Barris crouched down. "How are you making out?" he shouted above the racket, his lips close to his helmet speaker.
"All right," Pegler's voice said weakly in his earphones. "We're down and getting out the big stuff."
"That'll hold off the hammers," Barris said to Fields. He peered up at the sky. "I hope Chai-"
Chai's ship rolled and spun, trying to evade the ring of hammers closing around it. Its jets smoked briefly. A direct hit. The ship wobbled and hesitated.
"Drop your men," Barris ordered into his phones. "You're right over the fortress."
From Chai's ship showered a cloud of white dots. Men in jump suits, drifting slowly toward the ground below.
Hammers screeched around them; the men fired back with pencil beams. The hammers retreated warily.
"Chai's men will take care of the direct attack," Barris explained. "Meanwhile, the bores are moving."
"Umbrella almost ready," a technician reported.
"Good. They're beginning to dive on us; their screen-probes must have spotted us."
The fleets of screaming hammers were descending, hurtling toward the ground. Their beams stabbed into the trees and ignited columns of flaming wood and branches. One of Pegler's cannon boomed. A group of hammers disappeared, but more took their places. An endless torrent of hammers, rising up from the fortress like black bats.
The umbrella flickered purple. Reluctantly, it came on and settled in place. Vaguely, beyond it, Barris could make out the hammers circling in confusion. A group of them entered the umbrella and were silently puffed out.
Barris relaxed. "Good. Now we don't have to worry about them."
"Gophers are halfway along," the leader of the bore team reported.
Two immense holes yawned, echoing and vibrating as the gopher bores crept into the earth. Technicians disappeared after them. The first squad of armed troops followed them cautiously, swallowed up by the earth.
"We're on our way," Barris said to Fields.
Standing off by himself, Father Fields surveyed the trees, the line of hills in the distance. "No visible sign of the fortress," he murmured. "Nothing to give it away." He seemed deep in thought, as if barely aware of the battle in progress. "This forest... the perfect place. I would never have known." Turning, he walked toward Barris.
Seeing the look on the man's face, Barris felt deep uneasiness. "What is it?" he said.
Fields said, "I've been here before."
"Yes," Barris said.
"Thousands of times. I worked here most of my life."
The man's face was stark. "This is where Vulcan 2 used to be." His hands jerked aimlessly. "This was where I came to destroy Vulcan 2." Nodding his head at a massive moss-covered boulder, he said, "I walked by that. To the service ramp. They didn't even know the ramp still existed; it was declared obsolete years ago. Abandoned and shut off. But I knew about it." His voice rose wildly. "I can come and go any time I want; I have constant access to that place. I know a thousand ways to get down there."
Barris said, "But you didn't know that Vulcan 3 was down there, too. At the deepest level. They didn't acquaint your crew with-"
"I didn't know Jason Dill," Fields said. "I wasn't in a position to meet him as an equal. As you were."
"So now you know," Barris said.
"You gave me nothing," Fields said. "You had nothing to tell me that I didn't know already." Coming slowly toward Barris he said in a low voice, "I could have figured it out, in time. Once we had tried every other place-" In his hand a pencil beam appeared, gripped tightly.
Keeping himself calm, Barris said, "But you still won't get in, Father. They'll never let you in. They'll kill you long before you penetrate all the way to Vulcan 3. You'll have to depend on me." Pointing to his sleeve, he indicated his Director's stripe. "Once I get in there I can walk up and down those corridors; no one will stop me, because they're part of the same structure I'm part of. And I'm in a position of authority equal to any of them, Reynolds included."
Fields said, "Any of them-except for Vulcan 3."
Of to the right, Pegler's cannon thundered as the fleets of hammers turned their attention on them. The hammers dived and released bombs. An inferno of white pillars checkered across the countryside, moving toward Pegler's ship.
"Get your umbrella up!" Barris shouted into his helmet speaker.
Pegler's umbrella flickered, It hesitated-
A small atomic bomb cut across dead center. Pegler's ship vanished; clouds of particles burst into the air, metal and ash showering over the flaming ground. The heavy cannon ceased abruptly.
"It's up to us," Barris said.
Over the fortress the first of Chai's men had reached the ground. The defense guns spun around, leaving Barris' ship and focusing on the drifting dots.
"They don't have a chance," Fields muttered.
"No." Barris started toward the first of the two tunnels. "But we have." Ignoring the pencil beam in the older man's hand, he continued, his back to Fields.
Abruptly the fortress shuddered. A vast tongue of fire rolled across it. The surface fused in an instant; the wave of molten metal had sealed over the fortress.
"They cut themselves off," Barris said. "They've closed down." He shook himself into motion and entered the tunnel, squeezing past the power leads to the gopher.
An ugly cloud of black rolled up from the sea of glimmering slag that had been the surface of the fortress. The hammers fluttered above it uncertainly, cut off from the levels beneath.
Barris made his way along the tunnel, pushing past the technicians operating the gopher. The gopher rumbled and vibrated as it cut through the layers of clay and rock toward the fortress. The air was hot and moist. The men worked feverishly, directing the gopher deeper and deeper. Torrents of steaming water poured from the clay around them.
"We must be close," Fields' voice came to him, from behind.
"We should emerge near the deepest level," Barris said. He did not look to see if the pencil beam was still there; he kept on going.
The gopher shrieked. Its whirring nose tore into metal; the bore team urged it forward. The gopher slashed into a wall of steel and reinforced stressed plastic and then slowed to a stop.
"We're there," Barris said.
The gopher shuddered. Gradually it inched forward. The leader of the team leaned close to Barris. "The other gopher's through, into the fortress. But they don't know exactly where."
All at once the wall collapsed inward. Liquid steel pelted them, sizzling. The soldiers moved ahead, pushing through the gap. Barris and Fields hurried with them. The jagged metal seared them as they squeezed through. Barris stumbled and fell, rolling in the boiling water and debris.
Putting his pencil beam away, Fields pulled him to his feet. They glanced at each other, neither of them speaking. And then they looked about them, at the great corridor that stretched out, lit by the recessed lighting familiar to both of them.
The lowest level of the fortress!
CHAPTER 14
A few astonished Unity guards scampered toward them, tugging a blast cannon inexpertly into position.
Barris fired. From behind him, pencil beams cut past him toward the cannon. The cannon fired once, crazily. The roof of the corridor dissolved; clouds of ash rolled around them. Barris moved forward. Now the blast cannon was in ruins. The Unity guards were pulling back, firing as they retreated.
"Mine crew," Barris snapped.
The mine crew advanced and released their sucker mines. The mines leaped down the corridor toward the retreating Unity guards. At the sight the guards broke and fled; the mines exploded, hurling streamers of flame against the walls.