‘Bastard! It was local fauna—we got nothing!’ Theldon’s hands were now motionless on his console.
Goron called up an external view, while with one eye he continued watching the battle in the abutment chamber. His people were dying in there, all due to him. Outside he observed a macabre landscape of seared dinosaur fauna. The torbeast had driven these creatures ahead of it to take the brunt of Sauros’s first defensive measures. Goron did not like the intelligence that revealed. Beyond the carnage he saw a line of incursions closing in.
‘Hit them with everything we’ve got,’ he instructed.
‘All of them?’ Silleck asked. ‘They are all around us.’
More views, and Goron observed the ring as it closed.
‘Do what you can,’ he said, now operating controls that had been set in the control pillar ever since Sauros had been built, but had never been used. Now he watched missiles hammering out from the city, hitting the incursions—some of those nacreous whirlwinds collapsing, but always others moving into their place.
‘We’ve lost it, we’ve fucking lost it!’ Theldon protested, turning from his console and staring at Goron.
Goron gestured to the rear of the chamber. ‘Get to the displacement generator. It’s set to drop us ten kilometres away, which should put us outside the beast’s immediate reach. I doubt it’s much interested in us, anyway—there’s a bigger prize at the other end of the tunnel.’
‘OK,’ said Theldon, turning back to his console.
In a flash Goron understood why Silleck had picked up on that first incursion before Theldon had. Quickly he shifted virtual controls and saw that somehow Theldon had gained access, through equipment made for external and internal monitoring and some adjustment of internal systems, to the abutment controls. Using yet another control protocol he had never revealed to anyone but Palleque, the Engineer shut off Theldon’s console.
Theldon turned. ‘Maybe, if we—’
‘Nothing we can do,’ Goron interrupted, his face expressionless. ‘We blow the abutments and New London goes anyway. Get out of here.’
Theldon turned back to his console, stared at it for a moment, then slapping his hands against it, stood and, without meeting Goron’s gaze, headed for the generator. Goron watched the displacement sphere flick the man away from Sauros. Blowing the abutments would certainly close the mouth of the wormhole and prevent the beast reaching New London, and just as certainly the feedback energy, and that projected from the sun tap, would fry the city. Goron returned his attention to more exigent concerns now the man was gone.
‘This is Engineer Goron,’ he said over the public address system. ‘All personnel head for your nearest displacement generator and get out of here. We have lost Sauros.’
He saw that many were not responding to his order. Some were fighting feeding mouths that were shooting up like trains from the corridors leading into the abutment chamber. Others seemed to be doing nothing at all, perhaps preferring to die with their city.
‘This is Engineer Goron. I am now leaving this city. You must all come with me.’
This finally motivated many to head for the generator points. But, just then, most of them were thrown off their feet as the city lurched.
‘What the hell was that?’
‘I can’t keep them out!’ from Silleck.
An outside view showed Goron a wide-open incursion in which atomic fires burned and were swamped by the roll of megatonnes of flesh. From this extended the neck of a giant feeding mouth that was now chewing on the city wall. Lasers burnt grooves in it, and missiles blew away chunks of it the size of houses. Its neck broke then separated, the mouth end attached to the city crashing down and by its sheer weight causing Sauros to tilt. But then another of the giants hammered in from the other side of the city.
‘Put a tactical into it,’ Goron suggested, knowing Silleck’s answer even as he spoke.
‘I can’t—we’ve got nothing left.’
‘This is Engineer Goron. Everybody get out—get out now! This order includes all technicians vorpally interfaced. You must abandon this place. It is not worth your lives!’
‘Silleck,’ he said in quieter tones, ‘that means you too.’
A display on the control pillar informed him that at least this latest order was being generally obeyed. The other controls there, having gone through their detachment sequence some minutes before, had freed a section of the pillar. He pulled the section away and stepped back, holding a control sphere and viewing sphere with all the vorpal tech that connected them together. Tucking under his arm this item, which looked like the severed head of a huge praying mantis fashioned of glass, he turned towards where the displacement generator was located. Then he heard the crashing hiss of monstrous progress coming up the lift shaft. Looking to those still trying to separate from their vorpal interfaces, he knew there was just no time left.
‘Silleck…’ he said, but could not go on. Abruptly he turned towards the generator.
The sphere enclosed him instantly, flicked him out between nightmare incursions and deposited him on a denuded mountainside, along with many other citizens of the place he had ruled. He spotted Palleque walking towards him, the other escapees too shocked to even feel motivated to attack the man. When Palleque reached him, both he and Goron turned to look back at the city.
Now some incursions were expanding and mating up, while others were closing. As further citizens suddenly appeared around the two men, they watched more of the beast’s mass flowing in towards the city, tearing out walls and boring through the superstructure. Those displacing from there were now arriving injured, sometimes dead, till their numbers dwindled and finally reached zero. Now they could see the beast like the forever-turning back of a sea giant, diving in between the abutments of the wormhole and attenuating—flowing away like sump oil draining into some huge invisible funnel. But this was a flow that seemed as if it would never end.
‘Palleque! Palleque you bastard!’ The heliothant who stumbled up the slope towards them was drawing a weapon from his belt.
Goron held up his hand. ‘Palleque did his duty.’ He gestured towards the beast and the remaining skeleton of Sauros. ‘This is what we wanted to happen.’
This news was spread gradually as the endless transit of the beast continued. Hours passed and the surviving citizens gathered around Goron to hear his explanation.
‘But that means we are trapped here now,’ someone managed.
‘It means the survival of all we hold dear, and that is all that should concern you,’ Palleque replied.
That stilled them, while in shock, then growing horror, they saw the seemingly endless monster flowing through their temporary home towards what they truly called home: New London.
Goron leaned close to Palleque. ‘Get some help and find Theldon.’ Palleque raised an eyebrow. Goron nodded to the heliothant who had earlier been intent on killing Palleque. ‘Take him with you, and any others like him.’
‘So my position as arch-traitor has been superceded,’ said Palleque. ‘What should I do when I find him?’
Goron just stared at him.
Thirteen screens flicked on, one after another, as the tachyon feed from the abutment chamber of Sauros caused vorpal sensors—spaced all the way down the wormhole—to come into phase. Talk ceased immediately, and it occurred to Maxell you could pluck a dismal tune on the tension stringing the air of the New London Abutment Control Centre.