Chapter Nine

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1

"Let me get this straight, Mr. Hunnicut," the President said carefully.

"You're telling me that the sole result of the shutdown of the power broadcast is the plunging of seven federal installations into darkness? That two unauthorized and unidentified demand points are continuing to draw power?"

"That's about it, sir. Six of the installations are on emergency power or back on the New England Net—all but Caine Island—"

"Perhaps I'm tired, Mr. Hunnicut. How can these two bootleg receivers continue to draw power if you're no longer generating power?"

"Sir, that's the point I've been trying to explain. The station is still generating—and still broadcasting. When I shut down transmission—or tried to—the breakers arced over, welded the circuits open. I'm broadcasting whether I like it or not—and the same goes for the generators. I can't shut them down. The last man I sent in to manually disconnect is in the infirmary now, undergoing artificial respiration. We can't even get into the generator room. The whole thing is hot."

"Mr. Hunnicut, it appears to me matters at your station have gotten badly out of hand!"

"Mr. President, as chief engineer here I take full responsibility—but what's going on is abnormal—fantastically so! I don't pretend to understand it—but I can assure you that this is more than just a simple malfunction. Someone—or something—is manipulating the station—"

"Mr. Hunnicut, this it not the time to slide off into mysticism! I want the broadcast of power from your station terminated at once, by any means at your command. I hope that's quite clear?"

"Yes, sir, but—"

"That's all, Mr. Hunnicut." The President's face was dark with anger as he racked the phone. He swiveled on the men standing beside his desk.

"General," he addressed a compactly built officer in army green, "how long will it take you to move a battalion of troops into the Upper Pasmaquoddie station?"

"Two hours from the moment you so order, sir."

"Better get moving, General." He turned to a lean, white-haired man in self-effacing gray. "Mr. Thorpe, have the personnel you've selected stand by to cooperate with the army as we discussed. And in the meantime, let me know the instant your instruments indicate that my instructions have been complied with." The physicist nodded and scurried away. The President looked at the Secretary of the Interior, pale and owlish in the predawn.

"Funny—I wasn't at all sure that shutting down the broadcast was the correct course, in spite of Mr. Hunnicut's persuasiveness—but now that Mr. Hunnicut seems to have changed his mind, I'm damned if I'm going to change mine!"

2

Outside the office of the Governor, Caine Island Federal Penitentiary, a portable, five-KW generator chugged stolidly, powering a string of wan lights hastily rigged along the corridor. Inside the office, the governor gripped the telephone until his knuckles paled. He was shouting, not solely because of the booming of the storm beyond the thick walls.

"Possibly you still haven't grasped the situation here, Governor Cook! There are twelve hundred and thirty-one maximum-security federal prisoners housed in this facility, which is now totally without power and light! The PA system is inoperative. My guard force is scattered all over the prison, without light or instructions. Incidentally, the walls here are rather thick; with the air-conditioning equipment inoperative, the air is rapidly growing foul. At the time the power was cut, three hundred of these men were in the dining hall; over two hundred were at their duty posts in various parts of the facility. By the grace of God, almost seven hundred of them were secured in their cells. They're there now—in total darkness. However, the locks in the prison are electrically operated. When the power failed, they automatically went to the open position. When the men discover that—well, I leave the results to your imagination." As Hardman paused for breath, the voice of the governor of the state of Florida spoke calmly: "I understand the situation, Jim, and believe me, this step wouldn't have been taken had there been any alternative—"

"You sound as though the power were cut intentionally!"

"It was necessary to shut down the transmitter, Jim. The President personally notified me, and believe me, the reasons he gave—"

"Damn the reasons he gave! Unless I have power here in an hour, Caine Island will be the scene of the worst outbreak of prison violence in penal history! I'm sitting on a powder keg with the fuse lit—"

"That's enough, Jim!" the state governor cut in sharply. "I have my instructions, you have yours. You're in charge of Caine Island; take whatever action is necessary to keep matters under control. That's what you're there for!"

"Now, look here, Governor—" Hardman's voice faded. He was talking into a dead receiver. He slammed the instrument down, swiveled to stare across the dim-lit office at Lester Pale. In the absence of the hum of the air circulators, the wail and boom of the storm seemed ready to tear the walls away.

"He hung up on me! After telling me that the power system was deliberately shut down! And I'm supposed to keep matters under control, he says!"

"Sir, I've managed to contact a dozen or so of the guard force, including Lieutenant Trent. He's issued hand torches to the men, and they're out rounding up as many others as they can find. In a few minutes we should have the majority assembled in the barracks—"

"And then what? We huddle here and wait for the prisoners to realize they have the freedom of the prison?"

"Lieutenant Trent is standing by for your orders, sir," Pale said carefully. Hardman rubbed his hands up and down across his face, then sat erect.

"Thanks, Lester," he said. "I'm through making a fool of myself now, I hope. All right, we have a situation on our hands. Tell Trent to come up. I suppose our best bet is to concede the entire cell complex and establish ourselves here in the Admin wing. We should have enough men to control access…" He stopped talking, cocked his head. In the distance there was a faint popping sound.

"Gunfire!" Lester whirled to the door as it burst open. A man in guards' blue slammed halfway across the room before he came to a halt, breathing raggedly. He held a pistol in his right hand, pressing the side of the gun against his left shoulder. Blackish-red blood ran down his wrist and made a blot on his sleeve.

"My God, Governor," he blurted. "They've busted out; they shot the lieutenant, and—"

"I'll tell the rest," a hoarse voice said. A tall, rangy man in prison uniform, with weatherbeaten skin and stiff gray hair, came in through the open door. The guard-issue gun in his hand was pointed carelessly toward Hardman. The guard whirled with an inarticulate sound, bringing the gun around—

The tall prisoner twitched the gun to cover him, squeezed the trigger. There was a sharp whac-whac! The sound of the dope pellets hitting flesh was clearly audible. The guard took a step back with rubbery legs which folded suddenly. He hit the rug hard and lay still.

"I'm not here to mess around, Governor," Max Wiston said. "Here's what I want from you…"

3

Grayle awoke with his face in icy water, the taste of mud in his mouth. For a timeless moment his mind groped for orientation: listened for the twang of bows, for the boom of cannon, the crackle of small-arms fire; for war cries, or the screams of the wounded, the clash of steel on steel, the thud of horses' hooves…

But there was only the beating of the rain, hitting the mud with a sound like the rattle of muffled drums. Grayle sat up. Pain stabbed at his ribs. The girl lay across his chest, unconscious. He touched her face: it was cold as ice.

It took Grayle ten minutes to lever torn metal aside, extricate the girl from the shattered craft, and carry her across a furrowed quagmire to the inadequate shelter of the trees which the lightning flashes revealed. He saw the path taken by the plane after it had struck the crown of a tall oak, plowed its way through massed foliage shedding wings and empennage in the process, to impact in a plowed field. It was a miracle the girl had survived.

He was forced to lie down then. The rain fell, the wind moaned in the trees…

Lights, and men's voices. Grayle got to his feet with difficulty, feeling broken ribs grate. A line of lights showed on a ridge half a mile distant: parked vehicles, he guessed. The lights were moving across the field toward him. He thrust aside the breath-stopping pain, forced his mind to focus on the situation: the path of the small craft had been followed on radar, no doubt—but they couldn't be sure whether he had landed safely, crashed, or flown on at treetop level. And that, perhaps, gave him a chance—if he moved quickly.

He bent over Anne, feeling over her for apparent injuries. There were many small cuts and abrasions, but it was impossible to say if she were seriously hurt. She needed medical help, quickly. He looked across toward the approaching lights—and at other lights, advancing now from the opposite direction. They had thrown a cordon around the area, were closing the noose from all sides. Time was running out. He must slip through them now, or not at all.

He scooped the unconscious girl up in his arms, picked a direction in which the lights seemed more widely spaced, and set off across the boggy ground, keeping his course between two lights. Once he dropped low as the beam of a powerful light traversed the field; but the same light showed him a drainage ditch marked by a growth of weeds. He angled across to it, slid down into knee-deep, muddy, swirling water. He flattened himself against the bank as two men passed by a few feet above, one on each side of the ditch. He followed the ditch for another hundred feet, then left it and altered course forty-five degrees to the right, toward the road. He came up onto the pavement fifty yards behind the last of the three cars in line, moved up, keeping to the ditch. Two men in rainproofs stood in the middle of the road between the first and second cars in line. Both carried rifles under their arms. Grayle came level with the last car, a four-door sedan with police markings and a tall antenna. The courtesy light glared as he opened the front door, slid Anne onto the seat. Her head lolled on her shoulder. Pink blood seeped down her wet face. Her breathing was regular but shallow.

Something on the back seat caught Grayle's eye: a snub-nosed sub-machine gun. There was also a double-barreled shotgun, boxes of ammunition, and a web belt hung with fragmentation grenades. Grayle caught up the belt, strapped it on.

There was a shout; the two men in the road were running toward the car. Grayle crossed the ditch, came up against a barbed-wire fence; he broke the strands with his hands and ran.

Half a mile from the road, he paused, raised his head, pivoting slowly, as if searching the wind for a scent. Then he set off at a steady run to the west-northwest.

4

Zabisky slowed as the headlights of the Auburn picked up a dark shape blocking the road ahead. He halted twenty feet from a big olive-drab half-track pulled across the narrow pavement. A man came forward, swinging a lantern; Zabisky lowered the window.

"Road's closed," the man said. He wore a military-type steel helmet and carried a slung rifle.

"What's the matter, road washed out?" Zabisky inquired.

"Convoy coming through," the man said. He huddled in his green slicker, water dripping from the helmet rim. "Say, that's a wild car you got there. What is it, one of them foreign jobs?"

"Naw—made in Oklahoma. Listen, bud, we got to get through, see. We're on like important business."

The man shook his head, shifted the rifle to the other shoulder. "Nothing doing. You got to go back to Pineville, take state-road eleven—"

"We got no time for that—"

"Never mind, John," Falconer said. He leaned across. "How long will the road be closed, soldier?"

"Beats me, mister."

"What's going on?"

"Hell, who tells us anything? We get called out in the middle of this lousy storm, and—"

"O.K., knock it off, dogface." Another man had come over from the side of the road, a big fellow with a staff sergeant's stripes on his helmet. "What do you think this is, a Boy Scout jamboree?" He turned a black-browed look on the car and its occupants. "All right, you been told. Now get that heap turned around and get out of here before I have to get tough." Zabisky gave the sergeant a long look.

"How about it, Mr. Falconer," he said loudly. "You want me to call your pal the general on the car phone?"

Falconer smiled slightly. "That won't be necessary, John." He had been glancing at the map. "Sergeant, it's a long way back to route eleven, and it doesn't seem to be going in the right direction—"

"Things are tough all over. Now, pull out of here like I told you—and you can call your pal the general and tell him I said so!" Falconer opened his door and stepped out. The headlights threw a tall shadow across the curtain of rain as he came around the front of the car. The sergeant waited, his thumbs hooked in the pistol belt around his stomach. Falconer came up to him and without pausing drove his fist in a six-inch jab into the man's belly. The sergeant made an explosive sound and doubled over, fell to his knees. The soldier behind him gave a yell, fumbled his rifle from his shoulder in time for Falconer to catch it, twitch it away, and toss it into the ditch. Then he stepped in and slammed a short right hook to the startled lad's jaw. He tumbled down against the side of the car.

"Hey, you didn't need to slug the kid," Zabisky said. He had scrambled out of the car and grabbed the sergeant's pistol from his belt.

"A nice bruise on the jaw will help him when he talks to his C.O.," Falconer said. "Let's go." He started toward the big vehicle blocking the road.

"Hey—where you going?" Zabisky called.

"This is as far as we can go by ordinary car," Falconer said. "We were lucky to find better transportation waiting for us."

"Are you kidding, brother, talking about heisting a tank off the army—"

"You don't need to come along, John. Take the car and go back. But I suggest you abandon it at the first opportunity. The sergeant will give a detailed description of it as soon as he catches his breath." Zabisky stared at him. "Why not tell me what this is all about? The whole thing is nuts—and this is the nuttiest item yet!" He jerked a thumb at the half-track.

Falconer shook his head. "Good-bye, John," he said. "I'm grateful for your help—"

Zabisky made a throwing-away motion. "Forget it," he said. "I told you I was in with you; I ain't quitting now."

Seated in the armored vehicle, Falconer looked over the panel, pressed the starting button. The big engine roared to life. He put it in gear, rolled forward, down into the ditch, up the other side, flattening a fence. He corrected course slightly, then settled down to steering the big machine up across sloping ground to the dark mass of the hills ahead. 5

Chief Engineer Daniel Hunnicut, his operations chief, Sam Webb, and two maintenance engineers stood in the brilliantly lit passage outside the switch-gear room of the Pasmaquoddie Power Station. They were dressed in heavy rubber suits, gauntlets, and boots; each carried breathing apparatus. Hunnicut held a black, waxed carton firmly gripped to his chest. The engineers clutched coils of heavy wire. Tools were belted about their waists.

"I don't know how much time we'll have," Hunnicut said into the lip mike inside his breathing helmet. "It's hotter than the main bearings of hell in there. You all know what to do. No waste motion, no false moves. We place the charges, fix detonators, and get out. Any questions?" The three men shook their heads.

"Then let's go." Hunnicut undogged the heavy door, swung it outward. A blast of light and heat struck at him, scorching even through the insulated suit. At once, the cooling units went into high-speed operation. The chief engineer led the way across the high-ceilinged room, past a gray-bright patch of solidified metal snaking across the floor to the base of the main breaker bank. He placed the carton on the floor; the wax was melting, trickling down the sides. His fingers in the thick gauntlets were clumsy, tearing away the paper wrappings. He lifted out the cigar-shaped charges of explosive, linked together in clusters of four, handed them to Webb, who swiftly inserted them at the previously selected points around the base of the massive apparatus. One of the engineers began attaching linking wires. The other busied himself laying a heavy cable across the floor.

"That's all of them," Hunnicut said. Webb nodded, tucking the last charge in place. The engineers linked up their wires, rose to their feet, looking to Hunnicut.

"Out," he said. The three men went past him to the door. The two engineers passed through into the corridor. Webb paused to glance back. He froze, pointed past Hunnicut. The latter turned. A coil of smoke was rising from the insulated wire attached to the lowest cluster of explosives. Hunnicut took a step toward it. Webb yelled, jumped after his chief as the wire burned through. The charge dropped to the floor. Hunnicut took a quick step, bent to pick up the smoking charge—

The men in the passage were thrown from their feet by the terrific, booming blast. Acoustical panels dropped from the ceiling. Through the dust boiling from the doorless opening to the switch-gear room, they caught a glimpse of a tattered thing of rags that fell away from the scorched and shattered wall opposite the entry.

Later examination identified Webb by the fillings in a surviving jaw fragment. No recognizable portion of Hunnicut was ever recovered. Power continued to flow from the generators to the great antenna arrays of the Upper Pasmaquoddie Power Station.

For two weeks Gralgrathor has lain on a bed of stretched hides in the great hall of Björnholm, taking no food, swallowing only the mixture of wine and water that the old crone Siv presses on him before she and the other serving women perform the daily ritual of stripping away the dried, salt-impregnated cloths from the massive burn areas, tearing away along with them the day's accumulation of dead tissue, after which they smear reeking bearfat over him and rebandage him.

On the fifteenth day, he rises for the first time. The servants find him on the floor and lift him back to his bed. Two days later, he walks unaided to the door. Thereafter, he walks a little each day, swinging his arms, stretching the healing skin until the sweat of pain stands across his forehead. During the following days he practices with his weapons until he has regained a measure of his former skill. In the evenings, he roams the hills with the hound Odinstooth at his heels. During this time he says no more than a dozen words a day. He tolerates no reference to his dead wife and child, or to the were-demon who slew them on his doorstep. A month has passed when Gralgrathor climbs the steep escarpment to the ravine where the boat had lain. He finds a vast crater of broken rock, already overgrown with wild berry vines. He stands, looking down at it for a long time. Then he makes his way back to his hall.

The next day he calls his household together and makes distribution of his lands and possessions among his servants. With only the aging Hulf as companion, and carrying only a leather-thronged hammer as weapon, he sets off on foot along the shore to the south.

Chapter Ten

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1

Three men sat in a staff car parked beside the road opposite the exotic-looking civilian car abandoned by the hijackers. In the front seat were Captain Zwicky of the U.S. First Army and Lieutenant Harmon of the Florida State Police, in mufti. In the rear, Sergeant Milton Gassman slumped, his round face waxy-gray in the yellow glow of the dome light.

"Let's hear that one more time, Gassman," Zwicky said crisply. He spoke loudly, over the drum of the rain. "You and Bogen were manning your posts, a car with two unarmed civilians drives up, and then—what?"

"The guy tricked me, like I said, Cap'n. He talks nice, he looks harmless—"

"You're sure about the face?" Harmon cut in. "No scars? None at all?"

"I'm sure. I tell you, the guy was baby-faced, not even sunburned—"

"But his hair was gray?"

"Yeah, gray. I thought at first he was blond, but I seen him good in the light. But he's no old duffer. He had a wallop like a mule." Gassman rubbed his ribs gently.

"That's our boy," Harmon said. "I don't know how he covers so much ground so fast, but it's him, all right. We'll get him now. He can't be far from here in twenty minutes. A copter—"

"It's not so easy," Zwicky said. "He took off cross-country, and in this weather no copter is flying."

"Where he can go, we can follow him! He took your half-track; O.K.; so we follow him in a half-track—"

"Sure—I'll have one here in another ten minutes. That gives your man a half-hour start. If he knows how to handle a track—and I've got a hunch he does—he'll hold that lead. And up where he's headed, there are plenty of places to get lost. He'll ditch the track and—"

"You saying he's too much for the U.S. Army?"

"I'm just saying hold your horses, Mr. Harmon. I had a phone call that told me to take you along, but it didn't say anything about turning command of the company over to you. I have men and equipment to think of, in addition to a little chore of convoy escort the colonel kind of hoped I'd see to."

"Sure, sure, I'm not trying to tell you your business. But it gravels me to have to sit here and let the cop-killing son of a bitch slip through my fingers!"

"When did he kill a cop? My information was the guy broke out of jail, that's all."

"O.K., you want to get technical, he just roughed up a few cops, maybe they'll live, it's all the same to this boy."

Captain Zwicky looked hard at Harmon. "You take your job pretty personally, don't you?"

"You might say I got a personal stake in this deal."

"Just remember you're a long way out of your jurisdiction. And this is army business."

"Yeah, sure. I won't get in your way, Zwicky."

"Better make that 'Captain Zwicky' as long as you're attached to my command, Harmon."

Harmon smiled sardonically, sketched a two-finger salute—

"We don't play games with the military courtesies in this outfit, Harmon," the captain snapped. Harmon's heavy face blanked, tried a grin, then a frown. He sat up in the seat, yanked his lapels straight.

"O.K., excuse me, for Chrissake. I'm not pushing. I'm just along for the ride."

"That's right. I advise you to remember it."

In a heavy silence, they waited for the arrival of the half-track. 2

Twelve miles to the north-northwest, Colonel Ajax Pyler of the Third Armored Division, First Army, stood with a trio of regimental staff officers in the scant shelter of a big pine tree on the long slope of ground rising toward the blazing lights of the power station half a mile distant. On the road, the convoy, with dimmed headlights, stretched for five hundred yards back into the darkness. Cold rain drove at the colonel's face, blurred the lenses of the binoculars he held trained on the power station.

"Everything looks normal, Cal," he said, handing the glasses to a burly major beside him.

"I still don't get it, Colonel," the major said. "Sending a regiment of armor in here… what are we supposed to do, guard the place? Take a look and go home? Jesus!" He wiped rainwater from his forehead with a finger and shook his head. "Sometimes I think they're all nuts up topside."

"I'm in the dark too, Cal. My orders were to position the regiment and stand by, that's all."

"Call this a position?" The major waved at the line of vehicles.

"As far as I know, we aren't expected to attack," the colonel said with a bleak smile. He clapped the shorter man on the back. "Cheer up, Cal. We all needed the exercise—"

"Sir!" the communication tech sergeant was at the colonel's side with a field telephone. "Division on the line."

"Colonel Pyler," the officer said, turning his back to the pelting rain. He listened, frowning.

"Yes, yes… I understand. About ten minutes, I'd say." He looked toward the lights of the power station as he handed the instrument back to the comm man.

"All right, gentlemen," he addressed the officers standing by. "Position your units around the periphery of a half-mile circle centered on the station—guns pointing in. Cal—detach six men under a company officer, have them stand by to escort a party of civilians in." He made a motion of dismissal as several officers started to speak at once. "That's it, gentlemen. Move out." Accompanied by the sergeant, Pyler walked back to the road, went along the line of looming light and medium tanks to the weapons carrier where his driver waited. At his instruction, the driver turned, drove back to the rear of the column. Three men in civilian clothes and raincoats stepped out of an olive-drab staff car and came over.

"All right, Mr. Crick, gentlemen, we're to proceed." The civilians, two of whom carried heavy canvas equipment kits, climbed into the high-wheeled vehicle. It turned, rolled back up past the column. At the head of the line, two jeeps waited, each carrying four men. They fell in behind. In silence the three cars proceeded along the road, following a gentle curve up the gradual slope. Ahead, a gate flanked by massive brick walls blocked the way.

While the headlights dazzled on the steel panels, two men stepped down and went forward. There was a telephone box mounted on the wall. One of the men, a lieutenant with a slung carbine, spoke into the phone. Almost at once the gates slid back. The men reentered the jeep and the three-vehicle convoy rolled ahead.

The road led straight up a number-three grade to the high, blank walls of the power plant and the towering, light-spangled antenna farm spreading up the hillside behind it. A number of men were standing before the lighted entry to the big building. Pyler halted the ton-and-a-half and climbed down.

"Thank God you're here, Colonel," the first of the men on foot blurted as he came up. "It's been a nightmare ever since the explosion, phones out, automatic systems out, instruments out—"

"Hold on, sir," the colonel cut him off. "Better take it from the beginning—and let's get my technical people in on this." He waited until the three civilians had gathered around. By then three more men had arrived from the plant. The rain swirled and churned around them; in the glare of headlights, a million tiny crystalline tulips sprouted on the glistening pavement.

"I'm Prescott, maintenance chief," the plant man said. "Hunnicut left me in charge when he and Webb went in with explosives to blast the switch gear out of the circuit. It was all fused down, you know. Wilson went in earlier, and—but I suppose you know about that; Hunnicut reported it. Wilson died, by the way. Anyway, something went wrong, we don't know what. Hunnicut and Webb were blown to atoms—for nothing. Everything's still running full-blast—"

"You say Hunnicut is dead?" one of the civilians cut in.

"That's right. And Sam Webb, our ops chief—"

"All right, let's get down to specifics," another of the newcomers said briskly. "Give us a breakdown on exactly what's been going on here. All we've had is some garbled story that the generators won't let themselves be shut down—"

"That's not garbled, brother, that's the God's truth. And…" The excited man went on with his account of the events of the last three hours. The three imported experts listened in silence, with only an occasional terse question.

"…don't know what else to try," Prescott concluded. "At every point where we might have broken the circuits, the gear has fused and the surrounding areas are electrified—hot as firecrackers! We can't even get close!"

"Well?" Pyler demanded of his crew. "What about it? If Prescott's right, any ideas you may have had about walking in and throwing switches are out the window."

"I'd like to see some of this for myself," the tallest of the three civilians said. "Not that I doubt Mr. Prescott's word…"

"Go ahead; you'll find just what I said. But for God's sake wear protective gear!"

"Oh, I don't think that will be necessary—"

"Do as he suggests, Mr. Tadlor," Pyler ordered. With an amused smile, Tadlor complied, donning gear from the kit he carried. His two colleagues did likewise.

"My orders are to stand by outside the building until you gentlemen give me an all-clear," Pyler growled. ''Make it fast." He turned to Prescott. "How close can I bring my vehicles?"

"So far there haven't been any manifestations outside the building proper, except at the switch houses," the man said doubtfully. Pyler gave an order; the cars pulled forward, the men walking beside them. Under the loom of the high portico, they halted. Tadlor and his aides, with Prescott, started up the steps. The doors swung abruptly open. A man staggered out, clutching himself. The sleeves of his shirt were shredded, and blood ran down his arms and dripped from his elbows. There was a scarlet blister as big as the palm of a hand along the side of his neck and jaw.

"Nagle! What happened?" Prescott rushed forward to support the man. Behind him, two more men appeared, supporting a limp female form between them.

"The whole place… hot…" Nagle crumpled. Tadlor stared at the man, went past him and up the steps, his two men behind him. Prescott called,

"Colonel, don't let them—"

Tadlor's hand went out to the door. A blue spark crackled, jumped to meet him. For an instant a halo danced about the tall, lean man, then he made a comical leap into the air, fell sprawling, clownlike. His two men halted, then ran forward, bent over him. One straightened, looked down with wide eyes in a clay-pale face. "He's dead."

"Get him back to the convoy, into a respirator!" Pyler called, motioning swiftly to the armed soldiers from the jeep.

One of the men who had helped the girl from the building turned quickly, caught Pyler's arm. "Don't try," he croaked. "Too late."

"What do you mean?" Prescott snapped. "You saw what happened to that fellow…" The man tilted his head at Tadlor's inert body.

"But—I still have forty-odd people inside—"

"Not anymore, Mr. Prescott. You left just in time. The place went crazy a few seconds after you went out. Dick and Van and I were the last to get clear. We found Jill just inside. I think she's dead. And so will anybody be who tries to go into that hellhole!"

"Into the vehicles, fast!" Pyler snapped. "Everybody!" He waited until the last man was aboard, then climbed into the weapons carrier. Behind him, Prescott leaned forward.

"Colonel—what are you going to do?"

"Tadlor's approach didn't work," he said. "So we'll try more direct methods."

"But—what… ?" Pyler looked back at the man, his eyes wild in a pale, round face. "We'll see what effect a few rounds of one-hundred-millimeter through the front door, have on—on whatever it is we're fighting," he finished grimly.

3

The twin engines of the stolen half-track roared; the tracks churned futilely. The rear of the heavy vehicle sank deeper into the mud while the front wheels remained locked in the trap of broken rock that had halted the slow upward climb.

"This is as far as this bucket goes," Zabisky said. In the pale glow of the instrumental lights his round face shone with sweat. "Now what?" Falconer unstrapped, swung open the steel door, stepped down into a soup of muck and broken rock. He scanned the horizon all around, then reached back in the vehicle to switch off the hooded driving lights. In the abrupt darkness, a faint glow was visible in the sky through the trees clothing the slope to the left.

"A little reconnaissance," Falconer said. He made his way up through brush to the ridge, looked down across the spread of dark countryside at a rectilinear arrangement of lights perhaps two miles away. Other, smaller lights ringed the central concentration in a loose circle a mile in diameter. Zabisky arrived, puffing. "Brother, you move fast in the dark." He stared in the direction Falconer was looking.

"What's that? Looks like some kind of plant. This what we been looking for?"

"No."

"Funny place for a factory, out in the sticks fifty miles from noplace." Light winked brilliantly below: once, twice, three times. Some of the lights of the central installation faded.

"Hey—what gives?" Zabisky grunted. A dull carrump, carrump… carrump floated up to them.

"Artillery fire," Falconer said.

"Look, pal, you ain't here to get mixed up with the army, I hope?"

"By no means."

"Maybe you better tell me what this is all about, huh? I don't want to get the U.S. infantry mad at me. I'm pretty dumb, but there's got to be a connection: you busting a gut to get to this patch of noplace just when somebody starts shooting. What are you, some kind of foreign spy? Or what?"

Falconer turned to Zabisky. "You'd better go back, John. I'm going on from here on foot—alone."

"Hey, wait a minute," Zabisky protested. "Just like that, you're going to walk off into the woods and—"

"That's right, John. You can make it back to the road by dawn."

"Have a heart, mister," Zabisky protested. "I come this far. What's all this?

What's the shooting? Why—"

"Good-bye, John." Falconer turned and started upslope, following a faint footpath, angling away from the lights below. Zabisky called after him, but he ignored his shouts.

4

"You're a fool if you think I'm going to help you, Max," Hardman said.

"Don't call me 'Max'; we're not on that kind of terms." The prisoner smiled a gaunt smile. He was sitting at ease in the big leather chair beside Hardman's desk, puffing one of Hardman's cigarettes. The muzzle of the big-caliber solid-slug pistol rested on the desk, aimed at Hardman's chest.

"It's 'Mr. Wiston'—or just 'Wiston.' And you'll do like I say, Warden." He had a deep, gravelly voice, soft but penetrating.

Hardman shook his head. "I couldn't get you out of the prison even if I wanted to, Max," he said easily. "And I don't want to."

"Warden, you think I wouldn't shoot you as soon as look at you?" Wiston's voice was mild, his tone curious.

"Sure, you'd shoot me if you thought it would buy you your freedom. But you know it would all be over for you if you shot me in cold blood. I'm your one chance to get clear—you think. But you're wrong—"

"For God's sake, Governor," Lester Pale whispered from the chair against the wall where Wiston had ordered him to sit. "You convince him of that and he'll kill you out of hand!"

"No he won't," Hardman said. "He knows I'm the only one who can help him—if not to escape, at least to bail him out of some of the trouble he's gotten himself into tonight."

"Warden, you talk too much," Wiston said. "I'll tell you just how it is: I've waited ten years for this chance, I'm riding it all the way. Maybe it's true what you say about all the fancy safety gadgets and automatic traps and that—but I'd rather be dead than stay in this box any longer. We're walking out of here, me and you—win, lose, or draw. So maybe you better do what you can to get those gates open. Cause I'm not going back in that cellblock alive, ever. And if I have to die, I'm taking you along, I promise you that, Warden."

"He means it, Governor," Pale said.

"The pansy's right," Wiston said, smiling. "Now, let's get moving. I'm getting restless. I want to smell that fresh air, Warden, see that open sky, feel that rain on my face." He stood abruptly, motioning with the gun. Hardman didn't move. Wiston swung the gun to one side and without looking fired a round into the wall two feet from Lester Pale's chair.

"Next one hits meat, Warden."

Hardman stood.

"This won't work, Max," he said. "It's hopeless."

"Sure. Let's go."

In the corridor, sounds of distant shouting were audible.

"I set 'em to raising hell down in the services wing," Wiston said. "That'll keep your screws tied up whilst you and me try the back way."

"What back way?"

"The water gate, Warden. That was always the weak spot here at Caine. Could never dope the tunnel, though. But you'll get me through. You'll say all the right things and get me through."

"Then what? The road only leads to Gull Key—"

"There's a lot of water out there, Warden. I'm a strong swimmer. And I know these waters. I fished amongst these islands for many a year before ever they built the prison. Don't worry about me, Warden. I'll be fine, just fine."

"In this storm you'll drown before you've swum a hundred yards."

"Don't talk, Warden. Just lead the way."

In silence, Hardman pushed through the stairwell door. In darkness, he descended, feeling his way; Wiston's footsteps followed directly behind him. At the bottom, he felt over the wall, found the door that opened into the Processing Room.

"There may be some of my men in here," he said. "I hope you have sense enough not to start shooting, Max."

"We'll see."

Hardman opened the door; it swung in on darkness.

"Now what?" he said. "Neither of us can see—" Wiston's fingers touched him, hooked his belt. "You know the layout, Warden. Just keep going. When I'm unhappy, you'll hear this gun go off. Or will you? You know what they say about the one that kills you." Hardman tried to remember the layout of the room. The personnel doors were to the right… about there. He moved forward cautiously, the other man at his heels. His hands touched brickwork. He explored, found the cold steel of the door. It swung open at his touch. Chill air moved around his face. The sounds of the storm were louder now.

"Good work, Warden. I can smell the Gulf."

"This is the garage," Hardman said. "The only exit is through the big doors. They're power-operated. This is the end of the line. Max—" A beam of light speared out from the left. Hardman whirled, shouted,

"Douse that, you damn fool!"

The boom of the gun racketed and echoed in the enclosed space. The flashlight dropped to the floor and rolled, throwing its beam across the oil-stained concrete floor. There was a heavy, complicated sound of a body falling against the side of a vehicle, sliding down to the floor, a gargly rattle of exhaled air.

"Don't move. Warden," Wiston said calmly. "I'm going to pick up the light." Hardman heard soft, quick steps. The light swung up, flicked across him, on across to the spot where a man in coveralls lay on his face between two armored personnel carriers in a widening pool of black-red blood.

"Too bad," Wiston said. "I didn't mean that feller no harm, but he shouldn't of put the light on me thataway." He shone the light on the big garage doors, up one side, across the top, down the other.

"O.K., your time, Warden. Get 'em open."

"I told you—"

"Reckon there's a manual rig someplace. Better find it."

"Find it yourself, Wiston."

"You're a funny one, Warden. You saw me, just now; you know I'm not bashful about using the gun. You figure you're bulletproof?"

"I'm here to keep cold-blooded killers like you out of circulation, Wiston, not to lead you outside and wave bye-bye."

Wiston laughed. "You're a harder nut than you look, old man. But I wonder, are you as hard as you talk?" The convict held the flashlight beam on Hardman's right knee. "I count five. Then I put a bullet where the light is. After that, I ask you again." He cleared his throat, spat, began to count…

Hardman waited until the count of four, another half-second, then pivoted, dropped toward the floor as the gun boomed. A red-hot sledgehammer struck him behind the right knee, flipped him. His face hit hard, skidding on the concrete. There seemed to be a spike driven into the back of his leg. He tried to draw a breath to yell, tried to get his hand on the spike to pull it out—

"Stop flopping, Warden. I should of killed you for that trick, but you're just winged."

The light was dazzling in Hardman's eyes, growing and receding. Blood pounded in his head. Sickness swelled inside him. Pain rolled out in white-hot waves from his shattered knee. He hardly heard Wiston's voice. He lay on his side, his cheek against the floor, clutching his leg.

"Now, you better just tell me about that door, Warden…" The man was standing over him; he saw the dusty, dark-blue legs of the prison trousers, the sturdy shoes, through a veil of agony.

"Go… hell…" he managed.

The feet went away. There were sounds, thumping, the rattle of metal, curses. Then a grunt of satisfaction; a steady ratcheting noise started up, accompanied by heavy breathing. Cold wet air was sweeping in across the floor; the shrill of wind and the drumming of rain were abruptly louder. The ratcheting ceased.

Hardman tried to roll over on his back, succeeded in banging his head against the floor. He forced his hands, slippery with blood, away from his wound, pushed himself to a sitting position. The man Wiston had shot lay ten feet from him, visible by the light of the flash which Wiston had placed on the floor. The garage door had been raised a foot and a half. Wiston had picked up the light, was sliding under the door. He cleared it, got to his feet, moving away.

Abruptly, bright, hard flashes of light winked, the stutter of automatic weapons racketed in the drive well, casting shadows that moved like silent-movie actors. Lying on the floor just inside the door, Hardman saw a man walking toward him. The man slowed, knelt slowly, fell forward on his face. Other men were coming; bright lights glared, reflecting from wet pavement. Voices called out. Wiston lay on his face a yard from Hardman. His hands groped over the pavement. He lifted his head and looked into Hardman's eyes.

"Someplace," he said. "Sometime, there's got… got to be… be… some justice…" His face hit the pavement.

A foot turned Wiston over. The rain fell on his wide-open eyes.

"Did you get that?" someone said. "He goes out talking about justice. A punk like that."

There was something that Hardman wanted to say then, something of vast importance that he had tried all his life to understand and that now, in this instant, was clear to him. But when he opened his mouth, darkness filled his brain and swept him away into a black maelstrom of roaring waters. 5

Private Obers, Ewen J., ASN 3783746353, of the Third Company, First Battalion, paused in the lee of one of the big trees to wipe the icy rainwater from his face and try one more time to adjust the collar of the G.I. raincoat to prevent the cold trickle down the back of his neck. He propped his M-3 carbine against the tree, undid the top button with cold-numbed fingers, turned up the collar of the field jacket under the coat, rebuttoned the coat. It felt colder and clammier than ever, but it was the best he could do. He considered pulling off his boots to empty the water from them; but what the hell; they'd just fill up again. Every third step was into a gully with water anywhere from ankle-to knee-deep. Obers peered through the darkness for signs of the platoon. Pitcher had told them to keep it closed up while they worked their way upslope from the road where they'd left the six-by's. He hadn't seen Dodge or Shapiro, the men on his left and right, since they'd hit the rough ground. But at least you couldn't get lost; not if you just kept climbing.

Obers wished briefly that he were back in the barracks, racked out on his bunk, reading a magazine and eating a candy bar; then he slung the carbine and stepped out to face the rain anew.

There was a movement above him.

"Shapiro?" His call was muffled by the storm. There was no answer; but above, a dark shape moved, low to the ground, big—too big to be Shapiro—or Dodge; and why was the guy crawling? Obers halted, feeling a sudden prickling at the back of his neck—not that he believed in spooks…

"All right, who's there?" he yelled against the rain. No answer. The big shape—well over six feet long—flowed downward toward him. For an instant, Obers thought he caught a gleam of light reflected from yellow-green eyes. He swung the carbine around, jacked the loading lever, aimed it from the hip, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; the trigger was locked hard. Panic flooded up in Obers. Safety's on! The words popped into his mind; but his finger was locked on the trigger, squeezing until the metal cut into his flesh. And the dark shape was rising, flowing outward and down toward him.

In the last split second, he tried to scream, but there was no breath in his lungs. Then the weight struck him, threw him down and back. He felt something icy cold rake across his throat, felt a remote pain that was hardly noticeable in the greater agony of the need for air. Something scarlet red dazzled before his eyes, grew until it was a sunburst that filled the world, then slowly faded into an endless darkness.

In a clearing in the forest stands a tall man with a mane of flame-red hair, dressed in garments of green leather and a surcoat of buff ornamented with a white bird with spread wings. A two-handed sword with a jeweled pommel hangs at his side. A bow is slung at his back. He wears a heavy gauntlet on his left hand, on which is perched a white hawk, from whose head the man has just removed a hood of soft leather. With a lift of his wrist, the man tosses the bird high; it gives a piercing cry and circles high into the air.

"My lord's power over a wild bird is a thing to wonder at," murmurs one of a huddle of serfs watching from concealment.

"Indeed, 'tis a matter passing Christian understanding," another comments.

"I've heard it said," says another, "that the bird is a were-creature, a man enchanted."

"Aye, 'tis his own brother, some say—"

"Nay, not his brother; him he slew in battle before the eyes of all his men—"

"But by the virtue of Christ, the slain brother rose and walked again—"

"—and 'twas then he enchanted him into the form of the white falcon—"

"Old wives' tales," says the first man who spoke, a dark man with strange yellow eyes. "My Lord Lohengrin is no magician, but a true knecht—"

"Bah! What do you know?" speaks up an oldster with a straggly yellow beard. "I served him in your granger's time, and with my own eyes oft have I seen him quaff deep of the waters of eternal youth. For does he not—aye, and the bird as well—appear today as he did then, when I was a lusty stripling—"

"You lusty, Brecht? When was that, before or after the Flood of Noah?" When the furtive laughter dies, a man who has not spoken tugs at his ear portentously. "Aye, laugh," he says. "But in truth you are all wide of the mark. The bird is no man ensorceled."

The others look at him with slack jaws.

" 'Tis a woman, Leda by name, a humble maid who spurned my Lord's base advances. This I know, for gospel fact, because she was the sister of a cousin of a close friend—"

"Bah!" scoffs the elder. "If 'twere a woman, she would take the shape of a swan, not a hunting falcon; any fool knows that—"

"So you do," the other says sharply. "But a wise man knows better—" They fall silent as the hunter turns and looks across at them with cold blue eyes that penetrate to their hiding place.

"You are all wide of the mark," he says in a voice like the ring of cold iron.

"The bird is only a bird; my brother is a mad dog; and as for myself—I am a dead man."

As one, the gaggle of villagers whirl and pelt away through the underbrush. The falconer smiles a lean smile, stands looking up at the sky where the white bird circles on a rising current of air.

Chapter Eleven

« ^ »

1

Grayle had covered twelve miles in less than an hour, running steadily across the dark, rain-swept fields, ignoring the pain from his side. Now, in the broken ground below the high rampart of the hills, he found his progress slowed. It was necessary to pick his way, splashing through rushing torrents of muddy water flowing down over the barrier of boulders deposited ten thousand years ago by the glacier. Once he paused, listening to the sound of what seemed to be heavy gunfire in the distance, but the sound was not repeated. Minutes later he became aware of men moving on the slope ahead and to his left. The ground was steep here, a rubble-heap of rock fallen from the steep cliffs above; the men were noisy, calling to each other, occasionally flashing handlights across the slope, through the scrub pines that had found a foothold here. It was apparent that they were soldiers: a sergeant barked angry orders for silence to the members of the Third Platoon.

Grayle skirted the men, who were working their way southward, to his left, and continued his climb, facing into the driving rain.

He was close now. It would not be much longer before he knew if he had been in time.

2

Outside, the unceasing storm buffeted the thick walls; inside, the generator chugged, the stink of exhaust fumes hung in the stale air. Hardman lay on a field cot set up in his office, his right leg heavily bandaged.

"You look bad, Governor," Brasher said, frowning. "You ought to be—"

"Skip all that. Let's have that report."

"Well—if you think you're competent—that is, feeling well enough—"

"The report, Brasher." Hardman's voice was tight with pain. "You like to deliver reports, remember? It gives you a chance to sound like Moses—or is it God in person?"

"Look here—" Brasher started angrily.

"That's an order, Captain!" Hardman's snarl overrode the other. Brasher's face twitched angrily. "I was thinking of your welfare, Governor. However, as you insist," he hurried on, "you know about the car theft and assault in Brooksville. Well, that was just a warm-up, it seems. Our man proceeded to Gainesville, attacked two patrolmen and stole their car, drove it to the downtown police-helicopter facility, and proceeded to hijack a high-speed military recon machine—"

"Who told you this cock-and-bull story?" Hardman cut in.

"Captain Lacey. And—"

"All right, he drove in to the middle of a heavily manned police installation, borrowed a copter, and took off in a hurricane. Anything else?"

"The copter was followed on radar; it headed northwest. The plot was passed to Eglin, and on to other bases along the route. They tracked him to within a hundred miles of the Canadian border. Then

someone—Washington, I think—scrambled fighters out of Great Lakes. They forced him down in rough country in northern Minnesota."

"You're serious about this?"

"Dead serious."

"And—where is he now?"

"He got clear. But they got the girl."

"What girl?"

"His accomplice. The one who helped him escape."

"What has she told them?"

Brasher shook his head. "I understand she was pretty badly shaken up in the crash. She hasn't talked."

"You said he got clear. Weren't they covering the ground?"

"Certainly—but that's a big country—"

"He's alone and unarmed, probably injured. He should be easy enough to take."

"Well, as to that—I should point out that there are a couple of confusing points. It seems there's a report of a man answering Grayle's description attacking two police officers at the scene of an auto accident."

"Near the crash scene?"

"About seventy miles southwest."

"How does the time tie in?"

"The crash occurred at four-oh-seven; this other item was about an hour later, five-oh-one A.M."

"So now he's in two places at once," Hardman snorted. "What makes you think there's any connection? There are thousands of men who answer Grayle's general description."

"Not that can tear the door off a car," Brasher said, looking sideways at Hardman.

"What does that mean?"

"The FBI looked the car over—the one that was wrecked. It was one of theirs. It was tailing Grayle. The door was ripped from its hinges. And there were finger-marks in the metal."

Hardman was propped on one elbow. "And?" he prompted.

"He assaulted the police, as I said, and left the scene in his car. Twenty miles up the road, he and his accomplice—"

"A girl?"

"No, a man. They hit an army roadblock, attacked a couple of soldiers, and stole a military vehicle—a half-track, I think it was."

"All this, less than an hour after he crashed a stolen police copter in another place, accompanied by a woman. Quite a trick, eh, Brasher? A real superman, this fellow—either that, or the police forces of this country are a collection of idiots!"

"I know it sounds crazy." Brasher waved his hands. "But these are the facts reported to me! This man gets around faster than a dirty rumor! It has to be Grayle! Sure, anybody could have gray hair and a red stubble, but who else could tear steel with his bare hands? Unless…" Brasher looked startled.

"A minute ago you said something about a superman, Governor," he said.

"What would you say to two supermen?"

"I don't know, Brasher." Hardman lay back, looking exhausted.

"Well, I'll be getting along, Governor." Brasher glanced at the big gold strap-watch on his wrist. "Things are breaking fast; there'll no doubt be an arrest at any moment—"

"Brasher," Hardman called as the policeman turned away.

"When they catch him—either or both of him—I want him taken alive." Brasher looked grave. "Well, now, Governor, as we agreed earlier, we don't want to place any obstacles in the path of law enforcement—"

"I said alive, Brasher!"

"What if this mad dog begins shooting down more police officers? What are they supposed to do? Turn the other cheek?"

"Alive, Brasher," Hardman repeated. "Now, get out—and maybe you'd better tell that doctor to call the hospital after all."

Outside, Lester Pale was waiting. He raised his eyebrows.

"Nothing," Brasher said quickly. "He was conscious—just barely. He didn't say anything that made sense."

"No change in the orders? I had the idea—"

"No change," Brasher snapped. "I'm a cop, remember? My job is to catch crooks, that's all."

3

Halfway up the hill where he had abandoned the halftrack, Falconer lay flat on wet ground among dense-growing brush. From the darkness ahead and to the left came the sounds of a man forcing his way through the growth. Other sounds of passage came from the right, along with the occasional gleam of a flashlight. Gradually, the sounds receded as the men passed by, moving diagonally to his course. Falconer rose, gained another fifty feet, then paused, head up, sniffing the air. Cautiously he advanced, skirting a giant tree. The sharp, metallic odor he had noticed grew rapidly stronger. Then he saw the body.

It was a soldier, sprawled at the base of the big pine, hands outflung, one leg doubled under him. The front of the man's raincoat was shredded; pale skin slashed by deep cuts showed through the rents. Above, the throat was gashed from ear to ear, not once, but in three parallel wounds. The ground under the man was a gluey soup of blood and muck.

For half a minute Falconer studied the corpse and the ground around it through narrowed eyes. Then he went on.

4

Tech Sergeant Duane Pitcher of the Third Platoon was disgusted. For the past hour, ever since they'd left the vehicles on the road below, he'd been stumbling around half-frozen in the pouring rain in these damned pitch-black woods, trying to follow orders to make no noise and show no lights, and to keep the men spread out in some kind of skirmish line, and keep 'em moving up toward the position the lieutenant had shown him on the contour map. In this soup, he'd be lucky to get within a mile of it. It was bad enough just to climb these damned slippery rocks through this damned slippery mud, but he had to be in twenty places at once, because otherwise the eager beavers like Obers would be a hundred yards out in front, and goldbricks like Bloom and Ginty would flake out and wind up back at the trucks, claiming they got lost.

Pitcher saw a dim movement ahead, called, got an answer in a Deep South rumble.

"O.K., hold it up here, Brown. We don't want to run into the Second Platoon coming down."

He moved on obliquely across the slope, made contact with two more men.

"Where's Obers?" he asked a two-striper.

"Hell, Sarge, where's anybody in this stuff?" Pitcher grunted. "O.K., hold the platoon where they're at. Lieutenant Boyd's supposed to make contact on the left before we top the ridge. I got to look for Obers before he walks down and gets a one-hundred-millimeter in his lap."

"What was the firing, Sarge?"

"How do I know?" Pitcher moved up along a faint path through the trees. He had covered seventy yards when he tripped over an obstruction at the base of a big pine. Pitcher's training was good. As he stumbled, he swung the carbine from his shoulder, hit the ground and rolled, came to rest in firing position, gun aimed, safety off.

Nothing moved. There was no sound but the howl of the wind, the crash of rain. He hadn't liked the feel of what he had stepped on. It was too soft, too yielding. It felt like…

He unclipped the flash at his belt, flicked it in the direction of the tree. It shone on a booted foot. The rest of the man was there too, lying on his back. It was Obers. Pitcher held the light on the torn throat, the lacerated chest.

For a long moment he held the light on the dead man. Then he shifted the beam, shone it around him into the high darkness of the forest. There was nothing but wet trees, wet rock. Then a sound came from his left below: the snap of a sodden twig, the slither of shoes in mud, the scrape of leather against rock. Pitcher switched off the light, dropped it, fitted the stock of the carbine against his cheek, his finger on the trigger. A man appeared, toiling upward through the trees. He was a big fellow, dressed in a waterproof mackinaw. Wet black hair was plastered to his round skull. He was headed straight for the spot where the body lay. Pitcher put the light square in his eyes.

"All right, hold it right there!" Pitcher called. At the words, the man froze, then whirled, jumped for the underbrush. Pitcher's finger jerked; red flame gouted. The shot was a flat bam! against the background of the storm. The man stumbled, caught himself, plunged on into the brush. Pitcher fired again into the darkness where he had disappeared, but when he came forward to investigate, there was only a footprint and a splash of fast-dissolving blood to show that there had been a target and that his bullets had found it.

5

Falconer had halted when he heard the shots, then, hearing nothing more, resumed his climb. The trail ended on a bare slope of stone across which water sluiced like a spillway. He crossed it, hugging the rock, while the wind drove rain into his eyes and nose, under his clothes. At the upper edge, giant rocks lay tumbled like debris from some titanic explosion. Falconer picked his way up through them, and was looking down into a hollow, pooled with darkness like ink. He took a step forward, and abruptly there was no rain; the buffeting wind was gone. A foot away, the storm still shrieked, but here the air was still and warm. There was a soft sound from below; a vertical line of yellow light appeared and widened, shining out on dry rock, reflecting on a sleek curve of age-blackened metal. Beyond the open doorway gleamed pale-green walls, polished brightwork.

"Welcome, Commander Lokrien," a mellow voice rang out in a strange language that for a moment Falconer almost failed to comprehend. "I have waited long for this hour."

6

Standing in the road beside the medium tank which, half an hour before, had fired three rounds of conventional 100 mm. through the main entrance to the Upper Pasmaquoddie Power Station, Colonel Ajax Pyler propped his fists on his hips and thrust his face closer to that of the divisional staff observer.

"You don't know the situation, Yount!" he snapped. "I saw it kill a man right in front of me! I talked to the three men that managed to get clear!

I'm telling you this is more than a malfunction or a damn fool plot by a crazy engineer!"

"There are some forty civilian personnel still inside that building, Pyler," Colonel Yount came back coolly. "We have only the word of a couple of half-hysterical civilians that there's anything wrong in there that a platoon of foot soldiers can't control—"

"I'm not sending a man of my command into that death trap," Pyler said flatly. "I don't give a damn if the commanding general personally wrote out the order in his own blood with a bent pin!"

"Pyler, you're trigger-happy—"

"My orders were to shut down that transmitter. I intend to do just that—any way I can!"

"That's a five-billion-dollar federal installation you're shelling, man! This isn't Vietnam! You can't just blow anything that gets in your way to kingdom come!"

"I can try!"

"Before you do," Yount said coldly, "I suggest you think for a few moments about trying less drastic measures than total destruction of the plant."

"Who said anything about total destruction? I intend to place rounds in carefully selected spots, as pointed out by my engineers, until transmission ceases. Then—"

"No you're not, Pyler." Yount made a swift motion, and the big master sergeant who had been standing by at parade rest staring straight out under the rim of his steel helmet came to life.

"Sir!"

"Colonel Pyler, this is Sergeant Major Muldoon. He weighs two hundred and forty pounds, stripped, and there's not an ounce of fat on him. I've ordered him to escort you back to divisional HQ to make your report…" Pyler's face went pale, then purpled.

"That is, unless you're willing to listen to reason." Pyler drew a couple of hoarse breaths through his nose. "What… what do you have in mind?"

"I want to send a three-man team into the plant. Specially equipped, of course; I'm not completely discounting your description of conditions inside. It seems there are several points at which the circuitry can be interrupted quite simply—"

"I told you what happened to that engineer fellow, Hunnicut, and the other man—and before them there was another—"

"I know all about that. I've talked to Prescott. My men know what to do."

"Very well," Pyler said through stiff lips. "I'll want written orders relieving me, of course."

Yount shook his head. "You're not relieved, Jack. I'm just lending what you might call a little tech support from headquarters." He turned away, began giving instructions to a tall, blond-haired captain and two noncoms, all in black commando assault dress.

7

Lieutenant Harmon of the Florida State Police was the first to spy the abandoned half-track blocking the gullied trail above. He and Captain Zwicky climbed down from their machine, slogged forward, guns in hand.

"Well, what did you expect, to find your man sitting in it eating his lunch?" Zwicky asked as Harmon cursed the empty vehicle.

"The son of a bitch can't be far. Let's get him!" Zwicky squinted up through swirling rain at the dark forest above. "You think you could find him up there?"

"Got any better ideas?"

"Maybe." Zwicky indicated the low rise to the east. "The Pasmaquoddie Power Plant's just the other side of the hill a couple of miles. Maybe that's where he was headed."

"What the hell would he want to go there for?"

"I don't know—but there's some kind of trouble over there. That's why the army's out in the weather. Maybe your man has something to do with it?"

"Like what? For Christ's sake, Captain, this bum is a con on the lam, a lousy killer who spent his life in stir. What—"

"I don't know. But this is the only inhabited spot in forty miles; this is wild country, Lieutenant. And your man headed right for it. It's worth looking into, isn't it? Or are you dead set on climbing up there to beat the bushes for him—alone? Because this is as far as I go."

Harmon looked up toward the heights above.

"Well—"

There was a sound from nearby—the unmistakable double clack-clack! of the arming lever of a rifle.

"Freeze right there!" a harsh voice barked from the darkness. Harmon dropped his pistol, hoisted his hands where he stood, his back to the voice. Zwicky turned slowly, holding the carbine by the breech, muzzle down, out from his side.

A uniformed man came forward, holding a carbine leveled. There were tech sergeant's stripes painted on the helmet that concealed his eyes.

"What is this, Sergeant?" Zwicky said.

''Hey!" another voice spoke up. "The guy's an officer, for Chrissakes!" The sergeant paused, looking uncertainly from Zwicky to Harmon, who was looking back over his shoulder. The latter lowered his hands.

"G.I.'s!" he blurted. "For God's sake, Zwicky, tell them—"

"Get 'em up—high!" the noncom snapped. "You, too, Cap'n."

"Maybe you'd better tell me just what the hell you think you're doing," Zwicky said, not moving.

"Maybe you'd better drop it, Cap'n, before I pull this trigger. I've lost one man tonight, and I'm not messing around."

Zwicky let the gun fall. "All right, tell it, soldier."

"You better tell me what you're doing in my platoon area, Cap'n. And who's this fellow?" He jerked his head at Harmon.

"He's a police officer. We're looking for the man who drove the track up here." Zwicky motioned with his head toward the big vehicle behind him.

"Gus, take a look at their ID's. Don't get between me and them." A corporal came forward, slung his carbine, grinned sheepishly as he patted Zwicky's pockets, brought out his wallet, opened it, and showed the blue card to the sergeant, who studied it by the light of the flash another man held. The corporal took Harmon's badge, showed it to the other.

"All right, I've played along with you, Sergeant," Zwicky said as he pocketed his wallet. "Now, aim that piece in some other direction and tell me what the hell is going on here."

The sergeant lowered the carbine reluctantly. "One o' my men's dead up there. Obers, worth any other three men in the outfit. I'm looking for the man that did it." He glanced at the track. "Maybe—"

"Sure it's him!" Harmon burst out. "The man's a cold-blooded killer, an escaped convict!" He looked at Zwicky. "I told you about this boy, Captain. Now maybe you'll listen to me!"

"Let's take a look," Zwicky said. He picked up his carbine, wiped mud from it on his sleeve. Harmon scooped up his pistol.

"Gus, you take the point," the sergeant ordered the corporal. "Cap'n, you and the civilian next. I'll be right behind."

It took the group of men a quarter of an hour to pick their way upslope to the spot where Obers' body lay." Harmon whistled as he stared down at the mutilated corpse.

"O.K.," he said. "Now you see what kind of guy we're working with. Kid gloves, hah? Like hell, Captain; like hell."

"There's some kind of trail leading up here," one of the men said. "Hey!" He pointed excitedly to a sheltered spot under a clump of foliage.

"Footprints—a couple of 'em!"

"Sure, I seen the bastard," the sergeant said. "I winged him, but he got clear. When I heard noises down below, I figured maybe he'd doubled back."

Harmon grunted. "He's up there," he said. "And I say let's get him." The sergeant looked at Harmon. "You're a cop," he said. "If I go up there, I aim to shoot first and chin with the son of a bitch later."

"Can't say I blame you," Harmon said.

"Gus, you take the detail," the sergeant said. "I'll be back when I've cleared my barrel into somebody's gut."

With Zwicky in the lead, the three men started up the final ascent. It is dusk; against the dust-red sky, the flashes of the besieging cannon wink ceaselessly across the folds of the hills below the walls of the town. From the gates, a party of five men ride out on war horses, gaunt black steeds whose ribs stand out like the cheekbones of their helmeted., and corseleted riders, one of whom carries a couched lance from the tip of which a white pennon flutters. Four of the men are olive-dark, black-bearded. One is smooth-shaven, with black-red hair and a scarred face. He sits a head taller in the saddle than any of his companions and rides before them. Another party of five men sit their horses on the brow of the slope. These men are better fed; one has black hair and a cat's eyes. One, with hair the color of new rust, sits in advance of the others, dressed in rich but well-worn war gear, a sword at his side, a shield slung at his saddle bow. The oncoming party halts fifty feet distant. The leader speaks briefly to his men, swings down from his mount, comes forward. The rust-haired man dismounts, advances to meet him. They are of a height, one wider, thicker of wrist and neck, the other quicker-moving, lighter-footed.

"I knew it was you," the big-boned man says. "I saw your cursed fowl coursing above the field."

"Yet you came…"

"Have no fear: I honor the white ensign."

The flame-haired man laughs softly.

"Many loyal men starve in the town," the bigger man says. "This charade must end."

"Then cease your harassment of my merchants—"

"Let them peddle their wares at home! These people have no need of better steel and improved gunpowder; they do slaughter enough with their own crude means."

"I regret the uses to which knowledge is put, but that is the price of a growing technology."

"The price is too high; these barbarians are not ready—"

"I've told you my terms, de la Torre—as I believe you style yourself these days."

"Because of those who trust me, I must yield. But we will meet again, brother."

"No doubt, brother."

They turn; each rejoins his own men. De la Torre's chief lieutenant eyes the flame-haired man as he mounts his white horse.

"My lord, why not kill him now—a swift shaft in the back—" His master catches him by the arm, lifts him to his toes.

"He is mine, Castillo—mine and no other's!"

Across the hill, the cat-eyed man rides close beside his lord.

"Surely it would have been wise to dispatch the traitor on the spot," he is saying. "A single prick of a poisoned dart—"

"No."

"But, lord—doubtless he plots new betrayal—"

"You lie, Pinquelle!"

"I sometimes wonder, lord, whether truly it be hate—or love—that you feel for him."

The master reins in, wheels to face his lackey. "Get thee gone from my company, Pinquelle! I tire of thy pinched face and thy cruel eyes and thy poisonous tongue."

"As my lord wishes." The man turns his mount and rides away, not looking back.

Chapter Twelve

« ^ »

1

Captain Aldous Drake, Special Forces, on detached duty with HQ, Third Army, lay flat on his belly in sodden grass a hundred and thirty feet from the fire-blackened orifice that had been the glass-and-aluminum main entrance to the power plant. A typist's chair lay on its side among the rubble half-blocking the entry. A strip of tattered scarlet carpet was draped over the littered porch and down the steps like the tongue of a dead animal. Smoke still drifted from the blackened interior of the entry hall.

"Pyler messed up the front door pretty bad," Staff Sergeant Ike Weintraub said, hugging the ground a few feet to Drake's left.

"That's O.K. We don't plan to waltz in there anyway. Ike, there's your spot, off to the left, past the bushes." Drake indicated a vertical ventilator slot cutting the featureless concrete front. "A few ounces of PMM ought to open a hole wide enough to slide in through. Jess…" He addressed the big black-faced three-striper on his right. "Think you can get up on the roof—over there, to the right, above the terrace?"

"Sure, no sweat."

"When you get up there, keep low, look for the freight-elevator shaft. You know how to jimmy it." Drake looked at his watch.

"I make it five minutes and thirty seconds after." He waited while the other two made minute adjustments to their timepieces. "Ike, I'm giving you five minutes to set your charges. Jess, you have your spot picked. Use your power jimmy, but no blasting. I may break a little glass getting in. We'll spread out inside—you know the layout from the maps—and each go for his own target. First man to score sets off a screamer, and we get the hell out. All right, let's go."

"Cap'n—when we break away—will it be a category three, or what?"

"Category one, Ike. Every man for himself. Our reports may make all the difference to the next team. But I'm betting both you bums a fifth of the good stuff we all make it clean. Let's go." Drake slid forward, using his elbows and toes in a quick, comical rhythm that ate up the distance with deceptive swiftness and in total silence. For a few seconds he could see his two compatriots as dark blurs against darkness; then they were gone. Ahead the building waited, high, bright-lit, crossed by slanting lines of rain. Fifty feet from the facade, Drake encountered bits of debris: glass, brick fragments, a scrap of upholstery material, papers. He crossed a sidewalk, another strip of grass, eased under a line of low-growing juniper, and was against the face of the building.

The windows—fixed double panels of heavy plastic—were just above him, the sills at face level, the room behind them dark. Drake came to his feet to the left of the opening, opened a pouch clipped to his pistol belt, took out a lump of a dark-green material resembling modeling clay. He formed it swiftly into a long, slender tube, packed it along the edge of the windows, working two feet out from the corner along the bottom and side. He inserted a tiny glass-encased capsule in the corner, attached a pair of hair-fine wires, and withdrew along the face of the building a distance of ten feet. He went flat, face down, and brought his wristwatch up under his eyes. Three and a half minutes elapsed; ninety seconds to go. The rain pounded Drake's back. The cold mud under his chest soaked through his combat jacket, found chinks in his weather suit. He flexed his hands to keep them limber. Never tell what you might run into inside. Yount had talked as if the whole thing was an exercise, but the other bird—Pyler, his name was—had been pretty shook up. Too bad he hadn't had a chance to talk to the men who'd come out of the plant, but Yount had passed on everything useful—or so he said. Not that it amounted to much. But for what it was worth, the pattern looked simple. The corridors were electrified, the switches, door-hardware, everything you'd normally touch. So the trick was to make your own holes, stick to the service ways, go straight for the spot the tech boys had shown him on the drawings, and zap! The job was done. After all, it was just a pile of machinery in there. Pull the plug, and it had to quit; it was as easy as that. Ten seconds to go. Drake hoped Ike was ready—and that Jess had his spot picked. If there was some nut inside, some mad-genius type, hitting him in three places at once ought to keep him hopping. Five seconds. Too bad if he wasn't quite close enough to the building and a pound or two of pulverized Plexiglas hit him in the back.

Drake thumbed the detonator button. There was an instantaneous ear-shattering blast, and dirt gouted beside his face. He came to his feet, slid along the wall to the now glassless opening, reached in for a grip, jumped, pulled himself up over the sill, and dropped onto a glass-littered carpet. He rolled to the wall, stopped with his feet spread, toes out, elbow braced, the pistol in his hand aimed toward the door. Dust was still settling. A piece of glass fell softly to the rug. A corpse lay face down near the desk. All right, Drake thought. Where's Ike's shot?…

He felt the dull blast through the floor before the sound came; Drake let out a breath and looked around the room. The entry to the access system the engineers had pointed out was in the ceiling of the toilet opening onto the office. The door was six feet away, standing ajar. Drake stood; as he did, he noticed a pale light glowing against the rug. A corridor light shining under the door, hitting the rug fibers? No, too bright for that. More of a fluorescence—and getting brighter, rippling like the glow in hot embers. A spark leaped across the rug. Drake backed a step; his elbow touched a filing cabinet. In the next instant, blue fire enveloped him. He had time to draw one breath—a breath of flames that scorched his lungs—and to expel it in a ragged screech of agony. Then his charred body fell stiffly, lay smoking on the floor, the half-slagged pistol still gripped in his blackened finger bones.

Sixty feet distant, in the ground-floor mechanical-equipment room, Ike Weintraub paused in wrapping a field bandage around the gash he had received on his forearm from a wild fragment from his shot, his head cocked. The sound had been very faint, but it had sounded a lot like a yell—a scream, to be exact. But it was probably just wind, whistling around some of the holes they'd knocked in the walls. Felt kind of embarrassed, being five seconds late on the blast. Drake was right on the button. Sharp character, old Drake. If all the brass were like him, a man wouldn't mind throwing a few salutes. Too bad the army hadn't been what he'd dreamed it would be: good men, trained fine, ready to face anything together, one for all and all for one, or whatever the old saying was. Corny, maybe, but it was still the best thing in the world, to be with the ones you knew you could count on. Funny, back home he'd believed all that crap he'd been brought up on, about how much better he was than the goyim, had thought a black man was one notch above a gorilla. That was one thing about the army; he'd found out that when the going got rough; it wasn't the religion or the hide that counted, it was the stuff inside. Like Drake. Drake was the best. And old Jess. They didn't make 'em any better. He'd go all the way to hell with those two—like now. He didn't like this job, not anything about it. Those civilians were no dumbbells, and they were scared all the way through. And Pyler, too. He was a bastard, but nobody had ever said he was yellow. But it was O.K. being here, knowing what to do, how to do it, knowing Jess was in it with him, that Drake was running the show. It was O.K. And it was time to get moving.

Weintraub flashed his needle-light around the big room, spotting the ladder against the wall behind the big sheet-metal duct, the trapdoor above it, right where they'd said. So far so good. All he had to do now was shin up there and get into the crawl-space, and head for the target. But still he hesitated. It looked too easy. It was what the double-domes that worked in the place had figured out—but they hadn't done so hot when they'd been on the inside. Got their tails burned off. So maybe it might be a smart idea, to take two looks at the layout before he jumped. Weintraub worked the light over the walls, ceiling, and floor. He got to his feet, moved along the wall, not touching it. The back of the big air-handlers looked about the same as the front. There was a wooden ladder clamped against the rear wall, in a narrow space behind a big condenser. A square grille was set in the wall above it. There was nothing about it that looked any better than the other route, but Weintraub liked it better somehow. He lifted the ladder down, propped it against the wall, climbed it until he was facing the plastic grille. There were two plastic knobs holding it. He loosened them, swung the grille aside, and was looking into a dusty loft. Using his elbows, he pulled himself up and in. The light showed him a wide, low room, crammed full of ducting, conduits, cables, pipes. He didn't like the look of all that gear, but there wasn't much he could do about it. He knew which way to go. He started off, picking his way carefully over, under, and through the obstructions.

Ten minutes later, following his mental image of the diagrams he had studied for a full five minutes before starting out, he had reached the spot Drake had picked for him—he hoped. If he was on target, there would be a black pipe here as big as his leg. According to the civilians, it was some kind of lube conduit. When he blew it, it would shut down the high-pressure silicone supply to the generator bearings, and in about three minutes they'd overheat and kick in a set of automatic breakers. Anyway, that was the theory. It was plenty noisy here. That was a good sign. The manifold room was supposed to be right below him. And there was the pipe. He shone the light along the glazed black surface. The junction where it made a right-angle bend down looked like the spot to hit. Weintraub placed the light so as to shine on the angle and extracted the shaped charge from the pouch over his right hip. From another pocket he took the detonator, a tiny capsule half an inch long. He handled it with exaggerated care. The big charge would blow a hole through a concrete wall, but it stood a lot of handling. The cap, on the other hand, was as delicate as a cracked egg. One little slip, and blam!

He cut off that line of thought. Keep your mind on business, that was the secret. A guy who broke down and ran was just a guy who thought too much about the wrong things. He'd either finish the job and get out alive, or he wouldn't. If he didn't, he'd never know what hit him. So why worry?

Smiling slightly, Ike Weintraub shifted position to get at the miniature tools clipped to his belt. His head struck a pipe passing low above him. It was not a hard blow, not really enough to daze him. But it was enough to jar the detonator cap from his fingers. It fell fourteen inches to the concrete floor and exploded with a force that shattered Weintraub's lower jaw and drove a sizable section of jagged bone into his jugular vein. It was twenty-one seconds before his heart, having pumped the body's blood supply out through the immense wound, sucked convulsively on air, went into fibrillation, and stopped.

In the crawl-space above the switch room, big Jess Dooley heard the sharp report. He frowned, waiting for the howl of the screamer that would mean Drake or Ike had scored. But nothing came.

It figured. The bang hadn't been loud enough to be a working charge. Which left the question of what it had been. But that was a question that would have to wait. A category-one operation, Drake had said. That meant get the job done and ask questions later, at the corner table in the bar where the three of them did their serious drinking. Funny world. Couldn't get together in the NCO Club; Drake wasn't allowed. Same for the Officers' Club: no EM's wanted. Same for most of the joints off base: a black hide netted no smiles in the Main Street spots, and he'd have to whip half the draft-dodgers in darktown if he took a couple of Pinks down there. Yep, funny world. It was better here, with death crackling in the air all around him, doing the thing he knew how to do, with the men he knew he could count on to back his play, no matter what. Jess wiped sweat from his forehead with a thick finger, and using his pinpoint light, began studying the maze of conduits sprouting from the big panel on the wall, looking for the two that carried the wires to the thermostats that controlled the fuel supply to the nuclear generators buried a hundred feet below the station.

2

Falconer moved down from the boulder-strewn rim of the hollow, his eyes on the open, lighted doorway and on the slim shape soaring into darkness above.

"I searched for you, Xix," he said, in the old language that came haltingly to him. "I thought you'd lifted long ago, without me."

"I have never abandoned you, my commander," the voice called over the drum of rain. "So long as the Other knew my location, I would never be safe from him in my weakened condition. It was necessary that I conceal myself. But nine hours ago the natives erected a crude energy field on which I was able to draw for minimal functions. At once I sent out my call to you, my commander. We must act swiftly now."

Falconer laughed softly. "After all this time, Xix? What's your hurry?"

"Commander, the energy field is feeble, not matched to my receptors. I draw but a trickle of power from it, insufficient to charge my static-energy coil. If I am to lift from this planet, I require more power—much more."

"How long will it take to draw enough from the broadcast field?"

"Over a century. We cannot wait. We must charge the coil directly from the source, unattenuated by distance."

"How?"

"With your assistance, my commander. You must remove the lift coil, take it to the transmitting station, and tap the beam directly."

"It occurs to me that we're very close to the transmitter. That must have been the installation I saw on the way here. Rather a coincidence, eh, Xix?"

"Indeed, Commander. But the coil must be charged, and time is short. Already I have been forced to… But no matter. You must remove the coil and descend at once to the transmitter."

"I heard firing down there. What's going on, Xix?"

"An effort was made to shut down the transmission. Of course I cannot permit that."

"How can you stop it?"

"My commander, we must not delay now for discussion of peripheral matters. I sense that I am threatened; the hour for action has come." Falconer crossed the rock-strewn ground, aware of the thunder and roll of the storm beyond the protected area sealed, off by the ship's defensive field. He stepped up through the entry port, went along the dustless passage walled with smooth synthetic, ornamented with fittings of imperishable metal. In the control compartment, soft lights glowed across the banked dials and levers, so once-familiar, so long-forgotten.

"Xix—what about Gralgrathor? If he's still alive—"

"The traitor is dead."

"So many years," he said. "I don't feel any hate any longer." He laughed, not a jolly laugh. "I don't feel much of anything."

"Soon you will, my commander. The long twilight ends. Ysar waits for us."

"Yes," Falconer said. "Now I'd better get busy. It's been a long time since I put a tool to a machine of Ysar."

3

John Zabisky, wounded in the lower right side by a steel-jacketed thirty-caliber slug which had broken a rib, punctured a lung, traversed his liver, and lodged in the inner curve of the ilium, lay on his face under a dense-needled dwarf pine. Immediately after he had been shot, he had covered fifty feet of rough going in his initial plunge away from danger before the shock had overtaken him and dropped him on his face. For a while then—he had no idea how long—he had lain, dazed, feeling the hot, spreading ache in his side grow into a throbbing agony that swelled inside him like a ravenous animal feeding on his guts. Then the semieuphoric state had given way to full consciousness. Zabisky explored with his fingers, found the entry wound. It was bleeding, but not excessively. The pain seemed to be somewhere else, deep inside. He was gut-shot, bleeding internally. He knew what that meant. He had an hour, maybe two. A lousy way to go out. He lay with his cheek against the mud and thought about it. Why the hell had he followed the guy, Falconer, after he'd kissed him off?

He had his money, two cees. Curiosity? Not exactly that; it was more than just sticking his nose in. It was like the guy needed him—like he was mixed up in something too tough for him, trying to do it alone, tackling too much for one man. And you wanted to help the guy, stick by him. It was like there was something at stake, something you couldn't put in words; but if you finked out, let it slide, washed your hands of it, you'd never be able to see yourself again as the man you thought you were. It was like in the old days, kind of, when the first John Sobieski had climbed on his horse and led his men into battle. It was a thing you had to do, or admit you were nothing.

Yeah. And then the light had hit him in the face, and some guy yells, and then the ballbat hit him in the side, and he heard the gun firing after him, and then he was here, and what good were the two cees now?

And where the hell was here? Halfway up some lousy hill, in the woods, in the middle of the night, in a storm like you didn't see twice in one lifetime. Especially not his lifetime. Maybe another hour. Maybe not that much. Falconer would help him, if he knew.

Falconer was up ahead, someplace.

Got to get moving.

Painfully, grunting, fighting back the nausea and the weakness, Zabisky pulled himself forward another foot. He had covered perhaps a hundred yards when he saw the glow above. That would be Falconer up there. Probably had a cabin up there, a warm room, a fire, a bed. Better to die in a bed than here. Better to die just trying for it than to stop here and let the pain wash up and up until it covered you and you sank down in it and were like all the other extinct animals you saw in books. Not much you could do then, about anything. But it hadn't come to that yet. Not quite. He still had a few yards left in him. Take 'em one at a time, that was the trick. One at a time… as long as time held out.

He had covered another half-dozen yards when he heard the sound above: a faint clatter of a dislodged pebble.

"Falconer," he called, peering upward. There was a movement there, among the shadows. A long, high-shouldered, narrow shape flowed into view, stood looking down with yellow eyes that seemed to blaze like tiny fires against the blackness.

4

Two hundred yards to the east and a hundred feet below, Grayle worked his way along the face of a weathered fissure in the rock. Three times he had attempted to gain the ledge above; three times he had fallen back. The distance was too great, the scant handholds too slippery, the broken ribs still too crippling. Now he descended to the talus below, angling to the south, skirting the barrier. The grade was less precipitate here; stunted trees had found footholds; brush and exposed roots offered grips for his hands. He made more rapid progress, moving laterally into bigger timber. Striking a faint path, he turned right along it, resumed his ascent. He had covered only a few yards when he saw the body lying at the base of the pine.

For long seconds he stood staring down at the ripped throat of the dead man. Then he made an animal noise deep in his throat, shook himself like a man waking from a nightmare, and started upward.

He had covered a hundred yards when he heard sounds ahead: the grate of feet on stone, the puffing of labored breath. More than one man, making clumsy progress upward.

He left the path and hurried to overtake them.

5

Lying flat on his back in utter darkness, Sergeant Jess Dooley felt the miniature power hacksaw cut through the second of the two conduits. It had been a delicate operation, cutting all the way around each of the half-inch stainless-steel tubes without touching the wires inside, but the engineers had made it pretty plain what would happen if a man shorted them accidentally.

Now the trick was to short them on purpose and get away in one piece. Dooley wiped sweat on his forearm and thought about the layout he had studied on paper. Memory was important to a man in his line of work. You had to have a natural mnemonic aptitude, and then survive some tough training to qualify as a member of a Special Team. After all the trouble of getting to where the job was, there were plenty of times when completing it depended on perfect recall of a complicated diagram. Like now. It wouldn't do to just cut a wire; there were six back-up systems that would take over in that case—even if he wasn't fried in the process. He had to tinker the thing to give a false reading—and not too false at that. Just enough to show a no-demand condition, and make the automatic cutouts lock in. These automated layouts were pretty smart; they could deal with just about any situation that came up. But you could fool 'em. They didn't expect to get a phony signal from their own guts. And if he could attach the little gadget the technical boys had handed him at just the right spot, in just the right way—between sensors, and if possible at the same instant as a legitimate impulse from the thermostats…

Well, then, he might get away with it.

He extracted the device—the size of a worm pill for a medium-sized dog—removed the protective tubing from the contacts. He shifted position, settling himself so he could make one smooth, coordinated motion. The protective devices wouldn't like it if he fumbled the hook-on, making and breaking contact half a dozen times in half a second before he got the ringer in position.

He was ready. Sweat was running down into his eyes. He wiped at it ineffectively with his shoulder. Hot in here, no air. A man could suffocate before he got the job done. So what was he waiting for? Nothing. He was ready. The next time the relay clicked—it cycled about once every five minutes—he'd make his move.

6

Captain Zwicky, a few feet in advance of Sergeant Pitcher and Lieutenant Harmon, pulled himself up over an outcropping of granite and started to rise to his feet.

"That's far enough, Captain," a deep voice said from above. "This is no place for you tonight. Go back."

Zwicky remained frozen, both hands and one knee on the ground, an expression of total astonishment on his upturned face. Behind him, Pitcher, hearing the sudden voice, halted, then eased forward. Over the captain's shoulder he could see dark underbrush, dripping foliage—and the legs and torso of a man. A big man, in dark clothes.

In a single motion, he raised the carbine, sighted and fired. At the explosion beside his right ear, Zwicky plunged forward and sideways. Pitcher, his path cleared, scrambled up, saw the tall, dark-shadowed figure still standing in the same position; hastily, he brought the carbine up—and felt a ringing shock against his hands as the gun flew from his grip. He made a lunge in the direction the weapon had skidded, felt hard hands catch him, lift him, turn him. Zwicky was on his feet, raising his carbine; but he was having trouble finding a clear shot. Pitcher felt himself swung forward, released. He crashed downward through twenty feet of brush before he came up hard against a tree. As he struggled up, Lieutenant Harmon grabbed his arm, dragged him to his feet. "What happened up there? That shot—"

"Leggo," Pitcher blurted. He chopped at Harmon's hand, grabbed for the other's pistol. "Gimme that—"

"You nuts—"

The arrival of Captain Zwicky, sliding and tumbling down the trail, cut off his protest. Pitcher stepped back, holding the pistol, as Zwicky came to rest on his back between the two men.

"Stand fast, Sergeant!" he blurted as Pitcher started past him.

"I'm getting the bastard that killed Obers," Pitcher snarled.

"That's an order!" Pitcher halted as Zwicky crawled to his feet. His nose was bleeding, and he had lost his cap. He wiped at his face with the back of his hand, smearing blood which ran down, mingling with rainwater.

"Losing more men won't help anything," he said. "I don't know what we're up against, but it's more than it looks like. Before we try it again, we have to—"

At that moment, a sound cut through the crash of the storm: a strident, wailing scream that ran down the scale and died in a groan of horror. Without a word, Harmon whirled and plunged down the path. Pitcher backed two steps, was jabbed between the shoulderblades by the stub of a dead branch. He dropped his carbine, dived down the slope head-first. Zwicky hesitated for a moment, started to shout a command, then turned and went down the path, not running, but wasting no time.

7

"What in the Nine Hells was that?" Falconer rose from the open panel behind which the compact bulk of the drained energy coil was mounted.

"Don't be alarmed," the cool voice of the ship said. "It is merely a warning device. I arranged to keep the native life in all its forms at a distance."

"It sounded like a hunting krill. By the king of all devils, I'd forgotten that sound."

"It serves its purpose most effectively—"

"What set it off just now?"

"A native was prowling nearby."

"A strange time and place to be prowling."

"Have no fear; now that my Y-field is restored, I am safe from their petty mischief."

"I may have led them here," Falconer said. "It's too bad. There's likely to be trouble when I start back down."

"There are weapons in my armory, commander—"

"I have no desire to murder anyone, Xix," Falconer said. "These are people too; this is their world."

"Commander, you are as far above these natives as—but I distract you from your task. Their presence nearby indicates the need for haste." In silence, Falconer resumed the disassembly of the lift unit. 8

For a moment after the cry of the hunting krill sounded, Grayle stood staring upward into the darkness of the rim beyond which faint light gleamed on the slanting curtain of rain. There was no further sound. He resumed his climb, crossed a slope of naked rock, made his way up over a jumble of granite, and was looking across a pebble-strewn ledge at the soft glowing Ul-metal hull of a fleet boat of the Ysarian navy upreared among the rock slabs.

9

Jess Dooley heard the soft click of the relay as it opened. He had precisely 0.4 second to move. In a smooth motion, he touched the two wires of the false-signal device to the exposed conductors. A spark jumped, to the exposed end of the cut-through conduit, from which a volatile antistatic and coolant fluid was draining. The flash of fire seared the hair from the left side of Dooley's scalp, charred the edge of his ear, scorched deep into the exposed skin of his neck. In instant reflex, the man snatched a tiny high-pressure can from his belt, directed a billow of smothering foam at himself, at the pool of fluid over which pale blue flames leaped like burning brandy on a fruitcake, over the conduits and cables around him. He moved backward, awkward under the low ceiling, holding his breath to exclude the mixture of flame, foam, and noxious gases.

The flames winked and dimmed. Then the pain hit. Dooley dropped the can, groped for another, gave himself a liberal dose of nerve paralyzant. The burned side of his face went wooden. Too late, he turned his head. A drop of condensed painkiller trickled down into the corner of his right eye. There was a momentary stinging; then numbness, darkness.

Swearing to himself, Dooley found his needle-light, switched it on. Nothing. The light was hot against his hand. It was working, all right. But he couldn't see it. With nerve-deadener in both eyes, he was blind as a bat. Nice work, Dooley. Nice spot. Is the fire out? Hope so. Is the little magic combination can-opener and disaster-averter in place and functioning? Hope that too. Meanwhile, how does a man go about getting the hell out of here?

Alone, in darkness, Dooley began inching his way back along the route he had come.

In the glow of the campfire, the faces of the men are ruddy, belying the privations of the long campaign. They sit in silence, listening to the shrill of cicadas, the soft sounds of the river, looking across at the scattered lights of Vicksburg.

An orderly approaches, a boy scarcely out of his teens, thin and awkward in his dusty blue uniform. He halts before a broad-shouldered officer with shoulder-length hair, once red, now shot with gray.

"General Logan, Major Tate's compliments, sir, and they took a rebel colonel half an hour ago scouting this side of the river, and would the general like to talk to him."

The big man rises. "All right, lad." He follows the boy along the crooked path among the pitched tents where men in rumpled blue sit restlessly, oppressed by the humid heat and the swarming insects. At a rough compound built of boards wrenched from the walls of a nearby barn, a slouching sentry straightens as they approach, presents arms. A captain emerges from a tent, salutes, speaks to an armed sergeant. A detail of four men falls in beside them. The gate is opened.

"A five-man escort?" General Logan says mildly as they enter the compound. "He must be a redoubtable warrior indeed." The captain has a round red face, a long, straggly moustache. He wipes sweat from his face, nods.

"A hard case. Powell swears he broke a half-inch rope they had on him. I guess if he hadn't been out cold when they found him, they wouldn't have got the rope on him in the first place. I'm taking no chances with him." They halt before a blacksmith's forge, where a bareheaded man stands, trussed with new hemp rope. He is big, broad, with a square, scarred face and black-red hair. There are iron manacles on his wrists; an iron cannonball lies by, in position to be attached to his left ankle. There is blood on his face and on his gray tunic.

General Logan stares at the man. "You," he says in a tone of profound astonishment. The prisoner blinks through the dried blood which has run down into his eyes. Abruptly, he makes a shrugging motion, and the men holding him are thrown back. He tenses, and with a sharp popping sound, the hemp strands break. He reaches, seizes the blacksmith's hammer in his manacled hands, leaps forward, and brings the heavy sledge down with smashing force on the skull of the Union general.

Chapter Thirteen

« ^

1

Carrying the heavy coil, Falconer stood for a moment in the entry, looking out across the circle of dry dust and loose stone soft-lit by the ship's port lights, ending in abrupt transition to the rim of broken, rain-swept rock, and beyond, the tops of black trees rising from below.

"Good luck, Commander," Xix said as he stepped down. Burdened by the heavy load, he picked his way across toward the point below which the path led downward. He had descended less than a hundred feet when he saw the man lying face-down in the path, bulky in a bright-colored mackinaw. Falconer dropped the coil, knelt by the man's side. There was blood on the side of the heavy coat. He turned the man over, saw the gaping wounds across the side of the thick, muscular neck, the shredded front of the sodden jacket.

"John Zabisky," he muttered. "Why did you follow me?" Zabisky's eyelids stirred, lifted; his small, opal-black eyes looked into Falconer's. His lips moved.

"I… tried," he said distinctly; then all the light went out of his eyes, left them as dull as stones.

Falconer rose, stood looking down at the rain falling on the face of the dead man. He glanced up at a faint sound, and a hard white light struck him in the eyes.

"I should have known you wouldn't die," a deep, harsh voice said out of the darkness.

2

"So you're alive, Gralgrathor," Falconer said. Grayle came forward, looked at the body on the ground at Falconer's feet. "I see you've had a busy night, Lokrien."

"And more business yet to come. I don't have time to waste, Thor. Go your way and I'll go mine—or are you still intent on braining me?"

"I didn't come here to kill you, Lokrien. My business is with that." He tilted his head toward the faint glow from above.

"You expect Xix to take you off this world?"

"On the contrary: Xix isn't going anywhere."

"I think he is. Stand aside, Thor."

"I didn't come to kill you, Loki," Grayle said. "But I will if you try to interfere." He pointed down the path. "You'll be safe down there—"

"We'll go down together."

"You're going down. I'm going up," Grayle said. Falconer shook his head. "No," he said.

Grayle looked across at him, his square face obscure in the darkness.

"When the Y-field went on and I felt the homing pulse, I knew you'd come, if you lived. I hoped to get here ahead of you. It's strange, but over the years the thought had grown in my mind that somehow, in some way, there'd been some fantastic mistake. Then I saw the dead man down below. I knew then I'd find you here."

"I find that remark obscure, Thor."

"Have you forgotten I've seen wounds like those before?"

"Indeed? Where, might I ask?

"You dare to ask me that—"

Soft footfalls sounded, coming closer. From the shadows beside the path, a sinuous shape emerged, pacing on padded feet. It resembled, more than any other terrestrial creature, a giant black panther: as big as a Bengal tiger, but longer-legged, slimmer, deeper-chested, with a round skull and bright, alert yellow eyes. It advanced on Grayle, raised a claw-studded paw as big as a dinner plate…

"Stop!" Falconer shouted, and leaped between the man and the beast. The krill halted, lashed its tail; seated itself on its haunches.

"Do not be alarmed, Lokrien," it said in the smooth, carefully modulated voice of Xix. "I am here to help you."

3

"What are you?" Falconer said. "Where do you come from?"

"My appearance must surprise you, Commander," the cat-thing said. "But I am a construct, nothing more."

"An Ysarian construct. How?"

"Xix created me. I am his eyes and ears at a distance. You may address him through me." The krill rose, paced a step toward Grayle.

"Leave him alone," Falconer said.

The krill stared at Falconer. "My commander, the traitor must die."

"I need his help to force an entry into the plant."

"Nonsense—"

"That's an order, Xix!" Falconer faced Grayle. "Drop the grenade belt. Pick up the coil." He indicated the latter lying where he had left it.

"This thing belongs to you, eh, Loki?" Grayle eyed the krill. "I wondered why you chose the particular method you did—but now that I've seen your weapon, I understand."

"Commander—let me kill the traitor!" the krill hissed. Falconer looked into the yellow eyes.

"Are you the only construct Xix made?"

"There were others, Commander."

"Not in the shape of animals…"

"True."

"A man named Pinquelle… and Riuies… and a soldier called Sleet…"

"I have had many names, Commander."

"Why? Why didn't you announce yourself?"

"It seemed wiser to be discrete. As for my purpose—why, it was to assist you in the nurture of the technology we needed to do that which we must do."

"The placement of the power plant is no coincidence, then."

"I was instrumental in selecting the site, yes."

"You're full of surprises, aren't you… Xix? I wonder what you'll come up with next."

"I am true to my purpose, Commander, nothing more." Falconer turned abruptly to Grayle.

"We're going down the mountain, Thor. We're going to recharge the power coil and return here. Then Xix is going to lift for Ysar. Help me, and I'll take you with me; refuse, and Xix will deal with you."

Grayle growled and took a step toward him. The krill tensed its long legs, its head up, eyes bright on Grayle's throat. Falconer stared into Grayle's face.

"Why, Thor?" he said softly. "Why are you intent on destroying us all?"

"I swore to kill you, Loki. I intend to fulfill that promise." The krill yowled and yearned toward Grayle; Falconer restrained it with a word. "You can commit suicide," he said. "Whereas if you stay alive and cooperate, a better opportunity may present itself." For a moment Grayle hesitated. Then he stepped back, picked up the coil, slung it by its straps over his shoulder.

"Yes," he said. "Perhaps it will."

4

Colonel Ajax Pyler stood beside his staff car, looking toward the point from which the firing had come.

"Well, Cal? What the devil is going on over there!" The aide was speaking urgently into a field phone: "Bring him up to the road. I'll talk to him myself." He switched off. "A B Company man, Colonel; something spooked him. He swears he saw two men cross the plant grounds and enter the building. He opened up on them…"

"And?"

"It's a wild tale… here they come now."

A jeep was approaching from the direction of the perimeter fence. It pulled in beside the staff car; a sergeant and a private jumped down, stood at attention. The sergeant saluted.

"Sir, this is the private—"

"I can see that. Get on with it. Just what did you see, soldier?"

"Colonel, I seen these here two fellers, they come out o' the woods up above where I was at; first thing I knew he had my gun out of my hands—"

"Were you asleep?"

"Not me, Colonel, too damn cold, these fellers come up quiet, and with the wind and all, and I was watching toward the plant, never figured nobody—"

"So they jumped you and took your gun. Then what?"

"Well—I guess I yelled, and one of 'em told me to be quiet. Real nice-spoken, he was. Big feller. Both of 'em. And—"

"What happened, man? Which way did they go?"

"Why, like I told sergeant here, they up and went right down through the wire—"

"What did they cut it with?"

"Hell, Colonel, they didn't cut nothing. Tore that wire up with their bare hands. One of 'em did. Other feller was loaded down—"

"Sergeant, why didn't the alarms go off? I ordered triple circuitry all the way around the perimeter!"

"Colonel, I don't know—"

"How could anyone get inside unobserved? The entrance is floodlit—"

"That's just it, Colonel! They never used the front door—nor the holes them Special Forces boys blew. Just walked right through the wall! And after come this critter. Big, black as a caved-in coal mine, and eyes like fire. It come right up to me and looked at me like hell's door left open, and went on down and through the wire—that was when I let fly, Colonel. I—"

"That's enough!" Pyler jerked his head at the sergeant. "Take this man back to the dispensary. I don't know what he's been drinking, or where he got it, but he's raving like a lunatic."

He turned to his aide. "Cal, get a squad of master marksmen together, post them covering the exit. If there's anyone in there, we'll be ready when he comes out!"

5

Lieutenant Harmon pushed through the clump of men examining the tangled barbed wire through which a swath. had been untidily cut.

"…look at these ends," a man was saying. "That wasn't sheared, it failed in tension. Look at the deformation. It's been stretched."

"Hey—here's why the screamers didn't go off." Another man showed a strand of insulated wire. "They jumped it."

"Who saw what happened?" Harmon barked the question. Faces turned his way. He got a brief second-and third-hand account of the progress of the two intruders through the wire, across the grounds, and into the rear of the building.

"They didn't mess with the doors," a bulky corporal grunted. "They made their own hole."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Put the light on it, Sherm," the corporal said. A dazzling searchlight sprang to brilliance, thrust a smoky finger across the hundred yards of rain-soaked turf to glare on the buff-colored masonry wall marred by a ragged black aperture at ground level.

"I didn't hear any explosion," Harmon said.

"Wasn't none." The corporal spat. "They busted that hole bare-handed."

"Don't kid me," Harmon snarled.

"Hey, ain't you that out-of-state cop?" A freckle-faced soldier with a pale, pinched face spoke up. "I heard the man you were after tore the door off a car, something like that. Maybe it's the same guy." Harmon glowered at the laughter. "Where'd they take this kid that saw all this?"

"Field dispensary. Down the road."

Harmon walked back to the jeep Zwicky had lent him, turned it, drove back up past the parked vehicles of the convoy. It took him fifteen minutes to find the white mobile hospital, parked in a field under trees. Inside, he asked for and was led to Tatum's bedside.

"Hell, I ain't sick," the private said indignantly.

"Take it easy, fellow," Harmon said. "Now tell me what this man you saw looked like…"

6

Lying in darkness with his face against the cool floor, Jess Dooley drew deep, regular breaths, forcing himself back to calm. Panic wasn't going to help. Panic kills! that was what the posters on the cool, green walls back at headquarters said. He wasn't really trapped in a maze with no way out, trapped in the dark, buried alive—

Nothing like that. He was lost, sure. A man could get lost easy enough in a mess of crawlways, even if he had studied the plans for a whole five minutes. But what was lost could be found. All he had to do was keep his head, feel his way, and after a while he'd hear them coming to look for him. He'd been scraping his chin and bumping his head and eating dust and taking the long tour of the crawlway system for half an hour now. Been doing all right, too, up until the panic hit him. Claustrophobia, that's what they called it. Never bothered him before. But thirty minutes of being blind was enough for the first time out. Now he wanted air, wanted light, wanted to raise, his head, stand up, instead of being crushed in here in this space just high enough to push through, with all those tons of rock above—

Take it easy, Dooley. No panic, remember? Maybe one of the other guys had gotten in first and forgotten to fire his screamer, and maybe it was all just spinned wheels.

And maybe he'd better stop laying here and get moving. Jess snorted dust from his nose and moved forward. His outstretched hand touched a rounded plastic-walled duct. He remembered the duct system: it would lead a man out of this maze. And there were access panels spotted along it…

Three minutes later, Dooley was inside the big duct, headed in a direction he hoped was upstream. He covered fifty feet, rounded a turn—and heard faint sounds from up ahead—or was it off to the side? Voices. Good old Drake, knew he'd come, him and Ike. Close now. Yell, and let them know?

Hell with it. Came this far, play it cool. Could see a faint light up ahead, through a grille. Dope was wearing off. Just make it up there, and flap a hanky, and in another minute or two they'd be outside, having a good laugh together, breathing that cold, fresh air… Smiling, Jess Dooley moved forward along the duct above the Energy Staging Room.

The exhaust grille was a louvered panel two feet by three, designed to be serviced from the inside. Jess found, the release clips, lifted the grid aside. The voices were clearer now, not more than twenty, thirty feet away…

Jess frowned, listening. That wasn't Drake's voice, or Ike's. They weren't even speaking English. Frowning, Jess lay in the darkness and listened. 7

"Put it down here," Falconer ordered. Grayle lowered the drained power coil to the floor, while the krill watched closely.

Falconer knelt beside the pack, unstrapped it, exposing the compact device within.

"Get the cover off the service hatch," he ordered. Followed by the cat-thing, Grayle crossed to the hatch, forced a finger under the edge of the steel plate, ripped it away as if it were wet cardboard.

"Stand aside," Falconer lifted the discharged coil. Grayle hadn't moved.

"Don't try it yet," Falconer said. "The odds are still too great."

"Loki, don't charge that coil," Grayle said. "Defy your master; without your help, it's powerless."

"My master… ?"

The krill moved swiftly forward, raised a hook-studded forearm.

"Stand fast, Xix," Falconer snapped. The creature paused, turned its great eyes on him. "He threatens our existence, Commander."

"I'll decide that."

"But will you?" Grayle said. "Don't you really know yet, Loki?" The krill yowled and struck at Grayle, ripping the leather arm of his jacket as he jumped back. It followed, ignoring Falconer's shout.

"See how your faithful slave comes to heel, Loki!" Grayle called. Falconer took two swift steps to the open hatch, poised the coil on the rim, caught up the two heavy jack-tipped cables.

"Stop, Xix—or I'll cross-connect the coil and melt it down to slag!" The krill whirled on Falconer, jaws gaping, the serrated bony ridges that served as teeth bared in a snarl.

"Would you aid the treacher in his crimes?"

"I'll listen to what he has to say," Falconer said.

"Commander—remember: only I can take you back to Ysar!"

"Talk, Thor," Falconer said. "What are you hinting at?" 8

Twelve feet to the right and eight feet above the spot where Grayle stood with his back to the wall, Jess Dooley lay, his blind eyes staring into inky blackness, his ears straining to make sense of the jabber of alien voices rising through the open ventilation grille beside him.

There were three of them: one deep, rough-edged, one a resonant baritone, one an emotionless tenor. He didn't like that last one: it sounded the way a corpse would sound if it could sit up and talk. And the other two sounded mad clear through. Jess couldn't understand the words, but he knew the tone. Somebody was fixing to kill somebody down there. There wasn't any way he could stop it, even if the victim didn't have it coming. Because this was them, sure enough: the ones who'd messed things up here, sabotaged the place, killed all those people. Russians, probably. Too bad he didn't know Russian. Probably be getting an earful now.

He was lucky he'd heard them when he did. Another second, and he'd have dropped right down amongst 'em. And from what he'd heard about Commie spies, that would be the end of the Dooley biography.

No, there was nothing to do. Just lie quiet and wait for what came next—and be ready to move fast, if it worked out that way. 9

Lying on the hard cot in the tiny-walled room, Anne Rogers wondered where she was. She remembered wind, rain, bright lights shining across wet tarmac—

They had taken a helicopter. She and… and a man.

It was gone again. A crazy dream. About running, and police cars, shots, breaking glass—

The copter, hurtling low above whipping treetops, the sudden jarring impact, and—

She had been hurt. Maybe the copter ride was a dream, but she had been hurt. She was sure of that. Her hands went to her face, explored her skull, checked her arms, ribs; she sat up and was surprised at the dizziness that swept over her. Her legs seemed to be intact; there were no heavy bandages swathing her anywhere. Her head ached, and there were lesser aches here and there; but nothing serious. Her eyes went once again around the small room. A hospital, of course. Some sort of temporary one, like the kind the police took to the scene of an accident—

The police. She remembered all about the police now. He—the man—strange, she couldn't remember his face clearly, or his name—had attacked a policeman—or two of them. And now where was he? Anne felt a sudden pang of fear. Was he dead? For some reason, the idea filled her with panic. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. She was still fully dressed, even to the muddy trenchcoat. Whoever had brought her here hadn't taken much trouble with her. But why should they? As far as they were concerned, she was just a gun moll—an accomplice of an escaped convict.

Rain drummed and beat on the roof, only inches above her head. She rose, went, a little unsteadily, across to the narrow door. A passage less than three feet wide led past identical doors to a square of dim light at the end. She went to it, looked through a window into a room where a man stood talking into a canvas-cased telephone.

"…he's inside the power plant, Captain, but I can't get any cooperation out of the army. I've been ordered to stay the hell and gone back from the fence, not go near the place. But this boy is my meat, Brasher, all six-three of him! I've got bones to pick with this con, and it'll be his bones!" There was a pause while he listened, his face set in a scowl.

"Don't worry, I know how to handle it… Sure, I'll stay back. I've got the spot all picked. I can cover the front and the hole he blasted in the side, both. Whichever way he comes, I'll be there—just for insurance. I'll be watching him through the sights. One wrong move, and—Sure, I'll watch it. Don't sweat me, Captain—just so I've got your backing. Right." He hung up, stood smiling a crooked smile at the wall.

"But I've got a funny feeling," he said softly, aloud, "that any move that son of a bitch makes will be the wrong one—for him!" Anne moved quickly away from the door, hurried to the opposite end of the passage, stepped out into driving wind and slashing rain. It was dark here, but a hundred feet away were the lights of the vehicles on the road, and beyond was the looming pile of the power plant, bleak as a mortuary in the glare of the floodlights.

Grayle was in there. And when he came out, they'd be waiting for him. She had to warn him. There had to be a way…

Ten minutes later, having crossed the road below the convoy and approached the power plant beyond the glare of the field lights, Anne studied the front of the building from the shelter of a clump of alders. The doors had been blown away, the entry was wide open. There was nobody near it. If she ran, without stopping to think, quickly, now—

She had covered half of the hundred yards of open lawn before a shout sounded.

"It's a woman!" another voice yelled.

"Shoot, damn you!" a third voice commanded.

There was the flat, echoing carrong! of a heavy rifle, and mud leaped in a gout beside her. She ran on, heard the second shot, felt the sting of mud that spattered her legs. Then she was among the rubble, leaping an overturned chair, scrambling between broken door frames as a third bullet chipped stone above her head and screamed away into darkness.

"Grayle," Anne whispered, looking along the dark corridor. "Where are you?" Five minutes later she came on wet, muddy footprints in the passage. She followed them, moving quickly along the silent passage, to a stairwell leading down.

10

"Do you know what my mission here on Earth was, Loki?" Grayle asked.

"To conduct a routine reconnaissance—"

"One of Xix's lies. My orders were to establish a Class O beacon."

"Class O—that refers to a major navigational aid with a power output in the lower stellar range."

"Commonly known as a Hellcore."

"A Hellcore device—on an inhabited world?" Falconer shook his head. "You must be mistaken. Battle Command has no authority to order such a measure."

"The order didn't come from Battle Command. It came from Praze—my ship."

"Go on."

"I refused to comply, ordered the mission aborted. Praze refused, overrode my commands."

"I wondered about the crash. An Ysarian ship doesn't malfunction. You scuttled her, didn't you?"

"Ship-killer!" the krill hissed.

"I scuttled her—but not before she got the Hellcore away. It impacted in the sea, off the coast of the continent now known as North America."

"Why didn't you refer the order to Battle Command for confirmation?"

"Battle Command is a machine. It would have confirmed it."

"You're raving, Thor. Battle Command is made up of veteran combat officers: High General Wotan, Admiral Tyrr—"

"No, Loki—not for a long time now. You might ask Xix how long."

"Commander—we will listen no longer to this treacher! Charge the coil! Our time runs out!"

"Ask him what his hurry is, Loki. Ask him what it is he's so eager to accomplish."

"To leave this world, what else?" the krill said.

"Ask him about the beacon."

"What does the beacon have to do with it?"

"He raves, my commander," the krill whined.

"Ask him about the storm," Grayle said. "Ask him what he had to do with that!"

Falconer looked across at the great black entity. "Answer," he said.

"Very well—but we waste precious seconds. My instruments told me that the beacon device had been placed on the surface, but only the basic protective field was energized, due to the sabotage of the traitor. My first act when I began to draw energy from the primitive broadcast field was to transmit the 'proceed' signal on the Y-band for crust penetration, using a matter-annihilation beam. Naturally, a side effect of weather disturbance was created. The device is now well within the planetary interior. Once we are clear of the planet, it will require only the final triggering pulse to the reactor to ignite the beacon. But we must act swiftly! If the triggering signal is not received within a period of hours, the device self-destructs!"

"Cancel that," Falconer said. "We're not going to activate the beacon. It won't be needed now—not after all these years."

"Not perform our clear duty?"

"It's not our duty—not anymore."

"I fail to understand what circumstances you conceive could relieve us of responsibility for completion of a Fleet mission."

"Time—a great deal of time has passed. If the beacon had been needed, another ship would have been sent out."

"How does the passage of a few days influence the Ysarian Grand Strategy?"

"Over twelve hundred local years is more than a few days."

"What is this talk of centuries? Is it perhaps intended as a jest?"

"Don't you know how long we've been here?"

"Since our arrival at this world, less than ten thousand hours have elapsed; a little over a year."

"Something's interfered with your chronometry, Xix. You're wrong by a factor of a thousand."

"I am incapable of error within my design parameters. The need for the beacon is as great as ever. Accordingly, I will trigger it as planned. I can agree with no other course."

"You can agree? You're a machine. You follow my orders."

"My ultimate responsibility is to Battle Command. Its directives override your authority, Commander. The beacon will be activated as planned. Let us hope that the White Fleet has not suffered reverses in battle for lack of it."

"I think I understand," Falconer said. "Xix, you've been on Q status for most of the past twelve centuries. Your chronometric sensors only registered the periods of awareness."

"It is correct that I have from time to time reverted to J status as a power-conservation measure. But I fail to grasp your implication that this status has dimensional characteristics."

''It means," Grayle said, "that as far as it's concerned, when it's switched off, nothing is happening."

"The phenomenal world exists only during active status," Xix said calmly.

"This is confirmed not only by basic rationality, but by the absence of sensory input during such periods."

"I see: you don't shut yourself off—you turn off the world."

"These are mere semantic niceties, my commander—"

"How do you account for the fact that when you reactivate, you find that changes have taken place around you?"

"I have observed that it is a characteristic of the universe to reform in somewhat altered state after a discontinuity."

"What about the power broadcast you're drawing on? You think the savages I found here a millennium ago could have built that transmitter in six weeks?"

"A manifestation of the discontinuity effect previously noted. I had intended to discuss these phenomena with you at leisure, possibly during the voyage home."

"Do you realize," Falconer said, "that when you transmit that signal you'll turn the planet into a minor sun?"

"That is correct," the krill said.

"For the love of Ysar, Xix—listen to me—"

"For the love of Ysar, my commander, I cannot. Now, let me proceed with that which must be done."

"Tell it to go to the Ninth Hell," Grayle said thickly.

"Come, my commander—you know that without the coil I—and you—can never leave this world—and time grows short."

"Don't do it, Loki," Grayle said. "Let the ship rot where it is." The krill seemed to smile at Falconer, baring a serrated ridge of ivory white.

"Without power, I cannot lift, true. But I will not come to an end by slow decay—nor by the chemical bombs of the primitives. Reflect: the Y-field is still at operational level, is it not? I can trigger the beacon at any moment—from here."

"And incinerate yourself along with the rest of the planet."

"I have no alternative but to perform my duty. Your betrayal will change nothing—except that you will not live to see Ysar. I will regret your death. A useless death, Lokrien."

"If I agree," Falconer said, "will you contact a Fleet outpost for confirmation before you trigger the Hell-core?"

"It will mean a dangerous delay—but—yes, as you wish. I agree."

"It's lying," Grayle said. "As it's lied all along."

"Enough!" the krill said, rising to all fours. "Proceed, now, my commander! I can wait no longer!"

As Falconer hesitated, there was a sudden sharp sound from the door twenty feet distant in the end wall. It swung open, and a slim figure in a trench coat stepped through, hesitated. Her eyes found Grayle. In that instant, the krill crouched, leaped. Even more swiftly, Grayle moved, sprang between the beast and the girl. The krill struck him full on, knocked him back against the girl. She fell under their feet as Grayle rose, his hands locked on the beast's throat, while its talons raked him.

"Xix!" Falconer roared, and the cat-thing crouched away, while Grayle staggered, blood flooding down across his shredded jacket.

"You asked me once… where I'd seen wounds like those before," he said between his clenched teeth. "I thought then you mocked me."

"I saw John Zabisky," Falconer said. "And the dead soldier on the trail."

"There was another time… long ago, Loki. In a house built of timbers on a rocky hill among the snows. A woman and a child. Gudred, my wife, and Loki, my son." He looked across at Falconer. "May the Nine Gods forgive me, I thought you'd made them."

Falconer's face turned to a rigid mask. His eyes locked with those of the krill.

"You killed them," he said. "And let Thor believe I did it."

"It was necessary," the krill hissed. "He would have subverted you from your duty!"

"In the name of Ysar, you've betrayed everything that Ysar ever meant!"

"Ysar!" the krill yowled. "I weary of the name of Ysar, and of your foolish sentimentality! Ysar is dead, dead these hundred centuries! But you live—as I live—eternally! Let that reality sustain you! Now, do your duty, Commander!"

"He's telling the truth for once," Grayle said. "Ysar is dead, and only her undying machines—and a handful of immortal men—act out the dead dream."

"But—I remember Ysar…"

"

"Your memories are false," the krill said. "You were born aboard ship, Lokrien, nurtured in an amniotic tank, educated by cybertape! You were given the vision of that which once was and is no more, to inspire you in the performance of your duty. But surely now we can dispense with childish images! You live for your duty to Battle Command, as I do! Now, let me kill the traitor, and we will be on our way, once again to voyage outward, at home in the great emptiness of space!"

"Loki—it's bluffing! Without the coil, it dies—because that's what it draws its power from. That's why it came along—to keep an eye on the coil!

Destroy it, and you destroy the ship—and its murderous robot with it!"

"Commander—perhaps I erred through overzealousness—but if you destroy the coil—you die too!"

"Do it now, Loki!"

"Fools!" the krill raged. "I tried to spare you the last, full knowledge of yourselves, but you leave me no choice. True, I am a construct of Xix, linked to the neural circuitry of the ship, and with the death of the ship I die. But you, too, are constructs! Kill me, and you kill yourselves! Let me live, and yours is life eternal—even for the treacher, Gralgrathor!" Grayle gave a short, harsh laugh. "If we're constructs, we're human constructs. We should be able to do what a man would do."

"I move swiftly, Lokrien—perhaps more swiftly than you think." Falconer looked at the cat-thing, crouched, tail lashing, its eyes locked on him. He looked at Grayle, waiting, ignoring the terrible wounds across his chest.

"If I destroy the coil, we all die," he said softly, in English. "If I don't—the Earth dies."

"Decide, Commander," the krill said. "I will wait no longer." 11

Jess Dooley peered down into the gloom at the blurred figures below. He couldn't make out the details, just vague dark shapes against a deeper darkness. Until just now he hadn't had a clue as to what was going on; only that it was killing business. But he'd heard what the last fellow said, in plain American, about the Earth dying. That was plain enough. Everybody said World War Three wouldn't leave enough pieces to pick up for anybody to bother. Looked like the Russians were having words about—whatever it was they came here to do. One of them—the mean-voiced one—was for doing it right off. The other one, with the deep voice, was against it. And the third one wasn't sure. But he'd be making up his mind in a minute. Jess got silently to his hand and knees. He wasn't sure yet just what it was he was going to do—but he knew that he'd have to do something, even if it was wrong. He blinked, trying to penetrate the blindness, trying to get a good look at the fellow with the dead man's voice. He was the one to watch, the one to stop. If he'd just move a little more this way…

12

"For Ysar," Falconer said, and reached to close the contacts. The krill yowled in triumph, took two swift paces, reared above Grayle—

From the shadows above, a dark shape leaped, struck the cat-thing full across the back, unbalancing it enough that the stroke of its taloned paw went wide. It bucked, threw the man off, spun to leap at Falconer—

Fire burst from the hatch. In mid-spring, the cat-creature's body contorted. It struck the metal side of the machine, sprawled away from it, its limbs raking futilely in a last effort to reach Falconer, who sagged against the side of the unit, shaking his head dizzily. Grayle clung to the wall, fighting to stay on his feet.

"It lied… again," he whispered.

The krill lay limply; the light still glowed, but weakly, fading from the great eyes. It spoke in a dying voice:

"The long twilight… ends at last… in night."

13

"I'm all right, man," Dooley said as Falconer lifted him to his feet. "Don't tell me what that was I jumped; I don't want to know. Just get me out of this place."

"It's dead," Falconer said. "And the generators are stopping."

"But we're still alive," Grayle said. "That means we're bioconstructs, not mechanical. And now we're mortal creatures. We'll age and die like any man."

Falconer went to Anne, lifted her in his arms. "Until then we can live like any man."

They made their way up the echoing concrete steps, along the empty corridors. The first light of day gleamed beyond the shattered entrance. Already the wind was dying, the rain abating.

As the two men stepped out through the scattered rubble, light glinted on the dark hillside. Grayle leaped forward as a single shot rang out from the wooded slope above the building.

14

Captain Zwicky, coming up silently behind the man who lay in prone firing position behind the big pine, saw the stir of movement in the shattered entrance below, saw the two men step into view, heard the flat crack of the gun, threw himself on Harmon as he relaid his sights for the second shot.

"Why did you shoot him?" Zwicky shouted at the policeman as the latter wiped a big hand across his bloodied mouth. "Why?"

"Because," Harmon said with total conviction, "the son of a bitch thought he was better than I was."

15

"I'm sorry, brother." Falconer said. "Sorry for everything, but most of all for this."

"Xix was right," Grayle whispered. "But only half-right. Even the longest night… ends at dawn."

Carrying Anne, Falconer walked out across the dark lawn toward the waiting men.