by Paul Kenyon
"Do you know what's going to happen to you?" Professor Thing asked.
He was only a few feet away, leaning over the guard rail of the frail balcony at the top of the dome. He reminded her of a huge red spider, with his attenuated limbs and the bulging lenses of the sunglasses.
"I have a pretty good idea," she said dryly.
His long fingers waved like antennae. "Let me tell you. In detail. The laser beam will shoot out of the center of the rod. It will be no thicker than a pencil. When it reaches the American astronauts one hundred and ten miles above us, it will still be no thicker. But first it will penetrate your womb, your transverse colon, diaphragm, pancreas, fiver, continue through your thorax to your throat and palate, pierce your brain and burst through the top of your head into space."
"I'm familiar with anatomy," the Baroness said.
"All this will happen at the speed of light. A ruby laser is simply a very energetic form of light at a uniform frequency of thirty-five thousand oscillations per inch. The American astronauts will be incinerated before your brain has stopped thinking. You'll have three bridegrooms in death."
"And where will you be, Professor? Looking through the peephole?"
He stirred angrily. "I'll be down below at the eyepiece. I can observe the astronauts through the same reflecting train used by the laser beam."
He scuttled along the spidery catwalk, holding on to the guard rail. She followed his progress down to the observation tube with its rubber eyepiece. He was tiny down there, a man made of matchsticks.
It was busy down at the floor of the dome. Technicians scurried back and forth. Machinery was starting to hum into life.
She could see the circus cage parked to one side. They'd all been brought from the dungeons to watch Professor Thing's triumph — Skytop, Wharton, Inga, Tom Sumo. Alexey was down there, too. He'd recovered consciousness. He was alert but shaky. She'd managed to exchange a few words with him before they'd lashed her to the ruby mast.
There were only two security guards in the observatory, there to keep an eye on the cage. Professor Thing didn't like having guards around when he was working.
She twisted her body, feeling with her hands for the rim of the ruby pillar behind her. If they'd used rope, she might have tried sawing it against the sharp edge. But Professor Thing had thought of that. She was wearing steel handcuffs.
That was all she was wearing, except for the white bra. It was going to get very cold in a little while.
A hearty voice came booming from below, laced with static. "You're looking at a CBS News simulation. The long cylinder you see at the nose of the Apollo spacecraft is the docking module. In about twenty minutes, if all goes well, it will latch on to the forward end of the Soyuz craft — that special compartment that looks like a giant Russian Easter egg. Shortly thereafter, two of the three American astronauts will crawl through the docking module and join the Russian cosmonauts for an historic space visit…"
Professor Thing didn't want his American prisoners to miss anything. He'd set up a mammoth TV projection screen in the observatory. CBS was being piped in, ironically, by satellite transmission. He'd add flavor to his triumph when he heard Walter Cronkite, his voice shaky with shock and grief, announce the incredible tragedy that was about to take place.
She tried to watch the screen, but from her height it was too foreshortened. All she could make out was a narrow band of flickering shadows.
There was the rumble of machinery, and the night sky appeared in a narrow band above her. The dome shutter was open. She felt a blast of cold Manchurian air on her bare skin.
The giant telescope began to erect itself toward the vertical. She rode it upward, the ruby pedestal hard and cold against her bottom. The telescope thrust itself through the dome slot, out into the night. She was surrounded by brilliant stars. Her skin raised in goose bumps from the cold.
Below her, the entire dome began to turn, tracking something invisible among the stars. She swung in a great circle, clinging to the ruby pole like a steeplejack.
"…You're seeing it live," said the faint voice of Walter Cronkite below her. It seemed incongruous hearing it here in the snowy mountains of north China. "They're going to make it first try… There's the probe heading directly toward the docking adaptor, that round circle you see getting bigger in the screen…"
The Baroness wondered what it would feel like, having a small round hole drilled through your entire body and out the top of your head.
The ruby shaft began to flicker as the flash tube stimulated atoms within it. The pink fight danced over her body, getting brighter. It would take only a few seconds more of optical pumping before photon excitation reached the critical point. Then the high-energy burst of fight would spurt from the rod, through the lens cap between her thighs. She braced herself.
What was Professor Thing feeling at this moment, she wondered. She could see his matchstick figure far below, the dark glasses perched on his forehead, the good eye pressed avidly against the telescope eyepiece.
There was a vivid red pulse, like a flash of lightning.
A terrible scream came from below. Professor Thing lurched backward as if he'd been hit by a battering ram. His chair tipped backward and he tumbled to the floor. He lay there without moving.
The Baroness looked down between her legs. A red shaft of fight was projecting straight out. She could feel the heat on the insides of her thighs. The beam was bare inches from her flesh. It was bouncing from the laser mirror that Sumo had inserted between the end of the rod and its cap of optical glass.
The beam bounced accurately off another laser mirror in front of her, cunningly concealed in the rim of the telescope cage. The mirror had been made from the other lens of Sumo's sunglasses.
The reflected beam passed only a few inches from her hip. She wondered if Sumo would have cut it so close if he'd known she was going to be tied up there.
From there, the beam was reflected from the mirror that had been used to power the torture device that had killed Tania and Omogoy. Sumo had tilted it a few inches to send the laser shaft down through the optical train of the telescope, through the eyepiece.
It had pierced through Professor Thing's remaining eye and speared him through the brain. Light, the entity that had obsessed him, had finally destroyed him.
It was pandemonium down there now. Technicians were running aimlessly back and forth. Nobody had had the wit to turn off the laser yet. She had to act before they did.
Carefully, she moved her handcuffed wrists as far to the side as she could manage. The chain was positioned directly over the pencil of light. Holding her breath, she lowered it.
The laser cut through the chain like butter. Instantly she began working at the knots in the ropes with her fingernails and teeth. It took her almost two minutes to free herself.
Somebody pointed up at her and shouted. One of the security guards began climbing up after her.
She lifted herself gingerly off the crystal saddle, careful to avoid the deadly beam coming out at right angles. She crawled along the rim of the telescope cage toward the laser mirror, the one that Sumo had tilted.
Hanging to the cage with one hand, her legs wrapped around the cold metal, she grasped the edge of the mirror. The laser beam was brighter and hotter than an arc light. Experimentally she moved the mirror an inch.
Down below, the scarlet beam moved like a cutting edge. It sliced through Professor Thing's empty chair and left a smoking line across the floor. It overtook the running bug that was the technician trying to turn off the laser. He sizzled like a burned sausage.
She needn't have worried. Skytop hurled himself out crowded against the far end. The thread of light cut through the steel bars like cheese. An entire side of the cage fell to the floor with a clatter.
The remaining security guard looked around at the noise. He'd been watching the progress of his buddy. The Baroness didn't dare try to cook him with the laser; it was too close to Wharton and the others.
She needn't have worried. Skytop hurled himself out of the cage and tackled the guard at the knees. Wharton grabbed the automatic rifle. The man's legs thrashed as Skytop strangled him. Wharton fired a burst at a technician who was trying to escape. The five of them — her team and Alexey — moved swiftly, spreading themselves professionally across the floor, getting the unarmed technicians under control.
The guard who was coming after her raised his gun uncertainly. He was afraid to fire into the milling throng below. He pointed his gun at the Baroness and shouted at her.
Instantly she moved away from the laser mirror and sat tamely on the rim of the telescope cage. The guard grinned and came toward her. She couldn't have seemed so dangerous now, an almost naked woman without anything in her hands.
He motioned her to come down. Obediently she clambered down the cage toward the catwalk where he was standing. She passed the great dangling hook of the overhead crane and hesitated. The guard shouted angrily. She smiled and reached behind herself to unhook the white bra. She waved it in front of him and let go. It fluttered downward.
The guard's eyes automatically followed the falling bra. In that instant she swung the crane hook. It floated like a giant yo-yo past him, then came back. It caught him at the belt. Suddenly he found himself being lifted off the catwalk and swinging toward her.
She smiled at him as she took the gun out of his hands and jerked the hook free. He hurtled down to the floor, a hundred and fifty feet below. He hit bottom with a splat.
The Baroness slung the rifle over her shoulder and climbed down the struts of the telescope. She could see the huge TV screen now. Walter Cronkite's face filled the screen, grinning happily. "A perfect mission so far," he was saying. "No problems, no hitches. This reporter has seen a lot of space flights, but seldom has one gone off as smoothly as this…"
Wharton was waiting for her at the bottom, holding out a smock he'd taken from a technician, averting his eyes. She retrieved her bra first. There was going to be a lot of violent activity in the next hour.
The technicians had been herded into a compact group. Skytop was covering them with the automatic rifle. They looked cowed and frightened.
"Lock them up in there," the Baroness said, pointing to the trailer-size box that was the observatory's constant temperature room.
She walked over to Professor Thing's body. He was lying on his back, his long sticklike limbs stretched stiffly outward. The red cap had fallen off, showing white strands of the strange unpigmented hair. The long floury face looked like dough. Now there were two angry red holes in it in place of eyes.
"It took him a long time," she said, "but I think he finally got what he wanted."
There was a heavy battering sound at the main door to the dome.
"The security forces," Alexey said, pale and swaying beside her. "They know something's going on in here, but they don't know what."
Wharton furrowed his brow. "There'll be anywhere up to sixty of them, with riot guns, tear gas, automatic weapons. We've got two automatic rifles. What do we do?"
The Baroness gave him a serene glance. "Why, we let them in, of course."
She crossed the room barefoot in her white smock. By the time she reached the door, Sumo was up at the top of the telescope, and the others were hiding behind consoles and equipment around the perimeter of the dome.
She unbolted the door and faced a tough-looking soldier with captain's insignia. There weren't sixty men behind him. There were about twenty.
"Come on in, Captain," she said. She turned without waiting for a response and padded toward the center of the dome.
"Li ting!" he ordered.
She walked steadily on, waiting for a bullet to smash into her spine.
But the captain started after her. He'd known this was the woman who was supposed to have been tied to the telescope. He must have been puzzled. And the observatory was puzzling too. There was nobody around.
His men followed him into the dome, peering warily about, their automatic weapons ready. They were all inside the chamber by the time the captain caught up with Penelope and grabbed her roughly by the arm.
"Kao su?" he began, and then he saw Professor Thing's body.
At that moment, Sumo opened up with the laser.
A long finger of fire swept across the floor toward the clustered soldiers. Before they could react, it was cutting them down like a field of wheat. There were screams, and the smell of burning flesh. A riot gun went off with a deafening blast. Automatic weapons chattered. There was the random sound of shattering glass as slugs tore into consoles and apparatus. But there was nothing to aim at. The laser continued its terrible work.
The Baroness kicked the captain's legs from under him. He still had her by the arm, and his other hand was drawing a revolver. She grabbed his wrist. She'd been planning to use her free hand to smash his windpipe, but now she quickly had to switch to another target. She pulled at the wrist and jammed her knee into his belly. That made him let go. She pushed at his back and he toppled over. Her heel crashed into his skull. He tried to get up. She stamped on the nape of his neck. He was unusually strong; he started to get up again. This time she jumped with both feet. She felt something give, and the captain was lying there dead. She bent and took his revolver.
The laser had stopped moving back and forth. It rose like a hellish sunbeam from a pile of charred flesh. The dome was filled with a greasy, nauseating smoke. She walked over to the console and switched off the ruby fight.
They were able to gather enough undamaged weapons and gas grenades for all of them.
"We need plastic charges to blow up the telescope," Wharton said. "We compared our impressions of the place while we were in the cage. I think I know where the storeroom is."
"We've got to clean out the security forces first," she said. "That was only part of them."
They moved through the vast honeycomb of the observatory complex, killing as they went. The visiting PLA and militia units had long since departed, but Major Sung's people remained. They were at platoon strength now, after the dome massacre. Eight to one wasn't bad odds.
They killed some of them in their beds, spraying them with slugs as they struggled awake, reaching for weapons. Some they killed in ones and twos, patrolling the corridors. Once they had a pitched battle with a group of eight soldiers in the mess hall, sniping back and forth over the trestle tables.
They worked their way down to the parking garage. There were two sleepy guards there, looking after the armored snow tractors. They pinned the two men down behind a low concrete wall, but there seemed no way to flush them out. They had no fragmentation grenades to toss over the barrier.
"Cover me!" the Baroness yelled, flinging herself toward the square cab of a tractor. There was a hail of bullets splattering off concrete and metal. The door to the cab was open. She dove inside and slammed the armored door shut. She started the motor and put the bulky machine in gear. It lurched forward on its treads.
She headed straight toward the low wall. The armored behemoth must have looked terrifying to the two soldiers. They threw down their weapons and started running. The treads hit the wall with a spine-wrenching jar and started clawing at it. The tractor stood on its tail and climbed. It teetered at the top and pitched forward with a lurch. She crushed the two men against the wall.
She could see Skytop in the rearview mirror, making frantic gestures. His lips formed the word, "Outside!"
She threw the treads into reverse. The snow tractor leaped backward and swiveled as she braked one tread. She jammed the twin throttles forward and the machine headed for the open door.
There was another snow tractor climbing the slope toward her. It was the outside patrol, returning after their shift. A half-dozen men with rifles plodded along behind it.
She headed straight toward the tanklike vehicle at top speed. She could see the driver's frightened face through the square windshield. At the last minute he swerved in a desperate attempt to avoid her. She caught a f
orward corner of his tractor at something very close to a right angle. The driver had made a mistake that every farm boy driving a tractor learns to avoid. The slope was too steep for the beam of the vehicle. With the added push of the Baroness' tractor, it tumbled over and began rolling down the slope. The foot patrol tried frantically to get out of the way, but four of them were crushed by the tractor's tumbling bulk. It kept bouncing down the slope. There was an explosion and a bright gout of flame at the bottom.
The remaining two soldiers were firing uselessly at the armored cab. They were spaced wide apart, at either side of her headlight beams. She roared down the slope and caught one of them with the left-hand tread. Instantly she braked the left tread and fish-tailed. The right-rear corner of the tractor caught the other soldier a mighty swipe. His broken body flew in the air and buried itself head first in the snow.
It was over. She found a place where the slope was gentle enough for her to turn the tractor around. She drove the vehicle back into the garage and climbed out.
Wharton and Skytop were waiting. "We found our demolition equipment," Wharton said, "and enough Chinese explosives to blow the place to kingdom come."
First they collected supplies. The Baroness found a Chinese cold-weather outfit that fit her. They released the technicians from the constant temperature room and let them gather enough food and warm clothing to keep them alive for a few days, until they were rescued by whoever came to investigate the destruction of the observatory.
Wharton and Alexey made a good team, working together to shape the plastic charges around the stupendous telescope and the titanic miracle of the three-hundred-inch mirror. They were both first-rate demolition men.
Sumo watched with a sad, wistful eye.
"It's a pity," he said to the Baroness. "Professor Thing was a genius. Nobody will ever be able to build anything like this again."
"Don't be too sure, Tommy," she said.
