THE SILENT WAR Page 25

  "The front doorway has been sealed with a metal slab!" he called.

  The windows, too, were covered with heavy metal grillwork, Fuchs saw as he glanced around the upstairs hallway. The hall was lined with real wooden furniture: tables and chests and sideboards. Actual paintings hung along the walls.

  They think we're burglars or thieves, Fuchs thought. They're trying to make certain we can't get away. But I don't want to get away, I want to find Humphries.

  "Where are you, Humphries?" he shouted at the ceiling. "Show yourself, coward!"

  Nodon, his eyes so wide that Fuchs could see white all around the pupils, said in a tight whisper, "They must be sending more guards. We're trapped!"

  All the lights went off, plunging them into almost total darkness. Within an instant, though, Nodon pulled a hand torch from his coverall pocket. Its feeble beam made the hallway look eerie, mysterious.

  Fuchs rushed to a heavy walnut table against the wall. With one sweep of his arm he sent the flower vase and smaller porcelain pieces atop it crashing to the carpeted floor.

  "Help me turn this thing over and drag it over to the top of the stairs. We can stop them from getting up here."

  Sanja and Amarjagal tipped the table over with a heavy thud, and the four of them pushed it to the head of the stairs and wedged it there between the wall and the staircase railing. Down below they heard the pounding of running feet and saw the shadowy figures of security guards coming along the downstairs hall. They must have been stationed in the basement, Fuchs thought, straining to make out how many of them there were. No more than six, he estimated.

  He whispered to the two men, "Get the statues, the chairs, anything you can lift and bring them here. Amarjagal, go down the hallway a few meters so you can fire on them as they come up the stairs."

  If they think we're going to surrender, they have a big surprise coming, Fuchs thought grimly. I'm not leaving this house until I see Humphries dead at my feet.

  SHINING MOUNTAIN BASE

  Pancho jogged up the rampway, long legs pumping easily as she made her way to the top level of the base. Trotting along the final section of ramp she could see the ribbed vaulting of the surface dome overhead. Almost there, she said to herself.

  But she skidded to a halt when she spotted a quartet of men standing by the row of space suits that hung next to the airlock. They were all Japanese, their coveralls sky blue and bearing the white flying crane emblem of Yamagata Corporation. Each of them had an ugly-looking sidearm strapped to his waist.

  They saw her, too. Two of them started to sprint toward her as Pancho reversed her course and started back down the ramp, back toward the noisy, bustling construction crews and the minitractors that were hauling loads of steel beams and drywall sheeting. She swung her legs over the ramp's railing and jumped lightly to the dusty floor several meters below.

  The noise was an advantage to her, she thought. Nobody's going to hear those guards yelling, and these construction guys don't have comm units in their ears. She loped alongside one of the electric-powered minitractors and hopped into the cart it was towing, landing with a plop amidst coils of wire and bouncing, flexing lengths of plastic piping.

  She lay flat, hoping that the guards didn't see her hitchhike maneuver. The minitractor trundled on for several minutes; all Pancho could see was the bare beams supporting the ceiling overhead.

  She was thinking as hard and fast as she could. Airlocks are up on the next level, but they're all guarded. So are the suits. Even if I could grab a space suit the guards would grab me before I had time to put one on. And there's the damn-dratted solar storm outside, too. Not the best time for a walk on the surface.

  I could use the softsuit, she reminded herself. It's right here, tucked into my travel bag. Never used the blow-up helmet before but Doug said it works okay. Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. What choice do I have?

  The big problem was to get to an airlock without being seen. Suddenly Pancho broke into a fierce grin. No, the problem is how do I get some explosives so I can make a new airlock for myself!

  Doug Stavenger tried to busy himself with catching up on the minutes of Selene's governing council meetings. But as he read the reports of the water board and the maintenance department and the safety office, the words blurred into meaningless symbols before his eyes. Irritated, nervous, he told his computer to show him the latest report on the solar storm.

  One wall of the office in his home seemingly dissolved into a three-dimensional image of the Earth/Moon system. It was bathed in a hot pink glow that represented the radiation cloud. Stavenger muted the sound, preferring to read for himself the figures on radiation intensity and predicted time duration of the storm displayed across the bottom of the holographic image.

  "Add traffic," he said quietly.

  Several yellow dots appeared in the image. One of them was identified as Elsinore, the ship Edith was aboard.

  "Project trajectories."

  Slim green curving lines appeared, the one attached to Elsinore arcing out to the right and out of the cloud.

  "Add destinations."

  Elsinore's projected path ended at a dot labeled "Ceres." Stavenger noted almost subliminally that of all the ships in the region, there was one named Cromwell but that had no projected destination visible. No course vector for it showed at all. It was deep inside the radiation cloud, too.

  As he watched, Cromwell's dot winked out. Stavenger stared at the display. Either the ship's suddenly been destroyed or they've turned off all their tracking and telemetry beacons. There were no other ships near it, as far as the imagery showed. So it can't have been attacked by somebody.

  Why would they turn off all their beacons? Stavenger asked himself. It took only a moment's thought for him to understand.

  Pancho jumped off the cart as the minitractor rolled past a jumbled pile of equipment and crates of supplies lying in what seemed a haphazard disorder on the dusty concrete floor. The driver saw her and yelled at her over his shoulder in Japanese as the tractor trundled away from her.

  "Same to you, buddy," Pancho hollered back, bowing politely to the driver.

  Slinging her travel bag over one shoulder, she ducked behind the nearest pile of crates and started searching through the trove. No explosives, but in the midst of the scattered pieces of equipment she saw something that might be almost as good: a welding laser. Kneeling beside the laser's finned barrel, she clicked its on switch and felt her heart sink. The power supply's battery indicator was way down in the red. I need a power source, she told herself.

  Suddenly the loudspeakers hanging on poles every fifty meters or so blared into harsh, rapid Japanese. Pancho didn't understand the words but she knew the tone: There's an intruder sneaking around here. Find her!

  All the construction noise stopped. It was eerie, Pancho thought. The banging, buzzing, yelling construction site went absolutely still. It was as if everybody froze.

  But only for a moment. Hunkered behind a crate, Pancho saw the blue-clad construction workers looking around uncertainly. Foremen and women strode out among them, snapping orders. The workers gathered themselves into parties of four, five and six and began methodically searching the entire floor. Pancho figured they were doing the same on the other levels, too.

  Feeling like a mouse in a convention hall filled with cats, Pancho knelt behind the crate. The laser was within reach, but without a power supply it was useless. And even if I get outside, she told herself, I'll have to sprint through the storm to get into one of the hoppers sitting out on the launchpad. The outlook ain't brilliant.

  Then she saw the same minitractor she had ridden on heading across the cement-dusty floor toward her. Two men were squeezed into its cab alongside the driver.

  He remembers me hitching the ride, Pancho realized, and he's bringing the goons to search the area. She smiled. The tractor could serve as a power supply for the laser, she thought. All I have to do is get rid of those three guys. She unclipped her other earring and held it tightly i
n her palm.

  Sitting on the bare concrete floor, her back pressed against the plastic crate, Pancho listened to the tractor coming up and stopping. Voices muttering in Japanese. They're getting out, she knew. Poking around.

  She clambered to her feet. The three saw her immediately. Pancho noticed with some surprise that the hard-hatted driver was a young woman. The other two, bareheaded, were stony-faced men. And armed with guns.

  "You!" one of the men shouted in English, pointing a pistol at her. "Don't move!"

  Pancho slowly raised both hands above her head, the earring still clutched in her right palm. Wait, she said to herself, flicking the catch of the earring with her thumb. Let them get just a little closer.

  Now! She tossed the earring at them and flung both arms over her eyes. The flash of light still seared through her closed lids and burned a red afterimage on her retinas. But once she opened her eyes she found that she could see well enough. The two goons were writhing on the ground, screeching in Japanese. The woman driver was staggering around blindly. Blinking painful tears, Pancho grabbed the laser in both hands, pushed past the dazed and groping driver, and dumped it into the back of the tractor. Even in one-sixth g, it was heavy.

  Quickly she detached the cart and slipped into the tractor's cab. She put it in gear and headed for the nearest ramp, up to the top level.

  HABITAT CHRYSALIS

  Big George scowled at the display splashed across his wall screen as he sat in his favorite recliner, feet up, a frosty mug of beer at his side. Solar storm, he said to himself. Big one.

  The IAA forecasters were predicting that the storm would not reach Ceres. The cloud of ionized particles followed the interplanetary magnetic field, and the field's loops and knots were guiding it across the other side of the solar system, far from Ceres's position. George felt grateful. Chrysalis was protected by electromagnetic shielding, just as most spacecraft were, but George had no great ambition to ride out a storm.

  Poor bastards on Vesta are gonna get it, he noted. Hope they've got the sense to get their arses underground in time. George shrugged and reached for his beer. At least they've got plenty of warning.

  The display showed spacecraft traffic. Elsinore was the only vessel George was interested in. Edith Elgin was aboard, coming to Ceres to do a video report on the war out here. About fookin' time somebody in the news media paid attention, George thought.

  Elsinore was swinging clear of the radiation cloud, he saw. She'll be here in four days and some, George said to himself. Good. We'll be waitin' for her.

  He took a long swallow of beer. There was nothing else for him to do, except wait.

  HUMPHRIES MANSION

  Fuchs crouched behind the makeshift barricade jammed at the top of the stairs, peering into the shadows. Some light from the garden outside was leaking through the grills covering the upstairs windows. He could hear movement downstairs, but it was almost impossible to see anything with all the indoor lights off. Nodon has a hand torch, he knew, but to turn it on would simply give the guards a target to shoot at.

  "Nodon," he whispered, "pull down some of the drapes on the windows."

  The crewman scuttled away, and Fuchs heard ripping noises, then a muffled thud.

  A strong voice called from the first floor, "Whoever you are, you can't get out of here. You're trapped. Better give yourselves up and let us turn you over to the authorities."

  Fuchs bit back the snarling reply he wanted to make. Nodon slithered up and pushed some bunched-up fabric into his hands. "Will this do, Captain?" he asked.

  "We'll see," Fuchs whispered back.

  A light flashed momentarily in the darkness and a man yowled with pain. Amarjagal, halfway across the landing, had fired her gun at someone creeping silently up the steps. But not silently enough. The Mongol woman had heard him and shot him with her laser pistol. Its beam was invisible, but the fabric of the guard's clothing flashed when it was hit. Fuchs heard the man tumbling down the carpeted stairs.

  We need some light, Fuchs said to himself. If I can set this drapery afire we can use it as a torch.

  Another spark of light splashed against the table, just past Fuchs's ear. He smelled burning wood.

  "Behind us!" Sanja screamed in his native Mongol dialect.

  Fuchs turned as both Sanja and Nodon fired blindly down the hallway. There's another staircase! he realized. Fool! Fool! You should have thought of that, should have—

  Nodon screamed with pain as a bolt struck him and grabbed his shoulder. Fuchs snatched the gun from Nodon's fingers and fired blindly down the hall. In the corner of his eye he saw Amarjagal shooting at a pair of figures crawling up the steps.

  Dropping Nodon's gun, Fuchs bunched the drapery fabric in one hand and fired his gun into it. The stuff smoldered. He fired again, and it burst into flame. So much for fire-retardant materials, he thought. Put a hot enough source on it and it will burn.

  "Shoot at them," he ordered Sanja. "Keep their heads down."

  Sanja obediently fired down the hallway, even picking up Nodon's gun and shooting with both hands.

  Fuchs scrambled to his feet and plunged down the hall, bellowing like a charging bull, firing his own gun with one hand and waving the blazing drapery over his head with the other. Whoever was down there was still ducking, not firing back. Fuchs saw the back stairwell, skidded to a stop and threw the fiery fabric down the steps. For good measure he sprayed the stairwell with his gun.

  He saw several men backing down the stairs as the drapery tumbled down. The carpeting on the steps began to smoke and an alarm started screeching in the flickering shadows.

  Humphries had gone from his office into his adjoining bedroom, eyes wide with fright. He could feel his heart pounding beneath his ribs, hear the pulse thundering in his ears so loudly he barely heard Ferrer shouting at him.

  Somebody's broken into my house, screeched a voice in his head. Somebody's gotten into my home!

  The emergency lights were on and the cermet shutters had sealed off the bedroom from the office and the hallway beyond it. Nobody can get to me, Humphries told himself. There's two fireproof doors between me and them. I'm safe. They can't reach me. The guards will round them up. I'm safe in here.

  Still in her white terrycloth robe, Ferrer grabbed him by both shoulders. "It's Fuchs!" she shouted at him. "Look at the display!"

  The wall screen showed a stubby miniature bear of a man charging down the hallway outside, swinging a blazing length of drapery.

  "Fuchs?" Humphries gasped. It was difficult to make out the man's face in the false-color image of the infrared camera. "It can't be!"

  Ferrer looked angry and disgusted. "It is! The computer's matched his image and his voice. It's Fuchs and three of his henchmen."

  "Here?"

  "He's come to kill you!" she snapped.

  "No! He can't! They'll—"

  "FIRE!" the computer's emergency warning sounded. "FIRE IN THE REAR STAIRWELL."

  Humphries froze, staring at the wall screen, which now showed the rear stairs blazing.

  "Why don't the sprinklers come on?" he demanded.

  "The water's off," she reminded him.

  "No water?" Humphries bleated.

  "The building's concrete," Ferrer said. "Seal off the burning area and let the fire consume all the oxygen and kill itself. And anybody in the burning section."

  Humphries felt the panic in him subside a little. She's right, he thought. Let the fire burn itself out. He stood up straighter, watching the wallscreen's display.

  "Anybody caught in there," he said, pointing shakily, "is going to get burned to death. Fuchs is going to roast, just as if he were in hell."

  Hurrying back to the makeshift barricade at the top of the main staircase, Fuchs could smell smoke wafting up from the rear stairs.

  "FIRE!" said a synthesized voice, calm and flat but heavily amplified. "FIRE IN THE REAR STAIRWELL."

  "We've got to get out of here," Sanja hissed in his ear.

  "No!" F
uchs snapped. "Not till we get Humphries."

  Amarjagal crawled to them. "More guards down there," she said. "They will charge up the stairs."

  From the corner of his eye Fuchs could see the flickering light of the flames in the rear stairwell. They can't attack us from that direction, he thought. Then he realized, And we can't retreat that way, either.

  Laser bolts sizzled against the upturned table and scorched the wall behind them.

  "Here they come!"

  Even in the shadowy light Fuchs could see a team of guards charging up the stairs, firing their handguns as others down in the entryway also fired up at them.

  Fuchs rolled to one side of the table, where his crew had laid a heavy marble bust from one of the tables down the hall. He noticed that one of the laser blasts had ignited a painting on the wall behind them. Grunting with the effort, he lifted the bust with both hands, raised it above the edge of the upturned table, and hurled it down the stairs. It bounced down the steps, scattering the approaching guards like a bowling ball. Sanja and Amargjagal fired at them. Fuchs heard screams of pain.

  "We must get out of here," Amarjagal said flatly. There was no panic in her voice, not even fear. It was simply a statement of fact.

  And Fuchs knew she was right. But they were surrounded, trapped. And Humphries was untouched.

  SHINING MOUNTAIN BASE

  Been a long time since I drove a tractor, Pancho said to herself as she puttered up the ramp toward the base's topmost level. They haven't changed much since my astronaut days, she thought. Haven't improved them.

  The fact that the Nairobi base was so big was an advantage to her. They're scurrying all over the place looking for me; got a lot of territory to search. I'll be in good shape until those three blind mice down there start talking.

  The tractor reached the top of the ramp and Pancho steered past a knot of blue-coveralled construction workers, heading for a quiet, empty spot along the base of the dome. She figured it would take the better part of half an hour to get the laser going and cut a reasonably sized hole in the dome's metal wall. Better get into the softsuit before then, she told herself. Unless you want to breathe vacuum.