"Tall order, that." Mike said sharply.
"It is already done." Melanee explained with one of her maddening smiles. "They will know that only I can put things right and they will know that I will use the terminal in France to do it, not Quissac. They will guess it is a stratagem, a plan, perhaps, yes? But they will have to go."
"And so will we." Mary stated tartly. "Holy cow! Where is it? You realise we have to get there first?"
"Hell!" Mike yelled. "Why didn't we think of that before? Where is the bloody place?"
"But, hang on, Melanee." I muttered. "We convince them, yes, but can you really do nasty things from there or..."
"Oh, no." She smiled brightly at me. "I have to go to Quissac, but they do not know that."
"It doesn't bloody matter." Mike snarled. "We've still got to get there first. Where the hell is it?" He demanded through gritted teeth.
Mary fell on the computer terminal, typing rapidly. "I hope to God the damned place is in here because I didn't listen to Marie when she was spouting all about how bloody France was the most advanced society since the discovery of sliced bread." She ground this out through gritted teeth while we all peered over her shoulder at the screen.
"Argonne, near Verdun." Mike muttered. "Christ, why put it there?"
"Lucky they didn't decide to stick it up in the mountains." Mary stated, glaring at the screen with venom. "You know why? It's on the same meridian as Inverness."
"Winchester isn't." I growled.
"Winchester doesn't do the same thing." Melanee said with a certain smugness. "I am beginning to understand why they were placed in such random patterns."
"Random, shmandom!" Mike yelled. "We gotta go!"
Mary gaped but scrambled into the hatch, closely followed by Mike. Melanee smiled her ethereal smile at me and gracefully slid down to the entrance hatch. Halfway there, she turned and switched off the smile. "Don't you think we should tell your friends in Quissac what they have to do? They might think they only have to kill us to win the prize."
Of course, she was right, again. Suppressing a wave of irritation I slid down to join the rest. Mike was busy with the take-off check, Mary chanting the litany beside him, when Melanee sat herself down demurely and started tapping the satellite co-ordinates into the data box. Mary stopped talking abruptly. We all stared at the main comm screen which was showing interference patterns that slowly cleared to reveal a carrier signal with identity marks. Mike raised eyebrows at me, saying nothing, but meaning everything. Deliberately I entered our security code, the starship entry password which had let us into Quissac.
The screen changed colour, bright blues and reds suddenly crystallising into a sharp, clear picture. A woman's face gazed at us for long seconds before her expression changed from mild enquiry to hatred.
"You!" She spat. "You destroyer, you vandal, you piece of police scum..."
"Hello, Selena." I said cheerfully. "Nice to see you again. You pregnant yet? This planet could do with a younger generation."
The picture seemed to shimmer as if tongues of invisible flame were washing over it. Melanee leaned forward and put her hand on my arm, smiling her calm smile. "I have not met you, Selena." She spoke as if to a child. "But I am sure you know who I am."
"My name is Hampton, Doctor Hampton." Was the icy reply. "Only friends can call me Selena, and you are not one of them."
"Didn't know you had any." Mary snapped.
"Enough!" Melanee was more decisive than we had ever heard her. "Save your venom for later." She peered into the screen image of Selena as if trying to identify an animal. "The ship's orbit will go over the horizon in ten minutes so listen to me and listen well. I have put a block on your program interface, but you must know that already. None of the functions for your genetic recovery scheme will respond. The reason is logical."
She paused while another face appeared behind the image of Selena. Max's characteristic square jaw and bland features hovered over her shoulder. "Well, well, the mighty captain." Mike sat with a look of frozen distaste. "How's the paranoia?"
Max smiled and moved Selena aside to allow us to see his blue eyes and rigid grin. "And God shall wipe away the tears in their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain for the former things have passed away." He did not make any social conversation, but then he never did. The blue eyes gazed at us with unrelenting purpose.
"Revelations eighteen." Mary muttered, much to my surprise. "And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold I make all things new." She shuddered. "And you are making all things new, aren't you? Do you sit upon the throne now, Max? Is that what you dream about?"
"Listen!" Melanee cried. "Listen to me." She waved a fist at the screen. "This is an opportunity to stop and reason, this is why we have made contact. Do you really want to keep on killing? Can we not reach some consensus? We can stop what you want to do but we all have millions of people on our backs, the millions to come. We must talk and behave like civilised people not like animals."
Selena glanced up at Max, her face expressionless but transparent. "We will come to Argonne." She said. "We know who you are and what you can do. We will come to a satisfactory conclusion." She lifted her chin slightly. "Satisfactory to all of us."
The screen began to break up, jagged flashes of interference making her image fade. "Satisfactory conclusion." I muttered. "In a pig's arse."
"Finish the check." Mary bent her head over the check list, nudging Mike. They gave each other a bleak look but said nothing more until the engines were running. Melanee sat herself down beside me, folded her hands and stared into the middle distance while I started to fidget because I had agreed to let Mike fly some of the time and was regretting it. He was competent, however, if not brilliant like me and we staggered off the ground in a hurricane of dust and twigs that must have impressed the lady and her tribe no end.
The engine stopping routine passed almost without notice because I was trying hard to think of some foolproof plan and couldn't. We had to go to this Argonne place and if we got there first...then what? We set up an ambush and shoot them all down? I couldn't see Mary or Mike letting that happen and to tell the truth I wasn't too keen about it myself.
A soft hand on mine brought my attention back to Melanee who was regarding me with a calmness which made me suspicious. "We have the co-ordinates of this terminal? Yes? We must find a clearing and put down not too close." She seemed to be going into one of her brooding moods. Mike and Mary had ears flapping, listening to the words of wisdom. "This is only perhaps a hundred of your miles from Calais, yes? Perhaps Jules and Marie, they are there already? Of course, that is why they left us, they knew they could get there."
"Yeah." Mike's comment floated to us in the back seats. "We worked that out."
"Max and co will have one of those orbital landers, you know, the thing that bombed us in Scotland." Mary screwed her head round to view Melanee. "Much faster than this tub, and better armed."
"So we do not let them see us." Melanee said. "We know when the ship is overhead. We set down when they have no interface with the ship."
"OK, bright idea." Mike grinned. "I like it but it means we have to do this in short hops. That orbit goes over us every forty minutes."
"No, we don't." I thought I ought to add my ten cents worth. "We only have to work it so that we get there when the ship's not overhead."
"They'll find us." Mary said. "They only have to interrogate the ship."
"They will do that whatever we do." Melanee said flatly.
"But we get there forty minutes before they do it, then we have an edge." I told them, thinking it was about time I started to clean the guns. They didn't argue, the facts spoke for themselves. Presently the green carpet of Hampshire came to an end and the vista of the sea took its place, a deep blue sea under a summer sky. Where were all the ships? Would they ever come back? The engines whined, the hot sun poured through the forward screens as Mike brought us down low ove
r the water and we waited for the coast of France to rise over the horizon.
Chapter 27
SHOWTIME
Mike and Mary spent most of the time huddled over the navigation display scribbling high flown mathematics on paper, tapping formulae endlessly into the computer and staring wide-eyed at the scrolling responses. The end result of all this was, alarmingly, a decision to throttle back the engines, which I didn't like and said so loudly, only to be informed coldly that if we wanted to get to this infernal place in the Argonne forest at the right moment, we had to do some fancy calculations and was I an expert on navigation?
Melanee exuded a calm and serene expectation, telling me it was all going according to plan while I seethed and watched the water surface under us getting closer and closer as the speed bled off. We changed course sharply twice, finding ourselves running parallel to the French shore line until the high ground behind the coast levelled out and the familiar Calais beach arrived, whereupon we turned inland.
"It is a track designed to make us coincide with the ship's orbit." Melanee told me soothingly, ignoring the grunt she got in return. I knew that anyway and resented being chided like a five-year-old. She gave me her smile which annoyed me even more because I found it impossible to be bad tempered with her and the conflict this produced was only mitigated by taking a machine rifle to pieces with unnecessary noise.
But then the forest started to flow under our nose again. Mike picked the speed up until we were scudding along at nearly one fifty knots, the tree tops flashing under us. Mary sat back and regarded the nav screen with attention. I could see she had put in various way points for the computer to follow but that still left lots of questions swilling around in my head. Are we sure we are going to beat them to it? What about Jules and Marie?
"The ship says there are clearings." Mary screwed her head round to look me in the eye. "You see the idea? Our track is on course for the South of France and that is all they will see until the ship's orbit goes over the horizon."
Gazing at the complicated display over her shoulder, I found myself frowning furiously. "Yeah, but they know we're going there, don't they? Does it matter what course we follow?"
"They do not think like you." Melanee's voice entered the conference with decision. "They will suspect a trick, they will perhaps think we have lied to them and we are going to Quissac, yes?"
"Why should they do that?" I enquired calmly, suddenly feeling suspicious.
Mike looked back with a puzzled expression, a common feeling of male bafflement appearing on his face. "I thought we were just juggling with time factors." He muttered. "I wouldn't worry about Max Sorenson's character defects if I were you and it's all academic anyway because in thirty minutes we get there." He jabbed a finger at the screen. "Where do you want to put this tub?"
The navigation screen displayed the rolling woodlands of the Argonne in fine detail, down to individual trees if we wanted to be that inquisitive. This infernal terminal was on a hill top, naturally, not a special hill in any way, just a normal hill with dense trees in every direction giving enough cover for a regiment of infantry if one should miraculously materialise. The nearest piece of clear ground was by a small river and was the obvious place to set down, too damned obvious. Peering at the scrolling map, I came to a decision. I can't claim it was logical or even reasonable, it was instinctive and meant we would get our feet wet.
"Put it down on that river." I said, receiving stares in reply. "There's a straight stretch about three miles from the hill we want. There!"
Melanee smiled at higher power than before. "We put car under tree cover." She said contentedly.
"Right." Mike sat up and grinned. "Ten minutes."
The country under us could have been Hampshire or Kent or anywhere on this newly rearranged continent. It was solid trees, a myriad of shades of green producing a thick, impenetrable carpet. What was under it, even a scanner would never know. The contours started to rise and fall as we wound our way over valleys and rising ground. Mary tapped instructions into the flight computer which now started to bleep and flash lights at us. A river appeared, a bright, silvery blue ribbon wending its way through the forest, curving and twisting, towering growth on each bank sometimes seeming to meet in the middle. The engines howled, the car wallowed and there, suddenly emerging from the canopy was a stretch of water as straight as a runway. Mike put the nose down, banged in the verticals and we sat down on that flat, calm, stream in a blast of spray which poured over the front windscreens as Mike edged us into the bank.
Swarming out to tether us with the cable I nodded approvingly. The tree cover stretched well out over the river, hiding the car from any but low level prying eyes. In thirty minutes the engine heat would have dropped so they would have a problem finding us. Of course, it depended on just how good their equipment was, but we had to take something on trust.
In the silence after the engines ceased their metallic whine, the others clambered out and stood looking around them at endless receding lines of trees which faded into a darkness, a green darkness of primeval forest. Mary shuddered slightly and raised eyebrows at me. "What now, fella?"
The print out from the master data bank showed us exactly where we were, plus where the target was. We had arms and ammunition, and we had a resident genius who watched me with irritating placidity. It was a military problem and I was a military genius, so I opened my mouth to give them the words of wisdom when Melanee beat me to the punch.
"We should split up." She said, pointing an elegant finger at the map. "If they have an orbital lander, as Mary says, then they will have to land in that clearing which is four miles off."
Mary and Mike joined the frown club immediately. "Why split?" He demanded.
But Mary had got there, or thought she had. "Yes." She regarded Melanee with an appraising eye. "You're getting very strategic, aren't you? We sit down on the path they will take, you see?" She prodded the map. "That clearing, they'll walk along the river bank and then they'll climb here."
"Yeah." Mike nodded doubtfully. "If they go in a straight line it's a hell of a climb up another hill and no one would do that, would they?"
I said nothing because there was something ticking away in Melanee's head, it was obvious, at least to me. She wanted them to leave us alone. I didn't buy any idea of letting them depart as an early warning system, although it made sense up to a point, but she'd produced this theory out of thin air. Mike cocked an eyebrow at me, waiting for approval. I didn't see what Melanee was being devious about but I gave the idea my blessing all the same.
"You don't take chances." I told them. "You should be able to find a spot where you can see where they go and they don't see you." I paused as complications multiplied in my cortex. "If they're doing something we don't like, anything, you fire a shot, no, three quick shots and you bugger off, see?" I traced a route with my finger. "You circle round and you get back here."
"And meanwhile Melanee does things to that terminal?" Mary said uncertainly, glancing at Mike. They were not fools, indeed they were two of the brightest people around when there had been billions and Mary was conscious of an oddness in the logic of the plan.
"David will kill them." Mike said softly. "We're going to be the bait."
Neither Melanee nor I said anything in reply to this quite reasonable idea which I wished I had thought of myself but instead I just looked inscrutable. Mary stood up, checked her ammunition belt, steadied the pack on her back, clapped Mike on the shoulder and gave us a slightly lop-sided grin. "We'll be seeing you." She said lightly.
Mike gripped her arm, picked up his rifle and folded the map. "We'll take this. She's got the map of the universe in her head and you know everything, David."
Melanee released her smile, kissed Mary and put a hand on Mike's arm. "You are the closest friends we will ever have and David knows that as I do. We will all be together again." She was going into one of her supernatural moods, but she was impressive, hypnotic almost. Mike grinned at me a
s I banged him on the arm, but Mary seemed bemused, staring at Melanee as if she had sprouted horns.
"Ready in two hours." Mike said, turned Mary round and trudged off in to the forest. She half looked back, but said nothing more and we watched as they slowly disappeared in the green undergrowth. Presently all sounds of their progress had gone and we were alone, standing on the river bank in a warm silence broken only by gentle water sounds. Insects droned by and over the stream a bird, a bright red bird flew by like a jewel in the air.
"Right." I muttered. "Time to get the show on the road."
Melanee stirred, her face turning to the river, an odd look in her eye. She seemed about to tell me earth shaking things but changed her mind, glancing at me as if she wasn't quite sure what I was or how dim I could be. Reaching out, I took hold of her shoulders and pulled her in to me until she had to look up, her hair practically in my mouth. She was trembling.
"There is something we must do." She said, her voice muffled by my shirt.
"And you didn't want Mike and Mary to know about it."
She pushed herself away, gazing up at me with tears on her cheeks. "I want you to fly me to Quissac."
Nodding slowly, I watched her distress increase. "Now?" I asked her gently.
"In two hours." She replied.
"And Mike and Mary?"
"We will come back for them."
"If..." I told her. "If."
Revelations were arriving at top speed in my dim brain. The whole idea had been to get Max and co away from Quissac. She said why herself not so long ago. Only she knew how to get into the complex, and there was something only she could do, and it had to be done. Mike and Mary were the bait indeed but not for me, for her.
"This Max and Selena, they will come back from here when they find out." She said, still holding on to me, still shaking. "Can you defend me when they do?"
Come Back Page 32