“Seven! Six! Five! Four!”
“Please! Stop!” he shouted out, though no one could hear. “It’s me, Lentrall! It’s a mistake! Stop!”
“THREE!”
“TWO!”
Davlo Lentrall sagged backward, let his body go limp. The bloody-minded arrogance of it all. How could he have dreamed that he, and he alone, could see the way? Now he had killed them all.
“ONE!”
“ZERO!” they all shouted.
“Zero,” Lentrall whispered to himself in horror.
The screen flared into spectacular brightness, the light of a new sun blooming into life at the base of Comet Grieg. A tail, a jet of power and light and energy, lanced out from the detonation thruster, the powerful and intricate and clever device that allowed the comet to be aimed straight for its target, let it move toward the doom of the planet with far greater precision and efficiency. A tail of blazing, glowing plasma stabbed out into the darkness, and a shudder of power and motion rippled along the gleaming surface of the sunshade parasol. Rips and tears appeared in it as huge fragments of stone and ice tore free of the comet and smashed holes in the reflective plastic sheeting.
And the comet began to move, slid into its new heading, shifted into its new orbit and its new destiny. Down toward Inferno. No, thought Lentrall. No. He would have to stop it. He had to get down there first. He would have to get back to Inferno, and prevent the disaster he had set in motion. Somehow.
The burn ended, the jet of light died, the room erupted in cheers and shouts and applause, but Davlo Lentrall did not notice. He looked toward the screen, and saw nothing there but a monstrous weapon he had aimed at his own world.
What have I done? he asked himself.
What have I done?
Part 4
Impact Minus Ten
16
CINTA MELLOY WALKED down the chaotic streets of Depot, dodging the traffic that seemed to be roaring past in every direction at once. There he was again, just up ahead. She ducked around a corner as her man glanced around behind himself. She was fairly sure he had not spotted her. Fairly. The man was suspicious, no doubt of that. But he was also an amateur, and that cut into his effectiveness a lot. Cinta watched as Davlo Lentrall stopped to put another of his ridiculous posters up. Cinta hadn’t even bothered to examine any of them, choosing instead to keep her eye on her man. Besides, she knew, more or less, what they had to say. STOP THE COMET! STOP THE MADNESS! PROTEST NOW! LEAVE THE PLANET ALONE! MASS MEETING TONIGHT!
Pointless. All of it. Much as she agreed with the sentiments on the posters, she knew damned well it was far too late. The deed was done. Cinta permitted herself no such delusions. She knew the comet was coming. And presumably, so did Lentrall. The populace certainly knew it. The only ones showing up at the meetings were Lentrall, a few whacked-out loners, and a collection of spies and informants-some of them from the SSS, and the others easily identified off the surveillance photos.
So why was Lentrall bothering? Or was all this nonsense a cover for something else-and if so, what?
Lentrall looked behind himself again, and Cinta ducked out of sight again, or at least tried to do so. She wasn’t even quite sure why she was following him. She had simply spotted him on the street, and started trailing him.
Up went another poster. Cinta shook her head and gave it up. She turned around and started back the way she had come. She was tempted to order a formal watch kept on Lentrall, assign the job to less obvious and more skillful watchers than herself. If she wasn’t so badly short-handed, she would have done just that. But there were so damned many others to watch.
At least the evacuation itself seemed to proceeding in an orderly and sensible fashion. The heavy lifters, the construction crews, the seemingly endless series of auxiliary services-emergency medical, motor pool repair, preimpact cartography, provisions, accommodation and sanitation for all the extra bodies-somehow, incredibly, it all seemed to be dropping into place. Those Dee and Dum units Kresh was nursemaiding clearly knew their stuff.
But there was plenty else happening-and none of it seemed even remotely promising to Melloy. She had loaned a detachment of SSS personnel to the evacuation effort, as per Tonya Welton’s orders, and Cinta had even flown to Depot to take personal charge of it herself. But none of it was doing any good. The SSS was here, doing its overt job-but they also had a covert agenda. They were supposed to watch the other players in the game-and the others were giving them plenty to watch.
The CIP had its own security people out, and they were watching the SSS-as they should have been. There was still the Government Tower Plaza fiasco on the books, after all. The Ironheads seemed to be everywhere, out in force, the black uniform visible on every street, in every shop. One of the SSS watch teams had even spotted their old friend Norlan Fiyle, quite openly going into and out of the local Ironhead HQ. And then there were the hordes of New Law robots, frantically conducting their own evacuation out of their undersized offices over on Shipping Street. The SSS had stacks of images of Caliban, the No Law robot, going in and out of there, and a fair collection of shots of Prospero too-though he seemed to come in less often, and stay for shorter periods.
Maybe every last one of them had nothing but sweetness and light on their minds. Maybe all of them had nothing but thoughts of doing good deeds and building the planet Inferno into the Paradise it had been meant to be. Cinta doubted it, but such a thing was possible.
But disaster could follow on even the best of intentions. And Cinta Melloy was sure that at least someone in this town had less than the best of intentions.
SIMCOR BEDDLE SMILED as he looked out the viewport of the aircar. There was a fair-sized crowd there to welcome him to Depot. Indeed, quite a large crowd, considering the small size of Depot and its distance from civilization. Simcor Beddle had spent most of the last three weeks shuttling back and forth between Hades and Depot. But every time he returned to Depot, the crowds were still there.
Thank Gildern for that, Beddle told himself. Thank Gildern for everything. The man was indispensable.
But it would be best not to keep the crowd waiting. He would have to hurry in order to get ready. Or, more accurately, for the robots to get him ready.
The pilot robot completed the standard landing safety crosscheck. An attendant robot released Simcor’s seat restraint system for him while a second helped him to his feet. Simcor got up and moved around behind his seat. He stood in the center of the largest piece of open flat deck in the car while the two attendant robots stripped him out of his rumpled travel coveralls. He stepped into the car’s compact refresher unit, and waited for the first attendant to reach in and activate the system. The water jets came to life around him.
There was no time for a full-length needle shower, and, indeed, the aircar’s refresher did not include many of the amenities Beddle took for granted in the first place, but one did have to rough it, now and again. Besides, even a few seconds under the refresher’s spray arms proved most reviving. He allowed the hot-air jets to dry him, and then stepped back outside to the main cabin.
It was the work of a moment for the attendant robots to dress Beddle in the jet-black formal uniform of the Ironheads. Almost before he was aware of it, he was ready, all his decorations gleaming, his boots shined to mirror brightness, his perfectly combed hair under his perfectly placed cap.
One attendant robot held up a mirror, and Beddle nodded in satisfaction at his own reflection. It was always important to make a good appearance. He gestured for the second robot to open the side hatch of the car. It swung open, and Beddle stepped forward to face the cheering crowd.
There was Gildern, standing on a low platform, leading the applause. And there were the cameras at the back of the crowd, recording it all, feeding it to every outlet the Ironheads could get their hands on. Beddle smiled, stepped down from the car and crossed to the speaker’s platform, his two attendant robots behind him.