Ardan began checking systematically, first at the door, then moving to the right. File cabinets. Small equipment cupboard, still stocked with flasks, test tubes, pipettes, and probes. He turned the corner.
There was a cabinet filled with holos. On the desk that formed the lower part of it was a Reader. Ardan felt excitement build inside him. Was this something useful?
He checked the machine, and saw that it was operable by either current or battery. Surely he had seen batteries in that equipment cupboard!
He had, and a pair of them fit. He put them into the compartment and switched on the machine. A beam of light fanned against the pale wall.
Starting at the top of the ranks of holos, he worked his way down to the right. There were dozens of nasty-looking things that he presumed might be viruses and bacteria. Cultures? Maybe.
There were more dozens of indecipherable schematics. He was sure of only one thing—they had nothing to do with weapons or ‘Mechs.
Then he hit the third vertical row. The first made him gasp. It was a study of Hanse as he had seen him hundreds of times, sitting at his desk, leaning forward with the force of his intensity, talking, moving his hands as he always did. The next was of Hanse walking in a garden. The third of Hanse at a formal dinner.
Another, and another, and another, all of Hanse Davion as he went about both his everyday routine and formal and official matters that were a part of his duty.
Studies! By damn, they were studies! Whoever would wear that false body had to know how to make it behave, and this had evidently been part of his training.
Ardan flipped rapidly through the sets of studies, looking for some clue as to the one to be trained, or the use to which the image would be put. The last row held studies of the summer palace on Argyle, from every angle, inside and out.
There were close-ups of all the royal staff, the Guard, the intimates of the Court, the officials with whom Hanse came in contact A thorough bunch, whoever had done this.
And then he saw the false Hanse...still just a body, waiting to be used. In the cubicle, just as he had seen it the first time. Measurements were noted beside it, with coded symbols he could not decipher.
Ardan felt that he could be certain of one thing only... whatever was going to happen would happen on Argyle. Why else make such careful studies of a world and a house that Hanse inhabited for only a few months a year?
He turned away, ran back down the maze of corridors. He had to call Sep, to get witnesses to this discovery!
25
Sep had descended from her ‘Mech and was waiting for Ardan when he reached the central corridor past the entry. Ref, too, was ready.
"I brought Ref for the unimpeachable witness you wanted. You look excited, Dan. What have you found?"
Ardan turned back the way he had come, calling over his shoulder as they ran, "Holos. A bunch of them that show Hanse doing everything you can think of. And others showing the Summer Palace, not to mention still others that give a good view of that substitute Hanse in his cubicle." He felt something slap against his side and put his hand in the pocket of his uniform.
"I must have put one in my pocket, but we don't need to stop and look at it now. The good stuff is in that lab."
They pounded up the corridor, climbed emergency stairs, turned and cornered at top speed. They had reached the right corridor when there came a slight tremor underfoot, a vibration in the ferrocrete that seemed to quiver through the building's whole structure. Sep caught his arm and pulled him to a halt. Ref raised his head and motioned toward the other end of the passageway.
"Listen!" he said.
Then they heard it...a series of dull pops beneath and ahead of them. As if someone had set charges along the supporting pillars at one edge of the building where they stood.
"Out!" yelled Sep, pulling Ardan frantically by the arm. "It's going to buckle toward us! We can make it."
"No! I've got to get those holos out of here. Nobody will ever believe me if I don't" Ardan turned to run forward, but found himself seized by two sets of strong arms that dragged him bodily along the way he had just come.
"You don't understand," he moaned. "They think I'm crazy, all the doctors. Hanse won't have any alternative but to believe them. I wasn't in very good shape when I last talked with him. Hell dunk I'm crazy, too."
Neither answered him. Behind them, the floors tilted, the walls crumpled into dust. They were staying ahead of the demolition, but only by a little.
They descended the stairs in two leaps and flew along the lower corridor at top speed. As the curving walls overhead began to buckle, the huge figure of Jarlik's Crusaderstomped through the shaking structure and reached with irresistible arms toward them.
Sep grabbed the autocannon on the right Ref leaped onto an armored foot and hoisted Ardan so that he could reach the left cannon. The 'Mech then backed swiftly out of the self-destructing building, which collapsed in on itself as they retreated.
The air was full of dust and deafening noise. As the last walls buckled, the debris shifted, trying to find repose within the heaps of shattered ferrocrete, wall paneling, and ruined equipment
Jarlik let his passengers down onto the cool grass beyond the reach of the dust Then he opened his cockpit and climbed out of his 'Mech to join them.
"Some booby trap," he grunted. "What did they think was in there?"
"I suspect they thought the Liao forces might try to use it again. If they had, it would have wiped out a bunch of their Techs and staff people. A nasty little surprise, that one," said Sep.
Ardan was silent. Sitting on the grass, head buried between his hands, he felt that his last hope of proving his story was irretrievably gone. How could he protect Hanse from a takeover if he couldn't prove his story? The only hope now was that there would be enough proof on the holodiscs he hadbeen able to retrieve. They'd look at them later in the DropShip.
Jarlik came and sat beside him. "I don't know why you're so down. Sep told me just what I had to know about all this, and not a word more. Give, Ardan. Maybe I can help out."
Ref sat on the other side of him. Sep sighed and also dropped to the grass. "Your message was necessarily brief. Now's the time to fill us in on what you're trying to do. We've all heard odd things about your mental state. You seem all right to me. But we need to know what's going on. Now."
Ardan stripped the green from a blade of grass as he spoke. "You're right, but don't think I'm crazy until you've heard me out. Then tell me honesdy what you think." He reached into his pocket "I did save one block of holo discs. When we get back to the ship, you can see for yourselves what's on them...I haven't an idea. I don't really remember putting them in my pocket."
There was the sound of wind in the grass. A lonely insect cried, "Zeet! Zeet!" somewhere nearby. The 'Mechs stood about, a monstrous trio, seeming to listen as they rested.
"I was in bad shape when they brought me here, as I guess you've heard. Broken bones, contusions, infections of undiagnosable kinds from the swamp where I'd hidden. I'd been through some very odd experiences, and was hallucinating. I will admit that. When I came through those doors, I was just about totally out of it. I didn't know anything for a long time. It might have been days. I haven't any way to tell.
"When I came to, I could see that someone had just gone out of the httle room where they had me. The curtain was still moving. I thought of only one thing—that I had to be in the hands of the enemy. I remembered the Liao uniforms on the men who had cut me down from the tree where I was tied up in the swamp."