“Maybe four hours,” Darla said.
“Let’s not waste them.”
They entered bubble 38-C, stacked to the ceiling with pale ovoids. An egg chamber?
Angelique whistled. “I have no idea what we were supposed to do here.”
“I don’t think it matters,” Scotty said
Together, they ran across the dome to the far side.
“There’s another security hatch built in here,” Darla said. “Lift it up, and we’ll be in the superstructure again, next to the dome where Ali should be hiding.” She fiddled with the hatch, slid the door out. Poked her head out. The dim light revealed a welter of support struts, darkness. It looked like a long way down.
One by one they moved out, weaving their way through the struts carefully, until they reached the next bubble.
“Now what?” Scotty asked.
“Now we hope that Xavier is punctual,” Angelique glanced at her watch. “And that our Morse is up to snuff.”
Sitting and waiting, miserable, Ali felt something. His feet sensed a slight rumble, so low it was at the very edge of his awareness.
Celeste’s eyes shifted back and forth. Beside her, the man said, “I sure hope this structure will tolerate the explosives.”
For the first time the blond woman seemed a little uneasy. “Shotz has the specifications. He knows.”
“He knows,” Miller said, picking the last of the Selenite guts out of his hair. Ali didn’t quite believe him.
In the gaming center, Xavier was gesturing into a three-dimensional map of the gaming dome. “We have simulated charges designed to fake explosions here and here.” He pointed at spots on the B and D levels. “We can pump up the subsonics, maybe even play with the environmentals a little.”
“Heat?” Kendra asked.
“We’ve been raising the heat over the last ten minutes. In a few seconds, a blast of cold air will have an interesting effect.” His smile was vicious.
“Sixty seconds… fifty-nine.” Xavier said. “Wu Lin-bring up the rumble, please.”
Ali’s heartbeat was starting to soar. The floor trembled. Around him, the kidnappers were confused, sweating. “Subsonics,” he whispered, unaware that he had spoken aloud.
“What?” Celeste said.
“I said that these cuffs are hurting my wrists. Can you-”
“Not on your life. Damn!” She wiped at a film of sweat on her forehead. “Is there no way to-” Celeste began.
Suddenly, the dome rocked with dull, thudding explosions, followed by a sharp crack.
The kidnappers lurched, even though the floor hadn’t really moved that much.
“What the hell?” Celeste said.
“The dome!” the kidnapper said. “We must have damaged it when we blew the wall.”
The kidnappers shouted orders back and forth, panicked, Ali momentarily forgotten. Wind howled, and the lights died. Within moments, their flashlight beams probed the darkness.
“Damn! That air’s cold.” Gallop’s growling voice. “Is that a vacuum breech? Is that what it feels like?”
Ali’s eyes shifted to the side as a disguised security hatch popped open. Tiny gaming safety lights gave just enough illumination to see a shape crawling across the floor.
Then Scotty’s voice: “Shhhh.”
“I don’t know what this is.” Shotz’ voice now. “But there is no pressure drop. Repeat: no pressure drop-”
“Screw this!” A panicked opinion, shrill in the darkness.
Scotty dragged Ali back through the hatch, across the struts.
“Let’s go,” Scotty whispered.
Hands bound before him, Ali crawled down through the floor, into the spaces between the bubbles, then into the creche. As he arrived, Mickey and Maud were helping Asako in.
“We’ve got about sixty seconds,” Mickey said. Darla torched Ali’s cuffs until the plastic was soft enough for him to pull them apart.
“We have to move,” Angelique said. “And we have to move now.”
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” Asako said. “Now you’ll be limited to moving through the gaming areas. You could have remained in the gaps.”
“No man left behind,” Wayne said.
“Asako,” Scotty said. “It wasn’t just the kindness of our hearts. You have equipment in your pod that might help us.”
“How?”
“We don’t know. We’re making this up as we go along. Let’s get going.”
27
The mood in Kendra’s nerve center had plummeted from bad to worse, but when Max Piering entered, she found herself feeling optimistic even before he gave her his news.
“We’re pretty much shut out,” he said. “I only see one real possibility.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Well,” the big man said, “all of the primary power was cut. They pretty much ran a perfect game there. But they missed something.”
Was there actually some good news? “What?”
“Well…,” Piering said, and leaned toward her.
A precious hour had passed since Kendra Griffin had begun her spiel. In the interim, the mood in gaming control had shifted from glum to almost celebratory. Merry enough, in fact, that Kendra was not amused in the slightest.
Kendra watched Xavier prance between one workstation and another, improvising a happy little dance as he did.
Finally, she could restrain herself no longer. “Mr. Xavier, are you certain you understand the seriousness of this situation? You seem entirely too… entertained.”
Xavier stopped his little leprechaun jig and peered up at her shrewdly. “Am I? I apologize. Sometimes I do forget where reality ends and fantasy begins. Do you think perhaps that’s why I’m so damned good at what I do?”
Then he laughed, and turned back to his assistants.
Kendra turned to her own. “He knows more than he’s telling us,” she said.
“I do hope so. We have to let him do things his way,” Max Piering said. “What choice do we really have?”
“Dammit!” She wanted to punch Xavier’s lights out. “No time for someone else to learn the system. You’re right.”
The Asteroid Belt was its own society, so far from the rest of humankind that they coveted every Earth contact as if it would help them retain their humanity.
In one of the many small living modules, four men played cards, watching the lunar feed on a visual field that
