by Paul Kenyon
But it still wasn't good enough. She needed another twenty feet of margin. Otherwise she'd go crashing to the foot of the command center, right under the overhanging marquee.
She shrugged off the top of the body stocking and unhooked her bra. It looked like ordinary stretch fabric, but it was made out of an amorphous polymer similar to the Spyder's line.
In fact, it was an incredibly strong elastomer. The stretch ratio was sixty to one — many times more powerful than a giant rubber band of equivalent size. And it couldn't break.
She tied the ends of the bra to a pair of sturdy-looking cleats at the edge of the water tower. She cut off another twenty feet of the Spyder's line and tied one end around the bra, between the cups. She played out the line to the opposite edge of the tower. She wound the free end around the miniature winch in her kit: a mate to the little pulleys. She fastened the winch to a cleat and began turning the crank.
The bra began to stretch. The pull was fantastic, even with the winch's gear ratio of twenty to one. In a minute or two, the bra had stretched to a huge V, its sides a good fifteen feet long.
She fit her bottom snugly into the V and braced her legs. She aimed the Spyder at the concrete pier, thirty yards away. The Spyder hissed.
At the precise moment that the explosive piton hit the pier on the opposite roof, she cut the line that was wound around the little winch.
Like a stone flung from a giant slingshot, she flew through the air. She reached the top of her trajectory halfway across, but by that time the Spyder's spring was pulling her along. She began swinging downward like a pendulum, the Spyder reeling in the slack, foot by foot.
Her sneakered heels hit the side of the command building, jarring the breath out of her. She was dangling only a few feet above the entrance marquee. She was hidden from the crowd directly below.
She listened, holding her breath. There was no outcry from below. Nobody had seen the swift black shadow that had just flown twenty feet over their heads.
She hauled herself up the silken thread to the rooftop. Anyone standing out beyond the marquee might have seen her, but their eyes would be dazzled by the lights at the entrance. She was just another long dawn shadow.
A low skylight humped out of the center of the roof. Crawling toward it, she risked a look through it. It was the firing room of the launch control center.
Down below she saw a vast green-glowing chamber with hundreds of technicians sitting elbow to elbow at long rows of consoles. The walls on three sides were lined with TV monitors and huge display screens.
The Baroness felt beneath her body stocking and worked loose the plastic nipples that were pasted to her breasts. It was a relief to get them off. The adhesive itched. She stuck the phony nipples side by side on the glass of the skylight.
They stared back at her, blind paps. But they weren't blind.
She pressed the stud on the little receiver in her pouch. The disembodied teats became engorged with electrons. Microwaves flooded the room below. The Baroness sat with her back against the massive pier of a radar dish and prepared for a long vigil. She could hear everything that Vrach mission control could hear.
* * *
"Light, my dear Sung," Professor Thing said in his empty voice. "The most insubstantial entity in the universe. And yet the most powerful."
The professor sat perched at the focus of a web of girders, his long, bony hands creeping over the console in front of him. Major Sung thought again of a gigantic praying mantis. The ruby eye, thank the gods, was hidden now by a pair of huge curving sunglasses, giving the pale prism of a face an insect-like appearance. The illusion was heightened by the red, brocade Mandarin cap, and the long, trailing sleeves that suggested mantis claws.
Around him worked a dozen silent, unhurried technicians, wearing padded cotton coats against the mountain chill; with the dome shutter open, there was no way of keeping the observatory warm.
"You look doubtful, Major," the professor went on. "I know you prefer to rely on your knives and wedges and needles. Those are things you can hold in your hands. But I assure you, light is more powerful than all your instruments."
"The most powerful thing in the world is pain," Sung said flatly. He was feeling edgy and argumentative. "The world is what we perceive it as being. And when pain overwhelms the perceptions, nothing else exists." He gave a short, ugly laugh. "Ask anyone I've interrogated."
"Ah, you're in a philosophical mood, Major. Unusual for you. Very well, I'll pose you a riddle. Doubtless you're familiar with the old conundrum about the tree that falls in the middle of the forest. If no ear is there to hear it, has it in fact made a noise?"
"I've heard it," Sung growled. "Prerevolutionary nonsense."
"Now, the universe is revealed by light, is it not? For a mole or a blindworm, the stars do not exist. My question is this, Major. If there were no eyes to see it, would the universe exist?"
"Of course it would exist!"
"Are you quite sure, Major?" Professor Thing turned his dish of a face toward him and removed the dark glasses. The synthetic ruby egg glittered redly. The real eye didn't look much better: it was raw-rimmed and colored the angry pink that characterizes the albino — even a Chinese albino.
He's mad, Sung thought. His affliction has made him mad. Of course he believes in the power of light. Sunlight would kill him. Still, he is a useful instrument of the People's Republic. He is a genius. He must be humored.
"Perhaps not," Sung said aloud. He laughed lamely. "After all, light can make things cease to exist, eh Professor? You've taught us that."
Professor Thing stared at him silently. Sung began to feel uncomfortable. It was crazy, but he had the illusion that the ruby eye could see him, just as the pink one could.
"Very good, Major," the professor said at last. He put the glasses back on. He turned dials, and machinery far below whirred. The entire dome began to rotate. The giant telescope raised itself ponderously toward the vertical and thrust itself through the slot in the dome.
"Light," the professor mumbled, squinting through the eyepiece. "Th'ing! Strange, isn't it, Major, that, though my very name signifies light, I should find light so painful?" His bleached fingers stabbed at buttons. Accumulators began to hum far below.
He turned a parchment face toward Sung. "I think we're ready, my dear Major, to share that pain."
* * *
The sun was low in the west. All through the long morning and afternoon, she'd huddled on the rooftop, listening to Russian voices through her receiver. The spaceship was in its third orbit now, making the course corrections that would enable it to catch up to the burnt-out Molniya communications satellite.
The Baroness cursed the smashed transmitter that kept her from communicating with her team and with Key. They'd been wrong, dreadfully wrong.
Vrach I wasn't a killer satellite. It was exactly what the name implied. A doctor. A doctor for sick spacecraft.
The Russians were attempting an astounding feat. They'd sent the three cosmonauts into orbit to inspect and repair their Molniya satellite in mid-space.
And they were mad at the Americans for sabotaging it.
The Baroness crouched in the shelter of the concrete pier, listening to the crackling exchanges between the Vrach crew and ground control. They were all in high spirits. The launch had been good. They were about to score another space first.
"Doctor to nurse, doctor to nurse," the Russian commander said, his voice scratchy with static. He was a bluff, hearty man named Pirogov. "We have eyeball fix on patient now."
"Any sign of damage?" ground control said.
"Nothing visible yet. Whatever those neprelichniye Americantsi did to her, it didn't change her configuration."
"You need to raise your orbit a bit. Another three and a half seconds of thrust should do it."
"Where will I catch up with her?"
There was a pause and the hiss of static. "Approximately over Manchuria, at about the 120th parallel. Give your regards to our Chi
nese comrades."
Pirogov chuckled. "That's where I'll take a piss, then. I'll drop the bottle overboard. The bastards'll think it's raining."
Penelope couldn't help smiling. The Russians were an earthy lot. All through the flight they'd been using barnyard similes to describe the operation. At one point ground control had told Pirogov to be sure to feel Molniya's tits, a reference to her two bowl-shaped antennae.
She thumbed the little receiver to a different wavelength. The cosmonauts would be silent a while, as they performed the final delicate maneuvers. It was time for her to check her security net again.
She tuned in the five-kopeck coin she'd dropped at the foot of the service shed. She heard what appeared to be a single set of footsteps passing by. Good. No unusual activity in that area.
There were muffled voices in the vinicity of the next coin. One of them said, "Look what I found!" The voices became abruptly clearer. Someone had picked up the coin. "This is my lucky day." The voices faded. He'd put the coin in his pocket.
There were a dozen more within range of heir receiver. She heard nothing that resembled any kind of excitement or building-to-building security search. She knew that the body of the man she'd killed hadn't been discovered; she could see the sole of a boot sticking out from behind the water tank on the roof of the service shed across the way.
But there was excitement on the Vrach waveband when she tuned it back in.
"Major Pirogov, please stand by," ground control was saying. "The Premier wishes to speak to you. We are patching him in from Moscow."
Penelope perked up her ears. The Russians must have attached the highest importance to this mission if it was getting this kind of attention from the top governmental levels.
In a moment, Kosygin's distinctive voice was on the air. "Comrade Pirogov, the Soviet Union is proud of the brave deed you and your crew are performing today. It will go down in history. When you land, there will be three medals waiting for you: Heroes of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I hope to have the honor of pinning them on you personally. This is a great day for Communism."
"It is we who are honored, Your Excellency."
"Take lots of pictures, Major. We must have evidence of this American outrage."
Penelope narrowed her eyes. Thai's why the Russians were so hot about this mission. It wasn't just the technical achievement. They wanted an ace in the hole that they could use against the United States. There was a big international crisis brewing over this. The hot line must be humming.
Pirogov caught up with Molniya a half-hour later. He made a final, fractional burn that kicked him into a higher, slower orbit. The gap was closing inch by inch now.
"Extending grapples now," Pirogov's voice said tinnily.
"Can you see anything?"
"Nyet… wait a minute! There are bubbles all over the lower surface."
"Bubbles? Repeat, please. Did you say bubbles?"
"Correct. Over an elliptical area about two meters in length. As if it had been melted, then solidified at the different cooling rates of the separate materials."
"Are you getting photographs?"
"Da. Sasha's taking them. I'm going to go over and have a closer look."
"Be careful."
A new voice took over the transmissions as Pirogov entered the airlock. There was some half-hearted banter about the doctor getting in bed with the patient, but Penelope could tell the Russians were worried.
It happened five minutes later.
The copilot's voice said: "The cabin's getting warm. Too warm. Something's wrong."
Ground control said something indecipherable, then: "Give us your cabin temperature reading."
But whatever was happening up there over Manchuria was happening too fast. The copilot was screaming, "Mne zharka, mne zharka, I'm burning!" There was a horrible scream of agony, then silence.
There was nothing coming through her receiver now except the hiss of the carrier wave. Ground control tried frantically to raise them, but there was nothing.
Pirogov's voice came back on the air a quarter-hour later. He'd been clinging to the pitted and bubbled skin of the Molniya, listening to it through his helmet radio. He'd had trouble getting back into the cabin of the Vrach. The hatch fittings had been warped by heat, he said.
"It's terrible, comrades," he said, his voice cracking with grief. "They're cooked… cooked like a pork roast! Everything's black in here! It's a miracle the radio's still working."
"Is there smoke?"
"No. It's a vacuum here. Cabin's been breached. Controls are a mess."
A pause. "Did you see anything?"
"Nothing. I was outside. Nothing came near the capsule. Whatever it was, it happened inside the cabin. Maybe an incendiary was hidden there."
"Impossible, comrade. The checkout…"
Pirogov's voice was savage. "Fuck the checkout! Something happened! You've got a spy down there at the launching pad!"
After a while they faced the obvious. "You can't get me down, can you, comrades." Pirogov sounded calm, controlled.
"We're working on it, comrade. Have courage."
"Don't tell me any fairy stories. The retros won't fire. And even if they did, my altitude controls are shot. I'd be burned to a crisp if I tried to reenter."
There was a long, long silence. Then ground control came on again, very sober and formal. "Major Pirogov, the Premier wants to talk to you."
Pirogov gave a harsh laugh. "All right. Put him on. And get me my wife and children."
Penelope stopped listening a few minutes later. It was getting too painful. She collected the nipples that were stuck to the skylight and began to pack up her kit. It was getting dark. Pretty soon she'd have to see about getting out of here. It wasn't going to be easy. She tuned in on her listening posts. There was a lot of activity down there now. She could hear running footsteps, motors coughing into life, shouting voices. The voices sounded angry.
She inched back to the center of the roof and flattened herself against its surface, squeezing her body against the base of a steel housing of some kind. That was where they found her.
They burst out on the roof, about fifty of them, pouring through three separate hatchways. She was surrounded. They wore the uniform of the Baikonour security force, and they carried automatic weapons.
They looked furious, crazy with rage. There was nothing of the controlled efficiency of the professional security man on any of those contorted faces. Penelope knew that they wanted to kill her, that there were fifty fingers itching for any excuse to pull the trigger. She froze as motionless as a cornered hare.
A man with colonel's insignia on his shoulders came striding across the rooftop toward her. Tears were streaming down his face.
He only hit her once before he got control of himself. "Major Pirogov is dead!" he spat. "And now you're going to pay for it!"
8
She was strapped naked to a tilting table. Her head was in a clamp. All the paraphernalia of an interrogation room was around her: the hooded lights, the drip bottle for truth drugs, the discreet display of torture instruments whose sight was intended to frighten the subject and loosen him up.
A squat woman, resembling a toad in a white smock, was stationed at the foot of the table. The Russians tended to be prudes — even about torture. She was there as a chaperon for the colonel.
Colonel Ostrovsky held up the pair of nipples. "Very ingenious. The miniaturization of the electronic components is unbelievable. We could never duplicate it. What do they do?"
"They give a shock to anyone who tries to get fresh," Penelope said dryly. Surreptitiously she flexed all the muscles of her body, trying to determine how bad the bruises were. There didn't seem to be any serious damage. The beating had been a mild one.
Colonel Ostrovsky's face went purple with fury. "You're in no position to make jokes! I'll have answers if I have to peel off your flesh like cabbage leaves! How did you blow up Pirogov's spaceship? What kind of device did you place ab
oard?"
She tried to lift her head, but the clamp held it fast. "Pirogov's space ship wasn't blown up, and you know it."
He hooked his thumb and fingers around both her cheeks and squeezed. He bent forward, speaking only inches from her face. She could smell herring and leeks on his breath. "You did something! An incendiary bomb. How did you smuggle it aboard?"
"For what it's worth, Colonel, I had nothing to do with Pirogov's death," she said wearily. "It's not the Americans who've been disabling your satellites."
He released her. Her face felt numb. "I've wasted enough patience on you. Now you begin to feel some pain. Real pain."
"You're out of your depth, Colonel. This is too big for you. Moscow will want to interrogate me. And they won't want damaged merchandise."
She spoke deliberately, like someone trying to calm a wild animal. She thought about what might be coming, trying to anticipate it. She could trade off her pain for doled-out information about her mission. That wasn't important now. What she had to protect at all costs was the secret of her own identity. Once they knew that she was the Baroness Penelope St, John-Orsini, and that the Baroness was the legendary Coin, it would be easy for them to trace her links to Skytop, to Wharton, to Sumo and the others. And to Key. She had to bear whatever came and not betray them.
"Moscow will get damaged merchandise," he said positively. "And they'll get their information. Pirogov was a friend of mine."
He was getting personal about it. That was bad. When they got personal, they didn't know when to stop.
The colonel snapped his fingers and the toad-like woman got up. She passed out of Penelope's line of sight Penelope could hear her rummaging around in a cabinet. She began breathing evenly, relaxing her body for the yoga exercise that would help screen out pain. The toad-woman gave her the shivers. There was something sick and evil flickering behind those hooded eyes. Whenever Ostrovsky had left the room for a moment, leaving her alone with Penelope, she'd taken the opportunity to do some dreadful little thing: pinch a breast or the Up of the vulva, stick a needle into the ball of the foot where it wouldn't show, thumb an eyeball.
