I analyzed the situation as coolly as I could in the middle of roaring flames. What else should I try? In the old gangster movies, when the good guy finds himself cornered in a warehouse basement or in some cheap hotel, he always leaps out, turns a somersault or two, and runs off with both pistols blazing, saving himself. But I wasn’t too sure the Colossaur had watched those movies, so I decided not to try. Most likely he wouldn’t know that he was supposed to miss me when he fired his gun, and given the perfect aim he’d shown so far it seemed more like a suicide plan than a solution.
I took a slightly desperate peek at Vasily. The fact that he hadn’t washed his hands of the affair, after settling accounts with Giorgio Weekman once and for all, spoke very much in his favor. I decided to thank him—if we ever got out of there.
At the moment, he seemed kind of busy. He and Makrow were trying to part each other’s hair with gunfire. But all the time, their own curious Psi powers were at play, and the results were much more spectacular than in my duel with the Colossaur and his microwave cannon.
To start with, they each seemed to be affected by implausibly persistent bad aim. The microwave beams, the lasers, the various classes of projectiles ricocheted all over the place at unbelievable angles, none coming within a few feet of their intended targets.
Now, one stray maser blast did hit the metal counter that the Colossaur was using for cover. The furious roar he let out made it plain that he did not appreciate the heat wave.
A moment later it was my turn for a close shave. A hail of poisoned darts hit within inches of me. The toxin obviously couldn’t have harmed my inorganic body, but the closeness of the call told me my position was precarious. Next time it could be something truly destructive, like a thermal tracking missile. I had already noticed that Makrow 34, like Vasily, didn’t rely on a single type of weapon. The Cetian Psi was carrying a whole arsenal around with him.
Finally they both decided simultaneously to get smart, shift strategies, and aim anywhere but at their opponent. After this they each had slightly better luck, but only slightly. Gaussical powers to the max. Almost involuntarily I recalled that first Grodo Gaussical fifteen years ago, and I looked around for the two-headed centaurs that some had claimed to see. But fortunately I didn’t see anything equine circling us—just one tiny orange Pegasus flitting around in terror, dodging the web of maser and laser fire.
I did notice, however, a whole bunch of other stuff—what my friend Einstein might have called the collateral effects of a binaural disruption of the probability curve, something like that. In plain language: the results of a desperate encounter between two Gaussicals using all their powers without restraint. I suppose a physicist could have discovered some very interesting phenomena, such as the multicolored fluorescence around the ceiling, which would have made the brightest aurora borealis seem like a parlor trick. Or the hail that had started falling around us, contrary to all the laws of meteorology and thermodynamics. Or the restless scampering of a troop of little gnome-like creatures that had apparently been asexually reproduced by budding (or by fission; cellular biology was never my strong point) from one of the fallen humans, in Olympic disregard of evolution and its precepts.
As for me, a simple pozzie, I didn’t find any of that particularly interesting—much less reassuring. All it did was remind me of the magnitude of the psychic powers at play. And also that Makrow 34’s powers were, unfortunately, thought to be much stronger than Vasily’s. My human friend wouldn’t hold out much longer.
I must admit that even then, except for the occasional microwave beam rebounding a little too close, I didn’t feel frightened or even very worried. The situation was deadlocked, true, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, at least not for us. We couldn’t move from where we were, but neither could they. Time was now on the good guys’ side for a change. Vasily and I only had to hold on until the cavalry showed up with the heavy weaponry, all the pozzies in the world. Then it wouldn’t matter how many guns Makrow 34 and his stinking Colossaur had, or how formidable and Gaussical they were; they’d be forced to yield to our superior numbers and firepower.
Unfortunately, they weren’t exactly stupid, and they quickly realized that if they didn’t escape and right away, they’d never get out at all.
It’s funny how time passes when you’re under pressure. It felt like I had spent hours playing that game of firing and ducking, but my internal timer reported that we’d been exchanging fire for only three minutes, from the moment we burst into the docking module with guns blazing to the point when the villains were certain that they still had the upper hand and decided to force the situation.
My Colossaur was the first to make a run for it. With an impressive roar, he abandoned his fortress and headed straight at me in tremendous bounds. Imagine a two-ton rhinoceros leaping like a kangaroo. You’d never have expected such agility from his enormous bulk; he must have been buzzed on some exotic class of combat drug. Makrow was quite a fan of such concoctions.
I stole another glance at Vasily and Makrow. The Cetian lowlife must have made the same decision: he had also moved out into the open while firing his guns, which he kept pointed well away from Vasily. But unlike the Colossaur, he moved at his own majestic, leisurely pace, not troubling to run or jump. My friend El Afortunado was doing the same. They both ignored the continual rain of fire each hurled at
