“Get back.” Morel’s voice was triumphant. He trained the laser on Caliban as the squid threshed the water. “Back! To the outer rim — or I’ll burn all your arms off.”
The squid did not retreat. Morel reached into his pocket and pulled out the slim black communicator. He pressed a button on its side. “Get back, I say. Or I’ll give you a real lesson in what pain can be.”
It was not clear to Rob how much Caliban understood of the situation, but at the sight of the communicator the squid withdrew its third questing tentacle into the aquasphere. It was still hovering outside the window when Rob stood up by the wall, reached for the dimmer control, and turned the lights of the room completely off.
There was a moment of total darkness, then a ruby flash and the sputter of melting metal as the surgical laser discharged against the wall close to Rob. He felt droplets of molten aluminum and steel spatter his exposed arms and face. Dropping to the floor, he began to crawl towards the door. Over by the window there was a sudden grunt of pain or shock from Morel and the laser beam spun crazily from floor to ceiling. The heavy cylinder itself crashed into the wall, just a foot above Rob’s head. He felt for it and wedged it under his right arm, at the same time as he reached for the dimmer control by the door.
The lights brightened to show Morel, one tentacle around his neck and another about his hips, being pulled steadily toward the aquasphere. He still held the communicator and was keying in a sequence of command signals. Outside the window, Caliban was shuddering and convulsing, his skin a deep purple-red. But he was still dragging the man towards him. Morel was in the water, closer to the savage black beak.
Rob raised the laser and pointed it at Caliban. Before he could take accurate aim, the squid suddenly discharged its ink-sac. The aquasphere became a swirling sepia maelstrom, dark and impenetrable. Rob heard a bubbling scream. Somewhere within the dark cloud, Joseph Morel and his creation were in final combat.
Rob’s horrified trance was broken by the sight of another long tentacle groping its way out of the blackened water. Dropping the laser he dragged himself through the door, slid the metal barrier into position, and threw all the heavy outside bolts. Only when the last one was in position did he lie down by it, unmoving for several minutes.
When he at last stood up and glanced at his watch, he saw that almost five hours had passed since he set out to explore the secrets of Morel’s laboratory. Regulo would be in his study, waiting for Rob and busy with the final preparations for the mining of Lutetia.
Rob, dizzy with emotion and fatigue, staggered back toward the main living quarters.
CHAPTER 16: “Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the Gates of Heaven”
By the time that Rob reached Regulo’s study, his left arm had begun to throb with pain. An impossible pain. With electrical power for all the sensory feeds switched off, there was no way for signals to pass from his mutilated hand. Rob told himself that, even as he gritted his teeth against the waves of agony that came pulsing up his arm. He staggered into the study and dropped into the chair by the big desk.
Regulo was sitting opposite. And Corrie was with him.
Corrie? What was she doing here? Had she told him that she might be going to Atlantis, when they last met? He could not remember. He was having trouble thinking at all.
She had jumped to her feet. Now she was coming around to touch his ruined left hand. He jerked it away from her, flinching at the pain of the contact.
“Rob!”
“Don’t touch my hand!”
“But what’s happened to you?” She was staring at his clothes and face.
Rob guessed that he was quite a sight. His clothes were splashed with water and the sepia discharge of Caliban’s ink-sac, and his face and arms were stinging with a red rash of small burns where the laser had spattered drops of boiling metal from the wall.
“I’ve been over in the labs.” With a big effort he sat upright. “Caliban got Morel. Can you switch in a display to see what happened?”
“Morel?” Regulo spoke for the first time. “What do you mean, Caliban got him? There’s no way that Joseph would ever go near the aquasphere.”
“Through the window. He got him through the window.” Rob lay back in the chair. “Corrie, can you find a spray injector and give me a shot of local anesthetic in my left arm? I won’t be able to talk straight unless you can kill the pain.”
“I’ll get a med-kit.” She looked with horror at the jagged ends of his prosthetic hand. “What have you been doing to yourself?”
Without waiting for an answer she hurried out of the room. Rob felt himself sliding down again in his seat. He felt weighted, bound by the tiny gravity of Atlantis. He watched mindlessly as Regulo ran his thin fingers over the display control panel. A succession of images from the aquasphere raced across the big screen, steadying at one that looked back at the living-sphere. Rob saw the gaping opening of the missing window, the lights within the chamber still blazing brightly. Floating in front of the window hung the mangled body of Joseph Morel, limbs, neck and torso impossibly twisted. The final contest was over. The winner had disappeared, gone to nurse his own wounds in the depths of the aquasphere.
Regulo increased the magnification and zoomed in on the window, focusing on the room beyond.
“Is that door sealed? If not, we’d better close other locks nearer to this area.”
“It’s sealed.” Rob winced as Corrie came back in and pressed a spray injector to his aching arm. Within seconds, the pain began to fade. He sat up straighter. “I closed the locks before I left.”
“I’d better do one more thing.” Regulo keyed in another long sequence of control commands. “I’m going to halt the count-down for the tapping of Lutetia. We’ll have to postpone it now, with your injury and the accident to Morel. I don’t understand what happened there. I know we built ample strength into those panels. Did Caliban manage to break through the window?”
Rob stared at the display screen again, where an image of the glowing ball of the molten asteroid now hung steady. While he had been in the labs they had moved much closer. Lutetia seemed within hands’ reach, it must be just a few kilometers away from them. Atlantis was positioned directly above the pole of the rotating sphere. Rob could see the black form of the Spider, crouched on Lutetia’s axis of rotation.
“Caliban didn’t break the window,” he said at last. He shook his head. Now the injection was working there was room for other thoughts than pain. He took a deep breath and looked straight at Regulo.
“I did it. I took out the bolts that held the window panel in position. I had to do it. Morel had me trapped inside that room. He was going to kill me.”
“Rob, you’ve been working too hard.” Regulo sat back in his chair, his voice full of disbelief. “Joseph wouldn’t try to kill you. Why should he? You only met each other half a dozen times.”
Rob glanced at Corrie. She fixed her eyes on him and shook her head. “I have to agree with Regulo. I never cared for Joseph Morel, you know that. But he wouldn’t try to kill you. What possible reason could he have?”
“Because of what I found out about him, over there in his secret lab. Because of what he has been doing. He surprised me a few hours ago while I was looking around there. After that, he had to keep me quiet. The only one sure way was to kill me.”