The color had drained from Chris’s face. He stared numbly at the menacing forms moving slowly toward the doorway, then gritted his teeth and turned back to resume what he had been doing.
Seconds went by. The drones didn’t fire. They just hung there, watching . . . almost as if they were responding to a last-minute instruction from somewhere to hold off.
“Chris . . . They’re not shooting!” Ron’s voice was shaking. “You must be getting through. There’s something funny going on.”
“There’s some kind of response on the screen!” Chris gasped. “It’s the diagram of Janus that we put in at the beginning. Some part of Spartacus seems to be throwing it back at us. What does it mean?”
“Maybe it’s asking for clarification,” Ron suggested. “I hope your nerves are in good shape. I’m getting the feeling that we may have to go right through the whole thing again . . . only slowly.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Kim lay back in the shadow near the outer door of the lock and allowed her mind to wander. She felt calm now, and more at peace than she could remember for many years. Had that really been what her life had become—a tormented mind futilely pitting itself against what had already been done, trying to erase what time had already written? The ghosts in her mind that should have been laid to rest long ago were still at last. They would stir no more.
She reached out and laid her arm on the motionless prone figure behind the tailwheel with the sighter resting loosely near his shoulder. It had taken so long, she thought to herself. Why, now, did it have to be like this?
“You okay?” Solinsky’s voice asked in her helmet.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re sounding a lot better.”
“I’m . . . just fine.”
A half-hour had gone by since they had watched through the intensifying viewer of the sighter as the antlike figures of Dyer and Laura disappeared into the Spindle high above. Since then Spartacus’s steady stream of traffic had continued to plow back and forth between somewhere beyond Detroit and places behind the Hub, but nothing dramatic had happened. Now they could only wait and hope.
“I guess I’ve caused everybody a lot of trouble,” she said after a while.
“This whole place is one big mess of trouble,” Solinsky replied without taking his eyes off the scene outside. “If you took away the bit that was yours, or doubled it, I don’t figure it’d make much difference. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“But if anything happened to Chris and Ron . . . I mean, the reason they came here in the first place was because of me. If anything—”
“Look,” Solinsky interrupted. “Don’t start going off on another guilt trip. You did what you felt you had to do at the time. That’s all everybody else does all the time anyway . . . everybody who’s got what it takes to do something, that is. That’s all there is to it. And if Ray and Laura do pull something off up there, it’ll be because you gave them a way in. Don’t forget to put that on your balance sheet too.”
“I’ve been a pain in the ass to Ray too. You wouldn’t think a guy like him would have the patience of a saint inside, would you?”
“Oh. How come?”
“Well . . . that’s a long story. I used to be mixed up with some guy called Tony. He turned out to be no good and—”
“Shhh . . . ! Something’s happening.”
Kim fell silent and waited tensely. Solinsky half-rose from behind the tailwheel to peer out of the lock.
“Spartacus’s antimissile tubes. They’re all turning around as if they’re expecting something. It must be a missile strike coming in. The ISA boys must be here!”
Kim crawled forward to lie beside him and looked out to where he was pointing. Spartacus must have gone all-out at mass-producing the flying electron guns since its first successful experiments with them. Scores of them were moving out to form a protective barrier around Janus. Brilliant flashes of missiles detonating appeared farther out in space.
“That’s the ISA squadron all right,” Solinsky declared. “They’re not doing a hell of a lot of good, though. Look at the missiles blowing up out there. They’re not getting through.”
The wall of electron beams that Spartacus was putting up was impenetrable. The guns were moving out farther from the Spindle to form an even more solid pattern of overlapping fields of fire. Whatever the ISA ships were trying to do, it didn’t appear that they were going to have much success.
And then a gigantic concussion that seemed to originate not very far away shook the floor beneath them. It was as if the whole Hub had been struck by an enormous invisible hammer.
“What the—” Solinsky began, then cut off abruptly and stared openmouthed.
A storm of debris was erupting from somewhere on their side of the Hub, but farther around. Huge chunks of outer skin and inner bulkheads were cartwheeling away into space, accompanied by swarms of smaller fragments and spinning debris.
“What is it?” Kim shouted in alarm
“I don’t know. It looks like something’s blown half the Hub away.”
“What’s that?”
An object had come into view from around the curve of the Hub. It had emerged, by the look of it, from the same point at which the gigantic explosion had occurred. It was a cylinder of some kind, with what seemed to be rocket motors blazing from some sort of crazy framework stuck to the tail end. It was heading straight across the gap toward Detroit.
“It’s our guys!” Solinsky yelled suddenly. “We must still have people left in the Hub! They’re going in! They’re going for Detroit! Goddammit, they’re going straight in!”
Another object appeared hard on the heels of the first. This time it was an open structure loaded high with some kind of cargo. And behind that, following at a greater distance, came a second cylinder, a huge one this time—fifty feet long at least, Solinsky estimated.
As the tiny fleet reached the halfway point, Solinsky could see that the three craft were spreading slightly into a not quite line-astern formation. They were allowing for the relative rotation between the Hub and Detroit, he realized; with that amount of offset, they would all impact at the same point. He frowned as he watched and tried to figure out what was going on. Suddenly Kim’s voice, shrill with alarm, interrupted his thoughts.
“Mat! There are two more tubes coming!”
Solinsky took his eyes off the invasion fleet. Two of Spartacus’s electron guns, which for some reason hadn’t moved outward with the rest, were coming up from under Detroit and swinging around to bear on the flotilla, which still had to be ten seconds or so away from its destination. Also, something was moving just inside the port that Spartacus had constructed in Detroit—the one from which it had previously launched its missiles.
“They’ll never make it!” Kim shouted despairingly. “They’re going to get caught out there!”
But Solinsky already had the sighter up to his eyes. Even before Kim’s shout had ceased, the first Gremlin was on its way. At the same instant as the target blew apart, Solinsky shifted aim and fired again, seemingly without having to look. Seconds later the third Gremlin streaked into the missile port and put a quick stop to whatever had been starting to happen there. Solinsky grunted with satisfaction and lifted his head to look over the eyepiece as the first cylinder closed on its target.
The explosion tore a hole in Detroit that must have been fifty feet across. The second craft plunged straight into the center of the hail of debris. Seconds later a mushroom of what looked like smoke spewed out and boiled into a maelstrom as the larger cylinder at the rear plowed straight into it behind a curtain of rockets and with a retro-motor blasting from its front end.
Solinsky was on his feet, yelling and shouting as he waved the sighter above his head.
“They’re in! Did ya see ’em, Kim? They went straight in through the side of it! By God, I love ’em! I love every one of them crazy bastards!”
Kim stood up next to him and hauled him firmly back into the protective
shadow of the lock.
“Get back in here,” she told him. “It’s not over yet. Calm down, for heaven’s sake. If they make it, I’m going to make darn sure they know who got ’em there. Where on Earth did you learn to shoot one of those things like that?”
“Oh didn’t I tell you?” Solinsky said, still grinning uncontrollably. “I used to be an instructor on Gremlins.”
* * *
In the White House, Nash, Schroder and Belford watched the displays and listened to the reports coming in from Z Squadron.
“It’s impregnable,” Belford growled. “Look at it. It’s like throwing snowballs at the sun. This settles it, Vaughan. There’s no way now that we’re going to take Detroit to pieces with missiles. There isn’t a damn one of those getting through. If Linsay doesn’t get through in there, the only thing we’ve got left is Omega.”
Nash nodded his acceptance of the statement and looked inquiringly at Schroder. No question was needed.
“Thirty minutes,” Schroder said. “If there’s nothing from Linsay by then, I guess there won’t be anybody coming back out anyhow. Krantz should be able to get everybody that’s still alive at the Rim out by then too. Hold it for thirty minutes.”
Nash moved back to the console where one of the screens was still showing the face of General Miller, the Z Squadron Commander, maneuvering twenty miles out from Janus.
“What’s the latest from Krantz?” Nash demanded.
“The Hub is now completely isolated and communications are broken,” Miller informed him. “We don’t know if the defense box around the Cab Depot and the Water Plant has been overrun or not, Spartacus controls access to the spokes and is moving out to the Rim along all six of them. Severe damage in Berlin and Vine County by bombs dropped down the shafts inside the spokes from the Hub. Center of Berlin totally demolished and Rim breached. Similar attacks expected at any time down the Rocky Valley, Paris and Sunnyside spokes. All remaining personnel are being pulled back behind defense lines established east and west of Downtown. Demolition teams have blown out a section of the Downtown spoke to eliminate any risk of bombing there. The beam-throwers have moved out to the Rim but we’re keeping them busy with missiles.”
“How about the evacuation?” Schroder asked over Nash’s shoulder.
“Capsules being released from Downtown a batch at a time once every revolution. Two ships have transferred their missiles and detached from the squadron to assist Watchdog One and Watchdog Three in recovery operations. The latest estimate we had from Krantz predicted completion in about forty-five minutes.”
“That’s too long,” Nash replied. “Tell him he’s got thirty. Tell him to start them jumping out in suits if he has to, but I want everyone alive off that place within thirty minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And keep a viewer zoomed in on Detroit. I want to hear about it right away if there’s any news from Linsay. That’s all.” Nash turned away from the screen and nodded curtly at Schroder.
“Very well,” he said. “I take it that we are in agreement. Linsay has got thirty minutes to pull something off in there. If, at the end of that time, there is no further news, we will assume that his mission has failed, that he and his force have been liquidated, and we will proceed accordingly.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
In the zero-gravity conditions of south Spindle, Dyer and Laura moved smoothly and with little difficulty along the inside of the sealed-off shaft. They had measured off nine hundred feet in fifty-foot stages and Dyer had gone ahead on the final pitch. After lying wedged across the shaft in darkness for a while, Laura realized that he had been silent for a lot longer than usual. She twisted her head and could see distant chinks of light appearing and disappearing farther along the shaft when his body moved between her and the lamp that he was holding. He took up almost the whole width of the shaft and she could see nothing of whatever was in front of him.
“What are you so engrossed in?” she asked at last.
“There’s something in here.”
“What kind of something?”
“Some kinda machine.”
Laura’s heart missed a beat.
“Spartacus?” Her voice choked as she said it.
“I don’t think so. That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but I don’t reckon it is. There are Air Force codes on it in places but everything in Janus is ISA brand except what the Army brought along. I don’t get it.”
“I thought there wasn’t supposed to be anything in here at all. You said it was supposed to have been sealed off ages ago.”
“It was. There’s something funny about this.”
“Laugh then.”
“There’s a hatch been cut right over it too. Looks fairly new. It must have been made by whoever put this thing in here. So with luck, we’ve got a ready-made way out. It’s just about in the right place.”
“Can I move now?”
“Yeah, come on up. I just wanted to make sure this thing wasn’t about to do anything nasty. It looks pretty harmless.”
Laura loosened herself from the walls and began propelling herself smoothly along the shaft with occasional light tugs on the line, gathering in the slack as she went. By the time she reached Dyer, he had wormed his way, face outward, between part of the machine and the shaft wall to begin working on the hatch. It was secured by stud-bolts carrying nuts at both the inside and outside ends—evidently the result of a job carried out in haste with little regard for elegance or permanency. There was barely room for his upper body between the hatch and the mass of tubes and electrical gear that formed the near end of the device, so Laura could do nothing but watch and steady the lamp while Dyer attacked the bolts with a wrench. Beyond him, she could now see, was what looked like the end of a domed yellow cylinder blocking the shaft almost completely, leaving only a few inches to spare around most of its circumference. Had the parts been mounted the other way around, she realized, they would never have been able to get near the hatch at all.
“Did you feel that?” she said suddenly, whispering instinctively.
“What?” Dyer stopped working and lay still. A succession of shocks was coming through the walls. They felt suspiciously like explosions, and not very far away at that.
“It’s getting nearer,” Laura said. A little while earlier, when they had been several hundred feet back, they had felt a terrific concussion followed by an almost continuous series of smaller ones that had lasted for maybe five or ten seconds. Ever since, intermittent waves of further shocks had come and gone, every one feeling sharper and less distant than the one before. Dyer waited for a moment and then, without saying anything, clamped his mouth tight and resumed removing the nuts in front of his face.
When the hatch was free, he pushed gently with one hand while keeping a firm grip on one of the protruding studs to prevent it from floating away completely. It moved fairly easily. He nudged it out farther until he could work his fingers around the edge, then lifted it sufficiently to bring one side of his helmet into line with the gap.
“It looks like we’re in the main core-well,” he said after a few seconds. “Pretty near where I figured. We’re right next to what looks like one of the primary capacitor banks for the lasers. So we weren’t too far out at all. We’re inside the fusion plant. All we have to do now is get to the guts of it . . . either the control room or the oscillator bay.”
“See any signs of our mutual friends?”
Dyer eased the hatch open farther and craned his neck to take in as much of the surroundings as could be seen from that angle.
“No, I can’t . . . It seems strange. I’d have thought it would have had lots of stuff back here to protect this of all places.”
“Maybe it’s getting overconfident.”
There was no reply for a few seconds. Then Dyer said, “There’s something else odd too. There are lots of pipes and cables outside that look as if they run right across the outside of the hatch, But they couldn’t, because I wouldn’t have
been able to open it. They all cut clean off right at the edge here. They can’t be doing anything.”
“Do they carry on across the outside of the hatch?”
“I don’t know yet. Anyhow, we didn’t come here to study the fittings. I’m going out. Get ready in case I need a shove. I’m not sure if I can squeeze past all this junk.”
After a lot of wriggling and squirming, he managed to work the upper part of his body through and paused to catch his breath before hauling himself out as far as his waist. He halted there and surveyed the surroundings again. He was looking along the outside of a dense mass of cables and pipes that stretched away out of sight in both directions. The clearance between the core and the surrounding wall of the core-well was only a foot or so except for where a narrow access tunnel was recessed into one side of the wall opposite the hatch. Lucky, he thought, and then realized that it couldn’t have been otherwise; there was no other way that the device, whatever it was, could have been put there. The hatch was floating a short distance away from him against the far wall of the tunnel. He turned it over curiously and found, as he’d half expected, that its outer surface carried a set of dummy pipes and cables that matched the ones interrupted by the opening he was looking out of. Evidently great pains had been taken to camouflage its existence. But why . . . ?
He shrugged inside his suit, took one final look around, and pulled himself out into the tunnel. Laura handed out the two M25s and the other equipment, and began worming her way over the obstructions and through the hatch.
From the position of the capacitor bank, Dyer had managed to identify where they were. To reach the control room, they would have to go back about twenty feet along the tunnel to where the core-well intersected a wide cross-gallery that connected the fusion plant to the Power Distribution Center on the far side of the well. From there, unless Spartacus had made some major alterations since the last time Dyer had been in this part of Janus, access to the fusion plant control room could be gained from the right-hand continuation of the gallery. He helped Laura clear of the hatch and indicated the direction that they would have to take. Laura nodded and they began drifting back along the tunnel without speaking. When they had covered only a few feet, they both froze in the same instant.
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