"Open up!" Reinhart snapped. He glanced at his wristwatch. "I'll be at
the entrance in five minutes. I expect to find it ready for me."
"Of course." Sherikov nodded in bewilderment. "I'm always glad to see
you, Commissioner. But I--"
"Five minutes, then." Reinhart cut the circuit. The screen died. He
turned quickly to Dixon. "You stay up here, as we arranged. I'll go
down with one company of police. You understand the necessity of exact
timing on this?"
"We won't slip up. Everything's ready. All units are in their places."
"Good." Reinhart pushed the door open for him. "You join your
directional staff. I'll proceed toward the tunnel entrance."
"Good luck." Dixon leaped out of the car, onto the sandy ground. A
gust of dry air swirled into the car around Reinhart. "I'll see you
later."
Reinhart slammed the door. He turned to the group of police crouched
in the rear of the car, their guns held tightly. "Here we go,"
Reinhart murmured. "Hold on."
The car raced across the sandy ground, toward the tunnel entrance to
Sherikov's underground fortress.
Sherikov met Reinhart at the bottom end of the tunnel, where the
tunnel opened up onto the main floor of the lab.
The big Pole approached, his hand out, beaming with pride and
satisfaction. "It's a pleasure to see you, Commissioner. This is an
historic moment."
Reinhart got out of the car, with his group of armed Security police.
"Calls for a celebration, doesn't it?" he said.
"That's a good idea! We're two days ahead, Commissioner. The SRB
machines will be interested. The odds should change abruptly at the
news."
"Let's go down to the lab. I want to see the control turret myself."
A shadow crossed Sherikov's face. "I'd rather not bother the workmen
right now, Commissioner. They've been under a great load, trying to
complete the turret in time. I believe they're putting a few last
finishes on it at this moment."
"We can view them by vidscreen. I'm curious to see them at work. It
must be difficult to wire such minute relays."
Sherikov shook his head. "Sorry, Commissioner. No vidscreen on them. I
won't allow it. This is too important. Our whole future depends on
it."
Reinhart snapped a signal to his company of police. "Put this man
under arrest."
Sherikov blanched. His mouth fell open. The police moved quickly
around him, their gun tubes up, jabbing into him. He was searched
rapidly, efficiently. His gun belt and concealed energy screen were
yanked off.
"What's going on?" Sherikov demanded, some color returning to his
face. "What are you doing?"
"You're under arrest for the duration of the war. You're relieved of
all authority. From now on one of my men will operate Designs. When
the war is over you'll be tried before the Council and President
Duffe."
Sherikov shook his head, dazed. "I don't understand. What's this all
about? Explain it to me, Commissioner. What's happened?"
Reinhart signalled to his police. "Get ready. We're going into the
lab. We may have to shoot our way in. The variable man should be in
the area of the bomb, working on the control turret."
Instantly Sherikov's face hardened. His black eyes glittered, alert
and hostile.
Reinhart laughed harshly. "We received a counter-intelligence report
from Centaurus. I'm surprised at you, Sherikov. You know the
Centaurans are everywhere with their relay couriers. You should have
known--"
Sherikov moved. Fast. All at once he broke away from the police,
throwing his massive body against them. They fell, scattering.
Sherikov ran--directly at the wall. The police fired wildly. Reinhart
fumbled frantically for his gun tube, pulling it up.
Sherikov reached the wall, running head down, energy beams flashing
around him. He struck against the wall--and vanished.
"Down!" Reinhart shouted. He dropped to his hands and knees. All
around him his police dived for the floor. Reinhart cursed wildly,
dragging himself quickly toward the door. They had to get out, and
right away. Sherikov had escaped. A false wall, an energy barrier set
to respond to his pressure. He had dashed through it to safety. He--
From all sides an inferno burst, a flaming roar of death surging over
them, around them, on every side. The room was alive with blazing
masses of destruction, bouncing from wall to wall. They were caught
between four banks of power, all of them open to full discharge. A
trap--a death trap.
* * * * *
Reinhart reached the hall gasping for breath. He leaped to his feet. A
few Security police followed him. Behind them, in the flaming room,
the rest of the company screamed and struggled, blasted out of
existence by the leaping bursts of power.
Reinhart assembled his remaining men. Already, Sherikov's guards were
forming. At one end of the corridor a snub-barreled robot gun was
maneuvering into position. A siren wailed. Guards were running on all
sides, hurrying to battle stations.
The robot gun opened fire. Part of the corridor exploded, bursting
into fragments. Clouds of choking debris and particles swept around
them. Reinhart and his police retreated, moving back along the
corridor.
They reached a junction. A second robot gun was rumbling toward them,
hurrying to get within range. Reinhart fired carefully, aiming at its
delicate control. Abruptly the gun spun convulsively. It lashed
against the wall, smashing itself into the unyielding metal. Then it
collapsed in a heap, gears still whining and spinning.
"Come on." Reinhart moved away, crouching and running. He glanced at
his watch. _Almost time._ A few more minutes. A group of lab guards
appeared ahead of them. Reinhart fired. Behind him his police fired
past him, violet shafts of energy catching the group of guards as they
entered the corridor. The guards spilled apart, falling and twisting.
Part of them settled into dust, drifting down the corridor. Reinhart
made his way toward the lab, crouching and leaping, pushing past heaps
of debris and remains, followed by his men. "Come on! Don't stop!"
* * * * *
Suddenly from around them the booming, enlarged voice of Sherikov
thundered, magnified by rows of wall speakers along the corridor.
Reinhart halted, glancing around.
"Reinhart! You haven't got a chance. You'll never get back to the
surface. Throw down your guns and give up. You're surrounded on all
sides. You're a mile, under the surface."
Reinhart threw himself into motion, pushing into billowing clouds of
particles drifting along the corridor. "Are you sure, Sherikov?" he
grunted.
Sherikov laughed, his harsh, metallic peals rolling in waves against
Reinhart's eardrums. "I don't want to have to kill you, Commissioner.
You're vital to the war: I'm sorry you found out about the variable
man. I admit we overlooked the Centauran espionage as a factor in
this. But now that you know about him--"
Suddenly Sherikov's voice broke off. A deep rumble had shaken the
floor, a lapping vibration that shuddered through the corridor.
Reinhart sagged with relief. He peered through the clouds of debris,
making out the figures on his watch. Right on time. Not a second late.
The first of the hydrogen missiles, launched from the Council
buildings on the other side of the world, were beginning to arrive.
The attack had begun.
At exactly six o'clock Joseph Dixon, standing on the surface four
miles from the entrance tunnel, gave the sign to the waiting units.
The first job was to break down Sherikov's defense screens. The
missiles had to penetrate without interference. At Dixon's signal a
fleet of thirty Security ships dived from a height of ten miles,
swooping above the mountains, directly over the underground
laboratories. Within five minutes the defense screens had been
smashed, and all the tower projectors leveled flat. Now the mountains
were virtually unprotected.
"So far so good," Dixon murmured, as he watched from his secure
position. The fleet of Security ships roared back, their work done.
Across the face of the desert the police surface cars were crawling
rapidly toward the entrance tunnel, snaking from side to side.
Meanwhile, Sherikov's counter-attack had begun to go into operation.
Guns mounted among the hills opened fire. Vast columns of flame burst
up in the path of the advancing cars. The cars hesitated and
retreated, as the plain was churned up by a howling vortex, a
thundering chaos of explosions. Here and there a car vanished in a
cloud of particles. A group of cars moving away suddenly scattered,
caught up by a giant wind that lashed across them and swept them up
into the air.
Dixon gave orders to have the cannon silenced. The police air arm
again swept overhead, a sullen roar of jets that shook the ground
below. The police ships divided expertly and hurtled down on the
cannon protecting the hills.
The cannon forgot the surface cars and lifted their snouts to meet the
attack. Again and again the airships came, rocking the mountains with
titanic blasts.
The guns became silent. Their echoing boom diminished, died away
reluctantly, as bombs took critical toll of them.
Dixon watched with satisfaction as the bombing came to an end. The
airships rose in a thick swarm, black gnats shooting up in triumph
from a dead carcass. They hurried back as emergency anti-aircraft
robot guns swung into position and saturated the sky with blazing
puffs of energy.
Dixon checked his wristwatch. The missiles were already on the way
from North America. Only a few minutes remained.
The surface cars, freed by the successful bombing, began to regroup
for a new frontal attack. Again they crawled forward, across the
burning plain, bearing down cautiously on the battered wall of
mountains, heading toward the twisted wrecks that had been the ring of
defense guns. Toward the entrance tunnel.
An occasional cannon fired feebly at them. The cars came grimly on.
Now, in the hollows of the hills, Sherikov's troops were hurrying to
the surface to meet the attack. The first car reached the shadow of
the mountains....
A deafening hail of fire burst loose. Small robot guns appeared
everywhere, needle barrels emerging from behind hidden screens, trees
and shrubs, rocks, stones. The police cars were caught in a withering
cross-fire, trapped at the base of the hills.
Down the slopes Sherikov's guards raced, toward the stalled cars.
Clouds of heat rose up and boiled across the plain as the cars fired
up at the running men. A robot gun dropped like a slug onto the plain
and screamed toward the cars, firing as it came.
Dixon twisted nervously. Only a few minutes. Any time, now. He shaded
his eyes and peered up at the sky. No sign of them yet. He wondered
about Reinhart. No signal had come up from below. Clearly, Reinhart
had run into trouble. No doubt there was desperate fighting going on
in the maze of underground tunnels, the intricate web of passages that
honeycombed the earth below the mountains.
In the air, Sherikov's few defense ships were taking on the police
raiders. Outnumbered, the defense ships darted rapidly, wildly,
putting up a futile fight.
Sherikov's guards streamed out onto the plain. Crouching and running,
they advanced toward the stalled cars. The police airships screeched
down at them, guns thundering.