Death is a Ruby Light

by Paul Kenyon

  "Us?"

  "I don't know. It doesn't look as if they've intersected our tracks. The wind will have obscured the early ones anyway. But they could have found the remains of the yurt."

  "Or run into Omogoy and his boys."

  "Omogoy wouldn't admit he was a Russian spy. He's not suicidal. He'd do one of two things. He'd fight. Or he'd play the part of a poor wandering hunter and his band."

  "It doesn't look as if the Chinese intend to climb any higher. They wouldn't get very far anyway without mountain-climbing gear."

  The Chinese spotter plane arrived just before dark. It was a small, single-engined craft about the size of a Piper Cub, with yellow stars on the wings and tail. It circled some of the lower peaks, never coming closer than a couple of miles to them, then flew south into a cloud-bank.

  "Think it saw us?" Skytop said.

  They were huddled in a series of fluted crevasses that lined the ridge, their equipment covered by white tarps.

  "No," the Baroness said. "I don't think they know we're up here."

  * * *

  "Ingenious," said Major Sung.

  "You set me a problem," Professor Thing said. "It was amusing to solve it."

  His stalklike figure, wrapped in the red silk robe, towered over a gleaming chrome drum that was about seven feet in diameter and came up to Sung's chest. Its upper surface was a shallow curved disc of darkened optical glass, marked in a fine grid. Sung could see his reflection in it, distorted by the curvature, beside Professor Thing's image. He was reminded unpleasantly of a mantis and its prey, a round beetle or a baby toad.

  "But I don't understand how you've fit a laser projector inside."

  Professor Thing raised a pair of cotton-white eyebrows above the rims of his dark glasses. Sung followed his gesture to the giant steel cage that held the huge telescope.

  "I'm using the big laser," Professor Thing said. "It's my child. It needs nourishment. I'm going to let it taste blood."

  "But how?"

  "Quite simple. A laser is nothing more than a beam of coherent light. Like all light, it can be reflected. There's an arrangement of laser mirrors up there that catches the light as it comes out of the prime focus at the top. A reflector down here feeds it into this drum."

  "And you can focus it at any spot on the curvature?"

  "Precisely."

  "And then what?"

  "The three-hundred-inch reflector sends it back through the tube, into outer space. It's much too powerful for us to contain it here. It would burn through molybdenum steel, to say nothing of human flesh."

  Sung clapped his hands in delight. "You are a genius!"

  Professor Thing motioned one of his assistants over. The assistant unrolled a long cylinder of stiff paper. It was a man's silhouette, life-size.

  "Let me demonstrate," Professor Thing said in his unresonant voice.

  The assistant spread the paper silhouette over the curving glass. It represented a short, squat man, uncomfortably similar to Sung's own figure.

  "Step back, Major, behind the white chalk line," Professor Thing said. Sung obeyed hastily.

  Professor Thing fiddled with a couple of knobs, checking the position of the paper outline. He closed a relay.

  There was a bright skein of red wool strung through the immense domed chamber. It came down from somewhere near the top of the telescope to a canted black box at the base of the chrome drum. It reappeared at the curved glass and stretched tautly to the Coudé focus, became a long N that bounced off the three-hundred-inch mirror and up the tube.

  It flashed for less than a second, but the afterimage lingered in Sung's vision.

  He could see the crimson thread stretching through the slot in the dome, up into the sky, losing itself in infinity.

  "Come take a look, Major," the professor said.

  Sung stood on tiptoe. There was a neat scorched hole burned in the paper target, precisely where an eye would have been.

  It was the right eye, the same side as Professor Thing's ruby egg.

  "That particular beam was about the diameter of a pencil," the Professor said. "I can narrow it to the diameter of a human hair. Think of the precision you can bring to your professional endeavors, my dear Sung. I suggest that you begin brushing up your knowledge of anatomy."

  Sung flushed warm all over, thinking of the possibilities. He turned his codfish face to Professor Thing.

  "We may give your child a taste of blood sooner than you think. I've had a report from my Russian turncoat. The flies are heading toward our net."

  * * *

  Penelope snuggled closer to Alexey in the sleeping bag. It was warm inside, the heat of their naked bodies trapped by the fluffy insulation. The aluminized tent made a low peak over their faces. The tent itself was sheltered by the walls of the cavelike crevasse they had all to themselves. The atmosphere had been getting steamier for the last hour.

  It was delicious to know that outside it was seventy degrees below zero.

  "I'm glad you've decided to trust me again," Alexey said, nuzzling her ear.

  "Who said anything about trusting you?"

  She reached between his legs. He was already big again.

  "You're insatiable," he said.

  "Look who's talking."

  He put a big hand on her bush. She wriggled with pleasure. He extended a finger that penetrated with slippery ease.

  "You're ready?" he said in a raised-eyebrow voice. "Before I've done any work?"

  "It's not work, is it, darling?"

  "Far from it."

  He waggled the finger. She gave an exquisite shiver.

  "Don't stir too much, darling. There's something else I'd much rather have in there."

  The finger stopped waggling. It was buried up to the knuckle.

  "Now?"

  "Well not right now. I might have a good appetite for dinner, darling, but I like a martini first."

  "A vodka martini?"

  "With a twist."

  "Stirred, not shaken?"

  "You can stir me, darling, and shake me."

  His other hand found the yielding mound of her breast and closed around it. He held it in a reverent grasp, cradling the underside in the web of his thumb and forefinger. He moved the hand up and rotated his palm on the bulging nipple. Penelope shivered again. The fingers squeezed gently.

  She had the hard length of his post in her hand. It was hot and feverish. She moved her fingers caressingly. He drew in his breath sharply.

  Impulsively she burrowed down into the sleeping bag and put him in her mouth. It was dark and warm and safe down there, and his thigh against her cheek felt comforting. She nursed at the swollen knob, her tongue pushing down its fleshy sheath. He moved carefully into a new position, and soon she could feel his own tongue probing at her rimpled hollows. He followed the packed contours with a gentle insistent pressure, tasting her honey. The tongue darted inside and probed the engorged walls. His face was rubbing against the tight bud, sending flashes of lightning down the insides of her thighs, through her lower spine. She made a muffled moan.

  She broke free and crawled toward the mouth of the sleeping bag. She took a deep gasping breath when her head emerged. They turned on their hips, pressing themselves front to front.

  She felt between his legs for the rigid club and thrust it deep within her, wrapping her leg around his hip. Her body felt like a huge warm cavity, filled to bursting with him. She put one hand between his shoulder blades and another at the base of his spine and began moving in and out. He held her in a bear hug, flattening her breasts. She could feel the little hard nubs of his male nipples digging into her softness. He picked up her slow rhythm, making long delectable thrusts.

  It took a long time in the darkness of their little enclosed universe. She could feel a warm tide rising through the caverns of her body, washing over the exquisitely sensitive boundaries of flesh. Little by little, she and Alexey increased their rhythm, the motions growing more complex and violent. God, it was going well
! She could feel the warm tide sloshing, bathing her tightened nerves. The pressure grew irresistible. She fought against it, willing it to build higher before it gave way.

  He was slamming into her now, making wild animal noises. She answered him with the quick gasps that his piston thrusts were forcing out of her. And then every muscle of his body went rigid and he forced himself into her as far as he could push. A long, drawn-out groan escaped him. She could feel the hot stuff of his ecstasy spilling through her pulsing grottoes, and then her own dam burst.

  She climbed his body with the leg slung over his hip, digging her fingernails into his back, pushing at his buttocks with all her strength. The darkness spun round. There was a shattering paroxysm that went on and on, dividing itself into an endless string of shuddering quakes. She moaned uncontrollably at the ravishing joy of it. It died slowly in a series of shivering releases that dwindled into a final sweet pop or two.

  Alexey fell back like a dead man, panting. She kept a hand on his behind to keep the still-rigid rod inside her.

  "We need a breath of air, darling," she said.

  She unzipped the flap of the tent a cautious few inches. A precious cool breeze wafted in. They inhaled, tasting it like wine. It was refreshing on their cheeks, with their bodies burrowed into the warmth of the sleeping bag.

  She opened the flap further and peeked outside. The end of the little tent was a few inches beyond the rock cleft that sheltered them. She looked across at an endless world of white mountain peaks, a rumpled sheet under a clear black sky that glittered with stars.

  "Beautiful, isn't it," he said. "It could be another planet out there."

  There was a flash of red in the distance. A thread of light stretched upward to eternity. It seemed to have no width, as a star has no disc. It lasted a bare fraction of a second.

  "That's our laser," he said. "It came from that peak over there — the tall one that looks like a sugar tit."

  "Exactly where the computer coordinates put it."

  He looked at her shrewdly. "How far from here?"

  "Can't you tell, darling?"

  He appeared to ponder the matter. "Two more peaks to cross first. It shouldn't take us more than three days."

  15

  Sumo took her aside the next morning. "Baroness, there's something fishy going on."

  "What is it, Tommy?"

  "We've maintained radio silence since we crossed the border. But I've been monitoring the frequencies."

  "And?"

  He frowned. "Somebody made an FM transmission from here last night. And it sure as hell wasn't me."

  "Voice?"

  "No, coded signal."

  "Could you read it?"

  "Not a chance. It was a low-redundancy cipher. Sounded like a Russian gamma."

  She smiled wryly. "All we have to do is strip all the Russians to the skin and find out who's carrying a onetime pad. They're at least as big as a postage stamp."

  "They're not supposed to have a radio. That was the deal."

  "They're not very trustworthy, are they? But neither are we."

  "What do you think they're up to, Baroness?"

  "They're reporting our position to Moscow. Probably been doing it every night since we set out. Only last night they had something more interesting to report." She told him about the laser beam.

  He whistled. "Looks like we're right on the button. I guess it won't hurt to satisfy Moscow's curiosity. They can't do anything about it at the moment. But what worries me is the Chinese. The transmission was very short, but if they happened to pick it up they're going to start wondering who's in these mountains."

  "Tommy, can you improvise a two-plate magnetron from your equipment?"

  "Nothing to it. What do you want to generate? Infrared? Radar frequencies?"

  "I want you to manage to get close to all the Russians and their equipment one at a time before tonight. Flood them with enough microwaves to burn out any radio equipment they're hiding."

  "Okay." He hesitated. "Does that include Alexey? You were with him last night."

  "Especially Alexey. He left the tent to answer a call of nature just after we saw the laser flash."

  "Okay. If you'll delay the start this morning for about a half-hour. That's how long it'll take me to fix up the magnetron. I promise you there won't be any Russian broadcasts tonight."

  "Where are they?" Sung demanded.

  Sweat poured down the face of the radio operator. He was a sallow youth with a weak stomach. Sung enjoyed making him watch interrogations. "I don't know, Comrade Sung. There was no transmission tonight."

  "You fool! You've wandered off the frequency!"

  "No, no, I swear! The settings were correct!"

  "You missed it, then!"

  The radio operator looked at him with pleading eyes. "I was receiving from a full hour before the transmission time until now." He turned up the volume. Empty radio noise came out of the loudspeaker. "There has been no transmission."

  Sung's slit of a mouth tightened. "Keep listening. Don't leave your seat even to pee. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Comrade Sung."

  Sung hurried upstairs to the observatory dome. He stepped out of the elevator into a scene of bustling activity. He almost collided with a technician running from the computer room with a printout. A blue-clad mathematician with a sheaf of papers was calling out numbers to two assistants on a balcony. A team of electricians had the casing of the giant laser tube open and were checking components.

  He found Professor Thing studying the celestial globe, a sheet of calculations in his hand. His angular form seemed as insubstantial as a bamboo lattice wrapped in red brocade. He wasn't wearing his dark glasses. Tears ran from the inflamed-looking eye down his chalky face. He turned to Sung, showing annoyance.

  "I'm extremely busy, Major," he said. "We're getting ready for the new American orbiting observatory. What is it?"

  "Our flies have stopped buzzing. There was no transmission tonight. I don't know where they are."

  Professor Thing spun the dark-blue globe, looking like a Chinese magician. "That's a pity," he said. "But they're heading in this direction, aren't they? You'll be able to intercept them?"

  "Yes. I've sent for the nearest People's Liberation Army unit to help. We'll set up a ring around this mountain."

  "You may frighten our flies away. I shouldn't like that, Major. I'm counting on getting my hands on the Americans. You know how I feel about Americans, Major. Russians are the enemy of the People's Republic. I punish them out of duty. But Americans are my own enemy." He touched the ruby egg in his eye socket. "I punish them out of revenge."

  Sung turned to contemplate the chromium drum with its glass top. The paper silhouette of a man was still lying across it.

  "You'll have your pleasure, Professor," he said. "Even frightened flies are drawn by honey."

  "And where is our honey, Major?"

  Sung nodded at the gleaming length of the giant laser tube. "There," he said.

  * * *

  They reached the crest of the last ridge just before sunset. Penelope pulled herself over the rim, dug in with the crampons and helped haul Skytop up. He sat down gratefully, panting, and undid his heavy pack. The others straggled in, one by one.

  The mountain that Alexey had described as looking like a sugar tit was just barely hidden from them by the far edge of the sloping shelf they were on. Penelope didn't have to tell any of them to keep crouched low, out of line of sight. They were professionals.

  "Let's have a look," she said.

  She inched forward on her belly, another mound of snow in her white parka and hood. Alexey and Wharton were beside her. The others crawled forward to look from their own vantage points.

  Cautiously she raised her head over the crest, binoculars in her hand. The view was breathtaking in the flat rays of the setting sun. There was a reddish gold glow over the snowy vista, burnishing the western slopes and stretching long pinkish fingers between the peaks.

 
It was white, so they didn't see it at first. Then Penelope put a hand on Wharton's arm.

  "There it is. Just at the tip of the peak."

  A smooth creamy dome protruded from the summit of the conical mountain, catching a few rosy highlights from the sinking sun. It appeared no larger than the end of her thumb at this distance, but a look through the binoculars gave her some idea of its vast scale. Judging by the size of a snow tractor parked in front of a low shed at the base of the pearly bubble, the dome was close to two hundred feet high.

  "It's big," Sumo's awed voice said beside her. He'd crawled up next to her with his own binoculars. "Bigger than Hale Observatory on Mt. Paiomar."

  "That makes it the biggest in the world."

  Alexey spoke up. "You're sure it's an observatory, then?"

  "Has to be. Look at the configuration, with those tracks for the dome shutter. If it were purely a weapons installation, it would have a different design."

  "The Hale mirror's two hundred inches," Wharton said. "I thought you couldn't build them much bigger than that."

  Alexey said, "Soviet Union is building a 236-inch reflector."

  Sumo was doing some calculations in the snow. "Guessing at the distance from the mirror to the prime focus, that baby has to be at least three hundred inches."

  "Who could build one that large?"

  Sumo shook his head. "He'd have to be some kind of genius."

  A long dark slit was opening in the massive dome as a shutter rolled back on tracks. As they watched, a long cylinder extruded itself from between the curving lips on either side of the slit.

  "The telescope," Sumo whispered.

  The entire dome swung ponderously around on its base. The great rod of the telescope thrust itself upward, questing after something invisible in the sky.

  "Tommy, what's over Manchuria right now?"

  Sumo consulted the orbital tables in his head. "The newest orbiting astronomical observatory."

  It was getting darker. Through their binoculars the smooth ovoid was turning into a dim silhouette against the stars. The searching rod pointed like a finger.