watching us, knowing that by now ve know. I don't suppose there's any point asking you to call the chopper down?'
'Wouldn't if I could,' the other shook his head. 'No way — not into this lot. But in any case my radio's been out since we got into the lift. Some kind of electrical interference.'
As he finished speaking, so lan Goodly reeled and caught at the Major's arm to steady himself. And, Jake!' the precog gasped. 'My God, Ben — it's Jake!'
'Jake?' Trask repeated him. 'What about him?'
'He… he's on his way here,' Goodly answered. 'But so is the elevator!'
'Jake's in the elevator?' Trask failed to understand. But:
'No,' Goodly shook his head. 'Jake is in the Mobius Continuum. The bomb is in the elevator! When I staggered just now, it was because I'd seen it going off— but seen it at close range, even this close — and it's due to happen any time now!'
The Major might have asked what they were raving about but didn't have time. In a sudden stirring of smoky air, Jake stepped out of the Mobius Continuum with Liz clinging to him like a leech — and at the same time the elevator pinged and its doors hissed open.
Jake and Liz were staggering, disoriented; the Major didn't know what was going on; and the precog, knowing he was about to die, couldn't take his eyes off the elevator. Ben Trask was the only one who saw the 'truth' of it and knew what to do.
'To me!' he shouted. 'To me!' And without waiting he swept them into his arms, bundled all four of them close to himself.
'What?' Jake said, completely out of the picture.
'Make a door!' Trask shouted at him. 'For God's sake, make a goddamned door! Make a big one, and I mean right now!'
And Jake, and Korath, they made a door.
The blast took them right through it, all five of them (or six, with Korath), through the door into the Mobius Continuum. And in the hot blast and the fire that followed them, Jake knew only one safe place to take them. He remembered those suntanned, near-naked bodies sprawling indolently, and the shadow of the helicopter dark on the sparkling water. And he knew the coordinates.
Down they went in one of Xanadu's pools, and coughing and spluttering they surfaced…
… In time to see Chopper One at an altitude of one hundred and fifty feet, wheeling to face the backdrop of cliffs, steadying up and sitting like a hawk on the air, and opening up with its nose cannons on no clearly discernible target.
In his once-secret hiding place, Malinari saw it, too, and didn't believe it. But as cannon-fire ripped the chimney's facade to shreds he had to believe it. And while he still had time he tripped the rest of his switches. Then, with his thin clothing tearing under the pressure of madly metamorphosing flesh — and his bolthole hideaway collapsing around him — Malinari made a headlong dive through his window of observation, out into the night.
For a moment the pilot of Chopper One saw him: the jetcopter's thermal-imaging highlighted a shifting, flattening, morphing blob of a figure that at first plummeted, quickly adopted a manta-like shape, and finally glided from view. The pilot might even have taken a shot at the thing, but powerful updraughts from the blazing hell that was Xanadu were rocking his machine, forcing him to take action and climb out of danger.
And as Jake and the others left the pool, so Nephran Malinari shot like an arrow overhead. He might easily have been some primal pterodactyl out of Earth's prehistory, but was in fact a predatory creature from an alien, parallel world. Trask saw him — his crimson eyes, the dark blur of his passing — and a moment later heard his taunting laughter echoing from on high.
Hearing that laughter, and remembering Zek — unable to forget her, ever — all Trask wanted was to stand there and let his hate out, and will this monster to a terrible death. He knew he couldn't, but he had never wanted anything so much in his life.
In close proximity like this — so intent upon each other — Malinari had 'heard' Trask and sent back:
Hatred such as that is catching, Mr Trask. It breeds hatred! As for willing me to death: we must see whose will is the strongest, ehP Not here and now, no, but in another place, another time. This was nothing hut a skirmish, to get your measure. But if you would live tojight another day, first you must survive the night. Alas, I don't think so. If you survive, however, do not despair. For I shall he waiting, Mr Trask, I shall he waiting…
All of them with Trask heard it — that dark voice in their heads and its taunting message — but especially Liz. She heard it, and saw beyond it. Malinari's plan: flight, to a safe haven in another place, another country.
She might even have discovered which one, but Nephran Malinari recognized her presence and withdrew snarling into mental obscurity. Where his evil telepathic voice had been, only mindsmog remained, spiralling after him into a mental void.
And Malinari was gone…
But to Trask and the others it seemed the danger was still present. Xanadu was burning end to end; a series of devastating
explosions continued to rock the place; Malinari's bubble aerie on top of the Pleasure Dome was no more, and showers of plastic and glass were still raining to earth. Scraps of blazing debris drifted across the night sky, and clods of earth and grass were fountaining in the garden where Chopper One had made its initial landing. A lucky mistake on Malinari's part, that last. One of his few errors.
But the Pleasure Dome itself, the casino, was still standing, and now the precog lan Goodly cried, 'The big one is still to come. It's the casino. A set piece of delayed action — like the pause before the last big firework at the end of the show!'
Fortunately WO 2 Bygraves had taken the initiative. Thinking he'd lost his commanding officer when the Major's radio had gone down, he had called the rest of the platoon out of the casino. Now they came running, gathering at the pool. But from the pool on outwards to the perimeter of the resort, it seemed that the whole of Xanadu was an inferno. Even if there were no more explosions, the sheer heat would certainly kill everyone before they made half the distance. And meanwhile the precog, in a fit of delirious anxiety, was turning this way and that, repeating, 'It's going to blow! It's going to blow!'
Then a piece of burning debris from the bubble came drifting like a kite, weighed down by and trailing a length of electrical cable. No one noticed it until it struck the monorail's overhead power grid. There was a flash that sent blobs of molten copper skittering, and the kite and cable fell to earth.
Trask and the Major glanced at each other, headed for the boarding platform no more than fifty feet away. The rest followed them, and Jake quickly caught up. 'What are we doing?' he asked Trask breathlessly.
'The elevated monorail,' Trask gasped. 'It has power. Maybe we can drive out of this, or over the worst of it, at least as far as the main parking lot and the big ops truck.'
His idea was as good as any other; in fact it was the only idea, for the armoured car had been blown over onto its side by the blast from the garden. Fortunately the locator David Chung, along with Bygraves and his men, had already vacated that area; like Jake they had seen the pool as the only sanctuary from the bomb blasts and the fires that licked closer with every passing moment. And by now the heat and smoke were suffocating.
Dragging Liz behind him, Jake was the first into the leading carriage of two articulated, open-sided cars. Climbing into the driver's seat, he hit the red power button and, as the motor throbbed into life, grabbed the drive lever.
The system could scarcely be simpler: push forward to go, pull backward to stop. And ahead the single overhead rail climbed and curved outwards towards the perimeter parking lot, the reception area, Xanadu's gates and safety. But while the motor warmed up, still the precog was shouting. 'It's going any minute now.''
Men ran, limped, or were carried; they bundled each other into the cars. Until finally Trask yelled, 'That's it. Now get us the hell out of here!' And Jake pushed the lever forward.
Slowly — agonizingly slowly, or so it seemed — the cars climbed to their elevated height and started along the spiralling, pylon-supported rail. Fifty feet, a hundred, and gathering speed. And then the Pleasure Dome went.
The blast was awesome as the casino literally lifted into the air, sank down into itself, split asunder under the irresistible pressure of expanding gasses, and blew apart in red and yellow streamers of flame. The whole thing disappeared in dust, rubble, and gouting fire, and in the next moment the hot blast of its passing reached out and rocked the monorail's carriages, causing its passengers to grit their teeth and hang on for dear life. But then the
