Donna came back to her at once. "And Kuei Jen too. He's not here either!"
"What?" Disturbed and angered, she hesitated, then rushed across the room and up the steps. "I'm coming through. Hold tight where you are." Then, changing frequencies, she spoke quickly to the three team members who had been left to hold the hub. "Anne, stay where you are. Vesa and Joan, move down the hub to the end. And be careful. There may be someone there."
She ran on, past fallen guards and through smoldering, damaged rooms, until she came to Li Yuan's private suite. Here, where they had expected the fighting to be hardest, things were untouched. That, more than anything, convinced her that Li Yuan had not been here.
"The wives?" she asked.
"Farther down," Donna answered, coming across. "We had to torch the rooms. The guards fought hard."
"AndKueiJen?"
"He was here. The cot bedding was disturbed. His nurse knew nothing though. She was asleep. When she woke he was gone."
"Then he's still here." She smiled, reassured by the news. "Good. Then let's find the little bastard!"
TSENG-LI SHIVERED. He could hear them coming, their heavy, weighted boots clanking with each step. "Another minute!" he hissed softly through his teeth. "Just give me another minute!"
Kuei Jen was already wedged inside the tiny craft they called "the coffin," attached by a web of cords in the niche where, normally, the engineer on duty would keep a spare air bottle. There was neither time nor room for finesse how, though, so it would have to do. And if they failed, well, it was better than dying here. And death grew more certain with every passing moment.
He was outside, in the cramped maintenance area beside the blister that held the small, beetlelike maintenance craft. For more than a minute now he had been working at the catch of the manual controls, trying to force it open with a wrench. But time was running out fast. Even if he managed to get it open and operate the override, there was no guarantee that he'd get back to the craft. He had visions of it drifting out slowly on its two-ii tether, the outer hatch open to the vacuum. If Kuei Jen didn't freeze to death he would suffocate eventually. Unless Tseng-li could clamber back in somehow and close the outer hatch manually. And even then they had only twelve hours of air.
Things were bad. And getting worse by the second. He grunted and hit out at the heavy catch viciously, swearing beneath his breath. "Give, you bastard, give!" For a moment longer it held, then, with a hiss, it gave, the automatic controls springing the plate back so that it banged against his face plate.
"Well, sod you too!" he said, laughing, halfway between relief and sheer panic. Quickly he reached in and turned and pulled out the handle. At once he heard the dull concussion of the seals as they moved into place. The maintenance room was now an airlock, both of its access doors sealed off. It made him feel better, safer. It would take them minutes to cut through them. And in minutes . . .
He was about to turn away, when another of the controls caught his attention. A dial. It was calibrated finely, from o through to 2. At present it was set just over i. A second set of figures gave rotational speed. He knew at once what it was. Smiling, he turned the dial slowly to the right. Then, with an abruptness that was almost vicious, he slammed the dial back to the left and left it there, turning to face the opening blister.
KRIZ WAS BY THE POOL when it struck. There had been a moment's sensation of heaviness, of pressure, then, slowly at first but with gathering speed, things began to happen. At first the feeling was quite pleasant, a kind of lightness that was as much of the spirit as of the body. Then, before she knew what had hit her, the huge sheet of water in front of her began to lift and break apart.
In her ear-mike there was a gabble of sudden panic. The palace was slowing down! Someone had stopped its spin!
"Anne!" she screamed, her feet coming away from the floor momentarily. "What the fuck are you doing?"
There was a moment's radio silence, then Anne's voice came through. "What's going on? Aiya! What's happening?"
Kriz understood at once. The override. Someone had got to the end of the hub before them. Even as she thought it, Vesa's voice came through loudly in her ear.
"It's sealed! Someone's sealed it off!"
"Use explosives!" Kriz yelled back. By now she was floating several feet from the floor. Huge lumps of water were drifting out and up, away from the pool. She could imagine the chaos elsewhere. "Once you're inside, there'll be a control panel. Try not to damage it. Reset the dial for one atmosphere."
She could feel herself shedding weight by the moment as the great palace slowed, its huge engines reversing its spin and bringing it to a complete halt. Soon it would be as weightless all around the rim as it was at the hub.
Suddenly it had all gone wrong. Badly wrong!
"Vesa, I..."
The ship shuddered. It was as if something had hit it. Something huge. Kriz felt herself thrown across the pool, big gouts of water colliding with her and turning her about. She was buffeted and slowed. Then, when she thought things had died down, there was a second, far bigger detonation, that seemed to pick her up and shake her about, then cast her down, like a huge hand pressing her firm against the bottom of the pool, flattening her.
FROM A HUNDRED LI out the first of the fighters saw it happen and caught it on camera. There was a flicker and a blurring of the starlight surrounding the tip of the hub. Slowly, almost gracefully, the spokes of the lower end fell away, severing the hub from the rim. Then, only moments later, the whole structure seemed to shudder and slowly buckle, a strange electric tracery surrounding the docking nodule at the top. The opposite end of the hub was swinging inward now, toward the rim, but even before it struck, the whole palace seemed to quiver, then shatter, like a fragile shape of glass.
For a moment the fighter's screen was incandescently bright. Then, very slowly, it faded to a flickering, ember-strewn black. There was a strong hiss of static on the audio band.
"What's happened?" said a voice, cutting through the distortion. "What in the gods' names is going on up there?"
"It's gone," said the pilot softly, disbelievingly. "Kuan Yin preserve us, it's gone!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Stone Within
SEE, " said Tsu Ma, nodding gravely. He sat, all color drained from his face. "And has any wreckage been found yet?"
The man on the screen seemed to concentrate a moment, then nodded. He was wired to the console in front of him and was receiving reports by the moment. "Most of the wreckage appears to have stayed up there, but a lot of it has been falling. There have been reports of large chunks coming down into the sea off the Guinea coast."
Tsu Ma looked away a moment, then back at the screen, his whole face grown stiffer, a sudden anger making his eyes flare. "Who did this?"
There was no hesitation this time. "It was the Yu. Kiev had two minutes of taped material sent out from Yangjing before its systems cut out."
"Yu. . ." he said under his breath. Then, "How did they get on board?"
The Security man shook his head. "We don't know that yet, Chieh Hsia. Tracking reports certain . . . difficulties."
"Difficulties?" He was suspicious at once. "What kind of difficulties?"
"Well. . ." The man's hesitation showed his discomfort. He knew all the old adages about the bearers of ill news. "It seems we have half a day's tracking transmissions missing for that sector."
"Missing?" Tsu Ma laughed harshly. "That's impossible. There are backups to the backups, surely?"
The man bowed his head. "That is so, Chieh Hsia, but there is no stored record. Only a gap."
Tsu Ma was quiet, thinking, WangSau-kyan. This was his doing. But how prove it? How tie him to this foulness? Then, like a cold wave, dousing his anger, it struck him what this meant for Li Yuan: his whole family gone. Tsu Ma shivered and half turned, hearing the voices from the other room—hearing, at that very moment, as if in hideous mockery of events, Li Yuan's strong and vital laughter. Laugh no more, Li Yuan, for your wives are dead, and your infant son.