The armor curtain! He crawled to the bus bar and got it off. Back at the console he looked up at the dome. He operated the remote, positioning the dome exactly above them so it would come down correctly. He threw the switch to lower it. It was coming down too slowly. The cables must be stiff.
He could not help that.
He got a hatchet out of his belt for the cables. He would have to be ready to hack them off the instant the humming stopped.
Jonnie lost track of time. He could still hear the humming of the wires.
He looked toward Terl over on the platform. The monster seemed to have succeeded in opening the access plate. He was handling the bomb with great care, extracting the heavy metal core.
Suddenly Jonnie knew what Terl was going to do. He would throw that core at him. It would travel like a bullet! It could go straight through him.
Abruptly Jonnie saw something else. Brown Limper!
He was rushing forward with a Thompson submachine gun in his hands. He had gone through where the armor curtain had been at the far end of the platform. He was trying to get so close to Jonnie he couldn't miss.
The dome was not yet down.
Terl had the core in his paw now. He was going to throw it at Jonnie.
It was quieter. There was only smoke and falling snow and the creak of the cables lowering the dome. Jonnie pointed at Brown Limper.
"Terl! He's going to shoot!” he shouted. Terl spun around and saw Brown Limper. He saw him raising the Thompson to aim it. One shot at this moment would shatter the firing.
Terl threw. He threw with all his strength.
The core hit Brown Limper in the side. It ripped through and hit his spine. The Thompson clattered to the ground.
Brown Limper fell in a jerking tangle of arms and legs, screaming: “Damn you, Tyler! Damn you!” He lay still.
The wires were still humming.
Terl yelled at Jonnie, “I still win, rat brain!” He knew better than to move now.
Jonnie's head was pounding. His heart was going too fast. But he could shout back. And he felt he had to pin Terl there, distract him.
“Those coffins are full of sawdust! They were changed in your bedroom this morning!” shouted Jonnie.
Terl whirled to look at them.
“And the gold never went to Psychlo! We changed those too!” yelled Jonnie.
Terl opened his mouth to shout.
The platform cargo shimmered. The coffins full of sawdust shimmered. The Brigante corpses on the platform shimmered. Terl shimmered. And it was all gone. The platform was empty, clean even of slush.
The humming stopped. Jonnie took his hatchet and slammed the blade down across the cables.
It wasn't a full severance. He struck twice more. All the cables parted.
Things were going blacker. No, it was the dome.
The reworked plane skids on the bottom of it hit the metal. Jonnie reached out to the dome interior and pulled closed the locking lever which annealed them to the metal the console sat on.
It was very dark.
He felt his time sense must have gone out and then a fleeting thought that maybe Terl had extended the time for his own firing.
Jonnie had had a small mine lamp in his pouch. He made an effort to reach it. His whole body was beginning to shake as if everything was drawn too taut.
A voice was talking to him. It was Sir
Robert. “Hurry. Cut my hands loose.”
Jonnie had the hatchet. He made himself feel about for Sir Robert's hands. The blade was dull, the cord was resistant.
Then he remembered with a surge of panic there must be a time bomb under that console. It would blow Sir Robert to bits. He dropped the hatchet and put his hand to the console side. It was terribly heavy. He only had one working arm but he put his agonizing shoulder against the metal. He got the bottom of the console lifted.
He fished along the lower edges. Then a little higher. He felt it. It was taped on. Working with one hand he got it loose and pulled it out. He let the console tip back in place. In the dark he extracted the fuse from it.
Jonnie felt he was going unconscious.
His heart was revving up. Faster and faster.
He had one more thing to do. The switch. The position of the switch.
Jonnie felt like he was being torn to pieces by his nerves pulling tight.
“Sir Robert! Tell them the switch...the switch has to be in a down position...a down position for the next...”
The outside of the dome was struck a blow so hard the whole platform rocked!
It was as though a dozen earthquakes had hit at once. As though the planet had been torn apart.
Jonnie stiffened out into blackness. He no longer heard the chaos going on outside.
Chapter 5
About an hour before the firing, the orbiting group of ships had just come over the horizon that put them into position to view the American compound.
A small Hawvin spycraft in the orbit ahead of them had already reported some activity there earlier in the day. The report had only said that in the middle of the night a group had been seen on infrascreens entering the compound area and that the group had vanished, leaving only the usual sprawled about and apparently asleep night guards.
The scanners of the orbiting combined force were now picking up something unusual down there on the approaching horizon. There seemed to be a more than normal number of people at the site.
There was a local snowstorm in progress down there and infrabeams were a bit blurred.
The attention of the combined force was not yet fixed on the compound as it shortly would be. The command network of viewscreens was occupied by an interview that was going on.
When Half-Captain Rogodeter Snowl had gone back to Tolnep for reinforcements he had contacted his uncle, Quarter-Admiral Snowleter. Rogodeter believed in keeping profit in the family. The quarter-admiral had come along gladly with a flotilla of five ships, the largest of which was the Terrify-classbattle-plane-launching capital ship Capture. Snowleter had not become a quarter-admiral without some skill and he had brought part of that skill with him: a reporter.
Roof Arsebogger considered himself the ace reporter of the Tolnep
“Midnight Fang.” Even among news media of other systems, the “Fang” was envied as the very epitome of inaccuracy, corruption, and biased news. It always printed exactly what the government wanted even while pretending to be antigovernment. And Roof Arsebogger enjoyed the reputation of being the most poisonous reporter on a staff that specialized in them.
The interview was being conducted by
Arsebogger on the Capture and was addressed to Half-Captain Rogodeter Snowl. It was just a background interview and things were dull so others were listening in. They had various opinions. The quarter-admiral was not well liked. Other commanders contested Snowleter's contention that he was the senior commander and therefore the head of the combined force. And that he was the uncle of the even less popular Rogodeter Snowl made him even less acceptable. They detested Snowl.
“Now getting back to the man on this counterfeit one-credit bank note,” Arsebogger was saying, “would you say that he was dishonest?”
“Oh, worse,” replied Snowl. “Would the description, 'He is a known pervert,' fit him?”
“Oh, worse,” replied Snowl.
“Good, good,” said Arsebogger. “We must keep this to a totally factual interview, you understand. How would 'He steals babies and drinks their blood,' do?”
“Fine, fine,” said Snowl, “exactly.”
“I think you mentioned,” said Arsebogger, “when you filed dispatches, that you had several times met this...what is his name...this defiler of established governments...er...Tyler? Yes. That you met him in personal combat.”