Time passed somnolently on the giant screen portraying the repairs to the laser weapon's payload assist module. The sensation of such lumbering slowness scratched at Priabin's nerves. It was as if time itself imprisoned him, not the bored and chewing guard who lounged opposite him. He wanted to scream away the tension thai gripped his chest and made it difficult to breathe. Ten o'clock in the morning. Already half an hour of daylight on the Turkish border. The idea brought a fresh choking sensation. There was nothing he could do, however much he wanted to.
The repair work had been in progress for more than three hours. On the screen, the bloated form of one of the cosmonauts hung m the blackness alongside the laser weapon. The faulty payload assist module had been detached and returned to the Raketoplan's cargo bay in order to affect the necessary repairs. Now, as he watched, a second cosmonaut — only the shuttle's pilot had remained aboard Kutuzov—hovered into view, propelling slowly ahead of him module's bulk. It was one third of the battle station's size and circular, except where its single rocket motor narrowed into a funnel.
The cosmonauts, even wearing their backpacks, seemed dwarfed by the two machines they now had to reunite. It was perhaps a matter of less than two hours, then a further two hours, and—
Rodin — where was Rodin? He looked up toward the windows of the command room. Figures behind glass. Yes, there he was, arms moving in emphasis, the mad conductor of this mad orchestral score. Unable to settle or remain still. Moving between Lightning and Gant. Shaped by the progress of the repairs, which had gone well, and the hunt for the invisible Gant.
On the screen, the payload assist module was nudged toward the laser weapon, approaching it with the caution of a servant bearing bad news. The two cosmonauts, using their backpacks and yet still moving with almost stonelike slowness, closed on one another, handling the inertia of the PAM, slowing it, directing its bulk beneath the waiting battle station. Time was elephantine, yet it hurried, making him want to shriek. This was all the time there was. Four hours — and when they had passed, the world would have changed.
He rubbed his hand through his hair. Then drank cold coffee. The guard, on the other side of the foldaway table on which breakfast had been served — with a sense of mockery clearly emanating from Rodin, who must have organized the meal — belched softly, then picked his back teeth with a used matchstick. Priabin had eaten as if on holiday — or like the proverbial condemned man, he corrected himself.
On the giant screen, the two cosmonauts danced with heavy, slow movements around the PAM, maneuvering it into position. Their dialogue and the replies and instructions of mission control were no more than a background noise, like Muzak.
The hours of Gant's continuing escape had been like a mounting fever, maddening Rodin. His figure had vanished from the windows of the command section. Priabin, itching with a renewed assault of tension, watched the door below the line of windows. As if waiting for an actor to enter, stage right. Hearing a babble of sound that could not submerge itself into the dialogue with Kutuzov, he turned his head.
At the map table, someone was looking up toward the door into the main room, other officers were bending closer to the table. The excitement was unignorable. They'd found him, he'd been sighted…
Rodin strode across the room toward the table. Priabin stood up. The guard seemed indifferent to his movement. Rodin's voice was peremptory with inquiry, but bearing an undercurrent of congratulation in it, too. His staff officers crowded around, peering, gesticulating. There was no doubt about it. The dialogue with the shuttle and the images on the giant screen were peripheral, almost subliminal. The center of the room was the map table.
Priabin felt physically sick with utter weariness. He tasted the fat in which his breakfast had been cooked; the coffee seemed lodged at the back of his throat. He tasted too many cigarettes. He understood why he had watched the passage of slow time only on the screen and not looked at any of the numerous clocks in mission control. Subconsciously, he had known the exact moment dawn had broken over the border and seeped through the Caucasus mountains. And every minute since then had wound him like a watch spring, tighter and tighter. His hand gripped the edge of the rickety table. He felt dizzy. Words leaked like the chants of a distant but approaching mob… hit… confirmed hit, on fire…"
"Head-on… can't get away." Voices from headphones, tinny and stridently unreal, from remote microphones, repeated and emphasized by the group around the table. Hands tracing shapes and courses, heads bent to peer at the culmination."… is it, sir?"
"… there."
"… contact lost. Gunship has visual…"
"What of—?"
"Here, just here."
"… destroyed…"
Priabin was less than halfway across the room to the table. Peripherally, he saw the two cosmonauts like great white grubs on the screen. The battle station and its PAM seemed one single object now. And that was it, all of it. Then he heard:
"Fireball — completely destroyed."
Cheering, congratulation — nausea returning, on which he gagged. Looking up after a moment, he saw Rodin staring in his direction. The general's smile was one of cold, certain satisfaction. His right hand, slightly extended, was closed in a firm grip.
"… chute opening — there's a parachute opening, comrade General."
Rodin seemed to falter, as if ill or dizzy.
Priabin felt his limbs unfreeze. He hurried to the table. A staff officer moved as if to interpose his body between the general and some attack. Rodin glared into Priabin's eyes like a hard, explosive light.
"What—" Priabin began.
"… devil's luck," he heard Rodin exclaim in a pinched, cheated voice before the old man turned to the map table. His knuckles whitened on the table edge.
… gunship may get there," someone said breathlessly. The atmosphere around the table was choking and airless. "Two more aircraft closing quickly." The tone was that of someone repeating an unviable alternative to a set of facts. "Down — he's down."
"Kill him," Rodin managed to say. "Kill him."
"The gunship's going in — tricky, they've spotted him, the chute's dropping over him, marking the spot. Rocket and cannon, sir — they're using everything…"
Rodin lurched rather than walked away from the table. His hand waved the others away from him. The subliminal noises of the dialogue with the shuttle impinged on Priabin's hearing. It was as if he had lowered the volume of voices around the map, not wishing to hear.
"… can't see anything now…
"He can't survive that, surely?"
"Let the gunship take care of it. How many more in the immediate area — what? Let them wait until the snow's cleared—"
Someone had taken command for the moment. Priabin heard no more, squeezing the voices from his head like water from a sponge. Rodin was beside him, his eyes filled with apprehensions and blame.
"You," he said.
Rodin seemed to have aged. When a lieutenant appeared beside him and saluted, it was some moments before his presence seemed to register.
"What—"
"Sir, Stavka, sir." He held out a message form, hastily scribbled upon. "Coded signal. They're awaiting—" Rodin waved the man away, snatching at the flimsy sheet and tearing it. The lieutenant subsided to attention some yards away. The noise at the map table had subsided, too, into a concentrated murmur. Time had dragged free of the images on the screen and raced now. Moments only before Gant was obliterated like the old aircraft in which he had escaped.
Not quite escaped.