died before he could shut down the field.
Steiger was running flat out down the hall, shouting instructions as he went.
'They're on their way up! Cover the stairs and fire exits! Cordon off the area around all access points to this corridor! Nobody gets through! Heads up, people!
Here they come!'
The first tube came up and the chime rang softly as the door revolved. Steiger's men fired as it slid open. The interior of the lift tube was slagged with plasma, but not before some of the Lilliputians managed to get out, some coming out low, on foot, firing as they ran, while others came out high, swarming out in their floater paks and rapidly dispersing, firing down at the men in the corridor below them.
At the same time, a cry went up from down the hall. A squad of airborne
Lilliputians was coming up the fire stairs. The men covering the stairs immediately opened fire as Steiger ran from one point of conflict to the other. A filament-thin laser beam lanced past his left temple, missing his head by a quarter of an inch. He threw himself to one side, struck the corridor wall, and spun around. A Lilliputian in a floater pak came down at him from just below the ceiling, like a fighter on a strafing run, his tiny autopulser cycling rapidly. Steiger fired and the Lilliputian burst into flame, then exploded as the tanks on his tiny floater pak went up. Steiger shielded his face as little bits of burning shrapnel rained down on him.
Behind him, down the hall, the corridor was in flames. The Lilliputians were outgunned, but the same plasma weapons that enabled Steiger's men to shoot down such small and rapidly moving targets were also setting the hospital on fire. The sprinklers had gone off, but they were not sufficient to the task and Steiger couldn't risk sending in the fire brigade until the battle was all over. It wasn't simply a question of defeating the tiny invaders; they had to do it within the next few minutes or else the fire would endanger the patients on the lower floors.
He rushed to the stairwell. Several of his men were dead, some killed by the tiny commandos, but at least two were killed by fire from their own men, trying to shoot down airborne Lilliputians who were darting among them like angry wasps.
The walls and stairs were blackened and burning as Steiger came through the door, but none of the Lilliputians had gotten past his men. There was a pitched battle in the stairwell as the tiny invaders were being driven back.
And then another cry went up. They were coming out of a second lift tube. Steiger and his men ran out into the hall. Perhaps two dozen Lilliputians were in full flight, hurtling towards them down the corridor. Steiger's men and the Lilliputians opened fire simultaneously. The man on Steiger's right screamed briefly as a laser burned through his brain and
he fell dead on the floor. Half a dozen Lilliputians went up in a blast of plasma, several of them spinning end over end, in flames and out of control, exploding as they hit the corridor walls and their propellant tanks went up.
A few of them got past Steiger and he winced with pain as a laser burned his shoulder, then he was turning and sprinting after them. They were headed down the corridor, straight for Forrester’s room. Several of them hovered around the door lock, providing covering fire while two of them aimed their lasers at the lockwork.
They burned through the door in a matter of seconds. Steiger and his men ran directly into the deadly laser fire, firing into the beams with their plasma weapons to break up their collimation.
Steiger couldn't believe it. The Lilliputians seemed to have no regard whatsoever for their own survival. Like miniature kamikazes, they flew right at him and his men, corkscrewing in erratic loop-de-loops with their jets on full power. It was like trying to shoot down a flight of crazed hummingbirds. The man on Steiger's left fell. Steiger bent down and wrenched the plasma rifle out of the dead man's grasp, but there wasn't even enough time to slap a fresh charge pal: into it. He brought up the rifle stock sharply, smacking a Lilliputian in full flight. The Lilliputian caromed off the rifle stock like a baseball and tumbled end over end, his jets damaged and out of control. He slammed into another tiny commando and they exploded in mid air, the shrapnel from the floater paks lacerating Steiger's face. He didn't even feel it. He bolted straight for Forrester's room, but the Lilliputians had already flown inside. They swooped down over the bed, their lasers playing over the shape beneath the covers. As Steiger burst into the room, he heard someone yell, 'GET
BACK!' and he recoiled as the blue mist of Cherenkov radiation flooded the room.
The awesome weapon's transponder lapped directly into the energy field of a neutron star by means of an internal chronocircuitry link with an Einstein-Rosen Generator in outer space. The result was a limitless supply of 'ammunition' in the form of energy leached through a time warp from a star. The magnetic field generated around the muzzle formed an invisible forcing cone that allowed selective fire-a stream of neutrons fired on either a tight beam or a wide dispersal
'spray.' The entire room glowed blue for an instant and the attacking Lilliputians disappeared, their atoms disrupted by the neutron stream.
The bed also disappeared, as well as the night table, the drip I.V. stand, the lamp and the entire wall. A cold night wind blew in through the gaping hole where the wall had been. The edges of the hole were as smooth as melted glass. Forrester stood in the corner of the room, with his back against the wall. He lowered the strange looking weapon. It resembled a small flame-thrower, with a knurled pistol grip and an unusually shaped muzzle, only without the attached hose and tanks.
Steiger walked over to the hole in the wall. It was about twelve feet across and eight feet high. Steiger stepped up to the edge and looked down 110 stories. the wind plucked at his hair and clothes, its coolness soothing to the wounds on his face.
'Jesus Christ,' he said, softly.
Forrester came up to stand beside him, holding the disruptor in his right hand. It was difficult to believe that something the size of a sawed-off shotgun could have done such damage.
'I think we've got a slight problem here with over penetration,' Forrester said, wryly. 'Darkness always did overdo things. Sure works, though. If he ever gets all the bugs out, I might actually consider making these standard issue.'.
Steiger simply stared at him.
'You look terrible,' said Forrester.
'Yeah,' said Steiger. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then snapped on his communicator. 'This is Steiger. All posts, report.'
'Post 1, sir. Lafferty here. All secure down here.' 'Casualties?'
Four dead, two wounded, sir. Should I send in the fire brigade, sir? We've got alarms going off all over the place.'
'Yeah, send 'em in. Make sure we get all the wounded out and stand by to evacuate patients…Get additional personnel in if you have to. Steiger out.'
'Post 2, sir. Cpl. Steinberg reporting. Everybody's dead. I'm the only one left. But we're secure, sir. That is, I'm secure. I guess. I mean… hell, I don't know, I-'
'Pull yourself together, Steinberg. You all right?'
'I've been hit, sir, but it's not serious, I don't think. I mean, I'll manage. '
'Good man. Hang in there, we'll get someone to you as soon as we can.
Stand by.'
And on it went. Every single post, men dead, men wounded, but the attack had been repulsed. Fortunately, none of the hospital patients had been hurt. The
Lilliputians had known exactly where to go and they had struck directly at the top floor. Now they were all dead. They had given no quarter and asked none. Steiger and Forrester went out into the corridor, filled with smoke and flames, steaming from the sprinklers interacting with the heat, blackened from the plasma blasts, scarred by laser fire, littered with bodies.
'Oh, God damn it to hell,' said Forrester. his voice breaking slightly. 'All this just because of me.'
'Don't do that to yourself, Moses,' Steiger said. 'This is a war. And the Network has a lot to answer for.'
'And they're going to answer for it, believe me,' Forrester said grimly. 'We were lucky this time, but the entire top part of this building will have to be evacuated.
Christ, how many of them were there?'
“I don't know,' said Steiger. 'It seemed like hundreds. But we stopped
'em. We stopped 'em cold.'
