pincers together to form a huge pile driver. The pile driver slammed down just as the two shot the jagged opening, missing them by a hair’s breadth, making the Grid shake. Then the Reco rose from the small opening to fly over the arena walls and resume the chase.
In a narrow conduit outside the arena, Ram and Tron caught up with Flynn, who’d slowed to wait for them. The force of the original de-rezzing had been channeled along the conduit; another zigzag notch at its far end gave them a way out. Here, outside the Grid, the light-cycles no longer threw up their barriers.
They emerged from the broached wall into an enormous corridor and set off at high speed. Aboard his Carrier, Sark lashed out, batting aside and flooring a guard who’d had the misfortune to be nearby. Overhead, a control overseer worked furiously in his monitoring bucket. Sark opened a general communications channel. “Get them!” he shrieked. “Send out every Game Tank on the Grid!” His choler peaked, in a bellow that threw fear into every program in the Complex. “
The light-cycles emerged single file into an open area. Scores of depressions the size of city blocks were arranged in precise ranks and files to either side, divided by the squares of roadway. Two Recos swooped like hawks upon the fugitives, pincers spread wide to grasp or fire. The escapees raced for the resumption of the narrow corridor at the far end of the open area.
They did not reach it with any time to spare. The lead Reco slammed against the wall over them as they entered the little opening. As the first Reco rebounded, the second collided with it. The two machines hung there, stymied. Tron, Ram, and Flynn swept in tight formation through a long, narrow room, flanked on either side by rows of missiles poised on parked mobile launchers. In the next part of the vast arsenal, silent tanks waited, side by side to the right and left.
The tanks were dark, inactive, but not all were unmanned. As the fleeing conscripts raced along, vehicles to either side suddenly rezzed brighter and charged out at them. Tron and Flynn made it in a flash of yellow and orange, as the tanks’ prows closed in on them. But Ram had to slew his cycle to the left to avoid one, then right to miss a second. He thought for an instant that he would die under the light-treads of a third, but made it by—without room to spare.
The tanks wheeled to pursue. The lead vehicle’s gunner tracked them on his targeting scope, trying to bracket them for a shot. “Fire!” yelled the gunner. The long cannon spat its blinding chevron, but the round went wide. Three figures, hugged close to their cycles, sped out of his line of fire. “Missed,” he gritted.
The trio raced down a ramp laid out in squares delineated by light. Salvos of tank cannonfire blossomed to the sides and behind them. The white V’s of the cannonade sent rings of multichrome energy expanding from their impact. The escapees focused on their only possible salvation, high-speed flight. The sleek Game Tanks increased speed, raising commo with other contingents to try to block the way ahead. The unit leader relayed his situation report to Sark.
“Units exiting the Defensive Zone.” There could be no more ambushes now; only pursuit.
Outside the Game Grid for the first time, Flynn found himself riding for his life through a fantastic landscape of glowing walls, modular shapes, and darting vector lines. He was not unhappy. The three sped past huge cipher panels and rows of gleaming, angular buttresses. A tank unit fell in behind, and the three rode at maximum speed, weaving back and forth and rounding turn after turn, leaning close to the floor-ground, denying the tankers a clear shot.
They flashed out onto a wide landing, a sort of turning bay at the brink of an overhang. Tron barely slid to a side-on stop, the half of one wheel of his gold light-cycle over the very edge of the landing. Hundreds of feet below was a gridded canyon floor. The turning bay overlooked a terrain of tremendous cylinders, piled megaforms, slotted towers, ledge-roadways, and stark bridgespans. The entire vista was luminous with the brilliant light surfaces and demarcations of the Electronic World.
The three immediately set of along the ledge-roadway, desperate to put distance between themselves and the war machines. “Target units accelerating!” the lead tank commander snapped, forcing more speed from his vehicle. One after another the Game Tanks plunged out onto the landing.
The first, like Tron, just managed to halt on the edge of the turning bay. But the tanks had crowded up too closely upon one another; their commanders had been determined to carry out Sark’s orders, dreading what failure would earn them. The second tank smashed into the first, pushing it over the edge of the planiform cliff. The lead tank tumbled to the grid below, the programs within it screaming out the last moments of their lives. Then an angry blast of force took its place, and it was gone.
The three cycles howled in echelon along a curving ledge toward a division in a vast sweep of wall. Pursuit bogged down, the Game Tanks blocking one another as a new caution dampened the commander’s inclination toward disorderly, full-speed chase.
Flynn accepted Tron’s lead without question, and only hoped that the User Champion could find some place of safety where they might debate their next move.
They entered the division and descended a long downgrade, moving slowly in the murk. Among the twists and turns of the interior of the place, Tron found a final incline that ended in a cul-de-sac. The place reminded Flynn of a cavern, its walls and ceiling formed from blockish protrusions—trapezoids, squares, parallelograms. A soft blue light pervaded. Tron and Ram glided to a stop; Flynn followed suit.
Energy surged around them. In moments, the light-cycles had de-rezzed. Flynn only hoped that they’d be able to summon the bikes up again later, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d be needing them. He stretched, took a deep breath.
“Oh,
Ram and Tron stared at Flynn, wondering if he’d lost his senses. Flynn reminded himself to speak more guardedly. But he saw that he’d have to tell his companions the truth before long. He’d seen how shocked they’d been at the mere idea of leaving the Game Grid; he wondered what their reaction to his real identity would be.
Flynn dashed back up the ramp and listened as the sounds of the tanks filled the distance. But even as he listened, the sounds grew more distant.
He trotted back to the others. “They went right past us!” he told them, elated; light-cycles against tanks wasn’t a sporting event he welcomed.
Tron responded, “We made it—this far.” But it was farther, he thought, than he’d have expected. He and Ram and Flynn had done what had never been done before on the Game Grid. Perhaps this portended a change in circumstances, a chance to oppose the MCP. But Tron, scrutinizing Flynn, was still mystified by his daring and disregard of the common constraints.
A huge search force was deploying the area. Tanks wheeled and raced, hurrying to assigned positions to run their patterns. Sark’s Carrier presided over all; aboard it, the Command Program and his lieutenant studied the display of the situation on a broad expanse of wall-screen. Sark evaluated it, envisioning what the escapees were capable of doing, what they might choose as their best course of action, projecting himself into the minds of his prey.
He made a sudden decision. “Get the pursuit force back into the canyons.” His eyes narrowed as he considered the screen. “Those programs never made it out of there.”
While the lieutenant relayed his orders, Sark thought about the User and Tron, on the loose together out there. To him, they were a deadly disease abroad in the System.
“We’ll have them in no time, sir,” the lieutenant maintained with the confidence of one who holds no responsibility. “Long before they interrupt interface.”
Sark glared at him icily for a moment, then turned away. “We’d better, null-unit.” The lieutenant flinched at the affront, but dared say nothing. “I’ll be lucky if the MCP doesn’t blast me into a dead zone,” finished the Command Program. “I want those conscripts!”
The lieutenant turned to a communications officer to summon more units, as many as it might take to saturate the area, and the vacant region that lay beyond.
09
