"Open it yourself. I don't want to have anything to do with it."
Reinhart shrugged. He stepped up to the door. Holding his gun level he
raised his hand, passing it in front of the eye circuit. Nothing
happened.
Reinhart frowned. He pushed the door with his hand. The door slid
open. Reinhart was looking into a small laboratory. He glimpsed a
workbench, tools, heaps of equipment, measuring devices, and in the
center of the bench the transparent globe, the control turret.
"Cole?" Reinhart advanced quickly into the room. He glanced around
him, suddenly alarmed. "Where--"
The room was empty. Thomas Cole was gone.
When the first missile struck, Cole stopped work and sat listening.
Far off, a distant rumble rolled through the earth, shaking the floor
under him. On the bench, tools and equipment danced up and down. A
pair of pliers fell crashing to the floor. A box of screws tipped
over, spilling its minute contents out.
Cole listened for a time. Presently he lifted the transparent globe
from the bench. With carefully controlled hands he held the globe up,
running his fingers gently over the surface, his faded blue eyes
thoughtful. Then, after a time, he placed the globe back on the bench,
in its mount.
The globe was finished. A faint glow of pride moved through the
variable man. The globe was the finest job he had ever done.
The deep rumblings ceased. Cole became instantly alert. He jumped down
from his stool, hurrying across the room to the door. For a moment he
stood by the door listening intently. He could hear noise on the other
side, shouts, guards rushing past, dragging heavy equipment, working
frantically.
A rolling crash echoed down the corridor and lapped against his door.
The concussion spun him around. Again a tide of energy shook the walls
and floor and sent him down on his knees.
The lights flickered and winked out.
Cole fumbled in the dark until he found a flashlight. Power failure.
He could hear crackling flames. Abruptly the lights came on again, an
ugly yellow, then faded back out. Cole bent down and examined the door
with his flashlight. A magnetic lock. Dependent on an externally
induced electric flux. He grabbed a screwdriver and pried at the door.
For a moment it held. Then it fell open.
Cole stepped warily out into the corridor. Everything was in shambles.
Guards wandered everywhere, burned and half-blinded. Two lay groaning
under a pile of wrecked equipment. Fused guns, reeking metal. The air
was heavy with the smell of burning wiring and plastic. A thick cloud
that choked him and made him bend double as he advanced.
"Halt," a guard gasped feebly, struggling to rise. Cole pushed past
him and down the corridor. Two small robot guns, still functioning,
glided past him hurriedly toward the drumming chaos of battle. He
followed.
At a major intersection the fight was in full swing. Sherikov's guards
fought Security police, crouched behind pillars and barricades, firing
wildly, desperately. Again the whole structure shuddered as a great
booming blast ignited some place above. Bombs? Shells?
Cole threw himself down as a violet beam cut past his ear and
disintegrated the wall behind him. A Security policeman, wild-eyed,
firing erratically. One of Sherikov's guards winged him and his gun
skidded to the floor.
A robot cannon turned toward him as he made his way past the
intersection. He began to run. The cannon rolled along behind him,
aiming itself uncertainly. Cole hunched over as he shambled rapidly
along, gasping for breath. In the flickering yellow light he saw a
handful of Security police advancing, firing expertly, intent on a
line of defense Sherikov's guards had hastily set up.
The robot cannon altered its course to take them on, and Cole escaped
around a corner.
He was in the main lab, the big chamber where Icarus himself rose, the
vast squat column.
Icarus! A solid wall of guards surrounded him, grim-faced, hugging
guns and protection shields. But the Security police were leaving
Icarus alone. Nobody wanted to damage him. Cole evaded a lone guard
tracking him and reached the far side of the lab.
It took him only a few seconds to find the force field generator.
There was no switch. For a moment that puzzled him--and then he
remembered. The guard had controlled it from his wrist.
Too late to worry about that. With his screwdriver he unfastened the
plate over the generator and ripped out the wiring in handfuls. The
generator came loose and he dragged it away from the wall. The screen
was off, thank God. He managed to carry the generator into a side
corridor.
Crouched in a heap, Cole bent over the generator, deft fingers flying.
He pulled the wiring to him and laid it out on the floor, tracing the
circuits with feverish haste.
The adaptation was easier than he had expected. The screen flowed at
right angles to the wiring, for a distance of six feet. Each lead was
shielded on one side; the field radiated outward, leaving a hollow
cone in the center. He ran the wiring through his belt, down his
trouser legs, under his shirt, all the way to his wrists and ankles.
He was just snatching up the heavy generator when two Security police
appeared. They raised their blasters and fired point-blank.
Cole clicked on the screen. A vibration leaped through him that
snapped his jaw and danced up his body. He staggered away,
half-stupefied by the surging force that radiated out from him. The
violet rays struck the field and deflected harmlessly.
He was safe.
He hurried on down the corridor, past a ruined gun and sprawled bodies
still clutching blasters. Great drifting clouds of radioactive
particles billowed around him. He edged by one cloud nervously. Guards
lay everywhere, dying and dead, partly destroyed, eaten and corroded
by the hot metallic salts in the air. He had to get out--and fast.
At the end of the corridor a whole section of the fortress was in
ruins. Towering flames leaped on all sides. One of the missiles had
penetrated below ground level.
Cole found a lift that still functioned. A load of wounded guards was
being raised to the surface. None of them paid any attention to him.
Flames surged around the lift, licking at the wounded. Workmen were
desperately trying to get the lift into action. Cole leaped onto the
lift. A moment later it began to rise, leaving the shouts and the
flames behind.
The lift emerged on the surface and Cole jumped off. A guard spotted
him and gave chase. Crouching, Cole dodged into a tangled mass of
twisted metal, still white-hot and smoking. He ran for a distance,
leaping from the side of a ruined defense-screen tower, onto the fused
ground and down the side of a hill. The ground was hot underfoot. He
hurried as fast as he could, gasping for breath. He came to a long
slope and scrambled up the side.
The guard who had followed was gone, lost behind in the rolling clouds
of ash that drifted from the ruins of Sherikov's underground fortress.
Cole reached the top of the hill. For a brief moment he halted to get
his breath and figure where he was. It was almost evening. The sun was
beginning to set. In the darkening sky a few dots still twisted and
rolled, black specks that abruptly burst into flame and fused out
again.
Cole stood up cautiously, peering around him. Ruins stretched out
below, on all sides, the furnace from which he had escaped. A chaos of
incandescent metal and debris, gutted and wrecked beyond repair. Miles
of tangled rubbish and half-vaporized equipment.
He considered. Everyone was busy putting out the fires and pulling the
wounded to safety. It would be awhile before he was missed. But as
soon as they realized he was gone they'd be after him. Most of the
laboratory had been destroyed. Nothing lay back that way.
Beyond the ruins lay the great Ural peaks, the endless mountains,
stretching out as far as the eye could see.
Mountains and green forests. A wilderness. They'd never find him
there.
Cole started along the side of the hill, walking slowly and carefully,
his screen generator under his arm. Probably in the confusion he could
find enough food and equipment to last him indefinitely. He could wait
until early morning, then circle back toward the ruins and load up.
With a few tools and his own innate skill he would get along fine. A
screwdriver, hammer, nails, odds and ends--
A great hum sounded in his ears. It swelled to a deafening roar.
Startled, Cole whirled around. A vast shape filled the sky behind him,
growing each moment. Cole stood frozen, utterly transfixed. The shape
thundered over him, above his head, as he stood stupidly, rooted to
the spot.
Then, awkwardly, uncertainly, he began to run. He stumbled and fell
and rolled a short distance down the side of the hill. Desperately, he
struggled to hold onto the ground. His hands dug wildly, futilely,
into the soft soil, trying to keep the generator under his arm at the
same time.
A flash, and a blinding spark of light around him.
The spark picked him up and tossed him like a dry leaf. He grunted in
agony as searing fire crackled about him, a blazing inferno that
gnawed and ate hungrily through his screen. He spun dizzily and fell
through the cloud of fire, down into a pit of darkness, a vast gulf
between two hills. His wiring ripped off. The generator tore out of
his grip and was lost behind. Abruptly, his force field ceased.
Cole lay in the darkness at the bottom of the hill. His whole body
shrieked in agony as the unholy fire played over him. He was a blazing
cinder, a half-consumed ash flaming in a universe of darkness. The
pain made him twist and crawl like an insect, trying to burrow into
the ground. He screamed and shrieked and struggled to escape, to get
away from the hideous fire. To reach the curtain of darkness beyond,
where it was cool and silent, where the flames couldn't crackle and
eat at him.
He reached imploringly out, into the darkness, groping feebly toward
it, trying to pull himself into it. Gradually, the glowing orb that
was his own body faded. The impenetrable chaos of night descended. He
allowed the tide to sweep over him, to extinguish the searing fire.
Dixon landed his ship expertly, bringing it to a halt in front of an
overturned defense tower. He leaped out and hurried across the smoking
ground.
From a lift Reinhart appeared, surrounded by his Security police. "He
got away from us! He escaped!"
"He didn't escape," Dixon answered. "I got him myself."