Stile aimed the laser-cutter down and turned it on. The sand bubbled into glass as the beam plunged into it. It formed a glass-lined hole leading down to the shielded cable. Then it cut through the cable itself, casing and insulation and all, centimeter by centimeter. There was a flash from the hole. Air puffed from the dome in decompression. The force-field was gone. “I think she will be out presently,” Stile said with grim satisfaction. “Now I have sworn to kill her, but I want to be fair about it. I don’t want you to do the job for me. Since there are regulations against the execution of serfs by serfs, in the frame of Proton, 111 need to drag her into Phaze. Maybe we can bring her to trial there, and put her away ethically. So you leave it to me—but keep an eye on Blue Adept 283 me, because I don’t expect Red to pass up any advantage or ploy, legal or illegal, that she thinks will work. She’ll try to keep our feud private, because if the Citizens investigate her connection to Hulk’s murder she’ll be exiled from Pro-ton. So this is private between us—and I don’t want to be the victim of cheating.”
“Your logic is human,” Sheen said wryly. “If I weren’t programmed to love you—“
“Get on with it. Get a vehicle or something.”
“Bluette’s Employer has launched an investigation. Very soon he will obtain a transcript of Hulk’s experience.” She walked toward the shuttle tube. The gas would have no effect on her, and she would be able to use the communication screen to contact her friends.
So Bluette’s Employer was taking action. Red was already getting into trouble on Proton. But that didn’t change his own need to deal with her.
Stile ran on into the dome-area, now a shambles from the abrupt decompression. With luck he could catch Red during this initial period of confusion. All the occupants should be gasping, looking for long-neglected oxygen equipment, not paying attention to anything except their personal discomfort.
But as he entered, a vehicle charged out—a sand buggy with a bubbletop, painted red. She was taking off. Stile ran for the cellar section. Maybe there would be another vehicle. He had to have some way to follow. There were three other vehicles—all in flames. Red had made sure she would not be pursued.
Well, he had another avenue. Stile hurried to the curtain and stepped through, removed his abruptly inoperative oxygen mask, and looked about. Neysa was there, of course, pointing the way. “I’ll spell myself to a spot ahead of her, then recross,” Stile said.
But the unicorn nudged him, blowing a negative note.
She wouldn’t let him go alone.
“All right—we should stay together,” Stile agreed. “But I don’t want to wear thee out chasing after a Proton car. I’ll have to enhance the trip by magic.” Neysa still was not keen on magic practiced on herself, but accepted this as she had the horn-tail enchantment, 2 with equine grace. “We two proceed with smiles. Red’s direction fifty miles.” That made it possible to overshoot Red’s position, and land ahead—which was where he wanted to be.
They moved rapidly across the landscape, as they had when leaving the White Demesnes. In a moment they were there. It was a pleasant enough glade east of the Red Demesnes. Neysa’s directional horn pointed west; they had outdistanced the quarry.
“All I have to do now is cross back and intercept her, and—“ Stile stopped. “Oh, no!”
For the curtain was nowhere near there. “Well, we’ll just have to pace her until she intersects the curtain,” Stile said.
They paced her, moving near the limit of the unicorn’s capacity. It was a strange business, because away from the curtain they could not see Red at all; only Neysa’s horn pointed out her location in the parallel world. It was like following a ghost.
A ghost. Stile wondered whether there was a similar curtain-effect on other worlds. Back on Planet Earth, when the legends were being formed—could a curtain have ac-counted for the perception of ghosts? People or creatures that were and were not present? So much seeming fantasy could be accounted for, if—
Then Stile spied the curtain. “This is it!” he said. He tore off his clothes and set his mask back in place as he spelled himself through.
Red had evidently been heading for this intersection with the curtain. The car was slowing. It swerved almost immediately to charge him. Was she trying to drive him back across the curtain? Stile distrusted that, so he stayed put. The car had four choices; it could swerve to the left to catch him as he dodged that way, or to the right, or go straight ahead on the assumption he would risk standing still, or it could stop. He doubted it would stop. She in-tended to smash him if she could, and make him step back across the curtain otherwise.
She made a good effort. She feinted slightly to the left, then to the right, trying to provoke his motion. Stile stood still, and the car accelerated straight at him.
At the last moment. Stile leaped up. The car was sleek and low, more powerful than the dune buggy he had at first conjectured. It passed right under him. Sometimes it paid to be an acrobat. He landed neatly in the swirl of sand the vehicle had stirred up without even a twinge from his bad knees.
Now he saw another vehicle approaching. That would be Sheen, having obtained a car from her friends. No wonder Red was in a hurry; any delay, and the pursuit would catch up.
But why had Red wanted him out of Proton? If she planned to cross the curtain, why force him to cross too, when she knew he had the advantage in Phaze. That didn’t seem to make much sense.
Stile got ornery when unsatisfied. Red was up to some-thing, and wanted him out of the way so she could do whatever it was—and so he had better stay right on her. He hailed the second car, and sure enough, it was Sheen. She slowed to pick him up, then accelerated after the fleeing car.
Sheen’s car was larger and faster; her friends had pro-vided well. Stile did not inquire how they had produced it so quickly. Some computer entry had surely been made to account for its use. They zoomed over the sand at some hundred to hundred and ten kilometers per hour, a velocity even Neysa could not match. In Phaze, she would have to run sixty to seventy miles an hour cross-country. She might facilitate things by changing to firefly-form to cross the worst of it, but she would inevitably fall behind. A huge plume of dust swirled up behind each car. Be-fore long they had closed in on Red’s vehicle, traveling a little to the side so as to be clear of her cometlike wake. That dust served to emphasize the barrenness that was Proton—a world that science had improved into desolation. Red cut southeast, angling toward the Purple Mountain range. Where was she going?
“Do we have any way to bring her to a stop?” Stile asked. “I don’t like getting too far ahead of Neysa, in case we have action on the other side of the curtain.” “Oh, yes. This is an attack vehicle. We can fire a disrupter to short out her electrical system.”
“That’s ideal!”
But now Red’s car shot into a channel in the mountain.
It slewed through a curvaceous pass and up a barren slope.
Sheen’s car followed, but could not get a direct shot at it. Now, directly behind, they suffered the full effect of the dust-wake. Red obviously was familiar with this region; Sheen and Stile were not.
On they skewed, wending through the mountain foothills and gullies at dangerously high velocity, never getting a clean shot. “I don’t like this,” Stile said. “She thinks in terms of traps. Things that wait quiescent until invoked. She’ll have something set up here.”
“I can call my friends on the car’s band, and ask them to—“
“No! They have to maintain their anonymity. A clerical error freed this car; that’s as far as they can go. It’s my job.”