somebody who can help!" Heather was almost in tears. Panic nibbled at the edge of her mind. The growing sense of wrongness she felt was now almost unbearable. "Please, Honored Khuharkk', please!"
The Simiu stared at her intently. She could see his violet eyes narrow within the shadows cast by their helmets. "Are you telling me the truth, Heather?
Do you swear by your honor?"
"Yes, Honored Uncle, I swear to you with all my honor, on my dead mother's honor, that I speak the truth," she said, raising her hand solemnly. Hing had told her how Simiu revered motherhood.
"Very well, I will do it," Khuharkk' said. "You must explain to Honored Healer Gable where I have gone, and why." The pilot looked up at StarBridge Station, seeming impossibly far away. "It will not be easy to maneuver through the space lanes on this fragile insect of a craft, but I must try."
Heather thought of how difficult that would be for him, and almost told him not to try for the station, go to the Academy, but then there would be lengthy explanations, and inquiries, and Janet would be suspicious .. . "Go quickly, and in safety," she whispered. "Please be careful, Uncle!"
"I will, Niece."
Heather stood there watching as he took off. Then, computerpen clutched tightly in her glove, she headed for the airlock of the nearest bubbletent, her eyes the color and hardness of emeralds, her chubby features set in lines of grim determination.
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CHAPTER 16
Zero Hour
Jeff Morrow stood gazing at the silver radonium cylinders (there were far fewer of them in Cavern One than there had been during Serge's
reconnaissance), his lips tight with barely control ed anger. Slowly he shook his head. "I had no idea," he said bleakly, "no idea what was going on. I never dreamed that Andrea was capable of betraying me like this. You're right, it's time to call in the authorities. Horizons Unlimited is going to look very bad, I'm afraid."
"Not if you help us apprehend her, and testify against her in court," Serge said. "After all, she did this, not you."
"No, but I should have realized what was going on. Andrea wanted to supervise the mining portion of the operation, letting me handle the survey and technical end, so I let her have her way. I enjoy the technical stuff more anyway. And then, once I began to realize what this crisis was doing to the school, I... well, I wasn't well."
Suddenly Morrow grimaced, then slammed his fist against the cylinder. "Shit, Serge, why lie anymore? To put it bluntly, I couldn't handle the idea that it might have been my company's screwup that was costing StarBridge
Academy its home. I didn't want to go down in history as the guy who put the school out of business, and I... well, I started drinking whenever I wasn't actually out with the survey team. I should have been checking up on what was happening here in the caverns, but I've been sloshed
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every night. I just. .. couldn't handle it."
Serge felt a stir of pity. "I understand," he said. "And Rob and the others will, too. But the important thing now is to stop Lynch, find out where she hid the radonium she has already stolen, then give her to the authorities and have them recover the crystals."
Morrow nodded. "You're right, and that's exactly--" He broke off as the communications link signaled with a series of beeps. "Excuse me a moment, Serge, that's my priority code." While Morrow took his call, Serge wandered around the cavern, examining the damage to their site, wondering why the devil he was bothering. There had been no Lost Colony visit. The whole thing had been Lynch's hoax to have them open up the caverns and
pressurize them so she could get at the radonium.
Sadly, he pictured Professor Greyshine's and Esteemed Ssoriszs' reaction when they learned that, and shuddered. This will devastate them, he thought. I'll have to tell Hing-- All thought stopped, then Serge felt his heart contract. For a moment he'd actually forgotten. How could I forget? he wondered, feeling as though he'd somehow betrayed her, or perhaps himself.
His throat was so tight that he could barely breathe, and tears filled his eyes.
Resolutely, he fought them back. Not yet. Not here. Morrow was still talking, surrounded by the glow of a privacy screen. Serge wondered where Lynch was.
Then the engineer broke the connection, and rose from the seat. "That was Rob. He understands the situation, and is on his way out here to talk with both of us," says we'll work something out together. In the meantime, you said you wanted to retrieve that star-shrine. Want to do that now?"
"I suppose so," Serge said, feeling a great letdown. It was almost over.
"Even if the shrine is not from the Lost Colony, I am fairly certain it is genuine, and probably antique. I would like to run some tests, see if we can trace its origin, so we can return it to its rightful owners if it proves to have been stolen."
It was a delicate operation, but finally Serge stood with the star- shrine in his hands. Behind it, he'd found the connections where Lynch had wired it to the radonium-2 alarm, and anger made him grind his teeth together. Perdition take her, the bitch! Because of her, the Professor had nearly died!
When he and Morrow reached the main cavern again, the star-shrine with them, they found Rob Gable just removing his helmet |to call to them. "Jeff!
Serge! Where's Lynch?"
"We don't know," Serge said, carefully placing the star-shrine in one of the empty radonium cylinders. He had no stasis field,
'
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and the heavily padded container would protect the beautiful old object from harm. "She hasn't been here since we came."
"She's probably asleep up at the station," Jeff added. "That's what she was talking about doing when I last saw her."
"Asleep?" Serge stared at the engineer incredulously. "In the midst of the biggest theft of the century, you believe she is asleep?" He waved at the stacks of cylinders. "More than half of these are gone, since I was here earlier. Lynch is bound to be back for the rest of them at any moment!"
Rob was staring at both of them blankly. "Theft?" he said. "What about the cover-up? She screwed up the monitoring, didn't she?" His dark eyes fixed on Morrow's face. "You found out about it, didn't you? Jeff, you should have come to me--together we could have stopped her, before anyone died ..."
Now it was Serge's turn to look blank. "Cover-up? Rob, it was Lynch, she is stealing the radonium! Jeff knew nothing about it!" He turned to Morrow.
"What is he saying, 'before anyone died'? Was Lynch responsible for the crash of the Night Storm?"
"That's not all she was responsible for," Rob said in a choked voice. "The explosion at the school. . . Janet thinks it was sabotage, too."
"Mon Dieu ..." Serge whispered. "Do you mean that Hing"-- he could barely get the words out--"was ... was. .. murdered? Like Rizzshor and Andreiovitch?"
"Andreiovitch was a radonium expert," Rob said bleakly. "She had to kill him, because he'd know right away that she'd screwed up the last monitoring check. And then Kkintha called in more experts, and we weren't evacuating the way she told us to, so she caused the explosion in the school. . . Hing . . .
you and Hing just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"And Rizzshor . .." Serge's mind was racing. "Rizzshor would have been able to see immediately that the star-shrine was not from the Lost Colony, that it had been planted here, just like the other artifacts ... the ones Lynch and her crew supposedly uncovered during their monitoring check . .." He took a deep breath, feeling dazed at these additional revelations.
"Yes," Rob said softly. "It all fits, doesn't it?" He turned to gaze at his friend.
"Jeff, how long have you known about Lynch? Did you suspect that she was responsible for the computer sabotage, too?"
"I found out last week," Morrow said miserably, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears. "Or I suspected. I didn't know what to do, Rob! I didn't want to face public disgrace--I even
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considered suicide, but tonight I knew that I had to own up to it, and I knew y
ou'd help me, the way you always have."
Serge froze, his mouth suddenly dry. But Jeff swore to me that he did not know any of this. Was he trying to protect himself by lying to me? Or is there more than self-protection involved here?
He glanced at Rob, saw the psychologist regarding Morrow uneasily. Serge caught the doctor's eye, then jerked his head slightly toward the airlock, in a
"I need to talk to you in private!" gesture. Rob's eyes widened, then he nodded, his expression now carefully neutral. "Jeff, why don't you call Station Security, have them send down a team?" he suggested. "Lynch could be back at any moment for the last of the cylinders. Serge and I will wait in the airlock, make sure she can't get in until we're all ready to leave together."
Morrow nodded, walked over to the terminal. Putting on his helmet, Serge moved toward the airlock, and Rob fell into step beside him. They were almost there when Jeff yelled, "Wait! I just thought of something!"
"What?" Rob said, unsealing his helmet and turning back to face him. Serge stopped walking as the doctor froze, then, slowly, he, too, turned back.
"What's all this, Jeff?" Rob said, nodding at the gun in the engineer's hand.
The weapon was up, and the muzzle pointed directly at Serge's head.
Morrow smiled pleasantly. "This won't take long, Rob. I'm sorry," the engineer added, now addressing Serge, "I had hoped this wouldn't be necessary. You might as well take off your helmet and save your air. You won't be leaving here."
Slowly, staring at the gun, Serge obeyed. He could almost hear the clunk as, in his mind, the last piece of the puzzle dropped into place.
Heather stared at her computerpen, then back at the keypad, then looked up at the screen. She didn't know whose system this was, but he or she was a helluva programmer. Even better than she was. She'd been at this machine long enough to have mastered its most intimate secrets, but she couldn't even get it to open up a communications channel! And the damned thing was acting all kinds of wonky, besides. For one thing, the chrono was running backward. Maybe the main brain had had a nervous breakdown.
She tried another overlay code, but it was rejected just like all the others. No way to call out. No one could call in. It was weird. She was suddenly incredibly grateful she'd managed to convince
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Khuharkk' to go for help. She blinked, not wanting to think about him flying that little scooter out into open, endless space.
Frustrated, she stared at the machine, realizing that she was well and truly licked. Maybe, if she couldn't call out, there was something else useful she could do ... Experimentally, she tapped in a new sequence, ran a few unique overrides, pulled up some deep passwords ... ah, this might be something!
Horizons Unlimited's company files. Even crooks had to keep records, she supposed. Heather flipped through them looking for anything useful. Most of it was typical, boring memos, purchase orders, permits, stuff like that. But she kept looking.
Hey, okay! Here's the payroll for this project! Wonder what these guys are getting to rip off the 'Bridge?
She flipped through the list but it was amazingly short. She rolled it again.
I don't get it. There's hardly anybody on this thing. Just a handful--eight. . .
Only eight employees down here at this site? I'd've thought they'd haved dozens, at least. She looked for any name she might recognize, but there was none. Andrea Lynch must be on here somewhere, she thought and looked again. No Lynch.
She asked the computer to search for Lynch's name and was told her name was all over the purchase orders, bills of lading, permits, every other bit of business . .. but not payroll. Weirder and weirder. Maybe Serge was right in his suspicions . .. maybe Lynch wasn't her real name, and she wasn't a real engineer. Maybe she was an archaeologist, instead.
Then something else occurred to her. If this machine had sufficient safeguards to keep her from doing something as simple as making a call, then someone--Lynch, maybe--was good enough to program it that way. And if that was the case . . .
She mulled that over for a while.
Whoever was that good was probably also good enough to mess up the guidance beam, cause the Night Storm to crash. She shook her head in reluctant admiration. Whoever had done this was better than good, he or she was some kind of wizard.
Heather was so lost in thought that she didn't realize someone else had entered the tent until she heard the lock hiss shut. She jumped away from the machine, standing with her back pressed to the wall, knowing guilt was written all over her face.
A tall, slim, suited figure wrestled with its helmet, finally yanking it off with a grunt, and a woman's face emerged--a face she recognized from the flash she'd glimpsed in Serge's mind. Andrea Lynch. This was the infamous Andrea Lynch.
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The black woman stared at Heather, obviously furious to find her here.
The girl felt her nerves turn to water, felt her knees buckle. The sensation was so much like that moment on StarBridge Station when Khuharkk'
challenged her that she thought for a second she would piss herself again.
But that was before. She was a different person now. She'd been through worse, Heather told herself. Nothing Lynch could do to her could be as bad as those plasma things inside the computer.
She made herself keep her head up, her chin stuck out, and refused to cringe. She was a person of honor, her uncle Khuharkk' had told her so.
Heather thought of the Simiu, out in space even now on that tiny scooter, flying to save her, Rob, Serge, all of them. She had to be brave, too. If Khuharkk' could do it, so could she.
She drew herself up, staring at Lynch calmly, pretending that Doctor Blanket was in her mind, even though seloz was still on the space station, and couldn't "hear" her anymore. Seloz was in her heart. That would have to be enough.
"Who the hell are you?" Lynch demanded angrily. "And what are you doing here?"
Heather swallowed, not wanting her voice to quaver. "I'm Heather Farley. I'm from StarBridge Academy, ma'am." Name, rank, and serial number. That's all you're getting from me!
"You?" the dark woman sneered. "You're a damned baby. You're too young for StarBridge."
Now the girl felt her face flush angrily, but that was fine. Being mad didn't leave her time to be scared. "I'm an advanced student," she replied haughtily. "Special. Gifted." She said it in a tone that said not ordinary, like you!
Lynch grimaced and yanked a gun from an outside pocket Heather hadn't even noticed. The youngster felt her knees weaken. "Yeah, well, for a gifted child, you sure did one hell of a stupid thing coming here."
Not as stupid as what you've done, you crook! Heather thought, but for once she managed to keep her mouth from living a life of its own.
Lynch strode over to the computer as Heather backed up, unable to look away from the woman's gun. The adult tapped something into the computer, then touched a button on the console. A mechanical voice rang out:
"Sixteen minutes two seconds. Sixteen minutes, one second. Sixteen minutes remaining in countdown sequence. Fifteen minutes fifty-nine seconds .. ."
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"Ever hear a countdown before, gifted child?" Lynch snarled. "If not, you're hearing one now. There's a charge tied into the biggest radonium vein, and I can't do a damned thing about it. In fifteen minutes this whole rock's going to be vaporized. Understand me? Or am I being too simple?"
Heather's voice caught in her throat. She tried again, and it emerged in a squeak. Lynch was lying, wasn't she? Just trying to scare her? Wasn't she?
But there-was only truth in those cold black eyes. "You mean . . . like boom?"
she whispered.
"Big boom," Lynch confirmed. "Major. Large. Ultimate BOOM. Got it, brat?"
She latched on to Heather's arm, her grip like iron, hurting her, even through the spacesuit.
"What are you going to do to me?" the child asked, hating the tremor in her voice. She was really scared now, shaking. She knew Lynch was going to shoot her, leave
her here, to be totally incinerated. Remember your honor! a voice inside her ordered. She took a deep breath and faced Lynch calmly.
"What are you going to do?"
"What am I going to do?" Lynch repeated, obviously on the verge of losing it entirely. "What am I going to do?" Panting, she tried to catch her breath, the pulse in her neck jumping. "I... uh .. ." she hesitated, startling Heather more than anything she'd done so far. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm gonna stuff you in the cargo hold of our shuttle. You're going to get in there and be quiet, you understand me?" She gave Heather a vicious shake, and the girl nodded rapidly in compliance.
"Yeah, that's it." Lynch was thinking hard. "You stay hidden, and after we're safe, I'll sneak you some food. When we're far enough away, at some port, I'll sneak you back out again, give you enough money to contact your people after we're gone. He'll never know. Yeah. That'll work. You got that?"
Heather blinked. She had no idea what the woman was talking about.
"Who's he? You're not going to kill me? Leave me here?" She looked over at the console, at the voice intoning, "Fifteen minutes three seconds. Fifteen minutes two seconds."
"Kill you?" Lynch spat in complete amazement. "What the hell do you think I am?"
The girl collected herself, looked right into Andrea Lynch's eyes, and touched her mind for the briefest second. She was assailed with quick flashes of Lynch bartering for stuff... no, not just stuff. .. Heather remembered Serge's description of the artifacts they'd found here. Lynch had bought those things on the black market and planted them here. She glimpsed the memory of Lynch buying and installing the star-shrine. Oh, this would just 279
kill Serge! She saw snippets of other memories, too, in the brief touch. Lynch loading radonium onto a ship.
"You used to be an archaeologist," Heather whispered, terrified, but unable to say anything else. "But now you're a thief... and a liar."
The woman flinched, then grabbed her ear as if searching for something.
Her teledistort, Heather realized. It must've gotten yanked off when she pulled her helmet off so quick.
Lynch barked an ugly laugh. "All that and more, kid. But I'm no killer. I've never killed anybody, and I'm not starting with a kid, even a mind-reading snotty little brat like you."
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