The official looked him up and down, contemptuously, before shaking his head. “Nothing will move around here without the proper authorisation.”
“I’ve got the proper authorisation.” Nicklin made a show of activating the rifle. “It’s pointing at your navel.”
“That curious object!” The official placed a hand on the butt of his old-style revolver and smiled to show that he knew something about weaponry. “It isn’t even a good replica.”
“You’re right.” Nicklin elevated the rifle slightly and squeezed the trigger. A blue-white ray stabbed through the roof of the kiosk, explosively vaporising part of the gutter, eaves and plastic rafters, sending a swirl of sparks and smoke down the wind. Even Nicklin, who had good reason to appreciate the power of the weapon, was taken aback by the extent of the damage.
“It’s a fucking awful replica,” he said to the uniformed man, who had cringed back from the flash. “Now, about the slideway…”
“I don’t think you’d be stupid enough to use that thing on me.” The man straightened up and squared his shoulders as he spoke, but there was a trace of uncertainty in his voice.
Nicklin moved one step closer and gave him the full happy hayseed grin, while his eyes promised murder. “I’ve killed other men with this, and I’m fully prepared to blow you into two separate pieces—a top half and a bottom half.”
For a moment there was no sound but that of the wind, then there came distant shouting from the north side of the dock complex. Nicklin glanced towards it, in the direction of the park boundary, and saw moving flecks of colour which signalled the advance of the expected mob. He swung his gaze back to the official and immediately sensed that something had changed in him.
“I try to do what they pay me for, but there’s nothing in my contract about getting myself killed,” the man said with a shrug. “No hard feelings, eh?”
Nicklin blinked at him, giving away nothing. “No feelings of any kind. Are you going to roll the ship and stay alive?”
“I’m going to roll the ship. As soon as you get your party on board, away she goes!”
Hepworth moved close to Nicklin and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Jim, you can see what he’s up to. As soon as we go on board and seal the ship he’s going to run for cover and leave us high and dry. Even if we open the doors again it’ll be too late to—”
“I know what he’s up to,” Nicklin snapped, keeping the rifle steady on the man in the kiosk. “We’re all going on board now. I’ll be walking backwards, so keep a clear space behind me—especially on the ramp. Okay?”
“Okay, Jim.” Hepworth moved away towards the ship and the rest of the mission workers backed off with him.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” Nicklin said to the witichful official. “I could easily pick you off at three kilometres with this imitation replica, so there’s no chance of me missing you inside two or three hundred metres. I’m going on board the ship now, but I’ll have the gun on you every step of the way. Even if you throw yourself down on the floor I’ll destroy your little hut and everything in it, including you. Is that clear?”
“I won’t do anything stupid.” The man glanced towards the north where, at the end of a long row of sheds, it was now possible in< discern individual running figures. “How will—?”
“As soon as I get to the top of the ramp you start the slide moving. Don’t wait for the door to close. As soon as you see me up there—roll the ship.”
The man almost smiled. “That could be dangerous.”
“For you,” Nicklin countered. “That’s when you’ll be in the biggest danger. You might get the idea that I’ll be too busy with the door locks to keep the cross-hairs on you—but I promise you I won’t. The door will stay open until I feel the ship’s nose going down, so—whatever you do—keep the machinery running.”
“I’ll be as nervous as hell by then,” Nicklin added, beginning to back away, “but the gun will still be on you, and you’d better pray there aren’t any power failures. If the slide sticks for even half a second I won’t be able to stop my finger from twitching.”
“Nothing will go wrong if I can help it,” the man said, turning to his control panel.
Keeping the rifle aimed, not daring to glance behind him, Nicklin moved towards the ramp as quickly as he could. He had spent more time than he liked in talking to the slidemaster, but it had been necessary for the man to be very clear about what was expected of him. His peripheral vision told Nicklin that he was being watched by a number of port workers. They had formed an intermittent ring at a discreet distance, nobody caring to move forward in case the crazy man should be tempted to unleash another bolt of lightning.
The expanse of concrete between the kiosk and the Tara had become a sunlit arena, with wind-borne scraps of litter tumbling in the dust. Nicklin had full control of the situation because each person there was thinking as an individual, and had an individual’s fear of being annihilated. But hundreds of new participants were racing towards the scene, and the formless sound which heralded their arrival told him they were thinking as a mob—and a mob knows itself to be collectively immortal. Were a few of its sub-units to blunder up the steps of the slideway control kiosk the Tara would never be able to take flight…
“The ramp is two steps behind you,” Hepworth said.
“Got it.” Nicklin moved on to the slope, thankful for its smooth anti-slip surface, and backed up it. As he gained height he got a more comprehensive view of his surroundings. The entire space port area seemed to be awash in a riptide of humanity. He reached the entrance to the ship and, keeping the blue cross-hairs centred on the slidemaster, carefully stepped backwards to stand on the interior gangplank.
The Tara began to move immediately, and the platform at the head of the ramp slipped away to his right.
“The door hydraulics are on full pressure, Jim.” Hepworth was hunkered down by the control panel. “Give the word when you want to close up.”
“We have to wait till the ship actually dips its nose,” Nicklin replied, while one part of his mind shrieked in disbelief at what was happening. “Our friend in the glass box knuckled under too easily He isn’t finished with us yet.”
“But it takes time for the door to close. If we drop through the diaphragm field while it’s still open—”
“Don’t touch that button till I tell you!” Nicklin made his voice hard, concealing the agonies of suspense and apprehension inspired in him by the ship’s almost imperceptible progress towards the rim of the aperture. The leaders of the crowd advancing from the park reached the dockside while he was speaking. Some of them came sprinting towards the ship, punching the air in their frustration, but others were surging around the kiosk.
Don’t go up the steps, Nicklin prayed, his brow prickling with cold sweat. Please don’t force me to kill you.
Far below him the slideway was squealing as its rollers pulverised a two-year accumulation of debris, material which would have been swept out before a routine launch. New fears invaded his mind. What if the debris contained a piece of scrap metal large enough to mm the slide? What if some of the protesters below had got the same idea and were already hurling scaffold tubes into the exposed mechanisms?
He ceased breathing as a pool of blackness began spreading in the lower half of his field of vision. That meant he was now moving out over the portal and, as the door was close to the centre of the ship, the whole ponderous structure should be on the point of tilting downwards. His heartbeats became internal hammer blows as the scene projected by the rifle’s smartscope began a slow rotation.