, civilians and members of the various services alike, all either bringing reports to her or awaiting her orders.

  Her strained eyes swept those around her. They stopped when they came to rest on Van Rycke and Thorson. "You people probably gave this town its life. You've certainly cut down on the amount of dying. Help's already on the way from communities all up and down the coast. By nightfall, we'll have mostly everything we'll need in terms of supplies, equipment, and manpower."

  "By nightfall, a lot of people alive right now are going to be dead if they're left where they are that long," the Cargo- Master stated flatly. "We're here to lend a hand. The rest of the Spacers'11 probably be following pretty close on our heels."

  "We can use you." Her expression clouded. "Any word from your Captain or Doctor Cofort?"

  "No."

  "We've commandeered every functional flier and transport we can find. I'm giving you and your crew priority status behind my people and medical personnel. I can't send you all back into the town on one vehicle, but every one of you'll be at work within half an hour."

  "That's all we want."

  "That transport over there is refueling for another trip in. You and Mr. Thorson can go with it."

  "We appreciate that, Colonel. Thanks."

  The two Free Traders hastened to claim their promised places, squeezing in so that as many others as possible would be able to board.

  Dane kept his eyes lowered, not wanting to meet those

  of his chief. Van Rycke and Jellico went far back as a team,

  and they were a close one . . .

  Suddenly, another thought pierced him. Poor Queex!

  Only two people in all the ultrasystem had loved him, and he h
ad lost them both in one black instant of destruction.

  23

  Miceal turned his Hier perpendicular to its former course, threw it into hover, and flipped it onto its side so that its undercarriage faced the sea and the blow that was to come.

  Even as the invisible fist of energy slammed into the machine, he leapt from it, yanking Cofort after him as he sprang.

  The vehicle gave one jerk, as if it had truly been struck by a massive solid object, but the man was only dimly aware of that or of the way in which it was hurled against the building beside them. The flier had given them a fraction-second of shelter, and by launching themselves into motion, traveling with the blast wave instead of meeting it with their bodies in the full grip of inertia, they had won a measure of freedom of action. It would not last long, but if they moved fast and luck was with them, they might improve their chances of surviving reasonably intact—if his reasoning was in any way correct.

  Jellico stumbled as he struck the pavement but managed to keep his feet. Shoving the woman before him, he dove into the nearest of the dark, refuse-littered entrances to the buildings' subterranean levels and slammed her to the

  ground.

  Rael gave a sharp cry as she landed hard against a broken stone block and went limp.

  The Captain knew she was hurt but could "not pause to attend to her. They were too far in, and their time was almost gone despite his having moved almost instantaneously in response to the explosion's assault. Desperately, he jerked her inert body out toward the light, positioning them directly beneath the arch, close to but not actually leaning against the seaward wall.

  Only a superhuman effort of will enabled him to do that much. The world around them was chaos, an insane whirl of sound, flying, crushing debris, and fire. The Trader Captain felt as if he were being pummeled by a crew of Malkites specifically trained to reduce a human body to dismembered pulp.

  He set himself to endure. They were nearly three long blocks from the site of the explosion, far enough to blunt some of its initial force, and their hastily claimed hiding place provided some shelter. This much they could survive if fortune did not go back on them.