the first time he paused for air. “Stupid comms in these things aren’t worth—”
“Forget the comm,” he cut me off. “There’s been an accident with the Balercomb tour.”
I felt my heart seize up. “Bayta?” I demanded, breaking into a gliding, bobbing run.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Over by the new toboggan tunnels, at the far end of the red pylon line,” I told him as I emerged onto the surface. “I’m heading back.”
“Just stay put,” Applegate ordered. “I’ll be right there.”
I frowned; and then, belatedly, I noticed the faint sound of Shorshic thrusters in the background. I turned toward the lodge and saw a sleek Chafta 669 starfighter settle onto the ice twenty meters away. “Come on!” Applegate’s voice barked in my helmet.
He had the canopy popped by the time I reached him. “Take the ops seat,” he ordered, gesturing over his shoulder at the padded chair above and behind him.
“What’s this doing here?” I asked as I pulled myself up the handholds along the side and dropped into the seat. “I thought we were going to Modhra II to see them.”
“Losutu’s idea,” he grunted as the canopy swung closed and we lifted from the surface. “He thought it would save time if we brought one of the starfighters here for you to look at. Never dreamed we might actually need it for anything. Hang on.”
He kicked in the drive, the acceleration shoving me back into my seat. “What happened?” I called over the roar coming from behind me.
“Sounds like the driver lost control somehow and rammed the bus into one of the ice pillars,” he said. “I heard that Bayta was calling for you, and that no one could find you, so I fired up the Chafta and headed out to look.”
I felt a sudden crawling on my skin. Bayta had called for me? Knowing where I was and what I was doing, she’d still called for me? Not likely.
“Your turn,” he said. “What were you doing in a restricted area in a resort worker vac suit?”
“I wanted to check out the work on the new toboggan tunnels,” I said, sliding into liar mode with half my brain while the other half sifted through the potential traps. “If I’m going to recommend this place, I have to know everything about it, including how it’s being expanded.”
“Why didn’t you just ask for a tour?”
“Tours only show what the management wants you to see,” I said, peering out the side of the canopy. We were passing over the lodge, and I saw that the morning torchferry from the Tube had landed and was cooling down in preparation for the return trip.
But there was a second ship on the ice, as well, a ship with the boxy lines and soft-focus anti-sensor hull of a military troop carrier. Pressing my helmet against the canopy, I caught a glimpse of figures in dark green Halkan military vac suits moving toward the lodge.
And then, even as I craned my neck to try to see more, Applegate rolled the starfighter a few degrees to port, cutting off my view. “Hey!” I protested.
“Hey, what?” he called back.
I clenched my teeth. “Nothing,” I said. “How much farther?”
“About thirty kilometers,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m sure she’s all right.”
The crash site was bustling with activity when we arrived. Three ambulances were already on the scene, clustered around the bus, with half a dozen Halkas helping passengers out of the damaged vehicle. The bus itself was tipped nearly up onto its left side, its nose crunched into a huge ice stalagmite. Applegate set us down fifty meters away and popped the canopy. “What frequency are we on here?” I asked as we hurried toward the scene. “I’m still on the workers’ channel.”
“General Two,” Applegate told me.
I switched over, and the silent scene erupted with the terse orders of command, the moans and whimpering of injured or scared tourists, and the soothing voices of the medics themselves. “Bayta?” I called.
“She’s over here,” a Halkan voice replied, and a medic squatting by one of the ambulances raised a hand. The figure sitting limply at his feet looked up, and I saw that it was indeed Bayta, her face tense and pinched. But at least she was alive. I started toward her—
And came to an abrupt halt as a tall Halka suddenly loomed in my path. “You are Compton?” he demanded. He was wearing one of the military vac suits, with major’s insignia around the collar.
“Out of my way,” I growled, trying to get around him.
But he wasn’t about to be gotten around. “You are Compton?” he repeated.
“Yes, this is him,” Applegate spoke up, taking my arm. “Sorry, Frank, but we’ve got a situation here.”
“No kidding,” I said, trying to pull away.
“Bayta’s all right,” Applegate soothed, steering me toward the wrecked bus. “This will just take a minute.”
He led me around the back of the bus to where we could see the underside, the major staying close behind us. Up close, the damage to the vehicle’s nose looked worse than it had from the air, and I found myself wondering what speed the lunatic had been doing when he rammed the ice. “There, beneath the overhang,” Applegate said, pointing to the chassis between the two right-hand wheels. “You see it?”
“Of course I see it,” I said with as much patience as I could manage. From this angle, with the bus tilted up on its side, the long plastic-wrapped package would have been hard to miss. Given the three Halkas standing there poking and prodding at it, the thing was as obvious as a Times Square holodisplay. “So?”
“You know what it is?”
“I left my X-ray glasses in my other suit,” I growled. “You consider just unwrapping it?”
“No need,” the major put in, his tone dark. “It is a phased sonic disruptor, designed for underwater dredging and shock-mining.”
“Okay,” I said. “And this concerns me how?”
In answer, the Halka gestured to two of the three figures who’d been inspecting the disruptor. They walked over to us; and before I could react, there was a glint of metal and a sudden flurry of hands, and my arms had been neatly pinioned in front of me in a set of wristcuffs.
My heart, which had already been doing overtime over Bayta, kicked into full jackhammer mode. “What the
“You are wanted at the lodge,” the major said, getting a grip on my upper arm and leading me toward the ambulance. The medic had Bayta on her feet now, I saw, and was helping her inside. “You and your female both.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I muttered. In the distance I could see the bumblebee shape of a heavy lifter approaching, its underside grapples looking like giant insect legs. “This had better be good,” I warned.
“It’s not good, Frank,” Applegate said quietly. “It’s not good at all.”
FIFTEEN:
Applegate and the major seated me between them in the forward section of the ambulance, while Bayta was taken aft to the pressurized treatment area. Ostensibly so the medics could check her over; in actual fact, I had no doubt they just didn’t want us within helmet-touching range of each other where we could compare notes without anyone else listening in.
We were met by four other militarily vac-suited Halkas when we touched down outside the lodge. One of them took a moment to put wristcuffs on Bayta, then they formed a standard escort box around us as the major led us through a cargo airlock big enough to accommodate the whole group. Once inside, our escort handed us off to two more armed Halkas in regular army uniforms, the vacsuited batch then returning outside. Applegate and the major popped their helmets and slung them onto their shoulder clips, then did the same for Bayta and me. With our new escort flanking us, we went through a series of service corridors to a door marked WATERCOURSE CONFERENCE ROOM.
As the ready room had been of typical layout, so, too, was the conference room. In the center was a long
