Contest

13. 18:46:00 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:34

'Look at it. It's thirty-four seconds long -- three times longer than any other surge. And look at when it occurred: 6:46 p.m. That's nearly twenty-three minutes after the surge before it. All of the others occurred within twenty minutes.'

Swain looked at Selexin. 'The last surge was a separate surge. And it was big. Very big. Something that took a long time to teleport -- thirty-four seconds to teleport.'

'What are you saying?'

'I think Bellos had someone teleport a teleporter into the library so he could get the hoods out of here before he left.'

Selexin took it all in silently. He examined the list again. Finally he looked up at Swain. 'Then that means...'

'It means,' Swain said to Selexin, 'that somewhere in this building is a teleporter. A teleporter that we can use to get you home.'

Selexin was momentarily silent as it all sunk in.

'So what are we waiting for?' Holly said.

'Nothing now,' Swain said, grabbing Selexin's shoulder, starting to run. 'Let's find it while we still have time.'

----ooo0ooo------

James Marshall stood at the base of the ramp leading to the parking lot. He was watching the grid of blue electricity stretched across the metal grille when his radio operator came up to him.

'Sir?'

'What is it?' Marshall didn't turn around.

Status Check: 0:01:00 to De-electrification.

Standby.

'Sir, we're not even getting a signal now. Commander Quaid's radio is completely off the air.'

Marshall bit his lip. The night that had begun with so much promise was not panning out well at all. They had already lost two men inside the library, destroyed one Radiation Storage Unit, lost track of a bum who had been seen by the southern wall of the library, and now had a building that was burning itself to the ground. And for what? Marshall thought.

Jack shit, that's what.

They had nothing to show for their night's work. Not a single fucking thing.

And Marshall would be responsible. Too much was riding on this operation. Sigma Division had been given complete authority on this matter and they needed something to show for it.

Christ, not long before, the New York Fire Department had shown up in response to all the explosions and the NSA had held them back. The building was the source of a National Security Agency investigation, he'd said. Let it burn. But it's a National Register building. Let it burn. That wouldn't go down well with the bosses upstairs.

So now the situation was clear: if Marshall didn't get anything from this building, he would be the scapegoat. His career now depended on what they found inside that library.

They had to get something.

As it turned out, Swain, Holly and Selexin didn't have to run very far before they found the teleporter. In fact, they didn't even have to search beyond the Stack. But they almost missed it altogether. It was only Selexin's keen eye that had caught sight of a deviation in one of the long aisles of the Stack as they had been zigzagging their way toward the floor's central stairwell.

Status Check: 0:00:51 to De-electrification.

'It's so big,' Holly said in awe.

That was an understatement, Swain thought as he stood in the aisle and stared at the enormous machine.

It looked like a massive, high-tech, steel-sided telephone booth, with a glass door in its centre, and thick grey walls that almost reached to the ceiling. All of its edges had been rounded off to give it an elliptical shape and a big grey box sat on the floor beside it, connected to the teleporter by a thick black cord.

Surrounding the giant teleporter was a perfect sphere of emptiness that had been cut into the bookshelves and the ceiling around the big machine. The spherical hole in the air through which this machine had travelled had simply vaporised whatever had been standing here when it had arrived.

'That's a portable generator,' Selexin said, pointing to the grey box. 'Bellos had to bring one of those in order to operate the teleporter on Earth.'

Swain stared at the teleporter and at the bookshelves around it. They were right in the middle of the eastern section of the Stack, at least thirty yards from any entrance to the floor and surrounded by the towering floor-to- ceiling bookshelves. It was highly unlikely that anyone had been through here during the Presidian.

'Well hidden,' Swain observed.

'I do not think Bellos had much choice,' Selexin said.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, I have been thinking about this -- about how Bellos teleported his hoods into the labyrinth. Do you remember that every time we saw him, Bellos always had his guide draped over his shoulder?'

'Yes.'

'Well, I kept wondering, why did he need to immobilise his guide? What I think happened was this,' Selexin said. 'On his home planet, Bellos steps inside the official teleporter with his guide. Once inside, the guide receives the co-ordinates of the labyrinth on the wristband, which he hasn't given to Bellos yet. Bellos then attacks the guide, beats him, steals the co-ordinates, and then reopens the teleporter and relays the co-ordinates to someone else.

'Then he and his guide are teleported to the labyrinth alone, while at the same time, at another teleporter nearby, the hoods are sent.

'Much later, they teleport this teleporter, but they only have co-ordinates that are rather general. The teleporter could have arrived anywhere inside the library. It was impossible for them to teleport it intentionally into a dark corner. But then, when you're teleporting something into a maze, the odds are in your favour of teleporting it into a dark corner. A calculated risk, no doubt, but obviously one that Bellos was prepared to take.'

Status Check: 0:00:30 to De-electrification.

Next to Swain, Holly was staring up at the big grey machine. 'So what do we do now, Daddy?'

Swain frowned, looked back down the dark aisle behind him. In the distance he saw that some shelves were now on fire.

'We send Selexin home, honey,' he said. 'So he can tell the others what really happened, and so he can get away from here.'

'Oh,' Holly said, disappointed.

'That is right,' Selexin nodded slowly.

'Can't he stay, Daddy?' Holly said. 'He could live with us. Like in E.T.'

Selexin smiled sadly and reached up for the handle to the glass door of the teleporter. He said to Swain, 'When I came to the labyrinth, I thought about myself being assigned to guide the human contestant through the Presidian. And I was not happy at all. I thought you would not last a moment, and if you did not, I would not either. But having seen you, and the way you defended your life and the life of your daughter, I know now just how mistaken I was.'

Swain nodded.

Selexin turned to Holly. 'I cannot stay here. Your world is not ready for me, just as I am not ready for it. Why, even the Presidian was not ready for your world.'

'Thank you,' Holly said, crying. 'Thank you for taking care of me.'

Then she leapt forward and threw her arms around Selexin and hugged him tightly. Selexin was momentarily