The illumination outside the hangar cut the area into a crazy quilt of stark, flat pictures embedded in black, like a limbo set on a stage, because there was no air to diffuse the light. But the floods were cleverly aimed to prevent disorientation or dazzling on approach to the open hangar doors. Despite his contacts, Titus could make out traces of what existed in shadow, infrared images that would have been clear had there been no light, for the workers produced a considerable amount of heat that could escape only by radiation and conduction.
He climbed the scaffold into the probe and took a few moments to sort out who the electricians were. He hung over their shoulders asking questions as he examined each of them for trace of Abbot’s Influence. It would not be perceptible unless triggered by work involving Abbot’s modifications, so he checked only those at work. At last, he came to one woman squatting before an open panel consulting a circuit diagram.
She kept tapping a single component with a probe, and then following the circuit diagram away from that spot, clearly frustrated that she couldn’t find it. That’s it!
He hunkered down next to her and introduced himself. “Why are you checking this out? It’s been approved.” He pointed to the band of tape that had sealed the access port.
“Oh, another surprise double-check, along with all that anti-hypnotic conditioning they’re putting everyone through.”
“All that conditioning?” As far as Titus knew, they’d only done one round of hypnotic conditioning, unsure that H’lim’s power was related to hypnosis.
“Yeah, an experiment. They make you do a job, then they ”lash lights in your eyes for a while, make you do the job over again, flash lights at you again, and so on. Who knows when it’ll stop! If you ask me, the higher-ups were raised on too many o’d movies. This blood-sucking monster from outer space turned out to be a nice guy!“
“Sure seems like it.” I better not miss any more meetings! Titus couldn’t be hypnotized, but he had no idea if he could fake it without using Influence. Finger quivering inside his glove, he pointed at a familiar area of her diagram. “That’s my stuff. Here, let me. No use both of us rechecking what’s been rechecked before. You must be tired.” He didn’t even have to use Influence. Tedium had taken its toll. She shoved the display pad into his mitts.
“All yours, Doctor. I’ll be up top when you’re done.”
“Right.”
Aware that Abbot’s shift with H’lim was officially over, Titus kept looking over his shoulder expecting his father to appear. It can’t be this easy, not after all these months. But connection by connection, memorizing what he was doing, Titus excised Abbot’s assembly, checked everything by the diagram, ran a systems check, and buttoned it up again, satisfied it would now work the way the humans had intended.
Even with the lumpy appurtenances where Abbot had improvised parts, the whole transmitter fit neatly into his outside leg pocket. He was still sweating after returning the diagrams to the electrician.
Titus found himself climbing down between a welder and a shift supervisor who were arguing with each other, when their voices in his phones were cut off by a piercing whistle. “Clear the probe hangar! Clear the hangar! Incoming bogey at ten o’clock. Clear the hangar! Two minutes to contact.”
Swearing, the men above and below Titus pushed off from the ladder to land yards apart and running for the nearest dome. Titus copied them, and then lost ground when the lights went out as the station secured for attack. Titus followed the sparks of suitlights around him, and once outside the hangar, dug his toes into the compacted soil of the path. His mass was too great, his feet clumsy, his vision obscured by the helmet but he had to keep up with the swarm of men and machines behind him, driving toward the safety of the dome’s underground bunker or be run over.
The Disaster Controller’s voice chanted the countdown in his ears. He didn’t dare look up when the voice announced defenders on the attacker’s tail. He’d gained such momentum that he had to concentrate on staying over his feet.
An oddly detached corner of his mind worked Newton’s Laws, calculating his stopping distance, and impact force if he didn’t stop in time, a freshman final exam problem. This isn’t going to work! But the crowd seemed to be bounding along in nightmarish slow motion, and no one dared slow down even when the narrow opening in the dome gaped before them. It led into a small garage, still floodlit inside. The first arrivals skidded onto the smooth paving, yelling frantically when they realized they would hit the far wall hard. Way short of the door, Titus slowed, yelling for others to do the same despite the instinct that screamed, run!
Then the ground jerked from under him as something hit his back. He sprawled, chin first, momentum driving him on. In front of him, others fell, knocked over the staggering who piled into the fallen, who slid with relentless momentum into a tangled jam in the doorway. Then molten fragments of metal rained down. Screams filled his earphones.
Swimming in squirming, suited bodies, Titus struggled forward to throw himself across one man’s slashed leg, trying to keep air and blood in. It was a mindless act, but it saved his life. Where he had been, a large wedge of hot metal sliced into the man who had been under Titus. It stood quivering, its pointed end skewering the writhing body, its upper end glowing red hot in shadow. Panic drove others forward despite the pile of suits jamming the doorway, burying Titus in squirming humanity. Many of those on top died, suits holed by hot missiles floating down under lunar gravity, or plunging down with the energy of explosion behind them. However, most explosion debris hit escape velocity.
The eerie thing, the most frightening thing, was that it all happened in such utter silence. Spacewar movies always had sound effects. All Titus heard was the screaming. He had not even heard the ground rumbling because his boots were too well insulated.
For a long time, he lay buried under a mass of dead, injured and dying, pinning other dead, injured and dying to the ground with his own mass, and all afraid to move for fear of holing their suits on sharp fragments. At least I don’t have to smell the panic and the blood. After a while, his suit radio ceased working, so he was even spared the patient Disaster Controller’s voice instructing them not to move and not to panic to conserve air.
Eventually, people came and pulled the pile of bodies apart, heaping the stiffened corpses for identification and burial, setting the survivors onto their feet in the awkward suits. Those too injured to walk were carried off, and the others were told to report to the infirmary only if there were signs of concussion or serious injury.
When Titus was at last extricated and set up on his feet, one leg numb from lack of circulation, a small suited figure that had been attaching oxygen hoses for those still trapped, turned toward him, froze, then flew at him, almost knocking him over again.
Across the helmet was written, I. CELLURA. Through the faceplate he saw sweat on her forehead and her lip quivered. He let her support him all the way back to the airlock, because he didn’t trust his leg, and because it felt so good to hold her, but he made it clear that he was fine.
When it was his turn to be cycled through the lock, Inea reluctantly returned to her work, and he entered the corridor leading from the suit dressing rooms to the airlock.
Abbot and H’lim both were inside, helping survivors off with gear while others supplied drinks and first aid. All at once, Titus remembered the transmitter in his leg pocket, the reason his circulation had been cut off.
They pushed Titus down on a crate and H’lim pulled the exterior, insulating boots off him. Abbot hovered over him, cutting out other helpful corpsmen, and ostentatiously used a penlite to check if his pupils dilated properly, making notes on a medical pad as he worked. Along the line of dazed survivors, the four Brink’s guards who usually shadowed H’lim were wrapping sprained ankles and bandaging facial cuts.