by James Axler
He stepped toward her swiftly. Just as swiftly, Brigid slid off the stool, upending it and holding it by the seat in front of her. Sindri laughed in delight and feinted at her with his walking stick.
Brigid stepped back, feeling frightened and more than a trifle ridiculous. She circled the table, fending off Sindri's cane strokes with the legs of the stool. He chortled, crying out "Ho!" every time he lunged for her.
At the corner of the table, she swept the stool against the miniature glass maze of the purification system. It shattered amid a spray of splinters and foul-smelling chemicals. Sindri scrambled backward to avoid being cut and drenched.
Appraising the damage, he snapped, "You're starting to piss me off. You just ruined the work of two days."
"Then stop this foolishness," she said sternly. "Whatever you want from me is not going to happen."
Sindri's face molded itself into the same mask of demented rage she had seen in the pyramid. He bounded forward, flailing madly with his cane, two-fisting it like a broadsword.
Brigid managed to block and parry his swinging swipes for a few moments. She thrust the stool legs at his face. One of them struck him on the nose, bringing forth a gush of blood from both nostrils.
He didn't react to the pain or the sight of his own blood. Increasing the ferocity of his attack, he drove her steadily backward, around the table again in a flurry of blows.
Glass crunched beneath her boots, and she stepped in a puddle of chemicals. Losing traction for an instant, she stumbled, forced to take one hand off the stool to steady herself against the edge of the table.
That instant was all Sindri needed to leap at her, slapping aside the legs, grabbing the stool by a rung and wrenching it violently from her hand. Holding his cane as if it were a billiard cue, he punched the silver-reinforced tip of it deep into the pit of her stomach.
The impact drove the breath from her lungs in a gasp. Sindri glided to her side, hammering the back of her right knee with the cane's knob, neutralizing the nerve endings in her leg. It buckled beneath her and she fell, catching herself on both hands.
For a second, Sindri was taller than her, and she saw the cruel smirk play over his lips. He delivered a short, savage blow to the base of her neck, right on the carotid artery. Brigid felt a sharp pain, a numbness and her muscles turned to watery mud.
Then the hard floor slapped the side of her face. Sindri grappled with her, wrestling her up and over onto her back. His arms were like compact masses of knotted steel cables. His hands tore at the zippers and seals of her suit. He dug ten vanadium-hard fingers into her arms, her breasts, he shook her, buffeted her, pum-meled her to and fro. For a dizzy handful of seconds, she felt as if she were being dismembered in the grip of an earthquake.
The manhandling stopped suddenly, and she lay gasping on the floor, tasting the salty tang of blood at the comer of her mouth. Her body throbbed with a dull, steady ache, and sharper pains let her know of strained ligaments and tendons. She felt the cool touch of air on her torso and shoulders and knew her suit had been opened and peeled down to her waist.
When Brigid's eyes were able to focus again, she saw Sindri standing between her outflung legs. He undid the silk scarf around his throat and unzipped his bodysuit. Gently, smilingly he said "Accept, Miss Bri-gid. Don't struggle against the inevitable."
Sindri tugged the one-piece garment down over his lean hips, revealing a broad chest with a downlike covering of hair. He stepped out of the suit and kicked it and his boots away. His uncircumcised penis was like a length of heavy rope, uncoiling from a tuft of brown-yellow pubic hair.
Brigid was shocked to see it. It was not erect, but it was enormous, the one disproportion in a small but perfectly proportioned body. It made him a monster.
Still smiling, Sindri bent Over her.
Suddenly the atmosphere of the room seemed to give a great upward lurch. Brigid's stomach heaved, and an off-key ringing sounded in her ears. Sindri's eyes flicked back and forth in frantic bewilderment.
Slowly he drifted up from the floor.
Chapter 27
Despite the continuous stream of cool air playing over his face, Kane perspired profusely. Blinking the sweat out of his eyes, he stretched his arms out full-length, shoulders jammed up against his ears, chin dragging on the shaft floor. The crown of his head bumping against the top of the duct, he wormed his way forward with a steady wriggling motion. A burning ache had settled in his hips, the base of his spine and the back of his neck.
Kane had never experienced claustrophobia before, but he battled it now. If not for the slight give in some sections of the ductwork, he would have been trapped, caught fast yards ago. Dim light peeped in from vents where the shaft branched off. He prayed he wouldn't have to turn down one of the side arteries in order to follow the airflow. Trying to negotiate a turn would be almost impossible.
At least the neoprene texture of his gloves helped his fingers to gain some traction on the smooth surface of the duct. Still, after a few minutes of regular flexing, curling and uncurling his fingers, the metacarpal bones and wrist tendons stiffened and shook with the strain.
Although the confines of the shaft were almost intolerably cramped, Kane was grateful he had so far not encountered driving fans, internal grilles or vertical drops. The builders of the compound had gone for straightforward efficiency, with a minimum of accessories requiring maintenance or replacement.
Obviously no one had ever foreseen the ductwork being used as an alternate route of getting around the compound, since the shaft was barely large enough to comfortably accommodate a transadapt.
The deeper he dragged himself into the shaft, the more pronounced became a deep-pitched humming, interwoven with a steady clatter. Somewhere up ahead, machinery was working.
Kane glanced into the side shafts as he passed them. He didn't investigate any of them, continuing to crawl toward the steady airflow. At one point, he heard muffled, distant voices issuing from one of the vents. He thought he heard Baptiste, but he couldn't be sure.
It seemed a long time before a square of light shone in the dimness ahead. He tried but failed to increase his wiggling pace. Then, mercifully, the duct widened and ended. The spinning blades of a big circulating fan, at least four feet in diameter, ruffled his hair.
Peering between the whirring blades, past a protective screen of wire mesh, he saw a large room filled with an array of clattering pumps, their armatures rising and falling in a rapid rhythm. Square ductwork rose vertically from huge, cage-enclosed fan assemblies sunk into the poured-concrete floor.
Kane's perspective on the circulation station was limited. He couldn't move too close to the spinning fan without risking a sliced-off nose.
Examining it closely, he saw a flexible metal conduit snaking down from the exterior of the motor mount. He thought a moment, considering and discarding several methods of interrupting the fan's continuous cycle long enough to disconnect its power source.
Regardless of the virtually indestructible qualities Lakesh had attributed to his environmental suit, Kane knew jamming his arm between the whirling blades wasn't a viable option. Even if the tough fabric wasn't cut, bones were sure to be broken.
Propping up his right leg on his left knee, Kane inspected his boot. Attached to the legging just above the calf by a zipper running all the way around it, the boot appeared to be leather overlaid by layers of neoprene and Kevlar. The heavy, hard rubber treads were nearly an inch thick.
Kane didn't devote much thought to the consequences. He unzipped the attachment and tugged off the boot, nearly poking his elbow into the fan blades in the process. He carefully folded the boot in half, then hitched around on his knees so he faced the fan. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he thrust the boot, sole first, toward the lower edge of the frame.
One of the blades caught it, nearly snatching it from his grasp. Kane strained to hold the boot in place, so it wouldn't be flung into his face. The blade dragged it along the bottom of the frame. Th
e spinning stopped suddenly with a shuddery, mechanical groan.
Leaning forward, Kane thrust his right arm through the narrow gap between two of the blades. The fit was tight, and for a panicky instant, he feared he wouldn't be able to do it. Bending his elbow, he groped for the power conduit, his fingers brushing it twice before closing around it.
The fan groaned again, the blades shifting slightly, pushing the boot forward a fraction of an inch. Exerting all the strength in his arm and shoulder muscles, Kane yanked on the cable. It held fast. Clenching his teeth, upper body trembling from the exertion, he tugged and snapped at the conduit, up and down, side to side and then down again.
The tiny screws holding it in place on the mount sheared away, but Kane continued to jerk and yank, trying to dislodge the wires connected to the motor. The mechanical groan stopped for a second, started again, then settled into a stammering, on-off rhythm.
Finally the wires tore loose, and the fan's noise ceased altogether. Working his boot free, he noted the blade-inflicted scars on the surface layer, but the leather beneath was still intact, as was the zipper. He tugged it back on and secured the seal.
Worming his way around and leaning back as far as he could, Kane braced his hands and hips against the duct and drew up his legs, bending them double. He straightened them out again with all his strength, landing a powerful double kick against the fan's frame.
The banging sound of impact sounded horrendously loud, but it couldn't be helped. He continued to launch kick after kick, even after slivers of pain began piercing his tendons and ankles. The frame seemed solidly seated and bolted into place, and he lost count of how many times his feet slammed against it.
When it shifted, and then the upper left corner popped out, he could scarcely believe it. He increased the speed of his kicks, concentrating on that spot.
With a clanging crash, the battered frame and motor assembly toppled into the room below, landing atop breakables, judging by the brief jangle of shattering glass.
Breathing hard, Kane leaned forward and swept the room with a searching gaze. Aside from the circulation fans, ductwork and condensers, he saw three huge, horizontally mounted steel tanks in a far corner. The sym-bol for oxygen was stenciled in black on their dull surfaces. A network of pipes stretched out from the ends of the tanks, feeding into small, box-shaped modules at the bases of the floor fans. Glass meters and valves were attached to the pipes at regular intervals.
Within a chain-link-fenced enclosure rested a metal-walled disk, about eight feet in diameter and three feet thick. The ribbed top consisted of a small, round superstructure of raised flanges surrounding a recessed opening.
On the far side of the disk protruded a sealed yellow cylinder about two feet long and one foot in diameter. The warning painted on it in red letters read Contents Under PressureThorium Chrylon.
It wasn't until he leaned farther out of the shaft that Kane saw the plastic sign bolted to the gate of the enclosure. In blocky blue letters, it read Grav-Stator. Only Authorized Maintenance Personnel Permitted. Must Have C-Class License And Committee-Approved Work Order To Enter.
Looking below the duct, he saw the fan frame had lodged between a pair of pipes, breaking the glass faces of several pressure gauges but apparently causing no other damage. The drop was only ten feet, so he backed out of the shaft, clung to the edge for a moment, then dropped with flexed knees to the floor.
Kane didn't worry about tripping an intruder-detection system or alerting a guard. The racket he had made kicking loose the fan would have resulted in that. Still, he scanned the walls and ceiling for concealed spy-eyes and found none.
He saw the door hatch directly opposite the big oxygen tanks. He made his way across the room to them, studying the different valves, gauges and pressure switches attached to the pipes. He tried to differentiate between the intake and outflow lines. Kane knew he wasn't much of a technician, but he figured the trans-adapts weren't, either. The Cydonia Compound humans had obviously educated them to carry out a diversity of maintenance tasks, and monitoring oxygen content, flow and quality was probably the primary one.
Kane located an L-shaped lever beneath a large, numbered meter. A straight line divided into three color bands, yellow, orange and red, crossed its face. The needle held steady at midyellow.
Grasping the lever, he nudged it toward the right. The needle slowly crept toward the orange band. He waited for a moment, breathing deeply. Finally he caught a faint whiff of an odor reminiscent of ozone. He threw the handle to the far end of the red band and stepped back.
A high hissing emanated from the pipe to which the meter was attached. Within seconds, the metallic odor of pure, undiluted oxygen tickled his nostrils, stimulating the urge to sneeze.
As he turned away, a multipaged chart hanging on the wall near the hatch caught his eyes. He went to it and thumbed through the pages quickly, feeling a rush of elation. Like the blueprints in the manual, the chart displayed schematics of the compound, designating them by letters of the alphabet.
Unlike the manual, the pages bore handwritten descriptions of all the domes, even delineating separate chambers. Within a half minute of serious study, he realized he was in Dome V, only one dome away from X. His guess they were in Dome U wasn't that far off the mark. Judging by the description, the V habitat was primarily a community center, with dining halls, lounges and a medical facility. The facility was located only a few dozen yards down the tunnel from the environmental station.
Dome X had evidently been devoted to administrative duties, since a council chamber, a communications command post and various offices were clearly marked. However, he saw no reference to a mat-trans unit, but he wasn't surprised or dismayed. Sindri had implied the Committee of One Hundred kept its existence a secret.
After memorizing the shortest route to Dome X, Kane walked to the fenced enclosure. The gate didn't have a lock, so he stepped inside. The machine on the floor bore a resemblance to the nuclear generators in Cerberus, but one laid on its side. Circling it, he eyed the control switches studding its surface. Indicators were labeled with the words Rotational Rate Cycle, EPS Channel and Superconductor Stator. A small LED flashed 0.8G.
The disk hummed very purposefully and powerfully. He guessedand was pretty positive he was correct that he stood before a synthetic-gravity generator. He felt a gentle field of static electricity surrounding it, one that caused his loose hairs to shift and stir.
Kane had no idea of the effect radius of the gener-ated-graviton field, but the device looked so bulky and heavy he doubted every habitat was equipped with one. More than likely the compound was divided up into sections, with similar environmental and gravity-regulating stations placed at equidistant points that would allow the different fields to bleed into one another for stability.
Bending down, he scrutinized the LED and the small row of buttons beneath it. He chose one at random and pushed it. Immediately the steady drone of the generator dropped in pitch and the number on the readout screen changed from 0.8 to 0.9. He felt no substantial difference in the gravity.
Kane kept his finger poised over the buttons, face set in lines of concentration, weighing a number of causes and effects. Then he said, "You're doing it againmaking up shit as you go along."
He immediately felt a little embarrassed by speaking his thoughts aloud, but he began depressing the buttons in descending order. As the steady hum of the generator altered in pitch, the LED flashed the changing numbers. They went from 0.9 to 0.8 to 0.6 and to 0.5.
When the display glowed with 0.2G, Kane heard an odd ringing in his ears and felt a lifting sensation in his belly that spread throughout his entire body. By the time the LED read 0.0G, his feet were a few inches above the floor. Mars's gravity was a little under half of Earth's, but the generator nullified even that, as he had expected.
He hoped the generator wasn't equipped with an automatic fail-safe reset, which would restore normal gravity, but even if it were, the sudden change to zero-G conditions
would give him a small edge.
Most of the time, that was all he ever asked for.
Chapter 28
Grant couldn't be sure if the oxygen content flowing from the air vent was stronger than before. His nose had been broken three times in the past, and always poorly reset. Unless an odor was extraordinarily pleasant or virulently repulsive, he was incapable of detecting subtle smells unless they were right under his nostrils. A running joke during his Mag days had been that Grant could eat a hearty dinner with a dead skunk lying on the table next to his plate.
For twenty minutes or so, he had sat and leafed through volume two of The Cambridge Medieval History . He didn't read much of the dense, double columns of copy, but he found the illustrations, particularly the color plates of knights in plate armor, of interest.
Upon taking a deep breath, he caught a very faint odor that hadn't been in the room before. He stood up, turning to face the vent, inhaling the cool air flowing from the duct. Since he couldn't be sure if the new smell meant an increased oxygen content, he decided to wait a few minutes for the mixture to be completely circulated through the habitat. He had no inclination to face EHe or her agony-inducing harp unless she had an additional handicap, even a marginal one.
He returned to his chair and silently counted off three minutes. When he rose, he experienced a brief wave of dizziness, a light-headedness that abated as quickly as it had come over him. Holding the heavy hardcover book in his right hand, he went to the hatch and beat loudly on it with his left fist, shouting, "Hey, open up! We're hungry!"
He had to repeat his call and hammer even more forcefully before the hatch finally irised open. Elle stood blinking up at him, a beatific smile on her pushed-in face. Though she still held the harp, it wasn't pointed directly at him.
"Huh?" she asked, words slurred. "Whad you wan'?"
She swayed a bit from side to side, her long toe-thumbs crooking and uncrooking on the floor.
Recalling a passage from the book, Grant said sternly, "We want a haunch of roast mutton with mint jelly and tankards of ale."