‘I’ll bring the third sensor back into phase,’ said Carloon. ‘It doesn’t matter if we lose that one.’
The sensor operated for less than a second. Carloon froze the view, displaying a blurred image as of a torch shone through someone’s cheek from inside.
‘Coming up on number seven,’ said Carloon.
Maxell noticed how the man’s hand was shaking as he poised a finger over the virtual icon that would put this next sensor out of phase. Three more sensors went the same way and when Carloon got the same view from number four as he had from number three, she knew there was no point in saving any more of them for a hoped-for rear view of the beast.
‘Cut the structural feed to minimum sustainable,’ she instructed the interface techs.
The immediate energy surge caused the floor to vibrate, and she knew the Heliothane population would be feeling this all across the city’s disc. Now microwave projectors and terajoule lasers were pumping the energy excess out into space, but this was an emission the city could not sustain. Eventually something would burn out, and then systems would begin to break down. If that happened the wormhole extension would have to be cut, else the microwave beam transmitted from the sun tap would create a molten sea in the centre of their fine city.
‘Coming up on eleven,’ said Carloon. ‘It’s taking longer.’
‘When it hits twelve, we do it,’ said Maxell. She looked around, seeing that most of the superfluous control-room staff were now standing in a semi-circle behind her. ‘And then we see if we survive.’
Theldon gazed back for a second to where the survivors of Sauros were setting up camp on the mountainside, then turned and negotiated his way down what was once the course of a stream between stands of charred vegetation. He needed a deep pool to take the emergency manifold and there was none around here, the water having been evaporated literally in the heat of battle.
Even though the differences between heliothant and umbrathant were a few minor genetic ones, but mostly a question of loyalties, Theldon had found it difficult to infiltrate the upper echelons of the Heliothane Dominion. It had in fact taken him fifty of his one hundred and twenty-five years of life, and just when he was in a position to strike a blow that would obliterate New London, and the threat that it posed, Goron had shut down his console. He would have liked to have acted even earlier, but only during the chaos of the attack could his own penetration of abutment control have gone unnoticed. He damned himself for not sticking entirely to his job, and warning them of that first incursion because that error had certainly been what had roused Goron’s suspicions. Now fifty years of sycophancy were wasted and ten years of being subordinate to Cowl’s previously unknown primary agent.
Palleque.
They’d brought him back wounded for an interrogation. Theldon was unworried that his own presence might be revealed by Palleque, for the identities of Umbrathane agents or Cowl’s agents were never revealed to each other, precisely for this reason. What had worried him then was just how long it was taking for that interrogation to start. And now… now Palleque was Goron’s great friend and a hero to the Heliothane. Palleque had always been a double agent and this was something Cowl needed to know because that, and the fatalistic way Goron had reacted to the torbeast’s attack, made Theldon feel this whole situation stank.
At last, out of sight of the vast flow of the torbeast pouring into the wormhole, Theldon saw the glimmer of water between some rocks. Heading down, he scanned desperately for a deep pool, but none was yet in evidence. Then, thankfully, it appeared before him: a deep pool right by a seared pile of vegetation that must have been washed down here in an earlier flood. He hurried towards it, having no doubt that Goron’s people would be hunting for him even now. Perhaps Cowl could somehow divert an outgrowth of the torbeast into depositing one of its active scales—or maybe Cowl possessed some other method of retrieving his loyal agents.
At the pool Theldon went down on his knees and observed the floating bodies of blue-skinned newts amid the scum of burnt leaves and twigs. Plunging his hand into the water, he found it still warm and thought about the other kind of heat that would still be in this area. Certainly some of the citizens of Sauros would be excising tumours from themselves in the immediate future and having to run anti-cancer enzymes through their bodies for years to come. But whatever technology they had would now no longer be available to Theldon himself. Cowl would have something, though, and Theldon, with his tough genetic structure resulting from Umbrathane breeding programs and direct genetic manipulation, would be able to survive any melanomas for quite a few years yet. He sat back and shook water from his hand, then he pressed the finger and thumb of his right hand into his left forearm. The lump embedded in his muscle became visible through taut skin and, as he kept on the pressure, a fistula developed and began to ooze plasma. He pinched the flesh hard and a flattened white spheroid, a centimetre across, popped out of his arm. He inspected the thing for a second, then tossed it into the pool.
In the Jurassic he had established a permanent manifold set deep and out-of-phase in granite, just like the one Palleque had supposedly been caught using. That was all well and good, as the device extruded layers of vorpal crystal through the surrounding rock with which to blur the tachyon signal and thus hide itself from detection. The only problem was that once the egg had been placed, it took a number of days to develop and become usable. Growing one in water was quick but risky, as the chances of detection increased by an order of magnitude.
The spheroid sank about half a metre below the surface and there, with one twitch, expanded to twice its previous size. It then frayed around the edges, and all movement in the water surrounding it ceased as it set itself in a fast-propagating jelly. It then began to grow the hard tentacular arms of the manifold, like sulphate crystals dumped in a solution of isinglass. In seconds it was ready and he pressed his palm against the pool’s now rubbery surface: like an attacking squid the manifold rose to bind with his hand. After a moment Cowl’s beetle face looked up at him from the depths.
‘Sauros has been evacuated,’ Theldon said without preamble. ‘Was Palleque really your primary agent?’
‘He was,’ Cowl replied.
‘Then know that he was a double agent. Goron gave him a displacement generator before the torbeast’s attack and now it seems they are the greatest of friends.’
Pain shot up Theldon’s arm from the manifold and he found he could not pull his hand away.
‘It’s true!’ he protested. ‘Something more is going on! I’m sure Goron expected things to happen as they have.’ The pain eased and Theldon took an unsteady breath. He went on, ‘I don’t know what they think to achieve, but you have been out-manoeuvred.’
Cowl’s head turned sideways, and for a moment Theldon got a hint of nightmarish shapes deep down in the pool.
‘The beast will not stop,’ said Cowl. He turned back. ‘The killer… my sister…’
Abruptly the connection broke, and the manifold sank and slowly broke apart. Theldon withdrew his hand and looked disbelievingly at the still pool. No chance of rescue now. Cowl had given him nothing, not even a chance to ask for help. Theldon turned and looked back the way he had come. Maybe he could still salvage something. Maybe, during the chaos of the torbeast’s attack, what he had tried to do could be put down to panic… inexperience.
Theldon was halfway back along the course of the stream when Palleque spotted him, and folded up the scope of the Heliothane rifle he was carrying. Theldon did not even see the source of the shot that punched a finger-width hole through his chest and blew his spine out of his back. There were never any maybes in this conflict, and very little room for doubt.