The snow was drifting down, turning even the nearby mountain wall into a gray haze. The bitter chill bit Keilin's exposed face. The clear-cut path that the surgeon had described might be easy enough to follow when the weather was good. But now! And the surgeon had said this was late summer!
They edged their way forward. Keilin knew real fear. In this they could be lost in minutes. He was about to suggest each holding on to the other's belt when one of the overall muffled figures handed him a cord. One of the Gene-spliced obviously carried a number of spare bow strings. He struggled with the knot, and noticed a digital readout set on to his sleeve. It read -11O C. The wind behind the snowflakes would make it even colder.
They walked on, keeping a gloved hand on the guide rail set into the mountain. And then Keilin stumbled over something half-buried in a snowdrift. It was a chitinous Morkth body. A few yards later there was another. Then it actually became difficult to follow the path, so frequent were the sprawled insect corpses. Looking off into the snow Keilin realized they weren't black rocks, half covered in snow. Rather it was thousands of Morkth bodies. In the last pile one of the creatures was newly dead . . . Its jaws still opened and closed weakly. And, before they had time to prepare, coming up the path out of the snow haze, loomed the reason.
She was a hundred and fifty feet long, swollen with several tons of fresh ideal protein. Frozen ichor and fragments of black chitin still smeared her scythe jaws, and indeed most of her face. But she was sated now. Prey had no more attraction. Now she had to find a mate. But the Alpha neoteny had taken her far back in her species' evolutionary history, to when the drones were free-living. Now she hunted for one that smelled right. With increasing desperation, as the bitter cold began to affect even such a huge bulk, she stomped on, paying them no more attention than the rock itself. They smelled wrong. She had to find a mate.
But it was with the greatest physical effort that Keilin stopped himself from ripping the garments off the hive girl just behind him, and raping her on the spot.
He pulled his bow off his shoulder, and with clumsy gloved hands fitted an arrow instead. He launched a tiny toxin-tipped barb into her only soft spot, the reproductively open egg vent. She simply blundered on . . . and they hastily went the other way. Suddenly a burst of ruby incandescence glared through the snow. An explosive report. Then another. A retort in purple. A terrific explosion that rattled the mountainside.
"Holy shit. Looks like we're soft targets in the middle of a firefight," Johann muttered.
The speaker next to the console bleeped. Cap, dressed in a new crisp white uniform, bespattered with gold braid, stood up from his dinner and walked over to it. "Compcontrol, Report." He scanned the screen. "Destroy all craft. Even those grounded." As he spoke Shael watched Leyla calmly rifle the belt pouch Cap had taken from the Morkth commander. She took out the core sections and replaced them with something. It was lying innocuously back where it had been, when he finished looking at the screen.
He turned back to his steak. "The Morkth are trying to run, in their small craft. Give it ten minutes, and I'll order an infrared search-and-destroy operation on the remnants."
He pushed the steak around the plate with his knife. "Robot cooking's not as good as Beywulf's, is it?"
"Why did you kill him then?" Leyla could not hide the sadness in her voice.
"Don't get emotional with me. He stood in my way. Disobeyed my orders. I was planning to bring him along. But he thought he knew better. Look where it got him. Just remember that before you get any ideas."
Leyla stood up. "Well, thank you for the meal. Now I need to visit the loo. I found that flushing mechanism so . . . beautiful. What about you, Shael?" Something in the voice told Shael to go along. She got up.
Cap snorted. "Hmph. You women can never go to the heads alone. And you always take so bloody long in there. To think a flush toilet could be the most fascinating thing you've seen. Off you go then. It'll give me a chance to institute the infrared search in peace."
They stood before the great double doors set into the mountain. The doors weren't moving. The obdurate steel didn't budge or respond in any way to their pounding, shouting knocking or pleading. It was hardly surprising after those ear-ringing explosions.
Unaware that Cap was busy setting up a command sequence for an antipersonnel infrared search they stood in the fire zone having a council of war. It was difficult enough to stand still in temperatures suited only to castrato brass monkeys. "We need a ram," counselled the military expertise of the Gene-spliced.
"Well . . . can we make it out of snow?" asked Keilin bitterly. "Or bits of rock? I don't think there's enough left of the Morkth ships to make a toy dagger with."
Johann looked at him. "Yes. You make it out of snow. Use the same magic you used to call a rescue for Wolf's father."
Keilin shrugged. It was worth trying, but a bugger to get at a core section under all the clothing. With a sigh he opened the zipper, letting out the warmth, letting in the cold. He had to take a glove off. Reached down. Touched.
The doors slid open. Thankfully, they staggered forward onto the threshold. And behind them the automatic fire began sniping out single energy bursts. They were safe. Except for the genial, broad-faced Johann. He wouldn't be making any more cheerfully obscene comments. He had been the hindmost person in the queue at the door, and just too late.
His body smoked in the steaming pool that had been the snowdrift beside the door. Half his head was missing.
"No!" Wolf grabbed Sula and Hamesh as they turned back. "He's dead already. Go out there, and you'll be dead too. We'll go on and kill his murderer. Then we'll come back and bury Johann with honor," his young voice cracked, "and have the kind of wake he would have enjoyed."
With that he walked resolutely forward into the artificial lights and outstreaming warmth of the unknown. After a few seconds the others followed. And the great door slid silently closed behind them.
They stood there, a small frightened party in a great stark hallway big enough for reasonably sized groundcars to pass. This was human-built . . . but even more alien to the people of small, slate-roofed houses than the hive. To the hive folk . . . well, at least it was roofed, but it was still too big, too bare, and too light.
"Where now?" someone asked. They all looked inquiringly at Keilin.
How the hell could he tell them he had not the least idea? "I'll try the core sections again." He shucked the coverall and its clumsy boots and gloves. Took out the core section. Touched his tongue to it.
The familiar feeling of vastness . . . and of welcome, and of relief too. Shael. He recognized the image of self. In a room with a toilet . . . and Leyla, looking grim. Then the memory of betrayal, overpoweringly strong. And what was very distinctly a keyboard such as the surgeon had used after taking the blood sample.
He found himself being supported by an anxious-looking Wolf and one of the girls. "Did you have some kind of fit? I don't think we can get you back to the doctor . . ."
"I'm fine. Just the core section's effects. Ah! Over there." He walked them across to the same terminal as Cap had used on entering the mountain command center. He'd never used a keyboard before . . . but he'd seen it used, and he'd read plenty of print. It only took a minute to type in a one-word request: "HELP."
There was a brief silence. Then the screen began to scroll.
"CAN ONLY RENDER LIMITED ASSISTANCE. VOICE AND INDEPENDENT CONTROL LARGELY DEACTIVATED. SUB-CAPTAIN FISHER NOW IN CONTROL OF SYSTEM. CAN ONLY AUDIO-RESPOND TO BASIC AND MEDICAL REQUESTS BY KEYBOARD. VOICE RESPONSE TO FISHER ONLY. MORNINGSTAR II COMPCONTROL CAN ONLY RETURN TO INDEPENDENT FUNCTION IF ACCESS CODE PROVIDED. WILL THEN BE ABLE TO EFFECT ARREST OF THE TRAITOR.
Keilin and the Gene-spliced could read. The hive girls of course couldn't. So Keilin had to read it out.
"Ask it for the code."
Clumsily he typed this in.
The machine spat back. "CANNOT REVEAL CODE. COMPRISED OF SEQUENCE OF 36 NUMBERS IN SIMPLE FORMULAIC PATTERN RELATED TO THE NAME: DANE NESBIT HUENNIS FISHER."
He read it aloud. "We're stuffed."
The three hive girls shook their heads at him in unison. "We can work it out for you."
"You? I mean, thanks, but you can't even read."
"We spent our lives in the dark, with nothing to do. Everybody did maths. Codes are fun. Especially easy ones like this."
"Leave us someone who can read. You go looking for him."
They smiled in unison. "We bet we beat you to it."
Sula volunteered to stay. She was still deeply upset by Johann's death, and Keilin was honestly glad to be able to leave her there. But where to go? Compcontrol could or would not help them. In the end Keilin settled for holding the core section to know that Shael and the rest of the core sections were somewhere far above them—next to a toilet.
They'd gone to the en suite bathroom. The white door closed. Leyla slid the bolt. Closed her eyes briefly. Sighed. "Child. I'll try and ransom your way out of it. But I don't see how. He means to . . . look, I'll try to get you out anyway."
"I'm not a child, Leyla. My father didn't have any space for children at court. And I'm seventeen . . . almost eighteen. What is going on? What sort of game are you playing?" Shael was feeling intolerant and scared.
Leyla held her arms up. Spun about on her heel and toe. "Behold the great spy. I'm supposed to be a secret agent, for the Kingdom of Arlinn, God rot their souls." Shael's heart sank. "For the last ten years I've been reporting Cap's movements to them. They've drops in an amazing number of towns. I suppose Queen Lee's descendants are Cap's worst enemies . . . but if I didn't hate Cap's guts I'd be glad to use him to trip them up."
Shael looked at her in sadness. Her voice was a careful monotone. "They have your lover. And probably your child. Their safety is hostage against your behavior."
Leyla sighed. "After my dear Prince Jaybe, I didn't think I'd ever love a man. That I ever could. Sex was just a way of making them all pay. Then Laurence . . . he just took me away from the brothel. Away from Amphir. He didn't even seem interested in sex. He was just so kind, so gentle. I could talk, really talk to him. I was hopelessly in love. I was younger than you, I suppose. I seduced him." She sighed. "He was everything no man had ever been for me. I was so happy, especially when I found I was pregnant. My baby boy was just three months old when they were snatched. I nearly went mad. By the time that little creep came and told me their safety depended . . . How the Hell did you know?"
Shael looked down. Her father's dead hand still reached out to jangle the strings of his puppet child. "Standard Honey Trap," she said colorlessly. "My father eliminated most of the real governance of Arlinn. Its secret service was really just an arm of his. Your Laurence is the dream man of at least fifteen female agents out there. His counterpart Lauren has even more men who dream that her safety, and the safety of their child that she told them she was having, depend utterly on their cooperation. I thought it was so funny, when Saril Jaine told me about it. It was his department, you know. And he was too busy to pay proper attention to Cap . . . but he did stop my father hearing too much about it. I suppose you've been reporting all along. No wonder Deshin found us."
Leyla sat down, stunned, on the only available seat. "My son . . . ?"
"Oh, he'll be treated quite well. They're sent off to spy school from about four. If he's handsome they'll train him to do what his father does."
For a minute Leyla just sat, her face in her hands. Then she raised her head. "Give me that bag," she said in a small, hard voice.
Wordlessly Shael passed it over. Leyla fished out a rather bulky quilted sanitary towel from a stack of five, and a small knife. "It's the one place no man ever looks. I replaced Cap's hoard with ordinary opals," she said, a shade of the old Leyla coming through.
She slit the quilting open . . . and revealed four black river stones. Her mouth fell open. "How . . . ?"
Shael said quietly. "Keilin. He told me he'd stolen them. He could tell the opals weren't the real thing. He's coming, you know. He's inside the building."
Leyla sighed. "I'd have liked to see the end of your chase. I have his pendant and the core sections from both the Beta and the Alpha." She reached into her bag and produced a powder compact. "The Alpha's sections."
Shael touched. They were just dead stones. "Keilin was the first to reach S'kith's body. He must have replaced those too. Anyway there were five, not four." Wordlessly Leyla held out Keilin's pendant. Shael nodded. It coursed with coldness at her touch. Leyla took out the core sections she'd stolen a few minutes ago. They too cooled faintly at Shael's touch.
"Take them." She pointed to the ceiling. "I'll lift you up. You can push that air-vent cover aside."
"What about you?"
Leyla sighed. "I'll hold him here awhile. Threaten to flush his precious core sections down the loo. I don't really matter. I let my best friend die for nothing. I should have known that as soon as Bey turned away, Cap would cut him down. He was scared of Bey."
"Go back. Pretend I ran away. He wants you to have his children," Shael said quietly.
Leyla snorted, and said roughly, "Honey, his idea of sex does not result in children. To think he makes sarcastic comments about homosexuals! Now, up you go."
They found a stairwell. Well, none of them had ever seen or heard of elevators. Following Keilin's instincts they finally came to the officers' quarters. Then on to the room that said CAPTAIN'S SUITE. The Gene-spliced were about to kick the door in when Keil tried the handle. It swung open. The room was empty. But Gerda ran straight past him, into the bedroom and kicked open the bathroom door. Leyla lay there, gurgling, choking in her own blood. Her throat had been slashed. Keilin took one look.
The feeling of knowing, prescience, his most occasional psi talent, took over.
All he saw was a red cross.
He stepped up to the now more familiar keyboard. "HELP," he typed. "DOCTOR," and then, clumsily, "EMERGENCY."
There was a click. A voice from the speaker addressed him. "Is this a medical emergency?"
"Yes. A woman with her throat cut in the bathroom."
"An ambulance unit has been dispatched. Arriving in seven point three seconds. Remain calm. Attempt to pinch closed any major blood vessels which are pumping out blood. Stand clear when the rescue unit arrives."
The long, laterally flattened bed spear of the red-cross emblazoned, red-light flashing, rescue unit came in at head height, slid down onto the dying woman, and scooped her up. If they thought it had come fast, the speed at which it left was terrifying.
"Patient will be taken to Morningstar II General Medical. Staff have been alerted and are awaiting. Time of arrival twenty-eight seconds. End communication." The wall speaker clicked silent.
Keilin tried speaking to it. Tried typing "HELP" again. Received a curt "MEDICAL EMERGENCIES ONLY," or "ENTER ACCESS CODE."
Wolf smelled the discarded clothing in the corner. He grabbed Keilin's shoulder. "Come." He said, "We'll follow my nose instead."
Like a questing pack, the Gene-spliced sniffed off into the passage.
Shael didn't know where she was going. She just kept on crawling. And when she could crawl no further, she climbed down the metal rungs. She kept on going downwards as long as she could. Finally, when her arms were tired, she moved off into a horizontal shaft. There was a grille ahead. She got over it. Kicked it. It wouldn't budge outwards. And there was nothing to give purchase to lift it by, once she'd got it off.
A voice said, "Allow me."
He flicked the grille aside, and Cap's strong hand grabbed her arm and pulled her out of her security. "Did you really think you could fool the computer system by hiding in the ventilators?" he said with a sardonic curl of the lip. "My girl, if you oppose me, you'll always come off second best." He twisted her arm behind her back and took the bag of core sections out of her pocket. "Let's go and give these a try . . . my way."
The sniffers' trail had led to the set-into-the-wall metal doors of an elevator. It had taken awhile to figure out how to open the handleless metal things. Fortunately someone had tried the button off to the side before Hamesh had got busy with his battle-axe. Having encountered buttons once, they were rapidly found and understood in their context. But there were seventy floors. None of the buttons had Cap's scent. He'd plainly retained voice control for himself.
They were sixteen from the top, so they settled for going up one and smelling there. Nothing. So the next. They'd tried seven floors when Keilin thought of touching the core sections. "They've gone down. A long way down." Abruptly he disappeared.
She was tied down over the transmitter control center. Lashed facedown onto the bed that Evie Lee had had fitted. There was a little flue into which Cap had poured the core sections. All around them the electronic muscles and brain of the matter-transmitter system clicked and flashed with electronic life. The drug he'd injected into her was one she'd never encountered before. She thought she had heard of all of them. But she'd not come across this one. It made her feel as if every nerve was supercharged. Her sense of touch seemed most heightened. She could swear that she could feel the individual threads of her shirt touching her.
And the steely sound of a knife being sharpened was horribly magnified. Cap had not said what he planned to do. But tied like this, spread-eagled and helpless . . . It wasn't going to be pleasant . . . and not actually knowing made it worse. She wished Keilin would come . . .
He was there. Abruptly. A little stunned.
"That's one method I failed to take cognizance of," Cap said coldly. "Now I suppose I'll have to kill you after all. I'd decided I didn't want to do that."
"I'm afraid of you. Make one hostile move and I'll panic. I've got the rest of the core sections. The real ones. I stole them from Leyla. I'll use my power to scatter them into the sea." Keilin's voice was a little too unsteady to make the threat truly effective. "Let her go. Let her go and I'll give them to you."
"You know," said Cap conversationally, "I'd decided not to kill you because you're my only descendent. Evie lost a child in Dunbar when I nearly managed to get the bitch. Our child. I've been thinking about it. That pendant . . ."
"That pendant came from Arlinn," said Keilin. "My father claimed to be a prince on the run. He was probably nothing like that . . . but my mother loved him enough to leave her rich merchant family for him. I've nothing to do with you. Let Shael go."
"Hmm. He probably was from Arlinn. Before I got to Evie she'd spawned a whole pack of brats off various men. I suppose your mother's line . . . yes, that must be mine."
"Leyla said you couldn't have children. Not with your tastes. I don't believe Queen Lee ever had anything to do with you," spat Shael.
"Phew! You're a poisonous bitch, aren't you? To talk like that from the position you're in. But you're wrong. I seduced her very carefully. If I couldn't have the captaincy one way . . ."
But Keilin knew the truth, with sudden and absolute clarity. "She made love to you just the once. You could be very charming. But her psi worked best then. She knew exactly what fantasy you had to play in your mind to have normal sex. She threw you out. Rejected you. You, the great hero Dane Fisher."
Cap's face contorted with rage. Keilin held the bag in front of him, like a shield. "Let her go!"
"God I hate you little psis. Always snooping." He leaned over Shael and cut her bonds. She managed to get up.
"The core sections. Throw them or I'll cut her throat."
"I'll throw . . . when she comes towards me."
Cap smiled. It was not a nice smile. And he pushed Shael forward towards Keilin.
Keilin tossed the bag, grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him. "Run."
"No. Give me a knife."
Keilin pulled one out of his boot But instead of giving it to Shael he threw it at Cap. Cap dodged. He had picked up his long, curved sword. He smiled cruelly. "I never realized back on Earth how useful Kendo training would be. Give her a knife, boy. It won't make any difference. And you won't be able to run. CompControl: Close doors to the drive chamber." He leaned over the transmitter flue and took out the mixture of core sections and opals. "Now I have them all," he said, as the doors whined shut.
Keilin and Shael stood side by side, facing his slow, catlike advance. Keilin could tell it was giving the man great pleasure.
He felt the hard shaft of the assegai.
Knew with absolute certainty that this throw would strike true. Knew also that it wouldn't kill.
And the great doors at the far side of the room were struck by something with the force of double-forked lightning.
Again.
They cracked. Splintered before the assault. And crashed open.
The three Gene-spliced stood there. The svelte Gerda with her saber. The immensely broad, almost-fat Hamesh with the huge battle-axe that had wreaked part of the damage on the door. And in the middle the towering Wolfgang, looking so like Bey in a berserker rage . . . only one and a half times as big, and far more controlled. He was whirling a spiked steel ball on a chain. A slow and deadly figure eight of perfectly controlled steel, that could accelerate with unstoppable force.
Keilin knew that Cap prided himself on his martial skill. Why then did he back away?
"I've come to avenge my father," Wolf's voice was cold, and as carefully controlled as the morningstar in his hand.
"He tried to stop me. I had a duty to do. You would never have been born without me . . ." Cap whined.
"Liar."
"We know now how you poisoned our people." Hamesh tossed the heavy battle-axe from hand to hand like a willow wand. "You poisoned us against all other humans. Told us that they were afraid of us. You were the one who was afraid. Afraid because even the untrained humans like us are faster and stronger than you. That's why you poisoned our women, cut us off from other people."
"Killed our babies." Gerda cut the air with her saber. "And that's just what you did to our people. There are many others waiting to see you in hell."
They were closing. "You've always fought less-able folk. Let's see what you can do against us."
Keilin could feel real fear emanating from Cap now. He could also feel the fear of the other three. They were facing a legend. They didn't really expect to win. But Cap didn't know that. He saw Cap's index finger come up. Pointed at Wolf's chest.
Keilin didn't even remember throwing. But the heavy blade struck true, shearing into Cap's hand, deflecting the ruby incandescence. A hole was blasted into the wall inches from Wolf's head.
"Keep off. I'll shoot again." Fear and pain pitched Cap's voice higher.
"He's only got one shot until it recharges. He's lying . . . as usual," said Wolf to his companions, who hadn't slowed their advance. Then he spoke to Cap. "Why don't you call for medical help? The doctors in the hospital are waiting for you. They might put you in a bed between Bey and Leyla."
Keilin felt the change in Cap. Something Wolf had said had made him think of a way out. The man dived behind a bank of electronic instruments.
"There's a door," yelled Shael. "Get him."
But they were too late.
A speaker boomed. "I have instructed CompControl to flood this place with cyanide gas in three minutes. I'll be spacebound by then, you fools. The Morkth destroyed the shuttlecraft at Morningstar I. But of course they didn't get the ones here. I'd forgotten that! I've got the core sections. I'll come back when you're dead. And on the ship I've tools that are going to turn Dublin Moss and anyone else who dares resist me into molten lava. So long, suckers."
This door was made of sterner stuff than the doors they'd smashed earlier. It took at least a minute to break down. Cap's scent and the blood spoor ended abruptly outside the door.
"He's taken a groundcar, like the one we used to get here," said Shael quietly. "We'll never get out in the time there is left."
"There will be no need to," the voice from the speaker said. "Normal computer function has been restored. Sub-Captain Fisher's orders have been overwritten. Message follows." Faime, Lea and Sandi's voices, and Sula's slightly deeper tone, shouting triumphantly. "We did it! We did it! Wolf, Gerda, anyone, can you hear us?"
Keilin leaned against the wall amid the whoops of triumph. "CompControl. Tell them we're fine. Where is Cap . . . I mean Fisher?"
"Sub-Captain Fisher has fled in an orbital capacity spacecraft."
"Can you shoot him down?" Keilin asked.
"Negative. He is beyond range," said CompControl in its mellifluous voice, showing no trace of emotion.
"The stuff on the moon . . . the ship . . . can we do anything about that?" Keilin asked, warily.
"Negative. My attempts to contact the ship over the past three hundred years have only elicited the following automated response: "There are no living crew on board." There was a toxic gas release in crew territory thirty-eight seconds after the Morkth attack on Morningstar I. The ship recyclers will have cleared the gas within a few minutes, but someone seems to have inserted a command string to shut down all but the ship's maintenance functions. Ship CompControl is unable to give any support, unless these orders are countermanded by a live human."
CompControl paused briefly, and then continued, "Additionally, what Sub-Captain Fisher has said is factual. There are tools and weapons on the ship which are capable of destroying and reshaping continents, for the terraforming of new planets. You are not even safe here. This unit is flight-capable, but we lack fuel. We can manufacture this, but sufficient quantities would not be available for several years. Normally, we would have used matter transmission to retrieve stocks from the ship. I will attempt to evacuate you to any place you wish to go to. There are still three remaining shuttlecraft. However, once Sub-Captain Fisher establishes control over the ship, he will be able to track and destroy those."
There was a long silence.
Shael's voice was oddly strained. "Cay. Put your hand inside my blouse. Then . . . please touch my left nipple." Something in her voice made Keilin do exactly what he was told in front of the open-mouthed audience. He felt the coldness of the core section beside it . . . getting rapidly colder.
The bag of core sections popped into the air between them. Shael caught it before it could fall. "Compcontrol," she said, "these are the transmitter core sections. Can we get to the ship before him?"
"Yes. Once the transmitter is fully activated, matter transmission to the ship's orbital command center would be possible. A suitably skilled person could activate the ship's defenses." Could a machine sound hopeful?
"Suitably skilled . . . what does that mean?"
"Either someone who is computer-literate, or someone who the ship's computer would recognize as an officer. None of the human personnel within Morningstar II can be revived in time."
"What about that doctor . . . the one who was working on Dad . . ." Wolfgang asked quietly.
"I am accessing Morningstar II General Medical Hospital . . ." There was an infinitesimal pause. Then Compcontrol said, in a voice of urgency, unlike its previous mellifluous tones, "Psi-active personnel, return to the transmitter chamber immediately. I am now paging Lieutenant-Commander James Edwards."
"Come, Cay."
Keilin didn't move. "Cap was going to rape and kill you there. I'm not doing that. The world can go to hell. He won't destroy it entirely."
"It's all right, Cay. I'm your partner . . . remember. Trust me. I've read Queen Evie's records. She got forty million people, and tons of equipment and stuff, off Morningstar, without getting hurt at all, before Cap did what he did. Believe me. That was just the way Cap would have preferred to do it. Him, the Captain, in control, sacrificing psi victims, like some ancient barbarian priest. Come on," she smiled her most devastating smile. "The rest of you please go away . . . and seeing as you broke the doors down, please keep everybody else out too." She led the unresisting Keilin into the drive chamber. She slowly began to take off his clothes.
They put the core sections into the transmitter-core container. As soon as they were all together the sections began to meld. Even from a few yards off the cold glow could be felt. But the rest of the air in the chamber was pleasantly warm. Scurrying little robots darted out and one of them injected Keilin, too. Soon his nerves were tingling and hypersensitive like Shael's. On the other hand, the way she was behaving, he didn't think that he had needed any chemical help.
The scurrying robots had made up the bed on top of the transmitter core with fresh, smooth sheets. There was no sign of the ropes that had bound Shael. She led him to the bed, pulled him down onto it. Compcontrol had assured them they still had twenty-five minutes before the orbital lander reached the ship. There was to be no hurrying, they were sternly instructed, as they were inexperienced operators. Psi output had to be at an absolute maximum to successfully align the atoms within the crystal lattice matrix of the transmitter.
With the intensity of desire Keilin doubted if they'd last that long. His hands, clumsy with haste and need, fumbled with her buttons . . . and then his fingers, suddenly clever, drifted, caressing her soft body. Went down . . .
The need and desire, and . . . overpowering love. Togetherness. A melding of softness and hardness, and a moment in which all the vast, glowing, shifting colors of the jewel heart of the matter transmitter turned black, and a quarter of a million miles of nanocircuitry glowed instead. The lattices within the core shifted from helium ice to the surface of the sun. Their combined psi force reached out into it, just as Keilin and Shael reached that instant at which everything was utterly, absolutely perfect.
They certainly didn't hear Compcontrol say "99.999987% lattice alignment. Initializing transmission."
. . . Transmission. Transmission. Transmission. Transmission . . .
Dr. James Edwards found himself standing in the command center of the starship Morningstar. The computer recognized him, naturally. It informed him that the orbital shuttle from Morningstar II Control Center was about to dock. Dr. Edwards was a skilled surgeon, who knew when it was necessary to amputate. He was also a gentle, kindly man, but there comes a time to end gentleness.
"Destroy it!" he ordered.
On board the shuttle Dane Fisher knew that his long-laid and treacherous plans had reached fruition at last. This was his moment of triumph. There was the docking bay. Nothing could stop him now. Then he saw the gunports next to the docking bay slide open. And in a burst of ruby incandescence, a lifetime of monomania, lies, greed and treachery became nothing more than space-scattered atoms.