by Allen Steele
Curt didn’t argue. The white streak in the sky was nearly directly above the volcano and was now showing a reddish-orange head. The Comet itself was still invisible, but its engine exhaust was not. He fired a couple of last shots, taking down the two closest cultists in the mob running toward them, then ran around to the other side of the aircraft and threw himself into the front passenger seat, slamming the hatch shut after him.
In seconds, the broad-winged aircraft was airborne, its vertical ascent engines kicking up dust as it lifted off from the caldera. “Get us out of here!” Curt snapped. “We need altitude, fast!”
“What are you—?” Joan began
“Punch it!” Curt wasn’t strapped in. He held his seat frame as tightly as he could and prayed that he wouldn’t get thrown from the aircraft. As it stood on its tail and clawed for the sky, he turned his head to gaze out the window beside him.
In the final seconds before impact, the Comet became visible, a teardrop-shaped missile hurtling toward the ground below. The Sons of the Two Moons had finally spotted what was coming their way. In panic, they ran in all directions, a futile attempt to escape the inevitable. At the last instant, Curt caught a glimpse of a tall, robed figure poised at the lip of the vent and staring up at the sky: Ul Quorn, watching the Comet coming down on top of him and his followers …
And then he turned and threw himself headlong into the dark and bottomless pit.
Curt was still staring at what the Magician of Mars had just done when the Comet plunged into Ascraeus Mons.
The gaseous argon of its fuel mixture, an ion plasma one million degrees Kelvin, was normally contained only by the superconducting magnetosphere of its engine core. When the little racing yacht slammed into the center of Ul Quorn’s hidden camp, the engine ruptured and everything that had been within it detonated like a miniature sun.
In that instant, for the first time in millions of years, there was fire on the mountain.
IX
The raid on the Ascraeus tolou was over.
On the screens lining the walls of Vigilance’s combat information center, Solar Guard forces stood upon the balconies and catwalks, assault rifles cradled in their arms. Behind them, nylon cords dangled like vines, the ziplines by which the raiders had rappelled into the pit. At the bottom of the pit, soldiers stood guard over prisoners kneeling outside the King and Queen of the Desert, while more soldiers and IPF inspectors ventured into the lava tube in search of the arms caches. Outside the tolou, IPF shuttles waited to take aboard the prisoners deemed worth further interrogation.
There had been casualties on both sides, but not as many as might have been expected. As fortuitous happenstance would have it, the raid had commenced the same minute the Comet crashed into Mons Ascraeus. The inhabitants, most of whom either belonged to Starry Messenger or were sympathizers, were still wondering why the ground was shaking when armed soldiers began dropping into their midst. Only a handful managed to grab their guns, and most of them didn’t do so fast enough. Their bodies lay where they’d fallen, hastily covered with blankets by family and friends.
“We’ve shut down a major Starry Messenger nest.” Captain Henniker stood in the center of the CIC, observing the mop-up operations being supervised by the officers seated around her. “From what your people tell us, they’ve found enough weapons down there to supply a full-fledged revolution. If Ul Quorn hadn’t been stopped—”
“It would’ve been bloody as hell, that’s for sure.” Ezra Gurney slowly nodded, then looked over at Curt. “You’re responsible for this … you know that, right?”
Curt managed an offhand shrug. “I just wish we’d been able to shut them down entirely, the way we did in the caldera.”
“You mean, the way you shut them down.” A wry smile appeared beneath Ezra’s mustache. “The blast wiped out every damn thing in the volcano … there was nothin’ left standing when we sent another plane down there. Maybe we ain’t done with Starry Messenger, much as we’d like to think so, but the Sons of the Two Moons are toast.”
“No pun intended,” E.J. quietly added.
Ezra chuckled at his own unintentional and rather macabre joke, but Curt wasn’t smiling. It had been only a few hours ago that he’d landed the plane outside the Tharsis Ridge atmosphere plant, where a shuttle was waiting to transport him and the others up to the Vigilance. Since then, he hadn’t gotten a chance to rest. Otho, Grag, and the Brain were waiting for him in the cruiser’s passenger quarters, and he hadn’t seen Joan again since she’d gone away to be debriefed. His own interrogation had occurred here in this room, where he’d told Captain Henniker’s officers to send the raiding party into the lava tube once they succeeded in taking control of the tolou.
He was tired, yes, but that wasn’t all. He was also disappointed.
“Still no sign of Ul Quorn?” he asked.
E.J. gave him a curious look. “Why do you think there would be? You told us he took a swan dive into the vent. He’s probably still falling. I mean, he wasn’t kidding when he said it probably leads to the planet’s core.”
“Yes, I know, but…” Curt shook his head. “He didn’t strike me as the suicidal type. And I don’t know what happened to N’Rala. The last I saw her, she was running toward the landing pad.”
“You think she managed to escape? Or even help her master?”
Curt didn’t answer E.J. at once. Instead, he stepped a little closer to the bank of screens displaying images from the volcano caldera and looked closer. As Ezra said, the blast had obliterated just about everything in the camp: tents, equipment, and people. Apparently the Denebian artifacts had been lost along with his father’s ship, and he knew that both sacrifices would haunt him for years to come.
Bringing down the Comet, though, was the only way he could’ve saved his life and the lives of his friends. Even if he’d agreed to join Ul Quorn, he had little doubt that the Magician of Mars would have murdered Otho and Joan … and inevitably Curt himself, once he’d outlived whatever useful purpose Ul Quorn had in mind for him. A person who’d betray his own father could never be trusted by anyone.
Everything in the camp had apparently been destroyed. Yet amid all those twisted and incinerated remains, there was nothing that even vaguely resembled the air raft that had been used to transport him and the others up the vent from the lava tube.
“I think it’s possible,” he quietly replied.
X
He was exhausted and his body craved rest, but there was still one thing he had to do. He needed to pay a visit to the brig.
Captain Henniker had issued firm orders that no one was to speak with Victor Corvo before the Vigilance reached Earth. She didn’t want to risk having anyone in the ship’s crew who might be loyal to the senator being swayed by him. She made an exception for Curt, though, so Ezra escorted him two decks down to the brig, where a soldier had been posted outside.
The Solar Guard ensign snapped to attention at Curt’s approach and gave him a brisk salute. Curt fumbled to respond in kind. This was the third or fourth time he’d been saluted since returning to the Vigilance. Not only that, but on a couple of occasions he’d overheard crewmen referring to him as Captain Future. Curt didn’t know if he was ready to be treated as a hero yet, but he had to admit that it was better than being regarded as a suspect or a castaway.
Ezra hesitated a moment before unlocking the door. “Should I take that away from you?” He cast a meaningful glance at Curt’s plasmar, which rested in its holster on his belt.
“No.” Curt shook his head. “That’s nothing you need to worry about. And I’d prefer to keep it with me, if you don’t mind.”
Ezra’s mouth tightened. “Well, all right, then … would you like for me to stay?”
“No, I’ll be fine—but I’d like to see him alone, please.”
The marshal nodded, then pushed his thumb against the lockplate. There was a click; he grasped the handle, twisted it, and pushed the door open. “Okay, here you be … but for just a min
ute, okay?” Curt nodded in agreement, and Ezra moved aside to let him go in.
Victor Corvo sat on a fold-down bunk in a tiny room with no other amenities save for a seatless toilet and a small metal sink. He was unshaven and hollow-cheeked, with dark circles beneath his eyes, and didn’t look as if he’d had any more sleep than Curt had. The clothes he’d been wearing were gone; all he wore now were disposable orange overalls and paper slippers. Corvo had risen to his feet when the door was unlocked, but when he’d seen who was visiting him his legs had given way beneath him and he’d collapsed back upon the bunk.
“You,” Corvo said, his voice little more than a dull murmur. “I thought it might be—” He looked down at the floor and shook his head. “But of course, it would be you.”
“Hello, Senator.” It was all Curt could manage. Everything he thought he’d like to say to this man was forgotten in that instant. Despite the promise he’d made to Ezra, though, his right hand involuntarily twitched beside his holster.
Corvo apparently noticed this, because a humorless smirk appeared upon his face. “Is that why you’re here?” he asked, cocking his head toward Curt’s gun. “To take care of unfinished business? You had one chance already … why not give yourself another?”
He almost seemed to welcome the possibility of death. Curt was glad Corvo had made that remark, though. It reminded him of what he’d meant to say.
“No,” he said, “that’s not why I’ve come.”
Hands at his sides, he regarded Corvo with eyes as cold and gray as a sea just before a storm. “When we first met, when I first came to find you, it was to put an end to your life. That was what I wanted—revenge, pure and simple. But even though I grew up hating those who’d killed my father and mother, a friend of mine has taught me something I’d never learned. Revenge and justice are not one and the same, and given a choice between the two, one should choose justice.” He almost said always, but checked himself. He still wasn’t sure of that.
“So you’re not going to kill me?” Corvo was surprised, perhaps even disappointed.
“No. Your life is not mine to take. Instead, you’re going back to Earth, where I’ve been told that you’ll be incarcerated for a good long time before you finally stand trial. And when you do, it will be not only for conspiring in the attempt on President Carthew’s life and the planned insurrection on Mars, but also for the murder of my parents.”
“I’ll get lawyers—”
“I’m sure you will, for all the good they’ll do you. I have little doubt that you’ll be convicted. And when it’s all over and done, you’ll no longer be a senator and you’ll no longer be rich. You’ll just be another guy in orange pajamas with a number on the back, living the rest of your life in a miserable little cell on Pluto, as far away from everything that once mattered to you as you can get.”
Curt paused. “And when someone asks you how you got there,” he quietly finished, “I hope you’ll tell them about me, and give them my name.”
Without another word, Curt turned, opened the door, and walked out of the room.
XI
Much to Curt’s surprise, Ezra had left. Instead, Joan was waiting for him in the corridor.
“Did you say to him what you needed to say?” She’d cleaned up quite a bit since he’d last seen her. The civilian clothes were gone, and instead she wore the dark blue uniform of an IPF officer.
“Yeah … yeah, I did.” Curt slowly let out his breath. All of a sudden, it felt as if a weight had been lifted from him. One that had been on his shoulders his entire life. “I told him … well, pretty much what you’d said to me.” He looked into her dark eyes and smiled. “Thank you. That was something I didn’t know I needed to learn.”
Joan didn’t reply at once, but instead fell in step beside him as he started walking down the corridor. “Life is all about learning,” she said after a moment. “But some things are easier to learn than others.”
It sounded a little like she was leading up to something. “Such as…?”
“Nothing.” She slowly shook her head. “Nothing that you need to worry about just now.” Then, unexpectedly, she rose on her toes to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Maybe you’ve got a lot to learn,” she finished, taking advantage of his surprise to take his hand and link her arm with his, “but I think you’ve got promise.”
EPILOGUE
The Coming of the Futuremen
Government Tower rose above the canals of Manhattan as a sleek glass pylon that dwarfed New York’s other skyscrapers. Built on the site of the old United Nations Plaza, the immense, 250-story edifice had served as the center of government for the Solar Coalition for nearly a century. When the representatives of the different worlds of the solar system convened to discuss matters of state, it was here that they came.
As the IPF shuttle descended upon the rooftop landing pad, the squad of Solar Guard soldiers in dress blacks came to attention. Heels together, ceremonial rifles presented, they stood stiffly on either side of a red carpet running across the roof from the painted circle where the spacecraft touched down. The soldiers never blinked, but instead continued to stare straight ahead, as the passenger hatch opened and Curt stepped out onto the landing stairs. He paused to take in the sight of the honor guard standing at attention, then slowly let out his breath.
“I don’t think I could get used to this,” he murmured.
“I could.” Behind him, Otho was grinning broadly. “Last week, we were bums. Now we’re heroes. I think I like being a hero better.”
Perched on his shoulder, the Denebian mime he’d adopted squirmed and purred its name—the only sound it ever made—with what could only be interpreted as contentment. “Are you sure you should be carrying that?” Simon asked, his eyestalks studying Oog as he floated through the hatch behind them. “If it assumes the wrong shape while we’re here, like a gun…”
“Relax. It only did that once, back on Mars, and that was when I needed him to look like a weapon. Oog won’t turn into something else until I tell him … isn’t that right, Bolts-for-Brains?”
“That wasn’t a good joke.” Grag lowered its head and shoulders as it came through the hatch. “Poor Eek was confused.”
As if in agreement, the little moonpup trotting alongside his master peered up at Oog and gave a soft but menacing growl. In response, the mime’s amorphous form shifted shape, size, and color, once again becoming Eek’s identical twin. The little dog’s growl became a ferocious bark even as he sought cover behind the boots of the nearest soldier, who continued to stolidly stare straight ahead.
“Maybe we should have left them both on the Moon,” the Brain said.
“You idiots!” Curt hissed as he looked over his shoulder at Otho and Grag. “Get ’em under control or I’ll call the nearest humane society!”
“‘You idiots’ … oh, really?” Otho scowled at him in a half-mocking way as they marched down the red carpet. “Getting a little full of yourself, aren’t you, Captain Future?”
Curt didn’t have a chance to answer. As they reached the end of the carpet, a dark-skinned young man in a collarless morning coat and pinstriped ascot appeared. “Captain Future?” he asked, holding out a white-gloved hand. “I’m North Bonnell, the president’s personal assistant. I trust you had a good flight, yes?” He didn’t wait for a reply, but only briefly grasped Curt’s hand before turning to the elevator behind them. “Very well, if you’ll follow me…”
The elevator ride was short. Just one level down was Government Tower’s top floor, the offices of the president of the Solar Coalition. Plainclothes IPF security agents were waiting for them, but they didn’t catch Curt’s attention. In that moment, the only person who mattered to him was the dark-haired young woman in the full dress uniform who smiled as the elevator doors slid open.
“Hello, Curt,” Joan said. “Good to see you again.”
“Yeah. You, too.” From the corner of his eye, Curt saw Otho silently regarding him and Joan with an unfathomable expressio
n. He’d noticed, of course, that the two of them had spent a lot of time together on the way back from Mars. While Otho hadn’t voiced any objections, Curt had a feeling that he was jealous as only a lifelong friend can become, while the Brain was plainly concerned that a woman might distract him from …
Well, what exactly? Victor Corvo had been brought to justice. The task for which Simon, Otho, and Grag had spent a lifetime training him was complete. What was he going to do now? If only the Denebian tablet UI Quorn had discovered at Mons Ascraeus could be found. Now that the significance of the Dancing Denebians had been revealed, Curt and Simon might be able to figure out how the portal of the Old Ones worked.
“President Carthew will see you now.” Unnoticed, Bonnell had disappeared into an inner office. Holding open the oak-paneled door, he bowed formally as he invited his guests into the president’s chambers.
Curt took a deep breath. Much to his own surprise, he realized that he was nervous. Then a soft hand briefly touched his own, and he looked around to find Joan gazing at him with what seemed to be barely concealed amusement.
“Don’t be nervous,” she said quietly. “You’re going to like this … I promise.”
On the other side of an enormous office, President Carthew stood up from behind his desk, the top surface of which, as legend had it, was fashioned from the lower stage of the Apollo 17 lunar lander from the twentieth century. “Curt Newton … a pleasure to see you again, sir,” he said, walking around the desk to extend a hand. “And thank you for bringing your—what in God’s name is that?”
“A Denebian mime, Mr. President.” Otho grinned proudly, evidently enjoying Carthew’s reaction to the creature curled around his shoulders. “Something we got on Mars. A parting gift from Ul Quorn.”
“Yes … so I see.” Carthew was visibly repelled. Curt tried not to smile. At least Oog wasn’t growling at him the way Eek was. The moonpup recognized the president at once, and clearly hadn’t forgotten Corvo’s training. Perhaps they should have left the pets behind after they’d made a brief stop at Tycho Base on the way to Earth.