But by expecting the worst, he felt spiritually exulted when they arrived at the bottom of the starship unharmed and apparently unnoticed. They stood, still together, with their backs pressed against the cold, cold metal of the hull, sweat on their backs seeming to turn to ice. Breaths pounded in and out of four sets of lungs. Four hearts thumped too fast.
“Carefully again,” Coro said between labored suckings of air.
Quietly, gently they moved along the base of the ship, sliding next to the scaffold wheels. The lace-work steel shot up eighty feet. At the top, spray guns blasted black paint onto the gleaming metal.
“Drop back and fire,” Coro said.
And they did. Darts spurted out of four guns, and the slugs slumped quickly under the hail of needles, dropping spray machines onto the platform beside them. But even the loud clunkings from this didn’t seem to draw any unwanted attention.
“Up,” Coro said curtly, boarding the ramp of the scaffold and climbing quickly through the shadows of the metal piping.
At the top, they stepped over the slugs and reached the controls of the mobile scaffold. Coro experimented, found the proper operational procedure, and began moving them toward the main portal to the control cabin of the vessel. The machine hummed softly as it moved, a hum reminiscent of Racesong. They were almost to the portal when the beams burst bluely against the hull, announcing their loss of secrecy.
“Cover me!” Coro shouted, holding onto the controls.
The machine suddenly seemed to be moving so damnably slow! Moving slowly toward a port that was abruptly so distant as to seem an impossible quest. The other three turned, kneeling on the platform. There was no cover for them up here, nothing to intercept the beams that flushed outward from the weapons of a block of guards racing across the port deck.
“Can’t you move this thing any faster?” Lotus called.
“It’s at top speed already,” Coro shouted. “They didn’t design it for racing!” A beam smashed inches above his head, pitting the thick metal of the starship.
“Dammit!” Lotus snapped, angry at the machine, herself, all of them for not being able to move faster.
Sam fired a few darts, saw that the slugs were still too far away. The darts dropped lazily, snapping against the concrete thirty yards short. He stopped and watched the advancing guards. There appeared to be an even dozen of them, rolling like snakes, their black and yellow uniform cloaks fluttering idiotically behind them. Costumed worms, he thought. On their way to some ludicrous Halloween ball. Their anterior segments gripped the concrete and thrust them on. Their pseudopods gripped the sleek, powerful-looking rifles that spat the blue beams.
“Just another minute!” Coro called.
There was a blue explosion next to Sam. He fell flat against the platform, hugging it as if he could melt into it by virtue of the heat of his fear. They’re trying to kill me, he thought. They are purposefully trying to blow off my head. He clutched the dart gun, wanted to retch. The others fell flat and began shooting. The guards were close enough now, and they dropped almost as one as the first wave hit them. Seven fell with the initial round. The other five turned, abruptly anxious to seek cover, went down as the trio fanned them with darts.
Sirens wailed from the polyarcs. More slugs appeared between the ships that dotted the port deck. They rolled about, buzzing in confusion, then came to grips with the situation, armed themselves, and moved toward the starship with cold purpose.
Clunk! The scaffold jerked to a stop. “Someone help me with this portal!” Coro shouted.
Sam jumped and ran to the circular hatch. Together, they gripped the large primary handle, twisted it in the direction of a series of red arrows. When it clicked and could be moved no further, they turned to the second wheel and twisted it counterclockwise. The noise on the port deck below was much louder and much closer. A spatter of beams boiled over the plating, leaving shallow pits in the ship’s thick hide.
“Not much more,” Coro groaned between breaths.
Sam began to croak an answer, was flung from his feet and tossed against the hull, smashed back to the deck of the scaffold. A beam had caught his arm, leaving a four-inch wound. The gouge was an inch deep along his biceps. Blood gurgled out, matted in his shirt. Pain throbbed through every nerve and erupted nova-like into his brain. “I’m all right,” he managed to hiss to Coro. “Go on. Hurry!”
Coro turned back to the portal, strained at the wheel to move it the last few crucial inches.
Lotus and Crazy had used all the darts in their own guns just as the door swung open with a sigh. Slugs were clambering up the ramp while others stood on the deck below firing a murderous barrage that pitted metal and singed clothing and skin.
“Go ahead,” Crazy bellowed, grabbing Coro’s unused rifle. “I’ll hold them off a few more seconds, then leap in after you.”
Coro pulled Lotus — she was reluctant to go before Crazy — to the portal and shoved her through, jumped for Sam and helped him in. A hail of beams chipped at the rim of the hatch.
Crazy fired wildly, his hair bouncing.
Coro turned, opened his mouth to call; his mouth stayed open — in a scream. A beam caught Crazy in the chest, tore him open to the crotch and spilled his insides all over the scaffolding. For a split instant the boyish face looked surprised. Then the eyes fluttered shut. He swayed and toppled over the edge of the scaffold, hooves kicking.
XI
Like a needle sinking through a jar of Stygian syrup, the starship slid silently through the thickness of hyperspace, set on a course for Hope. Lotus lay huddled on a bunk, her wings crumpled carelessly beneath her, her cheeks stained with tears. It had taken both of them to hold her down and hypo enough c.c.’s of sedatives into her to put her to sleep. She wanted to leap out onto the platform, get Crazy back inside — even though he was dead. Dead. A word she couldn’t connect with Crazy, a word distant and unreal. Now, at last, she slept.
Sam stretched out on a bunk, anxious to catch a little nap before they reached Hope and the trouble ahead. A little nap, perhaps, before the longest nap…
Blackness… Blackness…
Concussion! Brilliance! A rectangle of nova-light!
The door had burst open, and the shadow-clad figure of a man stood there, framed in the doorway against the burning background of light. His eyes gleamed madly in darkness. Slowly he advanced.
Who are you?
There was no answer from the shadow-man.
Who are you!
There was a guttural, awful snarling from the man, the snarls of an animal. He was large as an ox, shoulders as wide as an ax handle, hands like chiseled rocks.
Desperately, Sam palmed the light switch, heart thumping like the heart of a bird. Light fired the room — but the flickering light of a strobe. On… off… on… off. The approaching giant was a pulsating, cardboard-like creature in the weird light.
On, off, on, off…
His face was a twisting mass of shadows.
The face of… of…
Who are you?
The face of Buronto! Black Jack Buronto! A leer split the all too familiar face. Hands reached out to grab, tear, strangle.
Don’t touch me! Please, please, don’t touch me!
On, off, on, off, the strobe threw flickering blacknesses and sporadic waves of yellow light over the snarling colossus. The hands fidgeted as they reached out for his throat and…