“Where are you going, Victor?” he said.
want my shotgun,” Quigg replied woodenly. “I’m going up on the roof of the hotel, and I’m going to wait there with my shotgun. ”
“Lutze mightn’t even reach the roof.”
“If he does, I’ll be there with my shotgun.”
“It’s young Theo I’m thinking about now,” Hasson said, hear-. ing his own words across bleak interstellar distances. “Give me a gun and a spare harness.”
ten
Nothing is happening. I’m still on the ground — safe and secure. Nothing is happening.
Hasson watched the underside of the Chinook Hotel blossom and unfurl like a carnivorous flower. As the circular building expanded to the limits of his field of view he began to see details of its structure — the spray of radial cantilevers, the spiderweb pattern of ribs and intercostals, the twin circular apertures of the elevator shafts, one of which glowed with a shifting ruddy light which made it a back door to hell.
It’s quite simple, you see. The foundation for the supporting column was positioned over a geological fault, or a swamp, and now the whole thing is sinking into it like a piston. I’m still on the ground — safe and secure — watching the hotel drop down to my level.
His flight brought him close to the hotel’s lower rim and for the first time he was able to hear the fire at work. It was making little downward progress for the time being — only a few gleaming razor slashes revealed that beams and slabs were being tortured by heat and heat-induced stresses — but flames and hot gases were pouring up through stairwells and ventilation shafts to reach other floors, and their advance was signalled by ragged explosions of timbers, glass and paint containers. Clouds of smoke interspersed with streamers of long-lived sparks were being carried away an the wind.
It’s quite fascinating — almost a privilege, really, though rather a ghoulish one — to be able to stand here on the ground and get such a good view of what is happening to the hotel. One can’t help being reminded of the destruction of the Hindenburg. All the same, even though I’m safe and secure on the ground, that second floor window is getting very close, and if I’m to pop inside, casually, just for a quick look around I’d better think about how I’m going to…
Hasson hit the window frame hard, his ballistic-style ascent carrying him through the field interference phase with virtually no loss of speed. He gripped the alloy which trimmed the aperture where six panes had been cut out, his feet found slithering purchase on the edge of nothingness, and suddenly he was inside the hotel, breathing deeply, standing on a litter-strewn composition floor. The noise of the fire was much louder here and he could feel its heat striking up through the soles of his shoes. It occurred to him that the floor structure in that area could not survive for many more minutes.
He scanned his surroundings — peripherally aware of the television cameraman hovering in the airy asylum beyond the windows — and made out the sawtooth silhouette of a nearby staircase. Only major load-bearing walls had been completed throughout the hotel, and Hasson received a powerful impression of vastness, of being on a battlefield at night, where dozens of minor skirmishes were marked by transient glows and glimmers among forests of columns. He ran to the staircase and sprinted up it.
The thermal cutter he had tucked into his belt felt secure at his left side, but the pistol began to loosen due to the action of his . body and he took it into his right hand. It was almost certain that Lutze and Theo Werry had preceded him on the same route, and therefore he felt safe from booby traps and their proximity fuses, but the time had come to prepare for an encounter with Lutze himself. He had been on the fourth floor when he shot Al Werry, but his climb to the roof of the hotel would have been hampered by his own injuries and, presumably, by the fact that Theo would be moving slowly in the lead. Hasson estimated that he could catch up on the pair as early as the eighth floor. He made sure the pistol’s safety catch was off and began to count the floors as he pounded his way upwards through the Vulcanian dimness.
Four flights of steps to each floor, which means I’m on… Or is it only three flights? Perhaps I’m further up than I…
Hasson and Barry Lutze saw each other in the same instant.
Lutze was standing on a broad expanse of landing, looking upwards to where the stooped figure of Theo Werry was feeling his way to the top of a flight of bare steps which were made hideously dangerous by the absence of an outer banister. As soon as Lutze became aware of Hasson he dropped on one knee and began firing with the police weapon he had taken from Henry Corzyn. Hasson, still sliding to a halt, had no place to hide, no time to cry out or plan tactics. There could be nothing but the basic survival reaction. He raised his own pistol and worked the trigger as rapidly as its mechanism would permit, filled with the sick realisation that he had blundered into what some would describe as a fair fight, a classic stand-off whose result would be determined as much by the blindly spinning cylinders of chance as by personal attributes of the contenders. The pistol recoiled against his hand again and again, but never quickly enough, with a seeming aeon between each silent propulsive shock.
Two things occurred at once. A bomb detonated on a lower floor, sending a sheet of amber and red flame billowing up through a central well; and in the same instant — as though he had been caught in the blast — Lutze was flicked on to his back. Stress waves raced through the building, rippling the floor slabs and initiating a train of lesser explosions, but Lutze did not move. Hasson ran up to the landing, gun self-consciously at the ready. Lutze was lying with both hands clapped to his forehead, eyes glazed and unseeing, mouth locked open in an expression of frozen surprise.
Hasson turned away from him and saw that Theo Werry had fallen to his knees. The boy was only centimetres from the naked rim of a manmade abyss which terminated many floors below, and he was unsteadily rising to his feet. Hasson opened his mouth to shout a warning, but a vision of what might happen if he startled Theo sprang into his mind. He bounded up the stairs, threw an arm around Theo and dragged him away from the edge. The boy began to fight against him.
“It’s all right, Theo,” Hasson said firmly. “This is Rob Hasson.”
Theo ceased to struggle. “Mr Haldane?”
“That’s what I meant to say. Come on — we’re getting out of here.” Hasson gripped a strap of the boy’s harness and began drawing him down to the landing he had just quit. He guided him past Lutze’s body, and away from the yawning mouth of the stairwell, to a window in the outer wall. The dark world beyond looked peaceful, sane and inviting. Hasson shoved the pistol into a pocket, took the thermal cutter from his belt and set its controls.
“I don’t get it,” Theo said, his face turning from side to side. “How did you get here?”
Same way as you did, son.”
“But I thought you couldn’t fly.”
1’ve done a bit in my time.” Hasson activated the cutter, turning it into a sorcerer’s sword of white fire.
Its light showed up the strain on Theo’s dirt-streaked face. “What happened to Barry?”
“He had a gun. He started shooting at me, and I had to shoot back.” Praying that Theo would not pursue the line of questioning, Hasson turned to the Window and slid the tip of the cutter through the nearest pane. It went into the glass with scarcely any resistance, causing roseate glowing drops to course down the surface.
“I heard my father shouting something at me a few minutes ago,” Theo said, raising his voice above the background noises in the building. “Where is he flow?”
“We’ll talk about that later, Theo — the main thing to worry about right now is…