He listened to Chabrier chatter into his control module, the Frenchman standing on one foot and then the other as if the elevator floor were hot lava. Slow-moving, emotional, untrained with the weapons of single combat: Chabrier was all of these, but his courage in behalf of alien slaves filled Quantrill with a bitter envy. The good Samaritan, it seemed, had his counterpart among the minions of Boren Mills.
The elevator's panel speaker erupted in jabbers that Quantrill did not understand. He understood one thing: the staff was staging their own Chinese fire-drill somewhere below. Chabrier spoke their tongue in staccato bursts, repeated one phrase, then leaped from the platform as the doors began to close. He ran the few steps to the hovercycle, scrambled aboard; cried, "Avance; vorwarts; GO, for God's sake!"
Quantrill went.
As the vehicle gained headway, Chabrier leaned forward and called over the whoosh of fans, "The perimeter fence is high and very near. If we cannot go over it, how will you get through?"
"Now you tell me," Quantrill snarled, throttling back, letting go of one handlebar to rummage blindly in the toolbox near his feet. Chabrier pointed to a dim moonlit tracery of rectangular mesh ahead, fully five meters high with steel pipe bracing at intervals. He shut off the machine, let it settle, swung his chemlamp to study the barrier.
"Be assured that if we cut it, we will alert the guards," said Chabrier quickly.
Quantrill saw that they were still too near the lab for safety. "Where are the nearest guards and how soon can they get here?"
"Halfway to the North gate. The patrol is probably halfway there now and they may need ten minutes to return from there."
"In other words, if we wait five minutes we'll have the longest head start."
"Do we dare?"
"Relax; we dare. I promise, the detonators won't pop for another ten minutes. At least that's what I was promised. Who the fuck knows?"
Quantrill unrolled a coil of tubing the thickness of a finger and ten meters long; gave another to Chabrier, demonstrating how to string the tubing in a great 'U' against the steel fence. As always, Quantrill readied two escape holes in case one, for whatever reason, failed. Pressure-sensitive tape crossing the tube gave it the appearance of barbed wire, but was only an aid in holding the tubing against tree trunk, fence, or door facing.
To Chabrier's query the younger man said, "Plastiquord — an improvement you French made on Primacord. When you pull the pin at the end you get ten seconds before it blows, and it'll sever two-centimeter steel bars. Just make sure it's snug against the fencewire, and let me pull the pin."
"That honor is all yours," Chabrier muttered, peering at his handiwork, readjusting a corner curl of the tube as if neatness counted. Quantrill checked the work; saw nothing to criticize. Near the midpoint at the crossbar of each 'U' he tied a monofilament cord to the fence and let it trail back on the ground.
The hovercycle was running again when a muffled thump from above the earthen berm made them glance back to the lab. The cargo elevator again stood in the open, a square of blackness against the night sky.
"Uh-oh," said Quantrill, who leaped to pull the delay pins; proved that he could duck trot as he dodged behind the 'cycle. "… Eight, nine, ten, elev—" he said as the first report ripped the calm. The second blast came a second later.
Quantrill burst from his cover to grapple with the monofilament cord, hauling backward with all his strength. Chabrier knew the fence was not electrified enough to deliver a shock — but the little saboteur hadn't asked him. Chabrier helped fold the severed mesh back by sheer force. Tied back by the cord, the mesh yawned open and, seeing several dim figures hurtling down the berm toward them, Quantrill vaulted onto his seat.
"Those guys are on their own now," he called, floating his vehicle through the hole. "Get aboard, Chabrier, before they swamp us!"
Moments later the two men hummed away without lights, building up to a speed so great that Chabrier was sure they could not avoid an obstacle if one did loom ahead. Quantrill squinted at a small box riveted on his instrument panel; twisted a vernier knob until an orange light glowed; readjusted so that the light barely flickered. With Chabrier's extra weight, the 'cycle's engine worked harder to keep its distance from the hardpan, and their speed seldom exceeded highway norms across the desert expanse. They were not yet ten klicks from the lab when a flash at their backs lit the terrain. Quantrill glanced back, thrust a fist aloft in triumph; far behind them, in splendid silence, a massive roil of crimson and yellow arose from the desert floor in a fireball that darkened as they watched.
Quantrill, over the engine noise: "Looked like an oil storage dump. Ammonium nitrate doesn't go up like that."
"Monomers and diesel fuel tanks buried outside in the berm, mon ami; it would appear that you are damnably thorough."
Turning again to the west, Quantrill laughed outright. "You should be cheering, frenchy; weren't you a prisoner too?"
"All that work, all that experimental data — one hates to see it lost."
"Mills's enemies don't hate to see it lost — and that means most of Streamlined America."
"They would, if they knew what you destroyed."
Dull thunder finally overtook them, half a minute after the glare. As it faded Quantrill said, "I was supposed to blow away a Chinese gadget that synthesized rare materials."
Chabrier stiffened, then accepted the fact that Mills could not keep his secrets as well as he imagined.
Speaking into Quantrill's ear: "You are well-informed. Every unit in existence was operating in that lower basement, and the porcelain parts were even more delicate than the cermets. I might possibly rebuild one from — from a small model and my memory, but without great good fortune M'sieur Mills will find nothing of much use back there."
"That makes you a valuable man to — wups," Quantrill ended as the field sensor light winked, then glowed brightly.
A sharp turn on a hovercycle requires the driver to bank steeply without scraping the fan skirts. Quantrill nearly lost his passenger as he urged the vehicle up and around in an abrupt turn. The field sensor light was a steady glare. Quantrill slowed until they were hovering; steered to make the 'cycle pivot; made its nose wag slowly as he watched a meter on the sensor box.
Finally, his outstretched arm pale in moonlight, Quantrill pointed left of center, ahead. "P-beam tower. I'm told they're about fifteen hundred meters apart. That true?"
"Closer, I think, over uneven ground. I saw them only once. Boren Mills amused himself by flushing rabbits and driving them forward by gunfire. When the beams struck the poor little beasts exploded as though struck by lightning. Of course the vultures came later — and met the same fate. Mills merely wanted to frighten me. He succeeded."
"Let's see if we're close enough. Move your legs up and shut your eyes; I'm going to fire one of the little birds near your feet."
Chabrier obeyed as if goaded by needles. Quantrill set a dial; pressed a stud. With a near-explosive whistling rush, the little homingbird sizzled away, backblast shifting from boost to loiter, and Quantrill watched with one eye covered to maintain half of his night vision.
For perhaps five seconds the exhaust cometed off, dwindling to a hard point on the horizon. Then a thread of light stretched across the desert for one retina-jarring instant, and a blue-white firebloom marked the intercept point where rocket and P-beam met twenty meters above the hardpan.
Quantrill urged the 'cycle forward another three hundred meters while Chabrier's grip tightened on his coverall; then he warned his passenger again. This time the Homingbird's rush carried it only a few hundred meters before a sharp line of glowing air molecules traced the P-beam's passage to the sacrifice decoy. Both men heard the spaaat of the beam in air and the chuffing boom of its target. "Near enough.