“Stow this someplace.”
I stowed it back in the glove compartment. He retrieved it and returned it to my lap, glancing at me.
“You’ll need it.”
“I will?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the .38. After some fumbling, I figured out how to push out the cylinder. The percussion caps of six cartridges stared at me. I closed the cylinder.
“There’s a box of shells in the back seat. Stick a handful in your coat pocket.”
“Smith.”
“Hm-m-m?”
“Just who am I supposed to shoot with this thing, assuming I could hit anyone?”
“Let them shoot first.”
“Who?”
“Spieler and company.”
Smith caught the Newport Freeway toward Tustin. He was going to Spieler Space Operations.
“What,” I asked, “are we doing?”
“If we can’t go in the front door, we go in the back, right?”
“Go in the back! If we’re going in the back, why don’t we take the cavalry with us?”
“Too much dust from the horses.” He smiled, happy with his metaphor.
“What,” I inquired, indicating the .38 in my lap, “if they scalp us?”
He eased into an exit lane. “Always a possibility.”
“Shouldn’t we at least tell someone?”
“They’d just screw things up.”
“But charging into Spieler’s back yard, guns blazing, won’t.”
He parked near the fence around Spieler Space Operations and shut off the lights. Apparently, he planned to enter under the fence again. He got out, stooping with the door open to look at me.
“Coming?”
“This is insane.”
“Probably.”
I reached into the back seat and scooped a handful of shells from the box. Smith lifted a satchel from the back seat, slinging it over his arm.
Finding the hole under the fence was more difficult at night. Down the slight slope from us, the compound was dark. Security lights shone weakly along the sides of the buildings. Smith found the hole and slid under.
“Pass me that bag.”
I passed it under the fence. “Smith.”
“Hm-m-m?” he answered, standing up with the bag in his hands. I talked to him through the fence.
“This time, tell me your plan. I feel like I’m following the scapegoat into the slaughterhouse.”
He pointed into the compound. “You remember the building where we were this afternoon?”
“The computer center.” Had it only been that afternoon? I was a burglar twice in one day. Smith was a bad influence.
“The building next to it is their Gate. It’s probably focused on the first satellite in their string.”
“So?”
“So it’s the back door. If we charged up there with the police, they’d close it. This way, maybe we can get through before it slams.”
“Get through! You mean I’m supposed to step into a totally man-made environment, surrounded by a vacuum”—I pulled the .38 from my waistband with two fingers, dangling it—“and start punching holes in it with this thing! You’re nuts, Smith! You may be seventy-five and have most of your life behind you! You may not care about a few bugged eyes and exploded lungs, not to mention bulletholes! But I’m twenty-eight! I still have one or two good years left! I care about eyes and lungs! Especially my own!”
“And bulletholes.”
“And bulletholes! You can just go on this little Kamikaze mission by yourself’!”
“OK.”
Smith turned away from the fence, staring down the slope. He walked quickly, the satchel swinging at his side.
“Smith!”
He kept walking. Somehow, I couldn’t leave. I wanted to leave. Smith’s so-called plan was the zaniest thing since Norton’s body played Houdini. It would get him killed. If I went, it would get me killed. There I would be, famous, jotted down in a history book footnote, the man who assembled the first Stargate, dead on the day of his triumph, his body bloated by the vacuum of the very space he conquered. I saw myself perforated with as many holes as a practice golf ball.
What the hell? If you die at the peak of your success, you can’t go downhill. I slid under the fence and followed Smith, noticing, as I caught up with him, that we were both going downhill.
“Change your mind?” he asked.
“No. It’s still lunacy.”
“Then why are you coming?”
“Kicks.”
“You’ll get plenty of those.”
We neared the buildings. Smith’s index finger went to his lips. We approached the corner of the Gate building. Smith glanced around the corner, then looked back at me, holding up two fingers.
“Two men,” he whispered. “Ten yards. When I say ‘go,’ head for the small one.”
Smith glanced around the corner again.
“Go.”
I went. Smith led, leaping on the taller of the two guards. Somehow, I managed to collide with the smaller guard. He had both hands on his holster, working at the flap. I used my one good blow, a short left to his stomach. I expected him to collapse or at least bend double. He just staggered back, gasping for air. I grabbed him with both hands, trying to throw him to the ground. Either the man was an ex-acrobat or it is harder to throw someone than in the movies. He stepped and staggered and kept his balance, continuing to slap at his holster and gasp for air.
I tried my last tactic. I hugged him, pinning his arms to his sides and lifting him off the ground. My knees buckled. We sprawled. He kicked at me, hitting my leg. I heard an inrush of air as he caught his breath, preparing to yell. Something moved over us. The air burst from him in a harmless rasp. He lay still. Smith stood over him, the satchel dangling from his hand. Whatever was in it had left my opponent cold. Smith helped me up.
“I guess I didn’t do that too well,” I panted, beginning to feel the pain where the man’s heel hit my thigh.
“You kept him busy.”
“What’s in that bag?”
“Plastique,” whispered Smith.
“Plastique!”
“Shhh.”
“Plastique,” I whispered. “And you hit him with it! You could have blown his head off and ours!”
“It isn’t nitroglycerin, you know.”
“What are you going to do? Blow this place up?”
“Not if I don’t have to.”
We started into the building. An empty hall met us. We followed it past several closed doors. Smith stopped and listened at each.
“Smith.”
“Hm-m-m?”
“You remember what happened the last time we did this. We wound up in jail.”
“Don’t worry,” said Smith. “This time we’re armed.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
The fourth door was open, light spilling on the hall floor. Smith held up his hand. I stopped. He eased up on the door, pulling out his .38 and indicating that I should do the same. He gave me a “here-goes” look and stepped into the room. I followed.
Only one man, his back to us, occupied the room. He heard us enter.
“Did you get the coffee, Tom?” he asked without looking around. There was something vaguely familiar about him.
“Nope,” answered Smith.
The man turned. It was Grizzly.
“You!” said Grizzly—whether he meant me or Smith I don’t know—and dived for an alarm button. He careened off a panel of equipment just as Smith reached him. The barrel of Smith’s .38 clipped Grizzly’s head. An earsplitting whooping shrieked from the public address system.
I heard people in the hall. Smith stepped over Grizzly to a set of elevator doors. They opened automatically before him.
“Come on!” he yelled over the deafening alarm.
I followed him into the elevator. As the door closed, men scrambled, into the transmitter control-room, looking first at Grizzly, then at the closing doors.
One man aimed and fired. Something thunked against the closing doors.
“We’re trapped in here, Smith.”
“Keep your fingers crossed.”
“For what?”
“Hope none of them knows how to shut off the Gate.”
“You’re not going through!” I said. “Without a suit!”
He pointed at the elevator floor. “We can go back down there if you like.”
The doors opened. Street lights from the City of Tustin winked through the shimmering air of the Gate field.
“Smith,” I protested, peering over the edge. “What if they shut off the field just as we step toward it? It must be thirty feet down there!”
“Have you ever heard of the Great Leap Forward?” asked Smith.
“No.”
“I’ll tell you about it sometime. Now go!”
I looked at the field in front of me, reminiscent of hot air vapor. I had the eerie feeling I was about to step directly into hell. Satan, looking surprisingly like Spieler, would greet me. Either that or he would be grinning out at me from inside the Merryweather Enterprize, waving good-bye, while I floated toward Pluto, suitless.
Holding my breath, I stepped through.
XVI
When the deck of the Merryweather Enterprize touched my feet, I exhaled. Smith, blasé as a businessman stepping into Chicago, came through, fiddling with the strap on his satchel. He got it open and reached inside, withdrawing a timer.
“How long did it take us to get from Earth to here?” asked Smith, adjusting the timer.
“A little over a minute and a half, but if you’re going to throw that through, don’t add the minute and a half. Timers don’t work when they’re dematerialized.”
Smith nodded and set the timer. “Two seconds.”
“Smith—”
He pushed the timer and hurled the satchel down the corridor. I had a sudden vision of Grizzly cutting the Gate power, leaving us with Smith’s plastique, activated and short-fused. The satchel hit the shimmering air and vanished. A second later, the shimmering air vanished.
“So much for the back door,” said Smith.
“That,” I said, looking ‘at the spot where the Gate had been, “was our back door, too.”
“Yep. Guess we’ll have to open the front door.”
“How?”
“From the inside, of course.”
We had materialized in the workshop area of the space station, across the wheel from the control-room. It was the best location for Spieler. He could assemble his men with minimum resistance. We started around the circumference, compartment by compartment. Smith paused at one of the workroom doorways, examining it.
“Can we lock these?”
“Not from here.”
“From where?”
“The control-room, or—” I hesitated, deciding how to tell Smith and avoid any impulsive response.
“Or what?”
“If a section is punctured, it automatically seals off, but,” I added quickly, “don’t start blasting away. Even if you found a thin spot—and there are plenty of them—it would only seal one section, not all of them.”
“What about the control-room?”
“What about it?”
“Will it seal?”
“Yes, but you’d kill everyone in there, even our people, if you punctured it.”
“A drawback.”
Smith thought, tugging on his lower lip and blowing out his cheeks. I began to get worried.
“I thought you had a plan.”
“I do.”
“What is it?”
“It doesn’t cover this situation.”
“Doesn’t cover it! This is the heart of the problem!”
“Frankly, buddy boy, I didn’t think we’d get this far.”
Encouraged by Smith’s meticulous preparation, I followed him. We moved from compartment to compartment, pausing at each doorway to glance in. I began to worry about Spieler. When the ground Gate failed, someone would notify him. He would be waiting for us at the other side of the wheel. I suggested the idea to Smith.
“Maybe,” he answered, approaching another doorway. “Maybe not. If the plastique got most of their ground Gate, it probably took out their communications equipment. The only word Spieler could get would come from the relay ship. They would only know that the Gate had failed, not why. Grizzly probably had orders to destroy it if the police showed up. That’s why I didn’t want all those cops running around. One sight of a black and white car and there wouldn’t have been any back door.”
“You make this sound like some sort of last-ditch effort.”
“It is.”
Smith was right. No one boards a space station, captures its crew and jams its Gate—all in the spirit of healthy competition. Spieler had to be desperate. Yet, even in desperation, what could he gain? Dolores had suggested Spieler would gain time by a well-planned accident. An armed boarding party seemed a little obvious for an accident.
“What’s Spieler going to get out of this?” I asked.
“Who knows?” said Smith. “We’ll ask him when we see him.”
Smith glanced into the next room, then jerked back from the doorway, waving for me to flank the other side. I heard footsteps approach. They stopped, then suddenly retreated. Smith stepped into the doorway, legs apart, arms fully extended, holding the .38 with both hands.
“Smith!” I shouted.
He fired once. The explosion reverberated against the metal walls. “Missed him,” said Smith.
“What in hell’s name do you think you’re doing?”
He looked at me, quizzical, bewildered. “He’ll give the alarm.”
“You can’t just go around shooting people!”
“Why not?”
“First of all, you might puncture the hull.” —
“You said it would only seal off the section with the hole. The hole would have been in there.” He nodded into the next room. “With him.”
“Second, you just about murdered him!”
“Murder?” He said it as if the word were new to him.
“Yes!”
Smith opened the cylinder on his .38, ejected the empty shell and replaced it with a fresh cartridge, glancing up to talk to me.
“Buddy boy, those men are committing more felonies than I can name. Kidnapping, burglary—”
“Burglary?”
“Sure, this is probably a building, legally speaking. Not to mention conspiracy and piracy and whatever else they’re planning. You and I are citizens preventing a felony in progress. We are not murdering people.”
“You’re killing them, though.”
“Nope.”
“You are! I just saw—”
“You just saw me miss. That isn’t killing anybody. I was aiming to wing him.”
“Wing him! Kill him! It’s all the same thing! It’s the same fascist disregard for life that they have!”
Smith’s face flushed, his expression so intense and hard it bordered on rage. He grabbed the front of my coat, slamming me against the bulkhead. His eyes, when he spoke, looked directly into mine.
“Listen, buddy boy, don’t ever call me a fascist again! I’ve been fighting fascists all my life. Madmen and lunatics. They don’t care how many bodies they walk over to get what they want!” He snorted contemptuously, releasing me and turning away. Relieved, I took a deep breath.
“Smith.”
“What?” he snapped.
“You can’t see it, can you?”
“See what?”
“You’re using the same means they use.”
He sneered at me, indicating the .38 with a jerk of his hand. “OK, I’ll throw this away and we’ll bludgeon Spieler to death with sweet reason.”
I saw the point. Somewhere behind the lines, there is a reason why a war starts. On the front lines, there is just shooting, no reasons.
Smith led the way. We made it through two more workrooms before I heard the hiss and bump of the doors cl
osing behind us, section by section: Spieler was sealing us off. I glanced back. One compartment away, a door closed. Crossing Burgess’ office, the door ahead of us hissed and closed. Smith, leading, caught himself on the closed door.
“Can we open these things from here?”
“No.”
“There’s no manual override?”
“You have to have a hand winch.”
Smith kicked the door once, cursing.
The phone screen in Burgess’ office came on, a master intercom call. Spieler’s face settled on the screen.
“Can he see us?” asked Smith.
“Not unless you touch on the phone. He’s using the PA system.”
“Whoever you are—” began Spieler, his expression impassive. Even his eyes seemed lifeless. It could have been the phone. He looked more haggard than when I had seen him at his club. “Give up. You have no hope either of escaping or interfering.”
“Encouraging, isn’t he,” said Smith.
“We are systematically searching each section of this station. If you do not respond to this call, you will be shot on sight.”
Smith shrugged. “I guess we’d better give the man a call.” He touched on the phone, grinning at Spieler. “Hi, Fred.”
Spieler blinked, startled, recognizing Smith.
“How’s tricks?” said Smith.
Spieler looked past Smith. “Dr. Collins. Excellent.” He leaned off camera, said something, then returned his attention to Smith.
“Are you armed, Smith?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?”
“No. Place your weapons on the desk in clear view of the phone. Then stand against the wall where I can see you.”
Smith pulled the .38 from his coat pocket, laying it on the desk.
“What,” I asked, incredulous, “are you doing?”
“He’s being sensible,” interjected Spieler.
“Sensible! Smith—”
“Like the man says,” said Smith, “put your gun on the table.”
I followed orders, whether Spieler’s or Smith’s I didn’t know. We backed to the wall, out of range of the phone mike. Spieler told us to put up our hands. We complied.
Stargate Page 18