Perseus Spur

by Julian May

  I dived out of the door.

  Chwoik chwoik.

  Elgar fired two more shots while I was in midair. They scorched the ceramalloy bulkhead of the corridor and I rolled aside, out of range. He sent a couple of shots past the doorframe, ankle-high and knee-high. I waited. Our Kagi pistols weren't powerful enough to pierce the wall.

  Silence. Not a peep out of Andy. If I wanted a live hostile witness to interrogate, it looked like I'd have to settle for Bron.

  The silence lengthened.

  I raised my pistol high above my head and took a blind shot inside the control room. Some kind of equipment gave up the ghost with a soft tinkling explosion. There was no other response.

  As rapidly as I could, I fired three more blind blasts at different levels. More flight-control gear perished. I ripped off one of my sneakers and poked the toe around the doorframe. Bait refused. Shoe back on. Deep breath. Crouch. Jump out firing.

  The flight control room was empty except for the two dead men.

  Cursing, I dashed to an unmarked door on the right side of the room. It opened into a stairwell. I galloped down to the ring-mezzanine level, flung open the door, and came out with the pistol steadied in both hands.

  I'd arrived in a vestibule just outside the restaurant. An elderly woman wearing a smart apple-green velveteen cloak emerged from the adjacent ladies' room and screeched at the sight of me and my gun. She turned and fled back into the John. I quickly checked the men's toilet and found nothing. An adjacent maintenance closet was locked.

  Pulling down the sleeve of my sweatsuit to conceal the Kagi, I scanned the dining area. There were a few patrons sitting at the tables and a single open-mouthed server. No sign of Bron. I looked into the kitchen. None of the workers had seen a fleeing man.

  He might have circled to the external stairway on the cylinder's opposite side. I started around, simultaneously looking over the railing. My vantage point was excellent, affording a view of the entire open concourse. The persons below were peaceably going about their business, apparently not having heard the old woman's startled cry. There were so few people in the terminal that I easily ascertained that Bronson Elgar was not among them. It hardly seemed possible that he had managed to reach the baggage area or hide behind one of the counters without being spotted by a port employee.

  The only ExSec guard in sight stood beside the archway that led to Aperture One. A sign above it read: to all flights. The guard was keeping an alert eye on the people moving around the concourse. He wore only a sidearm.

  I cursed Terence Hoy. Hadn't the idiot heard the firefight going on in the corridor? Where was the goddamn SWAT team?

  1 came full circle on the mezzanine. Outside the restaurant was a port phone with a notice telling me to press 0 in an emergency. I did, and got a live human being.

  "Connect me to Planetary Meteorology," I said.

  "Sir, this phone is for internal and emergency use only. If you—"

  I let loose a scorching storm of profanity and threats of dire retribution, but it was only after I evoked the magical name of Terence Hoy that the scandalized operator put me through.

  Terence averred that he was just about to call the special-weapons assault team. I told him to get a fucking move on and described the fugitive. Then: "The internal stairway that leads from Flight Control to the restaurant on the mezzanine. Does it continue down below the concourse?"

  "Why, no. It ends on the main floor."

  "The central elevator. Does it go to the basement?"

  "The only lower-level access is through Baggage Handling and Maintenance. I had guards posted there, per your orders."

  "Good! Then we may have the bastard penned. Tell the SWAT team to meet me on the main floor."

  I hung up the phone and went down the inner stairway. It opened on the side opposite the passenger elevator, facing the terminal entrance. I slipped out onto the concourse as casually as I could. Clutching both hands to my belly and holding the cuff of my purple suit over the pistol, I began a slow cir-cumambulation of the central cylinder.

  Where would I go if I was Bronson Elgar?

  I hadn't the faintest idea. Maybe he'd dodged me and gone back up to the tower offices, looking for another hostage. Maybe he'd frightened the kitchen staff into lying about his presence. Maybe—

  Twenty meters away the cylinder's elevator door opened. Out came the little old lady in the apple-green cloak, holding tight to the arm of another woman with white hair. The pair of them started for Aperture One, moving with surprising speed.

  Oh, shit.

  I yelled, "Elgar! Stop where you are!"

  The figure in the apple-green cloak whirled around and took a shot at me. The blue ray lanced past my shoulder and nailed a flight-bulletin kiosk. Several bystanders screamed and shouted.

  Elgar was running, dragging the woman along. The cloak fluttered around both of them, making it impossible for me to get a decent bead on him. There was too much danger of hitting the woman—and besides, I needed him alive.

  "Guard!" I shouted. "Stop him! don't let him get out the aperture!" There had to be passenger-transport vehicles in the green decon module beyond the force-field interface. If Bron managed to reach one, he'd be clear and away. His fake hospital ship was waiting.

  The security man at the aperture drew his sidearm, but before he could fire, Elgar shot him in the chest. The guard fell. Elgar turned around and sent another beam at me. He missed and I hit the deck.

  Then pandemonium broke out. Frightened people started running in all directions. One or two smart ones dived to the floor, like me. A six-man SWAT team, armed to the teeth, came rushing in through Baggage Handling on my left, bellowing "Halt!" through helmet amplifiers.

  Bron didn't. And he didn't let the old woman go, either.

  I howled, "Rampart Security! Don't shoot!" Then I got to my feet again and started to run, praying that Terence had told the team about my purple sweatsuit.

  The SWAT team was firing deliberately high above the fugitives in a futile attempt to intimidate Elgar. I saw the woman start to sag, either swooning from terror or suffering a heart attack at the sight of the crisscrossing beams of blue death just over her head. She must have tripped up the assassin as she collapsed. He staggered and fell to his hands and knees, the cloak billowing around both of them.

  The apple-green fabric settled around one figure. The other crawled toward the interrupter unit.

  Bronson Elgar had unfastened the cloak and dropped it onto the woman.

  The SWAT team, thrown for a loss by the switch, held its fire. So did I, until I realized that the creeper was Elgar. If he got through the aperture, he'd be able to turn the force-field back on from the other side. It was undoubtedly blasterproof, and by the time we reached the interrupter and reopened it, he'd be behind the decon airlock.

  Elgar hit the manual control of the interrupter unit. The field winked out, the cherry-beacon began to rotate, and the canned voice recited its warning.

  What had Terence said about the field safeguards? Only in the event of an emergency dome lockdown or the unlikely physical destruction of an interrupter unit would there be any real danger.

  The aperture would close if either interrupter was destroyed.

  Elgar continued his frantic scramble across the floor. I stopped, gripped my Kagi in both hands, and took aim.

  Chwoik.

  The nearest interrupter emitted a puff of smoke and its flashing red beacon died. The sparkling curtain rematerialized inside the aperture arch. I saw the old woman stir and lift her head, but the other figure at the field interface lay unmoving.

  Both halves of it.

  Epilogue

  It was pleasant on the open porch of my new beach house. A gentle breeze blew off the sea and kept the bugs away, and now that the sun was down the elvis-birds were humming mellowly in the mint palms. As the tropical sky faded quickly to indigo, stars popped out and a hundred comets gleamed like slashes of silvery chalk. "I love it," Matt said.
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  "Told you so. Stay here with me forever. Or three weeks, anyway. It'll take Simon that long to get back to the Spur after setting off his fireworks in Toronto. The Haluk will deny everything, of course. Interesting times upcoming, babe."

  "Mmm. And a million things to do, now that I'm VP Con Services."

  "Us Vice Presidents have to stick together. Promise you'll stay on K-L for three weeks. I'll take you to the Isle of Rum-ti-Foo and we'll listen to my great old Jimmy Buffet songs: 'Volcano.' 'Stars on the Water.' 'Cheeseburger in Paradise.' "

  We were lying together in a hammock built for two. I nuzzled her piel canela. Quite a lot of it was available, since she still wore her bikini. Our first trip together in the yellow submarine had been a tremendous success.

  "Three weeks," she said dreamily. "I think we deserve that much—unless the hot lead Karl has on Ollie Schneider's whereabouts pans out. I want to hook that bastard to the machines and interrogate him myself. He's probably the only mole who can implicate any of the Rampart directors in the conspiracy. Of course, they may all be innocent..."

  I nipped her ear. "Tell you what: let's kidnap Zed and wring the truth out of him. To hell with law and order."

  "Idiot! No wonder they threw you out of ICS. You know we have no proof whatsoever that he's disloyal. Or the others, either. And with every director stonewalling as a matter of principle, we're stymied. There'll be no more voluntary interrogation sessions of Rampart bigwigs."

  I kissed the side of her neck. "Our own confessions were blockbusters. And Eve's was supernova class. They'll do."

  She uttered a skeptical little grunt. "Hold the cheering until we're certain that they're held admissible in our suit against Galapharma. Alistair Drummond's lawyers have already filed twenty-three objections."

  "Piffle."

  "The objections could be upheld," she insisted. "Of course, if we manage to track down Schneider and add his confession to our own evidence, it would be a different matter ... Pity about Bronson Elgar. Just think of the tales he could have told."

  "So I goofed," said I. "C'est la guerre."

  "I'm glad he's dead," she admitted. "What kind of a human monster would deliberately maroon a man on a comet?"

  "It's right there, you know," I pointed. "The big one, just above the western horizon."

  "Really? Helly's Comet?" She laughed, bounced up out of the hammock, and pulled me out after her. "Let's get a telescope! I want to see it in close-up."

  "I found it to be just a trifle disappointing. But whatever you say."

  She paused, looking up at me, her black eyes gleaming. "On second thought, I have a better idea."

  "Let's hope," I said, "it's the same as mine. There should be just enough time before we're due to pick up Ivor at the hopper pad and go to Mimo's for the party."

  We turned our backs on the comet and went into the house, hand in hand.

  The End