‘Er, here, wouldn’t you like this chair?’ asked Alfri, and rose in haste.
‘No, thanks. I’m comfortable. Do sit. While we wait, Iern and I can describe the meeting to you, if you want.’
Alfri resumed his seat. ‘Probably no need as far as I am concerned,’ he said moodily. ‘I can guess. In fact, I volunteered for this assignment today, when I could have gone.’
‘Hm-m. And you’d been taking for granted we had killer nukes and would use them if hard pressed. What are you, precognitive?’
‘No. In my leisure, a student of history. My people tend to be. They’ve endured so much of it.’
‘Your people?’
‘Yesterday evening Rabbi Kemmer went about lamenting. He called for atonement, he recited Kaddish for the slain Mong. Others of us, like me, remembered Joshua; and the Captivity; the Maccabees; and the destruction of the Temple; the Khazars; and the Holocaust; Ben-Gurion; and – It went on, Miz Birken, it went on in my mind. This is in the nature of things. The trick is to survive. In spirit still more than body.’
‘Then you’re glad we have the weapons?’
‘Of course not. The point is that we do, and Orion is saved.’ Alfri winced. ‘As for whether or not we should have built and used them –I’m weak and selfish enough to thank God that that wasn’t my decision to make.’
Torel put the telephone in its cradle. ‘I can’t raise Dr. Abron either place,’ he said. ‘Probably the, uh, rally hasn’t let out. Do you want to wait, or what?’
Iern glanced at a clock on the wall. In … seventeen minutes Wairoa should open the portal. ‘We may as well wait,’ he replied.
Alfri beamed. ‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘At a time like this, it’ll be especially nice to have such good company.’
– ‘Oh, yes, the Domain is really something,’ Ronica declared. ‘I do recommend you visit it yourselves if you ever can. Not just monuments and quaint folkways, either. Some mighty jolly places. That dancing song, Iern, how’s it go?’ Her voice lilted Francey to a melody she probably improvised: ‘The alarm will be startling. If we’re ready, close to them, I think we can overcome. Try for a grip from behind and get their pistols.’
The Clansman forced a smile. ‘You know I can’t carry a tune in a wheelbarrow,’he said. ‘But if you’ll endure my croaking – You take the younger man, I the older. Be sure that neither can reach a rifle.’
Unspoken was the likely fate of Wairoa.
Alfri winced. ‘You’re right, sir,’ he agreed. ‘You can’t.’
‘The dance is easy to learn, and fun.’ Rising, Ronica took his hand. ‘C’mon, I’ll show you.’
‘Some fellows have all the luck,’ Torel grumbled.
‘Oh, I’ll teach you next,’ she promised. ‘Meanwhile stand aside and watch. Over there is a good vantage point.’ She indicated the opposite side of the corridor.
‘We’re not supposed to leave –’
‘Pooh! Scat.’ She leaned above the table and pulled lightly on what was left of his hair. With a sheepish grin, he got up and ambled off as directed. Iern accompanied him. Ronica guided Alfri to the middle of the floor.
‘Have a care, sir,’ he called to Iern. ‘I’m falling in love with your lady.’
Torel gave the flyer a sidewise look. ‘You’re pretty glum, yourself,’ he remarked. ‘And tense.’
‘It’s hard not to be,’ Iern said. ‘I’m glad Ronica can snatch a little enjoyment out of this mess.’
One minute.… I used to think she had no acting talent. Will she tease me if I mention it, tell me to beware?…
Ronica executed a few kicks. ‘La, la, la, la,’she warbled. ‘Like that. Do you see? Now we start back to back.’
‘Shucks, I’d rather be seeing you,’ Alfri laughed.
She fluttered her lashes. ‘The second measure is more interesting. Okay, dosey-do.’ She slipped behind him. ‘La, la, la.’
Time!
‘La, la, la, kick,’ she sang. ‘Oops, you got my ankle there. No harm done. Let’s take it over.’
Well, exact synchrony wasn’t possible. Was it? Or has something gone awry?
‘La, la-’
The horn sounded.
It was a deep, brazen roar, blasting out of a loudspeaker – out of loudspeakers placed everywhere – ringing, echoing, snarling down the corridors under the mountain, a warning, a call to battle, Orion shall rise!
Torel lurched, planted his legs wide, and stood dumbfounded. He would only remain so for a second. Iern cast himself at the blocky form. He might have delivered a deadly blow, but had decided he couldn’t. Torel was a decent man, a husband and father. Iern attacked him at his back. His right arm threw a lock on both of his opponent’s. His left hand darted to unsnap the holster.
Torel bellowed. Bull-strong, he wrenched loose and went for the sidearm himself. Iern got him again, but in a grip that immobilized the pilot too. They stamped and swayed about. The trumpet clamored around them.
Ronica’s voice cut through the noise. ‘Hold! Not a move. You’re covered.’
She had used the instant of Alfri’s paralysis to release and snatch his weapon and skip beyond his clutch, back toward the table where the rifles were. He stood as if she had clubbed him. ‘Stop that, Torel,’ she yelled. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
The older man sagged. Slowly, he raised his hands. Iern took the pistol and went to join Ronica.
‘Yes, this is a hijack,’ she said. ‘Please don’t make us shoot you. We’d try not to kill, but we might not succeed.’
‘Ronica,’ Alfrigasped. ‘No, no, not you, no.’
‘Yes. Go ahead, run off and tell. But be sure to remind ’em that anybody who comes after us will die. We’d rather take time to prepare properly for liftoff, but if the door cracks, we’ll assume there’s a party headed in equipped to stop us, like by shooting a rocket into the drive assembly, and we’ll launch on the spot. They’ll get the blast right in their faces, and the radiation will spew out here. You savvy?’
‘I do,’ Torel groaned, ‘yeh, I do, you –’ The rest was anguished obscenity.
‘Go!’ Iern interrupted, and fired a shot for emphasis. The men turned and ran. Twice Alfri cast glances back over his shoulder.
Iern yanked the telephone cord free. Ronica took both rifles. They sped to the inner door. He pulled the switch to Open 5; the valve would close itself after five minutes. It retracted with torturer slowness.
‘I hope,’ Ronica said, almost too faintly to hear through the alarm, ‘I hope … nobody … thinks to cut off power to this section. The door couldn’t shut, the catch pit couldn’t work, the contamination would be horrible.’
‘They should have thought of that before they fired on the Mong,’ Iern answered.
The steel mass had withdrawn to a point where he could slip past. Ronica followed.
Tail-heavy as she was, the ship required no support. Scaffolding for workers was gone. What replaced it was the access frame, its semicircular lattice movable on wheels and adjustable by motors to make any part of the hull reachable. Recollection jarred Iern: once the crew was aboard, that structure was supposed to be dismantled and removed before liftoff. What damage would its flying fragments wreak, white-hot or molten or vaporized, neutron-blasted into filthy new isotopes? Plik’s Angley drawled within him: Too bloody bad.
He and Ronica stepped onto a platform. He thumbed a switch on a post and the gangway slid forward along its runners.
The spearhead nose of the ship loomed before him. Light was everywhere, a candent blaze, cold as the air that eddied over his sweat-drenched garments. He could see nothing beyond. In this muffling place the alarm sounded remote, like a trumpeter blowing defiance on the rampart of the world.
The boarding platform stopped a few centimeters short of the crew entry lock. That was closed, but a key hung on the post. Iern brought it against the center of the circular valve and twisted its head. Magnetic fields intermeshed; a servomotor started; outer and inner valves swung aside. An identi
cal device was within.
Iern put a hand on Ronica’s hip, wondering if he would ever embrace it again as it deserved to be embraced, and urged her to the airlock chamber. She hefted the firearms she carried, seemed ready to throw them away, then kept them. Respect for the craftsmanship, he thought. He gave her the pistol he had carried. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but do secure them.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll take the first engineer’s station.’
‘Not necessary when we’re just bound straight up. I’d rather have you beside me.’
She passed her lips over his and crawled through. He came after. Crouched in the narrow space, he reached across to the control switch on the frame and set it for retraction. The valves he made fast behind him.
The pilots’ cabin was forward of the space he entered, which held seats for passengers – scientists, engineers, whose day I am certainly spoiling, he thought. He climbed the rungs provided for vertical position and weightlessness, into the compartment and the left-hand seat. Lying on his back, knees above head, he buckled himself to thick-padded resilience. The smell of the leather brought memories alive, Grandfather Mael’s easy chair, where he sat while he told a little boy stories of elves who lived in the dolmens and came forth at dusk to dance by the light of Ileduciel.… Through the window before him Iern looked onward and onward, the length of a monstrous tunnel, but in the glare around him he could not be sure whether he saw any sky at the end.
Enough. He brought attention and fingers to the many-studded intricacy of the pilot board. Click, a bulb glowed green, a needle moved on a dial, click, a fan whirred and a breeze touched his cheeks, click, a computer display sprang onto a screen, click –
Has this delay doomed you, Wairoa? I’m sorry, it’s not rational of me, I don’t wish it, but somehow that would atone for the killing – the double killing – and put an end to sorrow.
Well, more likely than not we’re doomed too, my love and I. No space suits aboard; those are individually made, and the flyers hadn’t been named before we did it ourselves. Untried ship; the robot craft was different in many ways. No ground control to help; no real crew; no emergency ejection system; no landing field for which I’ve practiced on the simulator, unless we want an executioner waiting for us to debark – Ronica, Ronica! Iern beat his fist on the chair arm. Designed to cushion acceleration, it yielded maddeningly. After a short while, he swallowed hard and got back to work.
Having taken care of various duties aft, she slipped in and established herself. ‘Keep watch for intruders,’ he said.
‘I’m not a total butterbrain,’ she snapped.
Stricken, he stopped his preparations again to turn his head her way. ‘Forgive me,’ he blurted. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘Of course you didn’t, and I shouldn’t’ve reacted. I’m on edge too.’ She laughed. ‘Damn the safety factors! We can’t strain across the gap between us for a kiss, can we?’
‘I’m amazed at you. If I’m in turmoil, you must be in agony.’
‘Well, I was, sort of, until … I decided. But now we’re doing what’s right, or what’s least wrong, anyway. And laying our own lives on the line. And Iern, Iern, we’re going out! Into space!’
He couldn’t help it. She kindled something of that joy in him, regardless of everything. He would not dwell on the fact that his purpose was to keep Orion from truly rising, ever.
5
‘– avenge the wrongs we have suffered –’
The horn roared.
Mikli’s harangue broke For seconds he poised like a cat. A surge passed over the crowd, with a sound as of breaking waves and screaming gulls.
Mikli’s lips peeled back from his teeth. ‘Oh, oh,’ he muttered. ‘School’s out.’ He addressed the microphone again. His voice boomed into the clamor: ‘That’s the launch alarm. Take it easy. We’ve got trouble. Probably nothing we can’t handle, we Norrmen, if we keep our wits about us. Stay put,’ He lifted his arms and the half-panicky confusion died away. ‘All security personnel present, leave immediately and report to your regular duty stations. Equip yourselves and stand by for orders. The rest of you remain seated until your guardspeople are out. After that, make an orderly exit and go to your quarters.’
Dreng had mounted the stage. Terror writhed over the heavy countenance, not for his own safety. ‘Talk to ’em, Eygar,’ Miklisaid. ‘Keep ’em from stampeding. I’ll rescue your precious ship.’ Into the microphone: ‘Be of stout heart, Norrfolk. I’m on my way!’
He hurried off, along the aisle and through the door. Some cheered him. The sound was lost in the trumpet call.
When out of sight, he ceased his fast but confident walk and pelted down the hall, up a stair, down the hall above to his office. The subordinate manning it stood pistol in hand. She snapped the barrel aloft in salute. He waved merrily. ‘Any information?’ he asked as he passed by.
‘No, sir. Not yet.’ Boots pounded in the corridor, men shouted, echoes flew, the horn raged.
Mikli laughed. ‘That makes this all the more fun, eh?’ he said from the inner office.
At his desk, he snatched the telephone and began calling. ‘Level One, okay, guards haven’t noticed anything except the alarm,’ he announced while he punched for the second entry. ‘Level Two, same.… Level Three – hello, hello – a dead line, seems. And that’s the crew port.… Level Four, okay, no disturbance.… Level Five – Hello, hello, hello – it rings, but nobody answers –and that is Gate Control.’ He grinned. ‘Uh-huh. We’ve got us a case of the galloping piracies.’
The duty officer’s instrument shrilled. She listened for a few seconds. ‘Yes, I’ll switch you over,’ she said. Her tone trembled: ‘Sir, it’s a man from the Level Three post.’
Mikli listened. ‘A-a-a-ah,’ he breathed. ‘Very well, Hos, you and Levayn report to your command center, draw new weapons, and wait for orders with the rest of your team. No time now to worry about whether you were negligent. Move!’ He put the phone down. ‘Shaira, dear,’ he called to the outer office, ‘check the whereabouts of Wairoa Haakonu.’
‘Why, he should be confined, sir, shouldn’t he? But –’ A throttled shriek. ‘He isn’t! He’s at Gate Control!’
Mikli nodded. ‘Figures.’ He consulted his watch. ‘Ferlay and the Birken slut must be snugging themselves into the ship at this moment,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘Normal countdown would be an hour. They can easily shave off most of that – or all of it, if we try to force an entry and they sec nothing to lose by blasting off at once. But they’ll prefer going through at least the basic checkouts and warmups. Twenty minutes, perhaps.’ He raised his voice anew. ‘Shaira, call security HQ and have a squad equipped with a couple of rocket guns proceed to Level Five, pronto. If the door is shut, which it doubtless is, they’re to blow it down, and get in and shunt that valve back in place before the ship rises. On the double!’
Once more he lifted his phone, and punched a special number. ‘Battleship Sea Serpent, Commander Scarp on the bridge, speaking,’ he heard.
‘Captain Karst,’ Mikli snapped. ‘Listen well. Code Volcano. D’you read me?’
‘Yes, sir. Absolute priority.’
‘Get up steam and man battle stations. Warn personnel not to look west. It’s possible there’ll be several flashes in that direction which could blind them – yes, they’d better not be exposed without full clothing, gloves, and face masks.’
‘What?’ The appalled man mastered himself. ‘Have civilians been alerted?’
‘Yes, ever since this pig got out of its poke, the alarm has included a radio ‘cast, and a receiver is always open in Kenai. They’ll be in bed with the blankets pulled over them. I thought everybody knew that.’ Mikli said impatiently. ‘If our spacecraft does go up, you put out to sea. Your primary mission will be to destroy the Maurai aircraft carriers, so they can’t lay precision bombing on us after they’ve taken a sight. You will do that at all costs. If thereafter you can inflict further damage, why, that’s fine; but try to disengage a
nd return here while you still have some missiles in reserve against whatever they may try next. Do you understand? Repeat.’
When the navy man had obeyed, his own words shaken, Mikli said, ‘Have fun,’ lowered the phone, and left his chair. For a moment his vision lingered on the mammoth tusks. ‘I hope you did in your day, old chap,’ he murmured, ‘and that I can leave as impressive a memento behind me.’ He stroked the smooth onyx of his penholder, turned, and walked out.
‘Where are you going, sir?’ his subordinate inquired.
Mikli chuckled amidst the trumpeting. ‘Why, to Level Five. You didn’t imagine I’d miss such an entertainment, did you, love?’ He patted her head, laughed at her annoyance, and hastened off.
An officer stopped him, wanting permission to lead a breakthrough at Level Three. Mikli lost several minutes; the request must be refused so emphatically that the attempt would not be made regardless. Finally an elevator bore him to the corridor just below his objective.
There the racket of the horn was loud enough to shiver his jaws. A dozen armed men stood at the ladder. One bore a launch tube across his shoulders, two more each carried four of the small solid-fuel rockets with explosive warheads which the device projected, the rest were conventionally outfitted. The entire squad was in disarray; men looked grim or slouched in despair; they reeked of fear; the pain that showed upon them was not only in their eardrums.
Mikli dashed to meet them. ‘What in hell’s shitpits is the matter with you?’ he yelled. ‘And I ordered two rocketeers.’
The squad leader saluted. ‘Sir,’ he answered against the noise, ‘the second man is dead, along with four others. There’s a rifleman defending, and he’s murderous. Whoever raises his head out of the shaft gets a slug straight through it. No time to deploy the weapon.’ He gulped. ‘And, uh, sir, you know this’s a suicide task, don’t you? The armor on that door ’ull throw chunks back – cut the rocketeer to pieces.’
Mikli glared from face to face. ‘A man should be proud to die that Orion may rise,’ he stated.
‘Orion Two will rise any minute,’ whimpered another. ‘Without the door, whoever’s up there won’t live to tell about it. Even down here –’
Orion Shall Rise Page 51
