trigger and nothing happened. With considerable effort, Moore brought his pistol around and tried the same thing. Same result. I let go of the pistol. It hung close to my hand, rotating lazily. Arms outstretched, Moore came up to meet me, and we grappled clumsily. I aimed a kick at his groin and missed, though it would have landed with the force of a thousand snowflakes at least. Moore tried a chop at my neck which I blocked, grabbing his envelope and compressing it until I felt my hand close about his wrist. He flailed at me with his other arm, to little effect, then kicked at my midsection, catching me good enough to send me spinning away, but I held on to his wrist. Finding myself against the ceiling again, I pushed off with my might and slammed into him, sending us plummeting toward the breakfast nook. His head whanged off the edge of the little table, which under ordinary circumstances would have knocked him out. With the envelope acting as a cushion, he was merely disoriented. I got my hands around his neck and squeezed, concentrating all my force and will. He brought his forearms up through mine in the standard countermove but couldn't raise them high enough. Transformed by rage, the muscles of my body became taut wire cable, the hoop of my arms a ring of power conducting furious white energy. The invisible envelope slowly gave until Moore's eyes went wide and filled with fear. There was a madman on him who wouldn't let go.
'Tell me now,' I said through clenched teeth, 'about how you'll abuse those women and make me watch. Tell me. I want to hear it.'
'Bastard!' he hissed. 'You?'
'In detail. Tell me.'
The pressure got to his throat. He gurgled, gave up trying to bring his arms through, seized my wrists and began vainly to tug at them. His kicks were weaker now. I ignored them. His head drifted under the table. I yanked and whacked his face against the underside. It felt good and the sound was most satisfactory. I did it again.
'Tell me,' I kept repeating with each thwack. His body went limp but I did not stop choking him.
A current of force caught us then, whooshing us out from under the nook and toward the hatchway. In the air, a flurry of objects swirled about us, more than could possibly have been loose. The doors and drawers of the kitchen cabinets were open, spewing out streams of utensils, dishes, cups and such. They too seemed to be heading in the general direction of the cab. We drifted through the hatch and my grip weakened. The distraction of what was happening deflected my concentration, and my fury began to subside.
But when I saw what they had been doing to Carl, my wrath doubled and redoubled. He tumbled beside me nude from the waist down. Wires dangled from his scrotum, to which they were affixed by tape. The wires led to a small battery and switch affair floating nearby. Carl was fumblingly trying to pick the tape off, encircled by trailing lengths of rope by which he had been tied to one of the back seats. I tried to tighten my grip on Moore's enormous neck but couldn't. The envelope had stiffened. I lost my hold completely and drifted away. Moore was unconscious, his face dark and bloated, but I couldn't tell whether I had killed him. He might still have been breathing. Another of Moore's henchmen was in the cab. I kicked at his face as I flew by, then tried to push myself off the front port and back to Moore to finish the job. Drifting objects got in my way and I batted at them like flies. They were everywhere: pencils, lading sheets, binocular case, backpacks, shoes, a packet of feminine napkins, the druggy contents of the medicine chest, somebody's lost sandal, dishes, scraps of paper, a moldy dinner roll, books, a pipette reader, the Ahgirr maps… all the junk that had accumulated over the past month and which everyone agreed needed to be cleaned up?tomorrow, maybe.
I had just about reached Moore again when both the cab's gull-wing hatches sprang open. The explosive decompression drove everything and everyone out of the rig and into the hard vacuum of the immense chamber.
But I could breathe. The invisible envelope held, trapped air. As I drifted upward, tumbling and turning, I wondered how much and how long it would last.
Soon my rotation slowed, not due to any effort on my part, and I could see the action below. There were Bugs everywhere, maybe about thirty of them, flittering here and about and from vehicle to vehicle, all of which were spewing an endless stream of objects and people from sprung hatches. The rig vomited clouds of jetsam from both ends. All our equipment and stores came flying out, including the astronomical gear?minus its protective wrappings. The whole gang too: Darla, Sean, Susan, Lori, the Voloshins, George and Winnie (where the hell had they been, I wondered), John, Roland, and Liam, all freed from their bindings and from the spell of the dream wand. Wide-eyed and disoriented, Darla passed me as we ascended. Then Lori went by, and I tried to wave. She saw me and shouted something but made no sound at all. She looked very frightened. I didn't blame her. I was scared bowelless myself.
Everything rose, tumbling, wobbling, spinning lazily. At about the height of fifty meters, the ascent stopped. Everything then proceeded to form into a vast swirling cloud like a flock of migrating birds, orbiting about a point on the floor of the chamber around which the Bugs were arranging themselves into a circle.
The scene was dreamlike; everything transpired in perfect silence. I could hear myself as I shouted and called out to everyone, but no sound conducted through the vacuum between individual force-envelopes. No reason why it should, I thought, so I shut up.
The cloud of junk and people began to order itself, forming spiraling lines leading down. During the reshuffling, I was astonished to see Wilkes?the genuine flesh-and-blood Corey Wilkes?go wafting past. He was naked from the waist up and wore white pajama bottoms. His chest was wrapped with white bandages. He looked as if he was having trouble breathing. His eyes seemed to find me as he passed. Dim recognition formed in his expression for a moment, then his eyes closed and he floated out of my ken. It was a reunion up there. Twrrrll, the surviving Reticulan, ghosted by, zoom-lens eyes fixing me in an insensate stare.
If Wilkes had been a shock, the sight of Ragna coming in for a docking maneuver had me reeling. In spite of myself, I yelled out, 'Ragna! What the hell are you doing here!!??'
Well, he answered, and what he said was probably something like 'Greetings, Jake, my friend of the bosom! Is this not of immense interestinghood?' or words to that effect, if his idiotically effusive smile was any indication. A slight perturbation of his orbit took him away, with his wife Oni following. I groaned.
I saw men I didn't recognize; other members of Moore's gang of cutthroats no doubt.
Above the circle of Roadbugs a gigantic cyclonic funnel took shape. Currents of force carried junk in spiraling patterns down to make a wide circuit in front of the Bugs, then back up again through the funnel and into the hovering cloud of people and debris. It seemed the Bugs wanted to inspect us and every doodad and whatnot we owned. I found myself in the funnel in short order, and began a dizzying descent in a quickly tightening gyre. As I neared the bottom, though, everything stopped.
They had found the. Cube.
The circle of Bugs drew tighter. In the dim light of the chamber I could barely see a black dot making the inspection circuit by itself, pausing briefly in front of each Bug before moving on. The Cube made the circuit twice, and that seemed to be enough. The funnel cloud began twisting downward again and I found myself parading before the assembled inspectors, floating single file with an assortment of digging tools. I had a momentary fantasy, imagining what was going through the Bugs' minds?if they had minds?as they categorized and cataloged everything.
Inanimate: implement; inanimate: foodstuff; inanimate: (unclassifiable); animate: being (semisentient, bipedal, mammalian); Inanimate: apparel (covering for pedal extremities)…
They found me of little interest but paused for a moment to better scrutinize George and Winnie. Then I gravitated up into the cyclone again, a helical course until I returned to take my place in the huge swirling galaxy of stuff and people above.
I looked down. Carl's Chevy was rising on its own special updraft. When the funnel cloud had dissipated, it floated down to rest on the floor in the middle of the circle. The Bugs crowded even closer together to get a better look at it?if that was what they were doing. None of the car's hatches opened and none of its contents came out. They spent a good ten seconds looking it over, then backed off, apparently either satisfied with what they saw, or despairing of ever making sense of it.
The strip-search was over?none too soon, because I was finding each succeeding breath more difficult to draw.
What happened next happened quickly. The cloud of stuff broke apart, its elements falling precipitously, but gathering into a dozen or so individual streams. I fell, my stomach flipping over even though the sensation wasn't like an ordinary fall. I started tumbling, tried to stop but couldn't. Blizzards of junk accompanied me. Somebody's shirt covered my face and I brushed it off. Then a tool box bumped into my protective envelope but didn't hit me. I grew disoriented and slightly nauseated. The last few moments of the ordeal were mercifully quick, and I can't
