It was night, but distant cities and even more distant suns cast enough light to silver the misty clouds that approached Spyre like curious fish. She saw how the clouds would nuzzle Spyre cautiously, only to be rebuffed by its whirling rotation. They recoiled, formed cautious spirals and danced around the great cylinder, as if trying to find a way in. Dark speckles—flocks of piranhawks and sharks—browsed among them, and there in great black formations were the barbedwire and blockhouses of the sentries.
To be among the clouds with nothing above or below seemed perfectly normal to Venera. If she fell, she only had to open her parachute and she’d come to a stop long before hitting the barbed wire. It wasn’t the prospect of falling that made her heart pound—it was the savage headwind that was trying to snatch her breath away.
The rope shuddered, and she grabbed it spasmodically. Then she felt a hand touch her ankle.
The soldiers hauled her through a curtain of speed ivy and into a narrow gun emplacement. This one was dry and empty, its tidiness somehow in keeping with Sacrus’s fastidious attention to detail. Bryce was already here, and he unceremoniously yanked the air line from Venera’s mouth—or tried; she bit down on it tenaciously for a second, glaring at him, before relenting and opening her mouth. He shot her a look of annoyance and tied it and her unopened parachute to the line. This he let out through the speed ivy, to be reeled back to Buridan for its next user.
Princess Corinne’s idea had sounded insane, but she merely shrugged, saying, “We do this sort of thing all the time.” Of course, she was from Fin, which explained much. That pocket nation inhabited one of Spyre’s gigantic ailerons, a wing hundreds of feet in length that jutted straight down into the airstream. Originally colonized by escaped criminals, Fin had grown over the centuries from a cold and dark sub-basement complex into a bright and independent—if strange—realm. The Fins didn’t really consider themselves citizens of Spyre at all. They were creatures of the air.
Over the years they had installed hundreds of windows in the giant metal vane, as well as hatches and winches. They were suspected of being smugglers, and Corinne had proudly confirmed that. “We alone are able to slip in and out of Spyre at will,” she’d told Venera. And, as their population expanded, they had colonized five of the other twelve fins by the same means they were using to break into Sacrus.
To reach Sacrus, one of Corinne’s men had donned a parachute and taken hold of a rope that had a big three-barbed hook on its end. He had stepped into the howling airfall and was snatched down and away like a fleck of dust.
Venera had been watching from the tower and saw his parachute balloon open a second later. Instantly, he stopped falling away from Spyre and began curving back toward the hull. Down only operated as long as you were part of the spinning structure, after all; freed of the high speed imparted by Spyre’s rotation, he’d come to a stop in the air. He could have hovered there, scant feet from the hull, for hours. The only problem was the rope he held, which was still connected to Buridan.
The big wooden spool that was unreeling it was starting to smoke. Any second now it would reach its end, and the snap would probably take his hands off. Yet he calmly stood there in the dark air, waiting for Sacrus to shoot past.
As the pipes and machine-gun nest leaped toward him he lifted the hook and, with anticlimactic ease, tossed it ahead of the rushing metal. The hook caught; the rope whipped up and into the envelope of speeding air surrounding the hull; and Corinne’s man saluted before disappearing over Spyre’s horizon. They’d recovered him when he came around again.
Now, brilliant light etched the cramped gun emplacement with the caustic sharpness of a black-and-white photograph. One of the men was employing a welding torch on the hatch at the top of the steps. “Sealed ages ago, like we thought,” shouted Bryce, jabbing a thumb at the ceiling. “Judging from the pipes, we’re under the sewage stacks. There’s probably toilets above us.”
“Perfect.” They needed a staging ground from which to assault the tower. “Do you think they’ll hear us?”
Bryce grimaced. “Well, there could be fifty guys sitting around up there taking bets on how long it’ll take us to burn the hatch open. We’ll find out soon enough.”
Suddenly, the ceiling blew out around the welder. He retreated in a shower of sparks, cursing, and a new wind filled the little space. Before anybody else could move, Thinblood leaped over to the hole and jammed some sort of contraption up it. He folded, pulled—and the wind stopped. The hole the welder had made was now blocked by something.
“Patch hatch,” said Thinblood, wiping dust off his face. “We’d better go up. They might have heard the pop or felt the pressure drop.”
Without waiting, he pressed against his temporary hatch, which gave way with a rubbery slapping sound. Thinblood pushed his way up and out of sight. Bryce was right behind him.
Both were standing with their guns drawn when Venera fought her way past the suction to sprawl on a filthy floor. She stood up, brushing herself off, and looked around. “It is indeed a men’s room.”
Or was it? In the weak light of Thinblood’s lantern, she could see that the chamber was lined in tiles that had once been white but which had long since taken on the color of rust and dirt. Long streaks ran down the wall to dark pools on the floor. Venera expected to see the usual washroom fixtures along the walls, but other than a metal sink there was nothing. She had an uneasy feeling that she knew what sort of room this was, but it didn’t come to her until Thinblood said, “Operating theater. Disused.”
Bryce was prying at a metal chute mounted in one wall. It creaked open, and he stared down into darkness for a second. “A convenient method of disposal for body parts or even whole people,” he said. “I’m thinking more like an autopsy room.”
“Vivisectionist’s lounge?” Thinblood was getting into the game.
“Shut up,” said Venera. She’d gone over to the room’s one door and was listening at it. “It seems quiet.”
“Well it is the middle of the night,” the preservationist commented. More members of their team were meanwhile popping up out of the floor like jack-in-the-boxes. Minus the wind-up music, Venera mused.
Soon there were twenty of them crowded together in the ominous little room. Venera cracked the door and peered out into a larger, dark space full of pipes, boilers, and metal tanks. This was the maintenance level for the tower, it seemed. That was logical.
“Is everyone clear on what we’re doing?” she asked.
Thinblood shook his head. “Not even remotely.”
“We are after my man Flance,” she said, “as well as information about what Sacrus is up to. If we have to fight, we cause enough mayhem to make Sacrus rethink its strategy. Hence the charges.” She nodded at the heavy canvas bag one of the Liris soldiers was toting. “Our first order of business is to secure this level, then set some of those charges. Let’s do it.”
She led the soldiers of half a dozen nations as they stepped out of their bridgehead and into the dark of enemy territory.
15
Everything in the Gray Infirmary seemed designed to promote a feeling of paranoia. The corridors were hung with huge black felt drapes that swayed and twitched slightly in the moving air, giving the constant impression that there was someone hiding behind them. The halls were lit by lanterns fixed on metal posts; you could swivel the post and aim the light here and there, but there was no way to illuminate your entire surroundings at any point. The floors were muffled under deep crimson carpet. You could sneak up on anybody here. There were no signs, doors were hidden behind the drapery, and all the corridors looked alike.