by Paul Kenyon
It was dank and smelly inside, heavy with the stink of stale bodies and diesel oil. Penkin was a dim shape in the darkness. She slammed into his huge bulk, her hand reaching for the skinning knife. He whimpered with fear.
"Nyet, nyet!" he babbled at the touch of the wolfskins she was wearing.
His hysteria made him dangerous. A big arm, hard as a steel bar, jerked upward at random and knocked the plastic knife out of her hand. She grabbed for it, but his enormous clubs of fists were hammering at her. She got herself inside them, pressing herself against his bulky torso.
He was clawing at her, whimpering like a child.
She got her hands around his neck. It was like trying to throttle a tree stump.
He shook her off in his panic. She crashed painfully against the control levers. She picked herself up and leaped on his back. It was cramped in the cabin. He thrashed about slamming her against the steel walls.
She hung on, her fingers clawing at his chest. She couldn't let go, and it was impossible to reach a vital part of him with her knee. She sank her teeth into his neck.
He screamed.
He was unmanageable in the cramped interior, with his strength and his wild panic. He shook her off and made a dive for the cabin door. He's stopped thinking. His one object was to get out of this dark steel box, away from the terrifying thing in fur that was after him.
Penelope picked herself off the floor and poked her head out the door. Penkin was running across the snow, miraculously still on his feet. The wolves were after him, snapping at his heels. One great silvery beast that must have weighed two hundred pounds had its teeth in his shoulder. He shook it off and kept running.
He got a few more yards before they brought him down. They got him on the ground and tore him to pieces. Penelope could see the flailing arms and legs, flinging wolves off him like so many flour sacks, before they finally got the better of him.
They pulled the flesh off his body by the mouthful, fighting over the choice morsels. The body grew smaller. Soon there was nothing left except a red stain in the snow, and that disappeared too as the wolves, still hungry, licked every drop of blood off the ground. Penelope watched as the beasts continued to nose at the trampled snow.
"Give my regards to your father, Evgeny Ivanovich," she said.
She looked out over the terrain as a new sound cut through the air.
A snowmobile engine.
She found the submachine gun on the roof of the vezdekhod where Viktor had dropped it, and inserted a fresh clip. She hid behind the far side of the snow vehicle and waited.
The snowmobile came into sight, a big heavy-duty machine painted a camouflage white. It skidded to a stop a few feet away, and a bulky, goggled figure dismounted, carrying a rifle as if he knew how to use it.
Penelope's heart leaped. "Joseph!" she said. "Joe Skytop!"
He spun around, the rifle coming up, then relaxed. A huge smile wreathed his ugly features. He said, "Crazy outfit you're wearing."
The wolves had begun cautiously to stalk him. He raised the rifle, deciding which one to shoot.
The Baroness joined Skytop and pushed the rifle away. "You don't want to shoot them," she said. "They're friends of mine."
* * *
Wharton and the others were waiting for them with guns ready when they rode into camp. Skytop slowed the snowmobile to a walking pace and waved a scarf at them, signaling them not to shoot.
"Joe's told me about the Chinese," she said, as she climbed down from behind him. "It seems we've got a new hand in this poker game."
She brushed off their questions about the wolfskin outfit and her capture by Penkin. The firing at the germ laboratory, ominously, had stopped.
"Tommy," she ordered, "get our transportation ready. We're going to have to move fast."
As Sumo scurried off, she turned to Wharton. "The snowmobile that Joe captured will hold three," she said. "Were you able to salvage any of the machines that attacked the camp?"
"I'm afraid not," he said. "Eric and Tommy pretty well clobbered them with grenades."
"All right," she said. "Break camp and gather up what we'll need. We're traveling light."
She accepted a cup of hot soup from Inga, and warmed herself with a swallow of bourbon from Skytop's flask. Inga produced a spare hotsuit, and she climbed into it quickly. Wharton brought her an automatic rifle and a new kit.
Sumo was busy unpacking his equipment. He pulled out three objects that looked like lumpy knapsacks.
"This better work," he said, pulling the release ring.
There was a hiss of pressurized foam escaping, and the fabric stirred and swelled. Within minutes, it had ballooned into something the size and shape of a snowmobile.
"Terrific job of engineering," Sumo said. "Notice how the two rollers holding the drive tread are stretched to proper tension? How the skis and handlebars and other rigid parts are locked into place?"
He poked a finger into the engine hood. It left a dimple in the fabric.
"Take a few more minutes for the plastic foam to harden inside those fabric layers," he said. He pulled the release rings on the other two inflatable snowmobiles.
The Baroness, Skytop and Wharton each took one of the collapsible machines, packing equipment on the rear saddles. Eric, Inga and Sumo doubled up on the big Chinese machine that Skytop had confiscated.
"I thought we'd just be using these to get away on," the Baroness said. "I figured we'd have used all this gear and thrown it away. It's a good thing we've got that extra machine."
Up ahead at the germ laboratory there was a string of explosions, one after the other.
The Baroness tilted her head and listened. "The Chinese are blowing the place up. They're going to get the hell out of there before the whole Russian army arrives on the Kanin Peninsula to see what's going on. We don't have much time, children."
She buckled on a handgun and pulled goggles down over her face. She kicked the starter, and hydrogen fuel ignited in the combustion chamber of the miniaturized spaceship engine that drove the snowmobile.
"You think the Chinese have the virus?" Wharton said.
She nodded impatiently. "That's what those demolition charges were all about. We've got to catch up with the Chinese before the Russians do."
"And before the Russians catch us," Wharton said with a wry grin.
She didn't bother to answer. She pushed the throttle, and the snowmobile shot ahead like the rocket it was. She didn't wait to see if they followed.
Chapter 16
They began to run across bodies a mile or two from the laboratory: the Russian guards and patrolling sentries who had been dispatched with ruthless efficiency by the Chinese. The concrete bunkers had been blown up or doused with napalm. An armored vezdekhod lay on its side, blackened corpses spilling out of the doors where they'd tried to claw their way to safety.
Mortar fire had pounded a path through the minefield. The guard towers, never intended to cope with a military force, had been demolished by rockets. Penkin's wolves, trapped between the wire fences, had been slaughtered by machine gun fire.
The Baroness had to admire the brilliance of it. It showed what a small, disciplined force could achieve when it had surprise, speed and planning going for it.
She smiled grimly behind her mask and goggles. The Chinese would find the rules had changed now. They were no longer the predators, materializing out of a snowy nothingness to strike at a sitting duck installation. Now they were a column on the move, strung out and vulnerable.
She gunned the engine, and her snowmobile leaped forward, kicked in the rear by the hellish exhaust of the liquid-hydrogen engine. The other snowmobiles followed in her track, with the big captured Chinese vehicle and its three riders bringing up the rear. The two wolfhounds ran alongside, their instincts adapting naturally to following this new kind of sleigh that pulled itself along without the help of horses.
A man in a white lab coat popped out of the smoking ruins and took a pot shot at them with
a handgun. The Baroness ignored him. There were dozens of disorganized survivors wandering around — scientists and office personnel, unused to coping with the kind of violence that had been visited on them.
She leaned over and scooped something off the ground as she sped by: a webbed ammunition belt with a stenciled U.S. Phony evidence dropped by the Chinese. The Baroness had no doubt that there'd be other planted items to implicate the United States. And Skytop had said that the Chinese were using American weapons and other equipment; the Soviet investigators would find plenty of shell casings and other debris.
She picked up the Chinese trail and followed it north. The Chinese were heading for the coast of the Barents Sea. She estimated from the tracks that they had a force of about eighty men, two to a vehicle. That was all they had left after their unlucky encounter with her people.
The wind whipped at her face, clawing at her even through the mask. She levered the throttle forward another notch. The borzois began to fall behind.
Up above, there was a droning sound through the clouds. Some kind of light aircraft: a Russian spotter plane. Russian troops would be pouring into the area before long.
She hurtled across another fifty miles of blurred white void before she caught up with the Chinese. She topped a shallow hill, and there they were, stretched out below her in a long straggling line, carrying their dead and wounded with them.
She leaned over for a sharp turn and got back behind the hill, sending up a spume of snow. She straddled her throbbing machine and waited for the others to close the gap. Then, with a bloodthirsty whoop, she swooped down on the Chinese column.
She shot past the startled Chinese on the left, steering one-handed, the Galil assault rifle braced against her right hip, firing sideways as she went. On the other side of the column, trailing her a little so as not to set up a crossfire, was Wharton raking the Chinese with his own automatic weapon. Skytop and Eric followed them, ten yards behind, taking a second crack at the column. Clinging to the rear saddle of the captured vehicle that Eric was driving, Tom Sumo happily dropped grenades behind him as fast as he could pull the pins.
It was bloody work. They caught the rearmost Chinese by surprise, stitching them with 5.56mm slugs before they were aware that anything was wrong. She could see the face of the first man she killed, his mouth open in astonishment just before his head exploded in a frothy pink cloud that rained down on the snow. His machine careened sideways, out of control, and behind her Skytop skillfully avoided it while he hefted his own automatic weapon into position.
By the time she was halfway up the column, heads had begun to turn around. The line of snowmobiles wavered and became ragged, and some of the soldiers with better reflexes were getting their own weapons out.
She could hear the popping of grenades behind her — Sumo tossing them into the Chinese path — and the short rough chatter of Wharton's Galil to her right. There were screams and curses, and the ugly metallic clash of snowmobile collisions.
The man leading the column was a cool one, twisting around in his saddle to fire at her with what looked like a pearl-handled Colt six-shooter. She swung the rifle against her hip and pulled the trigger, but the clip was empty. She veered off to the left for another pass at the column, reloading as she went.
She remembered the face: a thin, ascetic, intelligent one that had shot her a look of pure hate. She'd have to find him again. He'd be the one carrying the moon capsule.
She streaked toward the disorganized Chinese again from five hundred yards out. the automatic rifle resting on the handlebars this time. Skytop was riding parallel to her, twenty feet to one side. On the other side of the Chinese convoy, Wharton and Eric were doing the same thing.
The Chinese snowmobiles were still crawling along, the line breaking up aimlessly. The slaughter had been terrific. More than half of the soldiers had been killed or wounded. The bodies lay on the snow, spilling over idling machines. One bullet-riddled snowmobile came sliding her way, a dead driver sprawled over the handlebars. Three of the machines were tipped, their metal jagged and twisted, caught by Sumo's grenades.
Bullets whistled past her. The Chinese were setting up a defense. But the gunners who should have been riding in the rear seats had been replaced by gear and the corpses and wounded they had carried away from the battle with the Russians; instead, they'd been pressed into service as drivers. That meant that they had to shoot while trying to control their machines, or stop and take aim. She and Skytop got through the hail of lead without being hit, and then they were opening up with their own guns.
She saw soldiers jerk and twist like puppets as she fired. She counted at least a half-dozen victims to her bullets and Skytop's, and then her clip was empty again, and she had to swerve off, tossing a grenade to give them something to think about.
When she returned for a third pass, the Chinese commander had managed to get his men drawn up in a defensive circle, wagon-train style. Skytop was amused. He pulled in beside her and yelled in her ear: "I have a feeling I've played this scene before!" Then he separated from her, hunched down over his steering bar, and charged the soldiers with a blood-curdling Cherokee whoop.
An explosion rocked her snowmobile sideways. She leaned in the opposite direction to compensate and bore in on the ring of Chinese. They were firing a mortar, the damned fools! It was one thing to lob mortar shells at a stationary position, like the Russians, but it wasn't a very useful way to defend yourself against a moving target.
She dodged bullets and tossed a grenade into the ring, then sped off again before they could draw a bead on her. Beyond, she could see Wharton and Eric, charging in and out, punishing the other side of the circle. Sumo was covering each getaway with grenades, and Inga, riding behind Eric in the middle saddle, had an automatic rifle at her shoulder, drawing a line of fire across the Chinese position.
She was satisfied with what she'd seen on that last approach. There couldn't be more than fifteen or twenty able-bodied soldiers left out of the forty or fifty that had gotten away from the Russians. It was just going to be a mopping-up operation from here on out.
She charged on her bucking snowmobile once more toward the ragged circle, the big Indian riding at her side. He was firing one-handed, holding the heavy weapon in the crook of his arm as if it were a toy, getting off his high-spirited war whoops. He got a little ahead of her, speeding toward a weak spot he'd noticed in the circle.
And that was when she saw the big white snowmobile break out of the circle and speed away, heading north at top speed.
It was the Chinese officer. He knew the game was up. He was leaving his men behind to keep her busy, while he hightailed it to the coast, toward whatever pickup arrangements the Chinese had made.
Without hesitation she broke off her charge and swung after him. Skytop and the others could damned well finish the mopping up. She'd seen the long metal shape of the thing the Chinese officer had cradled in his lap.
The moon capsule.
The metal cylinder that contained the end of the world.
She rushed over the landscape in her light, shell-like machine, hatched out of plastic foam and propelled by a tail of fire that was hot enough to melt metal. The airspeed indicator told her she was going sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour. The airstream whipped at her, stinging through the hotsuit. The saddle jolted her spine like a huge boot.
The gap between them narrowed. The Chinese machine, powerful as its engine was, was no match for the bomb she was riding.
And then she saw it hit a fault and spill its rider to the ground. Too late she tried to avoid the same trap. Her machine pitched her out, licking at her with its fiery dragon's tongue, and she rolled clear to avoid being incinerated. Helplessly she watched her snowmobile skitter off. It would be a mile before it came to rest, its titanium gullet gulping the last teaspoon of liquid hydrogen.
He was still alive, but it looked as if his leg were broken. The metal capsule was lying beside him in the snow. He crawled over to it and put
a protective arm around it.
She was still holding her automatic rifle. Keeping it aimed at the injured Chinese, she advanced toward him.
He had his weapon too. He drew the pearl-handled revolver-and snapped off a shot that sent her diving into the snow.
She couldn't get close to him. She raised the automatic rifle, then lowered it.
She couldn't shoot. Her bullets would puncture the moon capsule. She remembered what had happened in Houston when the virus had leaked.
What had Hans Kolbe said at the briefing? That if the capsule were breached, the virus would begin to spread itself around the world, floating on air currents, transported by birds and insects. Growing and multiplying. Turning every speck of life that it encountered into more virus. Plants, animals, bacteria, fungus, people. Everything. AH eaten and transformed within — she shivered — fifty days.
The Chinese officer was crawling toward his snowmobile. It was still purring, a few yards away. The moon capsule was cradled in his arms. His leg stretched out at an unnatural angle.
But he'd be able to ride. If he reached the sea, he'd be picked up. The Chinese would have the virus to use as seed for a biological weapon. That would be bad enough. But it would be worse if, like the Russians, they'd underestimated the dangers of the strange new life form.
She fired a burst over his head to discourage him. Grimly he dragged himself onward. He wasn't going to be intimidated. She had to admire him.
Could she rush him? She picked herself off the ground and sprinted. His gun lifted in a flash and fired. She hit the ground fast. The bullet went through the space she'd occupied a half-second earlier.
He grinned at her and pulled himself up into the saddle. He knew what was going through her mind.
The Baroness leaped to her feet and sprinted toward him. The hell with it! If she was going to die, she'd rather be shot with a Colt .45 than be turned into spoiled jelly by a virus.
But he didn't waste time shooting at her. He got the big machine going and roared away, looking back once to see her standing there helplessly.