The three headed for the exit, looking dejected. Valerian anxiously noticed the red light blinking faster.
“Valerian,” Laureline said, “this doesn’t look good.”
“No, it doesn’t. I want you back in the room near the commander, right now. Alex? Where are they coming from?” Valerian demanded.
“Everywhere,” Alex responded. “They’re going through the walls.”
Laureline picked up her pace, threading her way through the packed hall and heading toward the podium. She met Valerian’s gaze, and he seemed to make a decision.
“Laureline, evacuate the commander! I’m going after these intruders!”
Laureline shoved aside the last few audience members blocking her path, leaped onto the stage and rushed toward Filitt. She seized his arm and began to haul him away.
“Agent, what—” he began to protest, but she cut him off.
“Sorry! Emergency protocol!”
General Okto-Bar, who had been standing off to one side, instantly sprang into position to offer cover for the commander’s exit. His gun was drawn and his face was resolute. The crowd was starting to panic.
I really hope this is a false alarm, Laureline thought. But she didn’t expect they’d be that lucky.
Valerian’s gaze darted from the screen to the crowd and back again. The red warning light was flickering faster now, and the adrenaline was kicking in.
“Alex? Dammit, I need to know the attackers’ identity! Who is it?”
“I’m sorry, Major, but I cannot read their DNA,” Alex replied.
“What?” exclaimed Valerian. That simply couldn’t be. The Intruder XB982 was programmed with the DNA of every known sentient life form. Alex couldn’t possibly—
The far wall of the reception hall exploded.
Cries of terror went up as several of the guests were knocked off their feet. Valerian stared, stunned at what he was seeing.
A dozen slender, gray-robed figures suddenly poured into the hall. Beneath their hoods, their blue-eyed, bone-white—pearl-white, Valerian realized—faces were set in expressions of determination. They lifted something that looked like gracefully fashioned glass or ceramic vases, except instead of being carried upright, they were held so the opening faced forward. In their bulbous lower parts, pale blue light glowed softly.
But they were not vases, of course. They were weapons, and the aliens began firing indiscriminately into the crowd.
Valerian braced himself for carnage of the worst sort, but what emerged from the muzzles of their weapons was not bullets, but a gelatinous substance. It spread rapidly over the victim’s body like some kind of webbing or cocoon, sealing them up inside and completely immobilizing them.
Valerian’s mind flashed back to when he had asked Alex to analyze the pearl. The computer had assured him that Mül had no inhabitants. But Valerian had dreamed them, and then he had seen them on Kirian, and here they were again.
Alex hadn’t been able to analyze the Pearls’ DNA because the Pearls didn’t exist.
He snapped back to himself, but by then the commander’s men were already firing at the slim, pale figures. But in addition to being non-existent, the Pearls seemed also to be untouchable. They leaped and dodged, their movements agile and flowing and as beautiful as they themselves were. Before Valerian could even react, Okto-Bar, Laureline, and Commander Filitt himself, in addition to most of his men, were encased in the strange, gelatinous cocoons.
Valerian dove for cover behind a large white marble pillar. “Alex,” Valerian hissed, “give me something with a bit of bite.” He glanced down at his gun, watching the LEDs flashing.
“A new generation weapon,” Alex replied. “Running analysis. Plasma bullets. No counter before thirty seconds.”
“Great!”
Valerian pulled a tube from his pocket, activated it with a quick snap, and stuck it between his lips, gripping it with his teeth. By this point, the Pearls had reached the stage. They seized the cocoon that encased the commander, hoisted it, and were carrying it off when Valerian leapt out from behind the pillar and opened fire on them.
He never saw the Pearl that had managed to sneak up on him from behind, but he did see the blue gel from their weapon ooze over his face and body and felt its gooey warmth envelop him, as it had done with all the others. He struggled against it for about a nanosecond before it totally wrapped him in its embrace and he toppled to the floor. Fortunately, the goo also provided plenty of padding.
“Thirty seconds,” Alex intoned. “Plasma bullets operational.”
Well, that’s nice, Valerian thought. But I can’t do so much as wiggle my little toe right now. The seconds ticked by, but Valerian wouldn’t give in to panic. Then, thankfully, the tube he’d stuck into his mouth started flashing red and then split in two.
A small mechanical spider emerged from the tube. Through the blue of the gel, Valerian followed the little trail of blinking red light as the robot extended a knife blade from its back and plunged it into the cocoon. It scurried down along Valerian’s body, cutting upward through the goo and slicing a tidy little line all the way down.
Valerian gulped in fresh air and sat up, squirming free of the sticky second skin. Stumbling forward, he rushed over to Laureline, drawing out a small knife from his kit and slicing open her cocoon. Her eyes fluttered open, and she inhaled deeply.
“What was that?” Laureline asked.
“The Pearls from Mül,” Valerian told her. “And they’ve got the commander! Free the general and get to the control room. You can track them and me both from there.”
She nodded. Goo was on her face, clumping in her hair. And he wanted nothing more than to kiss her. But he didn’t.
Instead, Valerian sprinted after the Pearls. He had worried that, since Alex wasn’t able to track their DNA, he might have trouble following them, but it turned out it was child’s play.
He just had to follow the enormous holes they’d blown in the walls.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
There had, surprisingly and fortunately, been no casualties among the extraterrestrials gathered in the security hall. It seemed that the commander’s soldiers had been good enough shots to avoid collateral damage, and the weapons the Pearls had used only incapacitated. The converter had been completely unharmed, and a quick check revealed that it had slept through the whole ordeal. Within a few moments, Laureline and General Okto-Bar were back in the control room. Both of them placed their hands on the ID screen.
“Status on Major Valerian. Level Five. Emergency,” Laureline stated, keeping her voice calm and cool.
“Accepted,” answered Okto-Bar.
Laureline called up a map of the space station on the screen and typed in the code. A red light appeared on the map. It looked like Valerian was deep in the heart of the technological section of the station. He was right in the middle of a major intersection.
“Valerian? I’ve got you on visual,” she said.
“Okay, but I’ve lost track of them. Try to locate the commander!”
Laureline typed in the message, but instead of the location of the missing Filitt, the face of the minister of defense appeared on-screen.
“Agent Laureline here,” Laureline said. “I need to access the genetic code of Commander Arun Filitt.”
But the minister was shaking his head. “Those codes are strictly confidential, Agent Laureline,” the minister chided. “You know very well I—”
Laureline had no time for this. She placed her hand over a scanner that glowed red when she touched it. “The commander has been abducted,” she stated. “If we don’t get a lock on him in the next minute, we’ll lose him.”