“Quent!” Mike bellowed as they approached. “What the hell are you doing there?”
The boy broke off his recitation to Sue and turned to face Mike and Jameson. “Jeez, Mike, I mean what was I supposed to do? Klein, he told me I
Klein’s sleek head quested in Mike’s direction, then paused to examine Jameson. “Thanks for bringing him over, Commander,” he said. “It saves me from having to send someone to get him.”
“Listen, Klein,” Jameson began, fighting down anger.
“We’re going to need him to activate the boron reaction. Quentin says he can’t do it by himself.”
“Berry’s not going. And neither are those other people.”
Klein lifted the gun and pointed it at Mike. “He’s going. Berry, get over there with the others. That’s an order.”
“The hell I’m going!” Mike said.
Klein said, “If you don’t get over there in about three seconds, you’ll take the consequences.”
“Yeah? When you get back to Earth, tell them to come on out here and arrest me.”
“You’re a traitorous son of a bitch,” Klein said tightly, “and if I can’t use you, I’m going to—”
Jameson stepped quickly between Mike and the gun.
“This has gone far enough,” he said, with as much force as he could muster. “Klein, didn’t you understand a word Dr. Ruiz said? If you interfere with the Cygnans—if you
Klein’s voice cracked, showing the strain he must have been under. “I’ve had it with you, Jameson! You and Ruiz keeping essential data from me, and then interfering—Step away from that man before I give you the whole clip right in your—”
Mike stepped from behind Jameson. “Hold it,” he said. “Don’t get yeasty. I’m going.” He gave Jameson a ghastly grin. “Say good-bye to our lovely hosts for me, and try to drop a line now and then.” He moved over to the group huddled against the wall. Quentin immediately began haranguing him, gesturing with both hands.
There was the screech of protesting ratchets, and the huge circular lock rolled in its slot, mounting an incline. “
“Hurry,” Yao called over his shoulder. He and Chia were pushing their people through the gate into the vast empty exhibition hall outside.
Klein looked thoughtful. “Just a minute,” he said. “We’d better have an astronomer.”
Chapter 25
“You can go straight to hell,” Ruiz said, “if you can find the place. I don’t intend to give you the slightest help.”
He stood facing Klein, his back stiff and straight and his stubbled chin thrust out, looking like an immensely dignified scarecrow. He was bad news now, and people were beginning to edge away from his vicinity.
Some of Klein’s muscle, four or five husky missile men, had drifted over to fan out on either side of him, hefting their makeshift weapons. The girl, Smitty, was among them. Jameson had taken her for one of the men at first, with her broad shoulders and big frame, but now he could see her breasts like flat dinner plates under the man’s undershirt she wore, solid as the meat of arm and shoulder. There was no question of Klein’s leaving without
“Don’t make us drag you,” Klein said. “You could get damaged and slow us up.”
“Then get on with it and damage me,” Ruiz said. “But I won’t lift a finger to help you put Earth in jeopardy.”
Klein lifted his gun. “I’ve seen your file, Ruiz,” he said, his voice rising. “With your Reliability Index, I’m at a loss to understand why they trusted you on this mission in the first place. I’d give you summary termination right now if I felt like wasting ammunition.”
Beefy hands closed on Ruiz’s arms. Smitty was behind him, an arm crooked around his throat. Ruiz tried to scuffle with them. Klein looked around at the crowd with worried eyes.
Gifford, hauling a limp Kiernan through the gate, said, “We don’t need the old crock. Maybury does all his figuring for him anyway.”
“Leave her out of it!” Ruiz cried. He actually broke free for a moment, and then a lead pipe came down on his head. He crumpled to the ground. Smitty and one of the Chinese began methodically to kick him in the ribs.
“Stop it!” It was Maybury. She ran to Ruiz and cradled his battered head. “Dr. Ruiz, Dr. Ruiz, say something!” Ruiz’s head lolled. He was as limp as an empty pressure suit.
They dragged her off him and hustled her through the gate, her feet off the ground. Jameson knelt beside Ruiz. “He’s alive,” he said. “Somebody go get Janet, quickly!”
Klein’s troops and their prisoners filed through the opening in the gate, weighed down with their improvised weapons and bundles of supplies. Somewhere nearby, Jameson heard Liz say bitterly, “They took practically all the food we got from the ship’s stores.”
The delay with Ruiz had been a mistake for Klein. As the last couple of Chinese got through the gate, backing up and brandishing their weapons warningly at the people left inside, somebody up front piercingly yelled: “
Dmitri was shaking Jameson by the shoulder. “An alarm,” he said. “They must have set off some kind of alarm when they opened the door. The Cygnans are coming.
Jameson heaved himself to his feet and ran to the gate. Ignoring the threatening gestures of the Chinese in the rear guard, he sprang to the bars and hauled himself up for a better look.
Two Cygnans were skittering down the curving corridor of the hall of bipeds. One of them was down, snake low, on all sixes, the long tubular snout aimed like an arrowhead. The other trotted on four legs like some nightmare centaur, cradling a gleaming blunderbuss in its flexible arms.
It was Tetrachord and Triad, come to put the animals back in their cages.
The neural weapon had a short range, a cone of modulated microwaves that lost its efficiency at twenty or thirty feet. But when Tetrachord fanned it over the twenty-odd people in Klein’s party, the floor was going to be covered with blind, writhing bundles of short-circuited nerves who would be kept that way until they could be hauled back to the cage.
Klein’s group split in two and scurried to opposite sides of the hall. Basic military tactics. A pair of zookeepers wouldn’t be much on strategy.
Jameson clung to the bars, taking in the scene. In the cusped vestibule that formed the intersection of the narrow ends of the five major habitats, the fleeing humans had spread out in two broken arcs that bent toward each other like pincers, some fifty feet apart. No matter which angle the Cygnans approached from, the neural weapon was not going to be able to sweep the nearer half of one of the two lines.
As if realizing this, Tetrachord veered first to the right, then to the left. Triad failed to change direction fast enough, and that was what saved her.
At a distance of about ten yards, Tetrachord, still running, reared up and shouldered his blunderbuss—or, rather, deployed it with the bulb-shaped grip braced in one rubbery claw. Jameson, seeing the whole thing in the slow-motion vision of stimulated adrenals, irrelevantly admired the unbroken rhythm of the Cygnan running pattern as he shifted from four legs to three to two.
And then the creature’s long flexible head disappeared in an explosion of orange gore.
Jameson caught a frozen glimpse of Klein picking himself off the floor, where he’d thrown himself for a prone shot. Then he realized that Tetrachord’s headless body was still running, and he remembered that a Cygnan’s brain was somewhere below the neck, a swelling of that central ganglion. He shuddered, wondering what thoughts might be going on within the blind, deaf isolation of the body. Klein was in no hurry to fire his explosive darts again; perhaps he enjoyed watching the creature’s agony. Tetrachord dropped to four legs, then six, the neural weapon clattering to the floor, running more and more jerkily, then lowering the long sleek body almost deliberately, the legs still twitching. A great gout of orange fluid, thick as syrup, was spurting from the tattered stem of the neck.
