Marooned in Realtime

TWENTY-THREE

The door slid back. Wil stuck his head into the forest air. And jerked it back even more quickly. Phew: take mil dew and add a flavoring of shit. He took another breath, and tried not to gag. Perhaps it was the abrupt transition that made it seem so awful; the flier's air was full of alpine morning.

They stepped onto the forest floor. Gray-green humus lapped around their ankles. He was careful not to kick it up. There was enough junk in the air already.

Della walked a large circle tangent to their landing point 'I've mapped all the rocks. They're not as big as Marta generally used, and not as well shaped. But backtracking their trajectories...' She was quiet for second. '... I see they were piled in a pyramid at one time. The core is intact, and I think there', something-not rocks or forest dirt-inside. What do you want to do?'

'How long would a careful dig take-say as good as a twentyfirst-century archeologist could do?'

'Two or three hours.'

Now that they really had something, they had to protect V, — and get themselves off ground zero at the same time. 'We could bobble the whole thing,' he said.

'That would be awkward to haul around if shooting starts.

Look, Marta never left anything of importance outside the core. That's less than a meter across in this case. We could bobble that and be out of here in just a few minutes.'

Wil nodded agreement, and Della continued with scarcely a pause. 'Okay, it's done. Now stand back a couple of meters.'

Dozens of reflections of Wil and Della suddenly looked up from the forest floor; the ground between them was covered by close-packed bobbles.

She walked back, around the field of mirrors. 'Bobbles are hard to miss against the neutrino sky; if the enemy has decent equipment, he noticed this.' Sonic booms came from beyond the treetops. 'Don't worry. That's friendly.'

The new arrivals slipped through the hole Della had made in the canopy. They consisted of one auton and a cloud of robots. The robots settled on the bobbles, rooting and pushing. The top layer came off easily, revealing more bobbles beneath. These were pushed aside to get at still deeper layers. On a small scale, Lu was using the standard open-pit mining technique. In minutes, they were looking into a dark, slumping hole. The bobbles were scattered on all sides, glowing copies of the forest canopy above.

One by one, the robots picked them up and flew away.

'Which one is... ?'

'You can't tell, can you? I hope the enemy is similarly mystified. We've supplied him with seventy red herrings.' He noticed that not all the bobbles were flown directly out. One had been transferred to the auton, and one to Della's flier.

Della climbed aboard the flier, Wil close behind. 'If our friend doesn't start shooting in the next few minutes, he never will. I'm taking all the bobbles to my home. That's a million kilometers out now. From there we can see in all directions, shoot in all directions; no one can get us there.' She smashed straight through the forest's roof, kept rising at multiple g's.

Wil sank deep into the acceleration couch. All he could see was sky. He squinted at the sunlight and gasped, 'He may not attack at all. He may still think we're bluffing.'

She chuckled. 'Don't you wish.' The sky tilted, and he saw green horizon. 'Twenty thousand meters I'm going to nuke out.'

Free fall. The sky was black, except at the blue horizon They were at least one hundred kilometers up. It was like video cut: One instant they had been at aircraft altitudes, the next they were in space. Something bright and sunlike glowed beneath them-the detonation that had boosted them out of the atmosphere. He wondered fleetingly why she hadn't nuked out from ground level. A technical reason? Or sentiment?

The sky jerked again, the horizon acquiring a distinct curve

'Hm. I have a low-tech on the net, Wil. She wants to talk to you.'

Who? 'Hold off on the next nuke. Let me talk to her.'

Part of one window went flat. He was looking at someone wearing NM fatigues and a display helmet. The space around. the figure was crammed with twenty-first-century communications gear.

'Wil!' The speaker cleared the face panel on her helmet It was Gail Parker. 'Thank God! I've been trying to break out for almost an hour. Look. Fraley has gone nuts. We're going to attack the Peacers. He says they'll wipe us if we don't. He says there's no way the high-techs can prevent it. Is that true? What's going on?'

Brierson sat in horrified silence. What was the killer's motive, that he would contrive such a war? 'Part of it is true, Gail It looks like someone's trying to wipe the entire colony. This war talk must be part of it. Is there anything you can do to —'

'Me?' She glanced over her shoulder, then continued in the lower voice. 'God damn it, Wil, I'm at the center of our C and C. Sure. I could sabotage our entire defense system. But if the other side really does attack, then I've murdered my own people!

'None of us will make it otherwise, Gail. I'll try to talk sense to the Peacers. Do... do what you can.' What would I do in her place? His mind shied away from Gail's choices.