The fight developed almost in slow motion. An officer stepped in, addressed one of the amateur technicians. The man ignored him until the officer tugged at his sleeve. On the monitors, mouths opened and faces contorted with silent screams. When the first fist flew, Selena gasped.
"What is he doing?"
"He is being scared," Radek replied as gently as one could if contending with klaxons. "When people are scared, they lash out. Even people as peaceful as you."
By the looks of it, people were very scared. After that initial, almost reflexive punch, the melee spread like ripples in a pond, but, unlike ripples that would quiet down with time and distance, the situation escalated further and further. Men, women, children were swept away and pulled under in a maelstrom of panic.
With a mix of dread and fascination, barely aware of Selena's sobs, Radek watched the sea of heaving, thrashing bodies, half thinking that perhaps this was a better way to die; at least they went out fighting. He was so wrapped up in the macabre spectacle that he almost missed it. A chevron had lit up on the outer ring of the Stargate.
"Selena!"
She blinked, stared where he'd stabbed his finger at the screen. "They actually dialed an address!"
"No." Radek's throat had gone dry and that one syllable stuck in his craw. Which might be just as well, because right now that blockage seemed to be the only thing that kept his wildly hammering heart in place. "No. Look again."
"You're saying it's an incoming wormhole?"
"Yes! Look at the console. If they'd managed to dial a valid address, the symbols would be lit."
The dialing pads were dark. The Stargate, on the other hand, showed four glowing chevrons now, with a fifth coming alight just as Radek glimpsed back at it. The crowd had spotted it, too, and they began pushing toward the gate as their way out, like an audience trying to escape from a burning theatre or sports stadium.
------- " Zadna." he shouted, horrified. "Stay back! For God's sake, get away from there!"
"They can't hear you!"
Of course they couldn't. And even if they could have, they wouldn't have listened. Helpless, Radek looked on as the seventh chevron locked and the event horizon surged into the throng-men, women, children-and vaporized everyone and everything in its path. Selena let out an inarticulate scream and clutched his arm.
The eight foot swath of annihilation had finally brought the crowd to a dead halt. Too late they came to their senses, faces white and slack, all of them so shell-shocked that they barely seemed to be able to take in what was happening when a squat, roughly cylindrical little vessel pushed its way out of the Stargate.
"Oh, my God," whispered Radek. "Oh, my God…
He hadn't seen a puddle jumper in twenty-six years, but there was no mistaking it. For a moment he simply stood there, unable to move a muscle, staring like an idiot with his mouth hanging open. Then he grabbed Selena's arm and yanked her toward the door.
"Come! Quickly! We've got to get to the gate. Now!
It was as though the events they'd witnessed only moments ago had sapped the life from her. She let herself be dragged over and around the rubble that littered the floor and out the door. Only when they reached the stairwell, she seemed to wake up from her fugue.
"Where are we going?"
"To the Stargate! I told you!" he snapped impatiently, regretting the outburst almost at once.
"But-"
"I'll explain later, I promise. But now we have to go. There's no time." He let go of her, patted her shoulder by ways of encouragement, and started racing down the stairs, trusting Selena would follow. Her curiosity was reliable enough.
The stairwell was a deathtrap, and in his mad scramble to the ground floor all he could do was pray that it wouldn't come crashing down around their ears. Twisted all out of shape, the banister wobbled dangerously, and pieces of jagged metal stuck out everywhere. More than once his coat caught on an edge, and he had to rip himself free again to rush on, skipping broad holes where steps had broken off and ducking under loose wiring. The air was thick with dust, and every breath he took-far too many-made his lungs feel as if they were filled with ground glass.
By the time he reached the ground floor lobby, he was dizzy with exertion, wheezing for air, but he only stopped long enough to determine a safe route to the exit. Once a soaring space illuminated by skylights and designed to convey the lofty goals of those who worked here-pursuit of knowledge and universal betterment-the lobby lay in ruins. They'd actually heard the crash all the way up to the twelfth floor. The ceiling had caved in and the skylights had turned the floor into a minefield of shards. And worse. He quickly decided that it would be wiser not to examine what lay beneath the glitter of destruction. There was no telling how many people had been in here when the lobby collapsed, but those who hadn't made it out in time must have been caught in what amounted to a hailstorm of glass daggers…___
"Oh no!" Selena had caught up with him, panting nearly as hard as he, which didn't stop her from repeating it over and over again, like a mantra or a spell that would make it all go away if only she said it often enough. "Oh no… oh no…"
He wrapped an arm around her and pointed to one of the support pillars. It must have survived the tremor that had destroyed the ceiling and come down in a later quake to topple across the lobby like a felled tree. Free of glass, it formed a bridge to the street.
At the third attempt he managed to pull himself on top of it, then reached down to haul Selena after him. Careful to avoid any unnecessary glances to the lobby floor and the dead scattered there, they balanced across the pillar and finally found themselves outside and under a livid, churning sky.
Heat slammed into them like a mallet. Apparently some of the cooling systems inside the building had still been working, or perhaps Radek simply hadn't noticed before and it had taken the sick color of the sky to drive it home. Out in the open, temperatures were scorching. Near-tropical humidity made matters worse, and without so much as a whisper of wind to stir it, the whole stifling stew hung trapped amid the skeletal remains of buildings. In hindsight Radek thought that he shouldn't have been so surprised. It made sense. As the planet expanded, the atmosphere would have to thin proportionately, offering less and less protection from the sun.
The devastation in the street matched that inside the building, except that things were a little less cramped. Directly ahead rose what was left of the monorail station. The rail had buckled between two support struts. A train was jammed at the bottom of the kink, still trying to move forward, its engine whining angrily.
"Hell," Selena muttered. "I paid my public transport dues a year in advance…" She was coming out of her shock and dealing with the situation the only way you could if you wanted to stay sane.
"Serves you right for being a goodie-two-shoes." Radek grinned. "But I wasn't going to suggest we take the train anyway. It's unreliable at the best of times. I was thinking along the lines of purloining a glider."
`Purloining?"
"I would have said borrowing, but given that there probably won't be any owners around to ask…" He headed for a large parking area at the opposite side of the station.
Not that anyone could have recognized it for what it was. For all the world it looked like a junkyard. Still, Radek counted on finding at least one glider-a fast one preferably-that was still operational. Finding it quickly would bean added bonus.
The one they found-almost immediately, and they could barely believe their luck-was wedged into a makeshift shelter. The roof at the far end of the station had collapsed, forming a lean-to and protecting the three gliders parked beneath from the falling debris that had flattened everything else in the vicinity.