Smoke and dust poured into the corridor from the doorway leading through to the club’s main lounge. It sounded as if the place was being demolished. Forgetting about what might have happened to the hour or more of lost time, Hunt and Danchekker hurried with Murray back to the rear exit that the others had taken, which was the one by which they had entered on their way from the tower elevator. Fendro, the club manager, caught up with them as they began crossing the gallery up the stairs outside.
As the four of them approached the opening into the hall where the elevators were situated, they saw Gina and Nixie with Keshen, the engineer, hanging back around a corner. Shouting and the sounds of shots came from ahead. Hunt drew to a halt and peered past into the hall. One of the elevator doors was open, with several khena inside, exchanging fire with some police who were taking cover in a corridor opening in from the far side. One of the Ichena had fallen and was preventing the door from closing. To try crossing the open floor was out of the question.
Fendro yelled something at Murray and went back along the gallery, gesturing. “He says there’s another elevator that way,” Murray told the others. “Service shaft or something. Come on.” He waved Nixie and Gina on ahead, then followed with Danchekker and Keshen. Hunt waited a few seconds longer to check the situation in the hall. Somebody inside the elevator showed himself long enough to heave the body out onto the floor, was hit himself and hauled back inside by one of the others, and then the door closed. Hunt turned and ran after Keshen’s retreating figure.
The rest of the group was waiting for him outside an elevator in a narrow side passage. The car arrived just as he did, and they all crowded in. Fendro spoke an order in Jevlenese, and they began ascending. Danchekker was flushed and panting, Hunt could see as he leaned against the rear wall of the car to get his own breath back. Gina was charged up with adrenaline and ready for anything. Murray was wearing a resigned, why-is-life-always-doing-something-like-this-to-me? look. Nixie seemed unperturbed and to be taking things calmly.
“It looks like maybe Scirio miscalculated,” Murray said. “I guess his pals are a bit more upset than he thought.”
“He was backing what looked like the winning side. I think he’s upset,” Hunt replied.
“I take it that our communication with VISAR is once again terminated for the foreseeable future,” Danchekker managed between puffs and wheezes. “Most unfortunate.”
“Is there any chance we could get back in there when things cool down?” Hunt asked Murray. Murray translated to Keshen. Keshen answered, then Fendro added something else and waved a hand, shaking his head.
“It doesn’t sound as if there’s a lot of point,” Murray said. “Seems like the hardware back there isn’t much use for anything except growing petunias in.”
Gina looked perplexedly at Hunt and Danchekker. “I’m not sure I understand what’s happened,” she said. “Are there other versions of us still in the Entoverse-still functioning? Or did they disappear when the connection was cut? Or did we ever get there at all? I’m confused.”
“I’m not sure I understand it either,” Hunt told her.
Fendro muttered something that sounded fatalistic and turned his eyes momentarily upward.
“What was that?” Hunt asked.
“He says, all it needs now is for the hearse not to start,” Murray answered. “Wouldn’t that just make the day, huh? And you know something? With Jev mechanics in charge, that might not be so funny.”
The elevator halted with a jolt, throwing everybody off balance. Fendro jabbered something, and the control computer replied. Something was wrong.
“The power’s cut,” Murray said. “Either somebody hit the switch, or something downstairs got wrecked.” They felt the car beginning to descend again, but only to align itself with the next door down. An emergency brake locked it in position, and the door opened. Fendro led them at a run to some stairs, throwing back disjointed words over his shoulder and sounding to Hunt as if he was on the verge of panic. “Three more levels,” Murray supplied. “Scirio won’t wait.” Danchekker leaned against the doorframe at the bottom of the first flight, closed his eyes for a second and drew a long breath, then launched himself up at a gangling lope. Hunt stayed behind him, ready to help if needed.
A door at the top of the third flight brought them into the bare, gray entrance hall with scratched walls. Ahead of them, the outer door onto the landing platform was open, and through it they could see the psychedelic hearse turning in preparation for takeoff, with an khena scrambling in through the doorway and two more close behind him. As the group from the stairs came out into the open, Keshen ran ahead, waving his arms and pointing back at the others, apparently trying to get Scirio to hold off for a few more seconds.
But Scirio’s voice shouted from inside as Keshen reached the door, and the craft began to move. Keshen tried to jump, but Dreadnought appeared in the doorway and kicked him away. As Keshen picked himself up, the door slammed and the hearse accelerated away off the edge of the platform. Hunt and the others came to a confused halt as they watched it bank into a turning climb. Hunt’s ability to think deserted him. He stood, staring helplessly, while Fendro ran in front, shouting and waving his arms.
Then Nixie called out and pointed in a direction off to one side. A group of dark-colored, streamlined shapes was swooping down and spreading out to close from different directions around the still-rising hearse.
“Shiban PD fliers,” Murray yelled. “Looks like our friend might be up shit creek.”
The hearse had seen them, too, and banked away evasively. Panels opened in its side to reveal small ball turrets, each mounting a pair of stub weapon muzzles-similar, Hunt guessed, to the one concealed in the personal flier that had made the attack on Grevetz’s. Two of the police craft opened fire, but without visible effect. What looked like a streamer of yellow light flashed back from one of the hearse’s turrets, but was deflected by a shimmering patch of violet that appeared briefly in front of the police flier. The hearse twisted around to double back into a dive that carried it close by the upper part of the tower. Another of the police fliers fired, hit the building, and debris showered down onto the platform where Hunt and the others were still watching, mesmerized.
“Get under cover,” Hunt shouted, snapping out of it and waving at the others. They ran back toward the entranceway, Fendro leading. At the far end of the hall inside, the first yellow-uniformed figure was just emerging cautiously from the stairwell door.
Fendro turned as Keshen reached him. “It’s no good. They’re here,” he said bleakly.
Above, the hearse was hit by two bursts at once as it pulled into another turn. It exploded in a blaze of orange light and black smoke, and the remnants cascaded down over the city.
On the command deck of the Shapieron, Leyel Torres stood with a group of crew officers, taking in the view being picked up by the ship’s sternward-looking cameras, showing the upper spires and roofs of the city sliding by below. A holographic floor projection showed an image of the ship hovering above a cutaway representation of the levels and buildings beneath, as retrieved from ZORAC’s stored plans of the city. The flashing symbol showing inside the zone beneath the ship centered on a maze of alleyways and side streets at the base of a complex of interconnected buildings that merged into a step-tapered tower. The tower rose at the confluence of several of the wide traffic corridors in a part of the city covered by a high outer canopy.
“The club’s located down in there,” ZORAC said. “Probe three is registering high police-band activity centered in that area.” A couple of the Shapieron’s probes, hovering some distance above and freed from the curtain of jamming that the Jevlenese had thrown around Geerbaine, were picking up stray communications traffic above the city.
“And we’re sure that the canopy is of lightweight construction over this section?” one of the officers checked. “There won’t be any people up there?”
“That’s what the plans show,” Torres confirmed. He c
ast an eye quickly around the company. “We have to give it a try.”
“Message exchanges between police fliers and HQ,” ZORAC reported. “It sounds as if they’re attacking something.”
“How far can we reconfigure the external stress field?” Torres asked.
“Sufficient to arrest major falls below and redirect beyond city limits,” ZORAC replied. “There might be some local peripheral fallout.” The Shapieron’s drive created a zone of distorted space-time around the ship. ZORAC was saying that it could shape that external field into a force zone that would project objects clear of the vicinity.
Torres looked at the other officers. “The decision is mine, totally,” he said. “ZORAC, execute the plan as specified. We’re going in.”
“Geronimo!” ZORAC responded.
“What?”
“It’s the expression that Terran paratroopers used on going into action, back in the days when they fought wars,” ZORAC explained. “It seemed appropriate.”
“Just fly the ship, please.”
“Yessir.”
Inside PAC, Langerif stared bemusedly at the scene being relayed from outside, as the huge shape of the starship hovering over the city started descending. The voice of the chief who was in charge at Geerbaine came excitedly over the audio. “I don’t know what it’s doing… It seems to be going down again. It can’t be! It’s going to land on top.” On the view, a part of the city canopy immediately below the Shapieron was pulled up and fragmented into pieces which flew upward and out of sight. The voice became frenzied. “No, it isn’t slowing down! What is it doing? I don’t believe this. It’s going straight down through!”
“What is happening there?” Eubeleus screeched on the screen from Uttan.
“I think that the intelligence destined to supplant us may have written us off a little too soon,” Garuth said as he watched. He managed to make it sound satisfyingly mysterious. In truth, he hadn’t the faintest idea.
They came to a halt, defeated. There was nowhere to go, nothing more to be tried.
And then Hunt realized that Gina was staring up past him and pointing incredulously. He turned and saw that a section of the imitation sky almost above their heads had gone dark and was bulging inward. Seconds later it broke into huge sections of canopy and supporting structure coming asunder, parting sideways unnaturally instead of falling, and then disappearing upward as if snatched away by a giant suction cleaner. At the same time a voice boomed like thunder across the city in Jevlenese. Hunt’s head snapped around toward Murray.
Murray was bewildered. “It’s telling people to get under cover. I don’t-Jesus Christ!”
Hunt looked back. Silhouetted against the pale green outside, an immense shape consisting of a distorted cruciform fastened to a huge, streamlined tower that shrank away into the sky under the acute foreshortening of the perspective was coming down through the hole in the canopy. A roar of rushing air filled their ears, and minor debris scattered down and bounced off the face of the building above as the canopy above continued to buckle and tear.
“Goddamn spaceship!” Murray yelled hoarsely. “Spaceship coming down through the fuckin’ roof!”
“That’s the Shapieron!” Gina shouted dazedly. “Vic, it’s the Ganymeans!”
The starship came down through the circling police fliers like a battleship scattering minnows filling the volume above the city s rooftops.
“My God!” Danchekker exclaimed, staring up as the cathedral-like space between the four curving, swept fins enlarged second by second right above their heads. The retractable rearmost section of the main body which contained the entry locks was already sliding downward.
A bullhorn voice rang out, not as loud as before, and in English this time “That’s them, luckier than we hoped. Okay Vic we see you. Get everyone over. I’m opening a door.” Never had Hunt been more glad to hear the voice of a computer.
Murray yelled something at Fendro, who came out of his funk and pressed a button inside a coverplate by the entrance. The doors closed, cutting off the police who had started moving forward across the hall inside. Hunt was already urging the others back across the landing platform.
The Shapieron could not maneuver close enough to the building to lower its rear section onto the platform, but was hanging overhead with the opened entrance just past the edge and a short distance below. Gina came to the rail and looked down into what appeared to be a bottomless void between the stern section of the ship, hanging in space, and the lower part of the tower, which was overhung, back beneath the platform. Inside the opened lock, Ganymean figures were gesturing frantically.
“It’s okay,” ZORAC’s voice encouraged. “You’re in a shaped field. I’ll steer you in.”
Hunt urged her up onto the guardrail. Consciously she wanted to do it, but some deep-rooted, primeval survival instinct held her back. She shook her head weakly. “I’m not sure I can.”
Nixie climbed nimbly up on the far side of her, paused for a split second, and then launched herself forward. All the experiences and instincts of a lifetime’s conditioning told Gina that Nixie shouldn’t make it; but unseen forces guided her, and she landed lightly inside the Shapieron.
Gina swallowed and glanced at Hunt.
He nodded. “Go on!”
Forcing all other thoughts from her mind, she pitched off the rail-oblivious to the shove in her back that sent her moving.
Danchekker climbed up shakily. “If we ever manage to return after this escapade, I’ll greet Ms. Mulling with flowers,” he muttered to Hunt, and jumped.
As Keshen moved to follow, Fendro looked back and shouted in dismay. “We’ll never make it!”
Hunt turned his head. The door from the building was open again, and police were rushing out onto the platform. “Go!” he yelled, and pushed Keshen off. But Fendro was right: there were still three of them to go, and some of the police were already leveling weapons.
And then one of the Shapieron’s probes came swooping downward with a roaring, swishing sound, flattening out to race over the platform at head height, straight at the doorway like a fighter on a strafing run. The police scattered amid shouts of terror, some throwing themselves out of the way, others retreating back into the doorway. At the last moment the probe broke and peeled upward, grazing within a few feet of the face of the tower, and began turning for another run.
Murray and Fendro had clambered up onto the rail, and both disappeared together as Hunt looked back. Hunt glanced behind one last time, then hurled himself over after them. For an instant he seemed to hang in midair above the abyss, and then without his really registering what had taken place, hands were steadying him inside the Shapieron.
“All aboard,” ZORAC’s voice said from somewhere. “Anybody want to change their mind? No? Then let’s get out of here. Next stop, orbit. Calazar and Caldwell are through in the command deck via VISAR, waiting to talk to you.”
Hunt accepted a set of communicator accessories from one of the Ganymeans and attached them to his neck, ear, and forehead as they walked. “Who’s running the ship?” he asked as they approached one of the internal transit tubes.
“Leyel Torres, at your service,” a voice said in his ear.
“Quite a stunt,” Hunt complimented. “Pity about the hole in the roof.”
“I assume their insurance will cover it.”
“What’s the score otherwise?”
“Well, it seems that you’ve gone and doubled all our problems-literally. The versions of you that we’ve just extricated from that mess were only half the story. Now we have to worry about the other half.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
Shingen-Hu refused to let himself be demoralized again. The higher gods had told him that he was to be their chosen instrument, and he had seen their power. Therefore the sudden cessation of the demonstration was a sign to him. It meant something. They had placed their emissaries in his charge, he had decided as the procession wound its way through the hills surrounding Rakashym, and l
eft them stripped of their protection. All the time, the emissaries had remained quiet and subdued, obviously leaving Shingen-Hu to work the interpretation out for himself. It could only mean that the gods were entrusting to him the task of saving them. It was a test of his faith and worthiness.
Having satisfied himself of that much, he maneuvered himself into one of the corners of the cart below the two guards who were riding up front, and out of their line of vision. Then, under cover of the other bodies packed around him, he slipped from his robe one of the pieces of mobilium from the dignitaries’ carnage that he had picked up and concealed when they were back in the village square. He laid the sliver along one of his fingers and, concentrating his powers, slowly passed his finger through one of the links of the chain shackling his hands. The mobilium following behind his finger repelled the material, preventing it from rejoining behind, and the chain fell apart. He nudged Thrax, indicated what he had done, and passed him the other piece of mobilium. Thrax loosened his own chains, then worked his way across to the far side of the cart. By the time the cart had covered another mile, they had freed all five of the captives whom the gods had entrusted to them.
The train rounded a sharp bend at a point where the trail began descending, and there Shingen-Hu saw the opportunity that the gods had prepared for him. On one side, a steep gully rose into the rocks above the trail, its course littered with many loose and precarious boulders. On the other side, just past the bend where the gully spilled out onto the trail, there was a deep gorge with a stream at the bottom, and across it a cliff of crumbling, red-brown gritstone, its face patchy and veined with crystal of various colors.
Shingen-Hu waited until the cart carrying the prisoners had passed the gully, at which point the supply wagon and main body of the escorting soldiers following behind were obscured momentarily by the bend. Straightening up suddenly, he pointed at the gully with the extended fingers of both hands, singling out a large boulder that had acted as a dam and accumulated a mound of smaller debris fallen from higher up. The rock moved. Shingen-Hu sent a bolt of focused power, which he felt augmented by Thrax, concentrating beside him, and moments later a miniature avalanche came rumbling and tumbling down the gorge, sealing off the trail behind.
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