"Busy man," Greg said. One star was brightening, edging across the screen. He stared at it, and knew.
"Melvyn," he called.
"Greg," Melvyn's voice was equally urgent. "Victor's on line. He reckons there's a tekmerc squad on the way."
The Celestial Apostles didn't like it.
"The time for running and hiding is over," Sinclair protested plaintively.
"Nobody is asking you to run," Melvyn's voice clanged out of his suit speaker. "We just want you safely out of the way."
"This is our home, now, Mr. Ambler. We live here. We built this place with the sweat of our brows."
"You may live anywhere in New London you wish after this," Julia said. "That's what you told me you wanted."
"That I did, yes. But why do you have to wait until these monster criminals come down here? Why not waylay them somewhere else?"
Greg listened to the argument with half an ear. The collective mind tone of the Celestials was nervous. And a fair proportion were practical types. They'd go. What he and Julia wanted was for Sinclair to carry on and show them where the drone had been. He suspected Sinclair was angling for concessions.
"They'd better get a move on," Suzi grumbled. She was standing beside him as he watched the spaceplane approach New London.
"Yeah. You going to stay here with the ambush team?"
"Fucking right I am."
"Don't annoy Melvyn, OK? He doesn't need it."
"Oh, thanks for the confidence. I'm fluid enough to take orders when I have to."
"Sure you are; I can read minds, remember?"
"Bollocks. All you know is that I'm pissed off with Leol fucking Reiger. Don't take no genius."
"Reiger's squad are bound to be in muscle-armour suits. How are you going to know which one is him?"
"'Cos the bastard walks with a swagger. Even in a suit, Greg, he walks with a swagger. I'll know him when I see him."
The spaceplane's auxiliary reaction drive came on, a vivid white spear of plasma extending across half of the starfield.
Sinclair started shouting orders, spurred by the sight. The Celestials were running round, collecting children, picking up flight bags stuffed with clothes.
Sinclair grabbed one of the girls. "Where's Tol?" he demanded loudly.
"I haven't seen him," she said.
"Holy Mary, the lad's probably off in the caves with a girl. All he thinks about, you know," Sinclair told Julia. "Terrible it is, but his heart's in the right place."
"You'll have to put someone else in charge," she said.
"Right you are there. Marcus!" he bellowed. "For the love of Mary, Marcus, where are you?"
One of the Celestials rushed over to Sinclair; Greg recognized him as a member of one of the afternoon's leaflet teams.
"I'll send a couple of the crash team with them to make sure they get out all right," Julia said.
"That's very kind of you," Sinclair said.
Greg smiled. Even down here, Julia was automatically in charge.
Eventually the Celestials were shepherded into a single agitated group. Some of the younger children were crying.
Sinclair stood on the rock staircase to talk to them, Julia at his side. "You can't use the Moorgate station, take them out through the Whitechapel entrance," he told Marcus. "It's the quickest from here."
"There will be some of my company security people waiting for you," Julia said. "Not the police, all right? They'll put you up in a hotel for tonight. After that, we'll sort out where you're going to live permanently."
The spaceplane's plasma drive cut off, revealing a small grey triangle floating beyond the end of the docking spindle. Pinpoint twinkles of blue light flickered around its nose, and it began to turn in towards the crater.
"Come an' get it," Suzi said.
Greg's intuition seemed to have dried up. He watched the spaceplane manoeuvring round the spindle, free of any presentiment.
Rick joined the two of them on the pedestal, giving the spaceplane a sober glance.
"You joining us?" Greg asked.
"Yes. It's what I came for. And I haven't been much use so far."
"Nobody expects you to hardline, Rick. Your job starts after we make contact."
The crack was slanted over at a good twenty degrees, one of several around the village cave. Sinclair had to clamber a metre off the arabic moss floor before he could squeeze into it.
"Down here?" Greg asked.
And Sinclair actually seemed embarrassed about it. "That's right, Captain Greg. The, er, younger folk use it quite a lot, if you take me meaning. The walls on the huts there, they aren't very thick."
"Got you," Greg said.
"It opens up a bit further down," Sinclair said encouragingly. "Your tin men'll be all right after that."
"Right." Three of the crash team were coming with them, Teresa Farrow, Jim Sharman, and Carlos Monetti. He took another look at the narrow crack. If they did meet anything hazardous in there, then targeting it would be a brute. "Hold it, Sinclair; Carlos, you go first. I want fire-power available if push comes to shove."
"Yes, sir," Carlos said gladly. He clamped his gauntlets on the side of the crack and walked himself up. Little splinters of rock spilled down.
Someone had found the controls for the solaris spots. They flared white, throwing everything into sharply defined contours.
Melvyn was busy organizing his crash team, sending them ranging into the village, and exploring the other cracks and fissures leading out of the cave.
"Hey, Greg," Suzi said. "Give Royan's arse a kick from me, OK?"
"No messing."
Sinclair wriggled into the crack after Carlos. Greg levered himself up. The aliens' presence was a cold burning star ahead of him, exerting a gravity which acted on his thoughts alone, pulling him on. He sucked in his belly, and slipped into the crack.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The empty corridors were faintly unnerving. Before the alarms had gone off the security centre had been a bustling, lively place. Now the moving walkway rattled hollowly in the deserted main corridor as the hardliner escorted Charlotte to the security centre's command post.
They stepped off the end of the walkway in front of a bank of seven lifts, the two at the far end were big service shafts. Security personnel were struggling with large flat-bed drones loaded with bulky machinery, trying to fit them through a service lift's doors. They were the first people Charlotte had seen since leaving Lloyd McDonald's office.
"What's all that for?" she asked the hardliner as they waited for their lift.
"Cutting gear by the look of it," he replied.
He'd been polite the whole time. Naturally. His eyes switching between her legs and her face. But he didn't know what was going on any more than she did. Nothing good, she knew, not with those alarms going off.
The lift arrived, and they descended.
There were three guards outside the command centre's door, all of them armed. He had to show his card to a cybofax one of them carried before they were allowed through the door.
Inside was a big circular room with rings of consoles, large flatscreens round the wall, a giant cube at the centre of the vaulting rock ceiling. She picked up on the current of worry infecting all the people sitting behind the consoles, their serious faces, strained voices.
"Over here." Her hardliner gestured at a glass-walled office. She could see Victor, Sean, and Lloyd inside.
Just as she got to the door she saw Fabian's face on a phone flatscreen, her legs almost faltered. Then Victor's expression registered. She wanted to turn and run.