Comeback Tour

Duroc had turned to ice. Not since the Jibbenainosay, had he felt such a dread.

'T-minus four..,'

'Fonvielle, abort take off.'

'T-minus three…'

'I'm trying, Mr Prezz, but the instruments…'

'T-minus two…'

'…don't respond.'

'T-minus one…'

Duroc hoped Krokodil was dead by now.

'Ignition.'

The bunker staff were looking at each other, bewildered. Sister Addams was hugging her knees, tears on her face. Fonvielle was chewing his entire beard.

'Lift-off,' said the mechanical voice, 'we have lift off!'

'The only possibility in the United States for a humane society,' said Phil Ochs, 'would be a revolution with Elvis Presley as leader.'

It was over. He was exhausted, emptied of music.

Surrounded by burning people, Elvis dropped his guitar and ran.

The dark shape was rising from the Cape, stabbing into the sky.

Krokodil was tearing at the ground, possessed again of an enormous strength, ripping through the elevator platform.

An indentee, down on his knees praying, exploded, spattering Elvis with burning fat. He wiped the fire spots from his jacket.

To the East, the sea was boiling. A tidal wave of boiling steam swept across the base.

Elvis's face and hands stung.

'Something's coming through,' Tozer shouted, firing up into the elevator shaft.

'Resist it,' Duroc ordered.

Waltons crowded into the shaftbed, trampling underfoot the remains of the sacrifices.

'It's exiting earth atmosphere,' Fonvielle said.

Duroc knew where it was going. He swore under his breath.

The Commander was plotting the phantom's trajectory.

'It will intersect with Keystone, sir…'

There was only one thing for it.

'Cease the ground attack. Order Needlepoint to defend itself.'

A large chunk of something fell down the shaft, crushing a Donny.

Fonvielle communicated with Needlepoint, rapidly reprogramming it.

Keystone responded, its defensive systems activated.

The rain of death had stopped, Shiba realized, and he was still alive. He looked around to see who else had survived. Raimundo was nowhere to be seen, and that was a bad sign. He should be impossible to miss. Krokodil had torn open the elevator shaft. The black girl from under the ground was wandering out of the smoke, her thin dress wet through. And Elvis was slack-jawed, astonished at what had been torn from him.

The steam felt good on his hide.

Seth withdrew from Keystone, and watched sadly as the Needlepoint System tried to defend itself. Its lases sliced accurately through the sky and passed harmlessly through the smokeshape of the Titan 7 rocketship.

The object was a cluster of angry ghosts.

'We've screwed the pooch, Mr President,' Fonvielle shouted, 'the Dream's not for killing. Needlepoint's been rotten from the start. It's an insult to the dead. That's why they want to stop it.'

The Prezz had a gun. Fonvielle saluted his chief, but knew that what he had done was an obscenity, a perversion of the great work…

Fonvielle knew he had to take what was coming to him. He knew he had to join the knot of spirits in the manitou of Circe.

The Prezz shot him through the heart. 'Thank you, Mr…'

'Prezzzzz…'

He was with the others now. Grissom, Capaldi, Metelkina, Poole, Kuhn, Sementsova, Griffith, Collins, Tracy, Lazarev, Mihailoff, Breedlove, Bowman, Rusoff, Gagarin, Victorov. All of them.

Their bodies had some substance. Not flesh, exactly. More like electricity, or fire…

The Circe IV sped towards its target.

Krokodil dropped frags into the shaft, and ducked away from the blast. This battle was nearly over. She knew now that Elder Seth wasn't down there, that she would have to face the preacher on some other field. But she knew that the Adversary had won a victory today, a victory that would tell…

Duroc looked at the monitor. Underneath the splash of Fonvielle's blood, the Circe IV blip .was nearing Keystone. Only moments until impact.

Seth was hurled out of Keystone as the Circe IV phantom enveloped the satellite, and tugged back to his body in Salt Lake City.

In the daytime sky, a star blazed brightly for an instant.

'Sir, sir,' shouted a junior lieutenant at Edwards Air Force base, 'we're getting some wild readings from earth orbit.'

'Shee-it,' swore his superior, 'this is like last year's fiasco all over again.'

'So, do we log it?'

The officer swilled hot recaff, and knew he was going to regret it, 'Yeah, log it…'

The tracking screens were flashing like strobe lamps.

'…but be prepared to swear we're talking instrument failure.'

Simone knew Roger was down in the hole. He would be angry with her. But she owed him something.

The Krokodil woman was leading the surviving Suitcase People, readying for a strike into the depths, to wipe out the Josephites.

Simone didn't know what to do.

Duroc watched it on the big screen. Keystone went first, flaring and leaving a black hole amid the light readings. Then the others, one by one, until all twelve were gone.

Addams was back at her monitor. 'Needlepoint is down,' she said.

There was fighting in the elevator shaft now. Tozer was dead, and the Suitcase People were abseiling down. Most of the Waltons were finished.

The bunker staff mainly sat quietly at their consoles and waited. There were several fires raging as the Needlepoint circuits burned out.

The big screen cracked across, and sheets of glass fell.

There was water on the floor. Hot, salt water.

Duroc threw away the headset he had been gripping throughout, and left his command position.

It was time to pull out.

'Premier Yeltsin, we thought you should know the Americans have been getting rid of some of their astro garbage.'

'Does this violate any of the treaties?'

'Most of them.'

'Ah well, call up Oliver and give him a bollocking. If he squeals too much, insist on a UN inquiry. What are GenTech…I'm sorry, I mean…what are the Japanese Government doing?'

'Nothing.'

'It is good.'

Raimundo Rex roared out of a pile of rubble, tail whipcracking, and jumped past Shiba into the elevator shaft.

Krokodil signalled the Suitcase People to follow.

Elvis took a rope, and plunged downwards into the fiery dark.