Dream Park

'Here!' Owen called, and Alex turned to see the older man scrambling towards something dark and egg- shaped. Alex checked sideways and up towards the lip for visitors again, and followed Braddon.

As the shape became clearer, Griffin felt a chill. The fins at­tached to the blunt end said 'bomb' so clearly he could almost hear it tick. The others had caught the same message; their head­long rush slowed to a cautious advance. At last they stood in an uncertain semicircle about the bomb.

It was darkly corroded metal, a pointed cylinder. The flat rock

it lay on had been positioned like an altar and draped with white cloth: a parachute. A glass jar held fresh flowers.

Even S.J. looked a little disconcerted. 'What in the world do we do with this, Chester?' He edged closer to it, to within five feet, but still couldn't bring himself to touch it. 'Can we carry it out? This baby has to weigh two or three hundred kilograms. Margie?'

'I wouldn't know how to move it, Chester. Across flat ground, maybe...' Her eyes lit up. 'Wait just a minute. How did the Black Hats get it in here in the first place?'

'Good thinking. It had to be magic.' Chester walked around the bomb in a decreasing spiral, fascinated. 'I don't know if we have enough power, though.'

Tony was giving the bomb plenty of room. 'Maybe we don't want to fool with it at all. Maybe Lopez just wants an excuse to blow us all up.'

But S.J. had moved in closer, and now he was actually touching the smooth surface, eyes closed as if trying to sense its internal workings. 'Chester...' he murmured. Then louder. 'Chester! Why can't we just extract the plutonium and take that with us? It's got to be almost as valuable as the whole damn bomb. And lots lighter.'

'Jesus, Waters. You want to fry us all? Or did you bring a ton of lead shielding?'

'I thought maybe the black fire?'

Chester hesitated, then, 'No. Radiation isn't fire.'

'He's got the right idea,' Tony insisted. 'We don't have to steal it. Wreck it. Make it useless for the Enemy.'

Chester shook his head. 'Good common sense, but our mission is theft.'

'But look at it! We'll never move it!'

'Magic,' the Lore Master said. 'I'm not sure I like it, but it's the only way out that I can see. It'll take everything that we have, and by the time we've got it out we'll be down to the dregs of our magic.'

Gina carefully walked closer to the bomb, nose twitching. 'The heat and steam, Chester. That thing could be pretty unstable.'

'Maybe leaking radiation, too.' Acacia seemed almost reluc­tant to say it. Instantly the Garners shied back a few feet.

'Abight, then. We need a continual Danger scan on this while

we try to move it. Margie, you and S.J. work out a way to lower it once we get to the lip.'

'Damn,' Margie cursed sedately. 'I broke another fingernail.'

'Try keeping your fingers out of the knots,' Waters laughed, cinching the line tight. They had rigged guide ropes around the bomb that ran up to the crater rim. With luck, they would turn the moving job from an impossibility to a mere back-breaking task.

Chester had sent Acacia up to the top to substitute for Gina, who had entered into deep meditation with Chester in preparation for the attempt. When they rose they both seemed hollow-eyed and deadly serious.

Tony was making them all nervous, the way he kept watching the rim. 'With luck we could get it almost to the rim before the Enemy jumps us.'

'We'll get warning,' Ollie told him.

'We'd still be afraid to let go of the bomb, won't we? While they're killing our three scouts!'

'Lopez doesn't make it easy,' Ollie granted him. 'Wish you'd stayed home?' Tony didn't answer.

Chester called, 'Are the lines tight?' He moved into position beneath the bomb without waiting for an answer. 'The rest of you, get on the lines. As soon as the Reveal Danger spell is in force, start pulling, gently but evenly. Gina and I will do what we can. We're well ahead of schedule, troops. If the Gods-' and he lowered his voice to growl through his teeth, '-and Lopez-' Gina nudged him, and a faint smile finally cracked through his mask of fatigue, '-are willing, then we will taste victory today.'

Griffin got into position on line, directly behind Owen. 'Do we get a prayer from the Padre?'

Owen tested the line, grunting. 'Good Lord, help us move this mother. Amen.'

'Good enough.'

A weak green glow surrounded the shape of the bomb, growing slowly more distinct. Chester and Gina stood erect, faces shining with sweat-from exertion, or the heat?-and down the middle of the emerald wave they projected came a darker thread of green. It pulsed and sparkled within the lighter hue like a vein of green blood, and when it touched the bomb the casing trembled.

'Now!' S.J. put his back into it even as he called the stroke,

and Alex bent to the task, feeling good to have an understandable physical task in the midst of the make- believe.

The rock beneath the bomb crackled and flakes of it fell away, sliding down the slope towards Chester and Gina. Henderson had closed his eyes, and his hands were outstretched. The green dark­ened and more rock slid away. McWhirter snarled and heaved; his long gymnasium muscles stood out like an anatomy diagram. The bomb shifted and rose several centimeters, and the Garners loosed a cautious cheer.

Owen's foot slipped a fraction, and he had to move nimbly to catch himself. He turned his head and grinned at Alex, then yelled 'Pull! Pull!' His mood was infectious and suddenly the whole group was laughing and sweating in the steam.

The pale green aura blinked and went red.

'Hold it!' Chester's voice was frantic, and the tension left the lines so fast that the bomb almost slid back down the incline.

S.J. crept closer to the bomb, and swallowed hard. 'It's tick­ing...' When he turned to look at them all of the color had left his face. The bomb's red aura was darkening smoothly toward black. Part of his head went dark as he leaned close. 'Chester.

I think it's gonna blow...'

Shadow had entirely engulfed the bomb.

Henderson was incredulous. 'An atomic bomb? He can't do this! Just what the hell does Lopez want from me? There's no way

-wait a minute.' Alex could see wheels turning behind his eyes. 'The black fire. Everybody empty your pots onto this thing! Mar­gie, you're carrying ashes? Dump it. It'll stop the priming charges. Who else has black fire? Or ash? Who's got Guinevere's pack?'

Dark Star and Holly still had anti-fire, and they snatched up their packs and dumped them out, fingers shaking with excitement as they searched for the makeshift firepots. Ollie dumped the ash from Gwen's pack onto the corroded casing. The blackness began to spread through the ash.

'S.J., Margie, heap it on while-what the hell are you doing?' Waters had pulled a leverage bar out of his pack, and was pry­ing at a hatch in the nose of the bomb. 'We can't just pour the stuff on, chief. We've got to try to stuff it as close to the primer as possible-' His voice was shaking, and his skinny arms jerked al­most spastically as he fought with the panel. The ticking stopped.

Griffin hesitated only a second, then rushed to help. 'Get out of here, Gary,' S.J. panted. 'I can do this myself.'

'Stop trying to be a hero, friend.' Griffin yanked the bar from S.J.'s hand and squeezed it into the narrow crack, leaning his weight against it. Distantly he heard Chester telling the others to clear out. The door popped open. Alex sniffed. Odd- 'Thanks and get out,' S.J. hissed, grabbing the bar back. 'No sooner said...' Griffin slapped the Engineer on the back and hightailed it. The gravelly surface of the slope gave that stom­ach-sinking two-forward-and-one-back traction of a sand dune, but Alex sprinted anyway. Wondering why they ran. He had sniffed cordite and hot metal. The primer had abeady gone off; the bomb's explosion was retarded only by the black fire. How could they outrun an atomic explosion?

Just below the volcano's lip, he looked back.