He turned to face the guard.
“Was it tough at Aergistal?”
The soldier did not stir. He was looking straight in front of him at a horizon which a timeless regulation fixed at a distance of six paces. Corson hardened his tone.
“Answer me, will you? I’m Captain Corson, remember!”
Finally the soldier did speak, in a clear voice, but barely parting his teeth.
“Colonel Veran will tell you about it himself. Those are his orders.”
Corson did not press him. The soldier wouldn’t anyway have been able to answer the next question he wanted to put. Even if he had been willing to. Where was Aergistal? As for the third—well, it made even less sense.
When was Aergistal?
For by now Corson was coming to the conclusion that the battle must have occurred far in the past. Veran’s ship must have crossed not only space but—like Corson—time as well. He must hail from an era when interstellar wars still took place, where the Security Office did not yet lay down the law.
He wondered how the Office would react when it learned about the presence of Veran on Uria.
He circled the pegasone park. Night fell, though the vanished sun still decorated the treetops with mauve plumes. A cool wind was rising. He shivered. For the first time he was really aware of how ridiculous his flimsy ornate garments were. No wonder the guard had trouble treating him as an officer! He regretted having destroyed his uniform. Even though it was unlike what Veran and his men wore, it would have given him a more military air. He smiled inwardly. He hadn’t been demobilized very long! Barely more than forty-eight hours. Perhaps Veran’s arrival had been providential. In his company, especially since the man seemed to have need of him, he might again take up the only profession he knew, that of arms. Never mind the risks. Danger was everywhere, in the forest where the Monster was at large, in space where he, Corson, was an outlaw, a war criminal… He might as well end his days among his compeers.
He scowled, thinking of Antonella. It was sensible to teach soldiers to keep away from real women, never to grant them more than a few minutes of female company. They complicated everything. As if the situation weren’t tangled enough already…
But he couldn’t simply dump her. He wasn’t going to. Even so…
His fists clenched in futile frustration. On the dark fringe of the forest the barrier wire shed a purple glow. It was absurd to wish he could escape.
“I’m going back,” he said, not addressing anyone in particular. The soldier fell into step at his heels.
Chapter 13
He had scarcely dropped off when he found himself back on Earth. He was running along an underground passage walled with rough concrete, a thousand meters below the surface, his eyes stinging from the glare of a snakelike neon tube. He was fleeing from something. His whole body vibrated to the beat of nuclear explosions which were taking place regularly, one a minute, a kilometer overhead. The bombs had been launched from too far away to be aimed at any special target. Urian ships had released them from the orbit of Pluto, or from even deeper into space, and nine tenths of them had been intercepted before reaching Earth’s atmosphere. Some failed to brake properly on entry and burned up in a flash, without time to explode. Four fifths of those that did reach the surface fell in the sea and caused no damage worth mentioning. Only one or two per cent struck a land mass. But the holds of the Urian fleet seemed to be bottomless. For the first time Earth itself was being bombarded, and overhead this hemisphere had been turned into a literal hell.
Naturally nobody was left up there. Those few who had not found room in the shelters in time had died in the first seconds of the attack. As he ran he mechanically repeated a calculation. At least two hundred million must be dead. All in ten seconds.
He didn’t know why he was running. It was impossible to stop himself, impossible even to slow down the legs that were bearing him along with the automatic frenzy of the pistons in an engine. He ran with his hands outstretched before him as though in a headlong fall, as though at any moment he was due to crash against some blank wall mindlessly upheaved from the ground. But the underground corridor was at least twenty kilometers long. The tempo of the explosions quickened and seemed to be echoing the sound of his feet. Someone was chasing him!
A light touch wakened him. He rolled over so suddenly that he made his narrow bunk wobble, and discerned in the gloom the form of Antonella leaning over him. He must have cried out in his sleep. His limbs were as limp as if he had just run a long race. It wasn’t the first time he had endured this dream. In sleep his memory often replayed the terrible punishment inflicted on Earth by the Princes of Uria. But it had never seemed so real before.
Antonella was whispering to him.
“Something’s going to happen. I can tell. But it won’t come clear yet.”
And, as he stretched out his hand to turn on a light: “No, better not alert them!”
She was showing more presence of mind than he was. He threw back his coverlet, set his feet on the ground, and in the course of the movement brushed against her. She caught at him. He clutched her to him and felt her lips move against his ear.
Before he had time to catch one word of what she was saying, there was uproar in the camp. Men ran and shouted oaths to the accompaniment of a rattle of gunfire. A motor began to wheeze. A shrill vibration ripped the air. Artillery snarled and burped. Officers shouting orders sought to call their men to stations. Searchlights stabbed the sides of the tent, but they were in quest of another target and did not pause. Above the cries and the clanging of metal on metal Corson clearly made out the sobs of frightened pegasones.
Frightened? But in the wild no Monster—
The lamps went out. The shadows which had been moving on the walls of the tent gave way to total shadow, menacing. The racket changed its nature. Sounds became muffled. The guns grew quiet. Someone stumbled and fell groaning against the tent, whose guys held good, and then made off on dragging feet.
In the silence which followed, he recognized the voice of Veran, much amplified.
“Corson, are you there? If this is one of your tricks... I”
The rest was lost. Corson hesitated. Not knowing what was going on, he had no reason to make things worse between himself and Veran. He almost called back, but Antonella put her hand over his mouth.
“Someone’s coming!”
When he lost sight of her in the sudden dark, he had not been particularly alarmed. Now that his eyes had had time to adjust, though, he realized that this was no ordinary night. They were adrift in the same opaque fog as when they had been taken prisoner. Something was blotting up light.
So the camp was under attack. The onslaught had lasted less than three minutes and already it was over. No one could fight in murk like this. And even if Veran knew how to generate it, he apparently didn’t know how to counteract it.
“You mean Veran?” he whispered, harking back to Antonella’s precognition.
“No, not him. Nobody from the camp. Someone”—she tensed, pressing close against him—“someone like you. Someone very much like you!”