by Paula Guran
No answer came out of that cold blackness, just the echo of the water whispering on its way to oblivion.
Keep moving.
Crunch!
A stunshell went off where he had been moments earlier. Only an amateur would have missed him. A suspicion became a thought in Stone's mind.
It had to be the same hunter who had been trailing him since RamRam City. He should know who it was by now. If it was a bluff, he'd been bluffed by a pro. Yes, there was no doubt. Someone was playing a game, maybe searching for his weaknesses.
With that, Stone snapped the helmet lights back on. There it was! A human shape fluttering amongst the stalagmites. He switched the light off, listening. Then, very quietly, he left the wide path. He passed among those great natural arches, seeking whoever hunted him. By the way they darted through the darkness, he couldn't help wondering how long they had lived on Mars. He recognized that same characteristic movement. A habit of approaching everywhere from the side or from behind. A habit of caution. The anticipation of attack. So this wasn't some Terran bounty hunter after his hide. This was a Martian.
Stone knew all the Martians likely to be offered the job and this wasn't their style, no matter how high a reward he had on his head. Except—
Again, he brought his lights into play, and this time he got more than a glimpse. A red-and-black night-suit. Carrying extra air. Two Banning 22-40s. Every bounty hunter had a signature.
Could it be Yily Chen? Or someone working with Chen?
Crunch!
Now he knew they didn't really want him dead. It had to be Chen. They had just been pretending up there before the ock-croc got him. They had wanted him to think he was as good as dead. Or maybe they'd wanted to get him down here where they could take their time with him?
"If that's you, Yily, why are you after me? You're on Terra. I'm on Mars. We were never at odds."
Her voice hadn't changed as much as he'd expected. A sweet, light, lilting brogue came back out of the darkness. "Maybe the price was never high enough, Mac."
"I don't believe you."
"Okay. Then you tell me why somebody wants you alive and doesn't want me to talk it over with you?"
"You wouldn't torture me. I know it. Not me."
"Maybe. Circumstances change, Mac. Times change."
"Very true. But you don't. I don't. We're Martians. You're more Martian than I am. You don't have anyone they can get at you through. Same with me. We have identical reasons for keeping free of ties."
"We're different, Mac. Fundamentally. I'm a hunter. You're a thief. Sometimes hunters are commissioned to find thieves."
"So who gave you the job? Who wants you to bring me in?"
"Can't you guess?"
"Delph. And he has most of the money in the universe. But not enough to pay for me."
"Maybe so much money that I got curious. I wanted to know what he wanted which is worth such a lot. A bag I'm not supposed to look in. And which you don't have. I know you don't or you'd have used it as a decoy by now. I've hunted you for nearly a week, Mac. I've almost killed you half a dozen times. I've given you a chance to try all the angles. And you've tried them."
"What? You were testing me?"
"I guess."
She stepped out into the open, into the beam of light, a quick, boyish figure. Not at all what he'd imagined. She held her helmet in her left hand, one of her guns loose in the other. Her brown, curly hair framed an impossibly beautiful triangular face with heavily slanted golden eyes. Her brows were thin and sloping, her lips red and bright as fresh blood. Few of those she hunted ever saw that face. Her clients rarely saw Yily Chen at all. She just delivered her "commissions," like packages. She'd been his sister. He'd played with her every day as a young child. For all he remembered her as smart and pretty, Mac could hardly believe how truly beautiful she had become.
"Hello, Yily. What are you really after?" He lifted his visor.
"Hi, Mac." She smiled and holstered her pistol. "You're a hard guy to fool. And hard not to kill, too. I guess I wanted to know what Delph needs so bad from you that he'd let me name my price."
Now he had a good idea what this was all about. He holstered his own Banning. She slipped her gun into its sheath and went back to drag something from the shadows. A bulky pack. She knelt to check the harness.
"And did you find out?"
Mac wondered why he remained so wary of her. The answer was probably simple. The strongest man, usually able to keep control of his emotions and stay cool, would find it hard to resist that beauty.
"Sure I did." She straightened her back. She moved toward him, half smiling, looking up from under heavy lids, her voice husky. "But I couldn't trust him to pay."
Stone caught himself laughing. "I last saw you twenty years ago, stealing water from the tanks."
She grinned. He remembered that grin from when he had chased her through the bazaars of the Low Canal and she had mocked him for his clumsiness. She boasted then that she had true Martian blood from a time when the great Broreern triremes had dominated the green seas swelling under a golden sun in the autumn of the planet's long history. Stone could easily believe her. Cynics said Yily's mother was a Terran whore and her father a Martian prison guard. But, with that glorious light brown skin, her beautifully muscled, boyish frame, that curly hair, her long legs, those firm, small breasts, her sardonic, golden eyes, no one who saw her ever believed she was anything but a Mars woman reincarnated.
There were very few career possibilities on Mars for a girl of Yily's background and looks. She had chosen the least likely: first as Tex Merrihew's sidekick, learning the bounty hunter's trade, then as a fixer on her own account. Mac wondered if Yily Chen had other reasons for helping him. She was known to be clever and devious. Was her word as good as they said? "So what are you proposing, Yily?"
"A partnership, maybe."
"I didn't know you liked me that much."
"I don't like Delph at all. I don't like what he's done to Mars or what he will do if he gets what he wants. What does he want, Mac?"
"He believes I have a bunch of indigo flame sapphires."
"A bunch?"
"A bunch."
She was silent. He could almost hear her thinking.
"What was that about a bomb?" she said.
He saw no reason not to. So he told her all he knew.
When he had finished she said: "Then I guess I'd better help you."
He asked why.
She grinned. "Because I'm a Martian, too." She bent and picked up her heavy pack. "And I'm not tone deaf."
5
Whistling Dixie
They came to the falls, increasingly communicating through their filtered helmet radios. The sound was deafening. An eerie pink light glared up from the chasm's depths.
"Some say that's Mars's core down there." She didn't elaborate.
"Have you been here before?"
"Once. Guy jumped bail on Terra. Thought he had immunity here. He did, but they framed him anyway because the judge in Ram owed the judge in Old London a favor. So I was in for double reward. A share of the bail money if I brought him in alive. Well, it turned out he had friends here. Archeologists. Academics. They crack easily. They told me how they'd found evidence for what they called the lost canal. You know the story?"
He nodded. "Guy's out in the desert. He beds down for the night. Wakes up suddenly. He hears water. He listens more carefully. Running water. It's the ghost canal. A kind of mirage, leading travelers astray so they die of thirst convinced there's water all around them."
"They told him about a cave system. Legends said it was a way in to another world. Some argued it came out on Terra, in Arizona somewhere. Some thought ancient Mars. Others linked it to the discoveries of the so-called 'hidden universe' obscured from our astronomers by drifting clouds of cosmic fog." She shrugged. "You don't have to break many fingers before they put two and two together. I found the cave, found this place, found him, hauled him up, took him in and took
the money."
"Why didn't I ever hear of that entrance?"
"Because I destroyed it. Didn't want those archeologists to be embarrassed again. My guy had two reasons not to talk. He might escape and hide out down here. And he knew what I'd do to him if news of the falls ever reached the surface. They sent him to Ceres. You don't live long there. As far as I know, he died with the secret."
The falls mesmerized them. They both found themselves walking too close to the edge, drawn by the vast, rearing walls of water spraying blue and gold, emerald and ruby, in that strange light. Old light, thought Mac without knowing why. Light which appeared to be pressed down by the cavern's impenetrable blackness. Mac saw all kinds of shapes in there. Faces from his past. People he had hated. Nobody he had loved. Men with weapons. Women wanting his money or contempt or both. Cruelty ran through interplanetary society like a fuel. Not his drug of choice. Peace. Why was he thinking like this as the pink flume blew into a million shapes and offered to hold him like a baby, safely, safely . . . ?
"Stone!"
Her strong hand grabbed his arm and yanked him back from the edge. "Damn! I thought you could look after yourself." Her anger was like a slap across his face. He swore. Those eyes, those glaring eyes! What had they held in that moment when she raged at him?
He shook his head. "Don't worry. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
She was frowning now, peering through her distance glasses out across the raging falls and pointing. "What's that?"
A flash of electric lime green. An obviously unnatural color. Nothing like anything surrounding it. He switched over to the helmet's optics and brought it in sharply as instruments reported distance and size. She adjusted her own glasses to check it out.
About one-and-a-half meters square, the star bomb lay balanced between a rough circle of rocks. Almost peacefully, white water whirled around it. Contrary currents held it in suspension. Any one of the currents could alter course slightly and take the bomb over the brink from where it would never be recovered. And would ultimately detonate, splitting the planet apart.
The falls bellowed, echoing through the vast cavern whose roof lay beyond sight in the glittering darkness. According to the helmet, its walls held deposits of gold, silver, diamonds, and many other metals now very rare on Terra. Stone could imagine what would become of the place once the likes of Delph found out about it. He scanned the falls as far as he could see, pointing out a possible pathway through to it, where a great slab of black granite formed a canopy on which tons of water fell by the second. The rocks beneath the canopy were given a little potential protection, at least for part of the way. Some of the rocks disappeared behind another great massing of fallen debris. They formed a blind spot. Neither Stone nor Chen could see what danger might be waiting for anyone who tried to cross beyond that point. There didn't seem to be a better route anywhere else.
"We'd best rope up." She lowered her heavy pack to the walkway. "We can't work on that thing out there. We're going to have to fetch it."
"I could try firing a grapnel from my Banning." He showed her the tonkinite hook on his belt. "It's attached to fifty meters of spiderwire. But even if it was a good idea, there's no way we could do it from here. We need to be sure we have the bomb securely held. We can't make mistakes. We need to switch over to gravity equalizers. They should hold off the worst of the force from the water. Does your suit have equalizers? Doesn't matter. We'll use mine. Both of us will probably have to go out there for at least as far as that route takes us."
They had little left to discuss. First, they tested the GE potential. This took the power of anything threatening them, and, using the threat's own energy, converted it into a force field theoretically capable of equalizing any outside pressure. The idea behind the technology was brilliant, but there had been more than one infamous GE accident. You didn't get any second chances. They contacted Miguel Krane. He assured Stone that the helmet had been tested for all environments, particularly for the power of the falls. He was surprised to learn that Yily Chen was involved, but he saw no problem in both of them using the suit. "One or a dozen, it can theoretically protect against a considerably stronger power. Of course, we haven't allowed for human error. Just remember, it only takes one break in the circuitry and you'll both be swept over those falls in a blink." He suggested that they have her suit run on low power as a backup. "You'll have to decide between you if that would work." Krane sounded a little uncertain.
Soon they were ready. They roped up using, Mac's spiderwire. It was unwise to rely on their helmets' intercom. They would rely as much as they could on visual signals. Even with everything turned to minimum input they could still hear the heavy beating of the water against the rocks, the yelping gush of the canal as it spilled over into that bottomless gorge. Together, they inched out over the slippery causeway, hands, feet, elbows, and knees on full suction, allowing them to gain traction with every limb. The vast weight of water, even though not the full mass, smashed against their force converter, allowing them to move forward. They were tiny specs caught above those gigantic liquid walls. Able to see less than a meter ahead, they clung together, taking careful steps, often crawling on hands and knees, blinded by the screaming spray surrounding them. More than once, Stone lost his balance. She remained surefooted and caught his cord before he followed his momentum down into the hungry core of the planet. He calculated that she'd saved his life at least seven times in as many minutes.
Above them, the wild spray boomed and shrieked. Their heads rang under the hammer blows of the surging current. Once, she was almost swept over the rim. He held on with hands and feet as he extended the field, hauling her back, kicking an impossible surge of power out of his equipment and falling backwards as something caught his shoulder. Recovering, he saw that debris was also being carried down the falls, effectively doubling their danger. They watched for larger objects as much as possible, another eye on their chronometers, which were telling them roughly how much time still remained before the bomb was due to blow. Forty minutes. They reached a place where the water was suddenly quiet and even the sound seemed muted. For a moment or two they rested, gratefully recovering their strength in calm water forming little pools beneath the huge canopy of granite. They made up some of their lost time.
Once or twice, Stone looked back toward the bank, now invisible to him. Was all their effort worthless? Wouldn't it be better to accept the impossibility of their mission? He began to think Krane was mad. If there were a threat, then inevitably they would die. Death was the future of all people, all planets, all universes. Their struggle was symbolic of the futility of living creatures who fought against their own inevitable extinction. What were a few more years of existence compared to the longevity of a cosmos? In those terms, the whole history of their species lasted for less than a fraction of a second. And then, sheltering beside him under the protection of the energy equalizer, she looked up for a second, and, obscurely, he understood that the effort always would be worth it. Always had been worth it.
They emerged eventually from the overhang. They saw the gaudy limegreen box glittering on the far side of a rocky cleft. Stone could see no obvious way down to it. For a moment, it seemed that they had come this far only to fail. Then Yily nodded and signaled that if he held on to the spidercord, she might be able to swing down and snag the box. But it would mean switching over to her own untested equalizers. Whether her suit had enough capacity was uncertain. She shrugged and began tying herself on.
The falls coughed and grumbled, always treacherous.
Stone grew concerned that there wouldn't be enough spiderwire. He had trouble gauging the distance properly. He braced himself. He would have to switch off as soon as he could after she switched on, conserving power and maintaining stability for split seconds. He raised his hand and gave the signal. They knew a sickening few moments while the switch took place and then she was dropping out of sight before coming back into view, a far smaller figure than he had expected.
>
The blue and red of her suit was just visible, flashing on and off as she fell through a sickening weight of water. Her relative gravity, thanks to the converter, gave her extra resistance, and she stretched out her arms and clasped the n-bomb to her, swinging free over the rosy abyss. She cried out her triumph in a wild yell, her body curving back into the trajectory. He thumped the control and brought her up to where he perched, hanging on with everything but his nails and teeth. He was laughing like a fool as she swung to stand beside him, counting out with elated blows on his arm the measure to activate his helmet's converter so both were again protected. He could feel her elation as he hugged her tight.
They had the star bomb!
Now, somehow, they had to follow the steps back to the sheltering rock. Inch by inch, they crossed the exposed falls, feet feeling for holds as the minutes slipped by, and they dared not waste a moment trying to see how much time they had before the bomb did what it had been designed to do. The climb back to the walkway seemed to take longer than the whole rest of the mission. Increasingly, the strain on the equalizer became greater. Little bubbles of energy flinched and disappeared into the wavering field.
Stone was almost convinced they had run out of time and strength. He gasped his surprise when, suddenly, his boots stood on the smooth granite and the bomb was on the ground before them. Manhandling it to the relative quiet of the stone arches, they were at last able to turn off the equalizers. The suit crackled and zipped, revealing flaws which moments later would have meant sudden death.
Stone triumphantly announced their success to Krane over the radio. The Earthman seemed less than overjoyed.
"You have twenty-seven minutes left," he said. "Do you think you can do it, Stone?"
