He looked around. An imposing picture of Cohaagen hung on the front wall, greeting all visitors. Soldiers stood ready, armed, in case anyone should think of protesting. He remembered seeing a video about the ancient days, when the Nazis added vicious attack dogs to the lineup, and loosed them if anyone gave them a pretext. Lovely!
He saw the fat lady standing in line behind a mother with a baby slung over her shoulder and his lip curled in disgust. Thank God, Lori never gained weight! The thought that he would see her soon raised his spirits even more.
An escort of soldiers appeared. They shoved people aside to make room for Richter and Helm, who were escorted to the front of the nearest line. As they passed, they jostled the fat lady, who was playing cootchy-coo with the smiling baby. Richter recoiled at the touch.
Two agents in suits approached, greeting Richter and Helm like VIPs. Well, why not!
“Welcome home, Mr. Richter,” the first agent said enthusiastically. “Mr. Cohaagen wants to see you right away.”
Richter walked past the two, hardly deigning to notice them. “What the fuck is that?” He pointed to graffiti on the walclass="underline" KUATO LIVES. A painter was in the process of cleaning it up.
“Things have gotten worse,” the agent said tightly. “The rebels took over the refinery last night. No turbinium going out.”
Richter and his entourage proceeded down the hallway. He was disgusted. The last thing they needed was messages from the mythical leader of the Mars Liberation Front! It was enough of a pain dealing with that traitor Hauser without running afoul of imaginary characters. The worst problem with nonexistent folk was that they couldn’t be killed.
“Any news about Hauser?” he asked, reminded of his mission.
“Not a word.”
Bothered about something he couldn’t quite nail, Richter paused and looked back at the patiently waiting people. He saw the baby playing with the fat lady’s hair. The fat lady had rearranged her outfit, but it still didn’t do a thing for her. Then the baby pat-a-caked the woman’s face with some force, not knowing its own strength.
“Where’s my cabin?” the fat lady asked incongruously.
Richter focused on her, vaguely disturbed. Was that the only thing she knew how to say?
The fat lady opened her mouth, seemingly horrified. The baby laughed.
Oh. She was doing it for the baby. Richter turned away, dismissing his concern. The entourage had almost exited the Immigration Hall.
“Where’s my cabin?” the fat lady asked again.
Richter stopped and turned again. Suddenly his vague concern was clarifying into a sharp suspicion. Was it possible?
The fat lady was evidently trying to stifle herself, holding her face as if it were talking without her volition. The baby laughed and laughed at this exhibition. The other people were looking at her now, including the soldiers, who found her behavior strange but not dangerous. Women did tend to get sappy about babies; it was one of the annoying things about them.
Then the fat lady looked his way. She locked eyes with Richter.
Now he knew! “That’s Quaid!” he rasped. “Stop him!”
The fat lady broke from the line and ran to the front, moving with surprising alacrity for her size. She opened her face, which peeled away on either side.
The soldiers were shocked, thinking she had some kind of loathsome disease. She charged them, and they almost fell over each other getting out of the way, not wanting to be infected. That enabled her to run away from Richter.
Richter scrambled after Quaid, drawing his gun, but couldn’t get a shot. The damn lines of stupid people, now scattering across the hall, ruined any decent line of sight.
Another soldier pulled a gun at close range to the fugitive. But Quaid swatted his arm, shoved him into another soldier, then smashed a third soldier in the face. Richter would have admired the man’s finesse if it hadn’t been so important to nail him. Agency training sure showed!
But Quaid couldn’t stay clear for long. He was confined to the spaceport, and the people were clustering at the sides of the hall. In a moment he would be a fair target.
Quaid ran down a corridor. Now, there was a mistake! He had lost his interference. Six soldiers were racing after him, and Richter and Helm after them. They’d corner the rat in a moment!
There was a large window by an intersection. Through it the barren Martian landscape could be seen. It was near-vacuum out there; the man couldn’t escape that way!
Quaid was about to dodge around a corner, but a young soldier blocked the intersection. Quaid tossed the deflated mask to the soldier, who caught it instinctively. The mask snapped together and said, “Get ready for a big surprise.”
The soldier gaped—and the mask exploded!
The explosion shattered the window. It fragmented outward, driven by the pressure of the Earth atmosphere.
This created an instant tornado, as the air funneled out. The spaceport was depressurizing in the manner of a balloon let go. Everybody grabbed onto anything handy and hung on for dear life.
The idiot! Richter thought. They had just about cornered the rat, and Quaid had to pull a stunt like this! Now they were all in trouble.
He saw Quaid grab the railing around an open staircase leading down. Trust the man to be able to handle this better than most! He was going to haul himself away while the soldiers were helpless.
One of the soldiers who had been closest to the window was sucked through the aperture into the near-vacuum. Quaid’s clothes and padding were sucked off his body and followed the soldier out the window. Quaid was left in the short-sleeved shirt and rolled up trousers he wore under the costume, and with the ludicrous high-heeled shoes. And clutching his purse, yet!
An immigration officer struggled to a control panel and managed to activate the emergency alarm.
Metal barriers started sliding down in sequence, covering all the windows and doorways to the left, the right, behind, and ahead. SQQRRCHANG! SQQQRRCHANG! SQQQRRCHANG!
Good! Not only would that stop the loss of air, it would trap Quaid inside, so they could finish the job. Nothing would smash any of those barriers!
He saw Quaid looking frantically around. Yeah, look, you shit! You’re cornered now! And I’m the one who’s going to—
A barrier started to lower over the staircase passage nearest to Quaid. SQQQRRRRR!!!
Quaid pushed off and rolled under just before—
CHANG! He was through.
No! Richter thought, anguished.
A metal sheet slammed over the shattered window. Had the system had any brains, it would have closed that one first and saved them all a hassle.
The tornado instantly dissipated. Now the tourists had breath to scream, gaspingly. Fuck them!
Richter sprinted to the staircase barrier. “Open it! Open it!”
“I can’t,” the nearest soldier said. He was a young twerp, obviously inexperienced. “They’re all connected.”
Frustrated and furious, Richter backhanded him across the face with his gun.
CHAPTER 16
Venusville
The noisy, old-fashioned train, probably a refugee from a condemned twentieth-century New York subway, pulled out of the station and entered a dark tunnel. Outside were clattering sounds and flashing lights, as if the thing were about to fly off the tracks and smash into a pillar. That, combined with the crowding, created a feeling of anxiety.
Quaid looked around, alert to potential danger. He wasn’t exactly well dressed at the moment; he had barely been able to hang on to his purse when his unsecured clothing got blown off. He was doing his best now to make that purse seem like a package. But no one seemed to notice. Blase Mars natives (anyone who had been here more than a year was a native) were talking among themselves, and he overheard snippets of conversations.