Matt sighed and joined Tomoko in the co-pilot’s seat of the skyfighter.
“Medea dear, stop fidgeting and steer the skyfighter,” Diana said irritably. “I want to get this over with as soon as possible so I can go back to controlling the riots.”
Nervously, Medea manipulated the controls of Diana’s sleek, late-model skyfighter. Only ten minutes had passed since the supreme commander, sulky and irritable, had arrived to pick her up. “I’m getting a signal now,” she said as she monitored the video screens for a sign of the hijacked skyfighter. “Well, after them!” Diana said. “There are three of us and only one of them. What on earth are you worried about?”
“Of course I’m not worried, Diana,” Medea said.
To be honest, she was far more concerned about the proximity of her capricious commander than about the possibility of their being unable to shoot down the resistance fighters. She could wager that the sole reason Diana had decided to come out herself, rather than send a lackey for this trifling mission, was to keep an eye on her—to make sure that she didn’t slip up again. She couldn’t concentrate on the steering console, and the skyfighter began to list to starboard. Diana fell out of her seat; when the craft had righted itself, and Diana was seated again, Medea could tell that her commander was not pleased.
It was not for nothing that Diana had taken for her human name the name of an ancient Earth goddess—the goddess of the hunt! Yes, Diana was a huntress. But whom was she hunting? A few insignificant members of the resistance, or Medea herself, her erstwhile favorite? Medea could not help thinking that her commander had some hideous fate in store for her. When the thrill of the hunt was over, Diana seldom had any use for her victims; she would discard them like so much trash. Though Medea was proud of her own warlike nature, she had to admit that Diana’s ruthlessness was in a class of its own.
The enemy came into sight.
“There they are,” Diana said, “flying over that canyon. What a hideous natural formation! When we complete our conquest, I’ll have it levelled, and we can build an enormous food-processing complex over it.”
Never shifting from their perfect V-formation, the three skyfighters turned in the direction of their prey and swooped down towards the canyon.
A whimper of pleasure escaped Diana’s lips. “You seem pleased,” Medea said, “though we haven’t caught them yet.”
“The joy is in the chase,” Diana said, closing her eyes. A vein throbbed in her artificial cheek. How lifelike these disguises are, Medea thought. They can portray every nuance of emotion. And Diana's deadly beauty still radiates, even through that fur-topped skin and those simian features.
Chapter 7
“They’re splitting up!” CB shouted. “I can’t get a fix on all three at once. There’s just one of me.”
Two of the alien craft were zooming toward them. A third remained high up. “That top one isn’t attacking. Must be one of their precious leaders. The others are just cannon fodder,” Matt said. “Tomoko, swerve—oh God, swerve!”
He held on tight as the skyfighter nosed up and rocketed toward the morning star. Lines of laser fire crisscrossed the darkness. “I can’t see, I can’t see!” Tomoko screamed.
Matt clawed his way back to the control console. “I’ll steer, you drive,” he said.
“I’m gonna fire . . . I’m gonna fire . . . missed!” CB cried. A blue lightline shot out from their skyfighter, strained toward the enemy . . . petered out. “These lasers need recharging. They’ll never function unless we get real close.”
“They’re coming in,” Matt said. “Evasive action!” Wildly, he manipulated the controls. The
skyfighter responded sluggishly.
“There’s only one thing to do,” Tomoko said. “Dive.”
“Into the canyon?” Matt said.
“That’s what I said.”
“We’ll get creamed,” CB said.
“Maybe. But, Matt, but . . . those guys are flying top-of-the-line skyfighters. I can tell by their markings. I’ll bet that one that’s up there, watching the fray, is Diana herself! You know what that means? With their souped-up drives, those skyfighters’ll accelerate to multi-Mach in fractions of a second —faster than the reaction time of any human or lizard! They’re designed for high-speed chases in the upper atmosphere, not for threading precariously through a canyon. They’ll never be able to react in time to brake and—”
Matt swallowed in disbelief. But they were already descending so rapidly that he felt lite throwing up all over the console.
Only a few hours until daybreak. Already the sides of the great gulf were striated with fingers of crimson, rose, gray. A mist rose from the valley. Still they fell. “I’m well within the canyon now,” Tomoko said, “Now skim the edges, swaying from side to side.” Matt did as she suggested, forcing the skyfighter’s trajectory into an irregular spiral that just missed crashing into the rocks.
A skyfighter was stealing up behind them— “Shoot, CB!”
“You bet!”
Fire met fire across the dark-hued crags. “It’s gaining on us!” CB shouted.
“Hold your fire till you’re sure it’s within range,” said Matt. He watched the kid, stern-faced, his eyes intent on the enemy, this kid who should have been sitting in a schoolroom, not fighting for his life against lizard oppressors. How could Matt have foreseen, when he took in this young boy whose parents had been cruelly murdered, eaten alive by the Visitors, that he would be bringing him into even more danger? They had to reach the free states somehow, alive ... he owed it to the kid. A normal life. He had a right to it.
The skyfighter was riding their tail now. “Here goes nothing!” the boy said, and squeezed the control.
For a single instant it seemed that they were doomed, for the enemy kept coming. Then came the roar of an explosion, the shriek of shredding metal, the pelting hail of shards on their skyfighter’s flanks. “You got the bastard,” he breathed.
“No time. Here comes another one,” CB said.
“He’s really gunning it,” said Matt. “Tomoko, do we have more drive power?”
“No ... no, I think we’re losing acceleration. This old thing just isn’t meant to take such punishment.”
“Okay. Bring her down even lower. Until we’re almost touching the canyon floor. I have an idea. Remember what you said about the responses of the super skyfighters, how the lizard reflexes would be no match for the hardware?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s lure them down.”
“Sure.”
“CB, when we get them skimming the bottom, chasing us—”
“They’re there now!” he shrieked excitedly. “They’re aiming!”
“Quick! Shoot randomly at the surrounding crags . . . start a landslide!”
CB fired madly. Rocks flew. A huge chunk of the canyon wall started to wobble and then topple. The crash reverberated through the canyon. Looking aft, Matt saw that the lizards had shot skyward to avoid the shooting rocks. The lizard skyfighter was leapfrogging now. “I think we’re starting to panic them,” he said.
“Look! A bend in the river. Matt, dodge!” Tomoko yelled.
“Full speed!” said Matt. “I’ve got it under control.”
A huge black wall loomed up, stretching as far up as the eye could see. The enemy vessel was less than a hundred feet behind and closing, closing—
Matt veered up, yanking the control levers with all his force! Beneath them, the other skyfighter smashed full tilt into the wall of the canyon. It seemed as though a beast of fire were devouring the very mountain. Another roar echoed endlessly. He could hardly hear himself think. Ascend, ascend, he thought, pulling the controls hard.
“There’s one left,” CB said. “The one that’s been hovering above us the whole time, not diving down to attack.”
Matt saw it now, silhouetted in the sunrise.
Gliding back and forth. Waiting. Waiting.
“What are we gonna do now?” he said.
; “Lasers are out,” CB said.
“Drive power’s low,” said Tomoko.
CB came forward to the pilots’ area and squatted between the two seats. “Wanna make a run for it?” he said.
“Dunno,” said Matt.
“Parachutes?” said Tomoko, reminding him of how they had been forced to land over Tokyo in their last adventure.
“Yeah. Maybe. I guess.” Matt didn’t want to confess that he was beginning to feel a terrible despair. How stupid of them to think they could ever make it to the free zone alive. How many miles were left? Two or three thousand? Their van was gone. This skyfighter didn’t have much juice left in her. And an enemy craft was stalking them, ready to pluck them from the air; and even if they eluded it there’d be another and another and another . . .
“I don’t know what to do!” he said at last. “It seems that the number of human beings on this earth is dwindling, dwindling—and there’s an endless supply of lizards up there in space, wave after wave after wave. Now I know how the Indians felt when the cavalry started coming down the hill.”
“Matt,” Tomoko said, and she and the boy squeezed his hand gently.
If only he had the guts to cry. But he hid his feelings deep inside himself as he turned the skyfighter toward the one remaining alien craft.
“Shall I give chase?” Medea said, eying the battered skyfighter that had emerged from the rim of the canyon. She was not entirely thrilled at the prospect. Not after seeing the other two skyfighters dashed against the rocks, smashed, unsalvageable.
Diana watched the skyfighter as it neared them. “They’re madmen—madmen, those humans! They would have killed themselves, just to take us along with them. That half-Japanese one, Tomoko Jones; I daresay she’s not above a kamikaze attack on us.” She said no more, but set her mouth into a frown, waiting for Medea to make the next suggestion. It was a game, Medea saw. If Medea opted to attack, Diana could blame her for foolhardiness; if she advised caution, Diana would criticize her cowardice. It was a familiar pattern. That was how Diana dealt with others. She must never, never appear in the wrong—-or she’d lash out in a rage, and more than likely ruin the political career of whatever subordinate had inspired her wrath.
What a quandary, Medea thought. But she still had one more trick up her sleeve, one she’d occasionally used before to good effect.
“Diana, dear,” she said, in a passable parody of a seductive voice, “we can catch them any time, can’t we? I mean, they’re only humans. I swear to you, I’ll get them for you. We’ll have a banquet, just the two of us, and eat their little hearts out! But meanwhile ... I haven’t, you know, seen you in so long . .
“Don’t you Diana dear me,” Diana snapped. “You’re right, I don’t have time to chase after a few sorry specimens. I’ve got to get back to Los Angeles. Hunting is all very well, but ! am a planetary commander with serious duties.”
“Perhaps a moment or two of. . . recreation?” Medea said, ripping off her human mask to reveal her slime-glistening scales, her crimson-slitty eyes, the delicated wattles of her neck. “Oh, Diana, I’ve been so starved for . . . attention, here.”
She reached out to caress the rubbery texture of Diana’s artificial face. Beneath it she could fee the outlines of scales, the contours of reptilian muscles . . . beneath the cheeks the sinous movement of her tongue. “You fat, incompetent harridan,” Diana hissed, her voice growing more and more metallic. But in spite of herself she was becoming aroused. What a relief, Medea thought, that Diana had never been too choosy about the objects of her lust.
“I swear to you I’ll catch them,” Medea whispered in the croaking, rasping tones that passed for eroticism among her kind. “I’ll chase them all the way to the eastern mountains and beyond. I’ll chase them into the no-man’s land . . . I’ll even chase them into the free zone if I have to!”
“The red dust will get you,” Diana said. “No great loss!”
“I’ll send in the experimental papinium tanks whose production our colleague Dingwall is overseeing on the East Coast.”
“How do you know about them? That’s classified information, unavailable to an underling like you.” “! wasn’t always an outpost commander, Diana. Remember? You demoted me!” Her wattles quivered now, their hue deepening in response to unspoken desire. She could smell the heady pheromones her glands were releasing into the close, confined air of the skyfighter. “Must we always be strangers, Diana? We were equals once . . . partners . . . lovers.”
A piercing animal shriek of lust escaped Diana’s pretty pink human pseudothroat. Good, then, Medea thought. She’d won a reprieve.
“I do need a little something to relax me,” Diana said, her tongue curling in and put of her mouth like a serpent swaying to the flute of a snakecharmer. “But I warn you ... if you fail, this time . . .”
“I’ll accept the consequences: oh, Diana . . . Diana ... oh, how your scales glisten . . . how your eyes shine in the alien sunlight!”
“How peculiar,” Tomoko was saying, “they’re making no move to attack.”
“Maybe they’ve got fifty more of the goddamn skyfighters hidden behind the mountain somewhere,” Matt said bitterly.
“I don’t think so. Look, they’re turning around. They’re veering west, away from us.”
“We scared ’em off!” CB said triumphantly. “We kicked ass!”
“I don’t think we should be that confident,” said Matt, watching the craft, hawklike, gleaming, vanish over the mountains. “They’ve probably gone back for reinforcements. We’d better haul it out of here.”
“Where to?” CB said.
“Freedom!” Matt said softly.
“Think we can make it?” Tomoko said.
“We have to!” Matt said urgently.
“Not in this wornout old thing, we won’t,”
Tomoko said. “Another battle scene like that, and everything’s going to give out: the steering, the drive, the lasers, everything. ”
“We’ve already lost our lasers,” CB said.
“How long have we got?” Matt said, watching nervously as Tomoko read the gauges. “Can we make it at least as far east as the Carolinas, maybe hit the no-man’s land, where we’d at least have a chance?”
“I don’t know!” Tomoko said, anguished.
They turned the craft toward the rising sun. The crimson glow pervaded the cramped control chamber, flooding them with its warmth. Sunrise, renewal: it was a corny symbol, but they had survived the first twenty-four hours of their escape attempt.
“Jesus, I want to get out of this alien uniform,” CB said, twisting the papinium sample in his hands into a delicate corkscrew shape.
“It’ll be soon now, kid,” Matt said. “Soon. I promise.”
He didn’t know how soon it would be, or whether they’d make it at all. But he had to keep hope alive. For the kid’s sake.
The clouds: grim, foreboding, stained with red. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. He steered the fighter skyward. They breached a stratum of purple-gray clouds and emerged into a cold, golden sunlight high above the desolate beauty of the desert.
Chapter 8
After her tawdry tete-a-tete with the supreme commander, Medea was not disposed to be charitable. Returning to her office at the Phoenix Hilton, she ensconced herself in her divan by the window overlooking the sundeck, and began to eat heavily. Not even one miserable skyfighter, she reflected. The least she could have done was allow me to keep the one I flew back on! But no. She abandoned me to my own devices. How does she expect me to catch them? By the supreme saurian, they could be a thousand miles away by now.
She cast no more than a momentary glance at what the chef had produced for her breakfast. Ah, how touching. The hamster canapes. Her favorite. Those succulent morsels were still wriggling, trying to disengage themselves from their pastry confinement . . . how cunning! How did they ever manage to bake the shells without killing the hamsters? It just goes to show, she thought, how creative a properly converted
human can be in the service of their masters. She couldn’t wait to sample one of those furry, palpitating warm-blooded little ro-
dents; picking one up delicately by its tail, she swallowed it in one gulp. Ah, that delicious rush of warmth as it squeezed its life juices into her gullet! There was nothing in the galaxy as invigorating as a live mammal. Despite the stupefying obstinacy of its inhabitants, this planet did have its uses after all.
Oh, to be warm-blooded like these creatures . . . to be constantly cocooned in a comforting heat-haze . . . not to have to seek out the sun, not to have to grow lethargic at the onset of the cold. How strange it must be. Her nerves tingled all over from the sense of well-being that the hamster’s violent death had induced in her. Another! she thought, automatically reaching for the platter of goodies.
But no.
There was business to be done, if she was ever to climb back into Diana’s good graces. Clearly, just submitting to her deviant desires wasn’t enough; and even Medea had to admit to herself that her body was not what it used to be. Her scales were matted and lusterless, and her gluttony had made it harder and harder to squeeze into her human skin every morning.
She had to face the harsh truth about herself. She had failed with the Florida project; she had failed even with this childishly simple task of capturing three aliens—one of them a child, no less. For some moments Medea luxuriated in self-pity. But self-pity was a poor substitute for power, so she reached for the controls of her telecommunications console and started to call people.
“I want the entire jurisdiction mobilized, do you hear?” she commanded the overworked officer whose harried face appeared in the screen. “Get on with it! You irk me.”
“Yes, Medea. Of course, Medea.” Why did she get the impression that he wasn’t taking her seriously? What rumors had Diana’s arrival planted in the local staff? Were they perhaps already planning a coup, those blasted subordinates? Sometimes she wished she were a member of a cowardly race like the humans instead of the fiercest, most warlike species in the galaxy.
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