The Universe - or Nothing Part 10

"Sure."

The clerk repeated his grin-scowl, snickered, and slapped Hodak on the shoulder.

"What's the word on living accommodations under the dome?" Adari cut in.

"Gotta register for permanent quarters, and you'll need a permit to build a place of your own. They're almost impossible to get. Try for 'temporary' until you know your way around. Good place to start is the Condor over on Con-man Slash."

"How do we get there?" k.u.miko asked.

"Taxi to dome air lock 22," he replied. "Inside, take the second transit strip. The off-ramps are Smuggler's Alley, Faithhealer's Spread, Plunder Cove, Bunco Crawl, and then Con-Man Slash.

It's in the center of town; you can't miss it."

He waved them toward the air lock. "On your way, folks; you're cleared."

He watched them suit up and enter the air lock.

When he heard the whisper of the outer door, he lifted a comm device, pressed b.u.t.tons and spoke hurriedly.

Chapter EIGHT

Clearing the outer door, Zolan leaned against the buffer, tightened his bootstrap with one gloved hand, the other pressed against the wall to steady himself. Seconds later, he pulled away, shook his leg to settle the boot for comfort, and caught up with Brad.

Grasping Brad's elbow activated the secure to-suit circuit. Myra, Hodak, Adari and k.u.miko crowded in close and energized a camouflaging mix of artificial jive and loud laughs on the nature of the terrain, the location of the Transit Strip, the tank town's appearance in the distance, whatever served as a barrier to electronic penetration.

"The clerk pa.s.sed the word about us," Zolan said.

"Gave full descriptions and said to notify someone called 'Scarf'. By the way, he did a lot more than check our weapons while we stood at the counter.

We were scanned down to our bones. He's sending the file to his control, including the main portal's lock combination on the Raven. He'll have a lifter ready for someone who's to arrive soon. Looks like they're going to search the s.h.i.+p."

"Fine," Brad nodded. "Nothing there to cause us a problem. Pa.s.s the word as we move along.

No changes in plans until some contacts develop.

Then we'll regroup and go on from there."

Boarding a robo-taxi that had just discharged suited figures at a nearby mooring tower, the Sentinels lined up along the taxi's portal. Zolan consulted a placard on the instrument panel and punched in the coordinates for Air Lock 22. As the flitter rose and headed toward the dome Brad thought back as he weighed their chances.

The processes of intense physical training and weapons drills, the concentrated telepathic loading of Plutonian political history and its government's despotic apparatus had been cleared from their consciousness; the substance remained. Nor were they aware of any new or altered neuro-muscular capabilities or functions. They knew they had a job to do, and what the job was. They were on their own: no mercy from one side, no help from the other.

More than three-score sleeps had pa.s.sed since their ch.o.r.eographed escape; only the events flashed through his mind; why they happened did not.

The Raven, on a lengthy umbilical-catwalk, had been tethered to the Guardian Station, ostensibly for maintenance after a servicing round of nearby communications boosters. The s.h.i.+p was skeleton-staffed. Brad and his companions had been secretly transferred beforehand to a cubicle adjacent access to the catwalk.

At Brad's signal, the Sentinels moved quickly.

Hodak, acting as clumsily as he could, slammed and locked the pa.s.sageway safety doors with the loudest noises he could generate, broadcasting the unusual activity to all within hearing range and for electronic sensor pickup.

They had lurched and stumbled noisily along the catwalk, Adari suppressing giggles. As the last of the six cleared in through the Raven's air lock, Hodak had hit "Emergency," on appropriate switches and the s.h.i.+p-to-station servicing lines went through quick-disconnect. Portals closed and locked.

Within seconds, Brad was on the bridge and his crew at rehea.r.s.ed departure stations. The caretaker officer and his two aides stepped aside, silent, businesslike. They were Ram's men.

Adari hit the tether-disconnect. Disengaged, the catwalk coiled in toward the station as the s.h.i.+p edged away. Signaling Hodak for minimal repulse and acceleration to increase the drift, Brad ordered all hands immediately into accelo-nets. He increased thrusters to 'low' and, following a moment's pause into 'intermediate'. As soon as he sensed they could handle the acceleration he stepped the thrust up to successive levels.

The old tub creaked, pitched, rolled and yawed; lights flickered and dimmed; systems slipped into yellow or borderline red on half a dozen indicators, all recorded on the s.h.i.+p's log. The Raven all but flapped wings, and true to her name, took off. To the hundreds who watched from the station's portholes, the escape was real. The cover might hold.

The alarms went out from the Guardian Station to Sector s.p.a.ce Guard, and from there to a patroller conveniently distant.

Messages spunneled throughout the sector and to Earth and Luna: "Escape of dangerous felons,", "Sabotage of station surveillance system,", "Station 15 unable to respond in time," or "Immediate pursuit and capture essential" with abundant 'Expedites' and 'ASAPs' scattered throughout the text.

The scenario was exquisite. The word was out, and within hours, had spread system-wide.

A couple of million kay out, Ram's men boarded a well-stocked lifeboat and headed back to a prearranged pick-up. The Raven settled into outbound, Brad aware of an opportunity to merge with traffic at a not too distant spunnel gate.

Brad brought his mind back to the present as the flitter settled on the landing pad near air lock 22. Entering the pressure compartment and attaining atmospheric balance the Sentinels removed their suits and sealed them in wall lockers. The switch of weapons and holsters to clips on their inner coveralls completed, they strolled out of the storage room and mingled with a throng of citizen commuters. Moments later they were on a moving transit strip on their way to beautiful downtown Coldfield.

The strip cut across and through narrow streets and alleys lined with huts fused from the gray detritus of the planet.

Occasionally, a mall or square appeared along the transit route, lined with workshops, playgrounds, and colorful private houses or apartment complexes.

Occasionally, they pa.s.sed a dwarf tree or a flowering shrub in an earth-filled container.

Running and leaping alongside the moving strip as it pa.s.sed slowly through stations, hawkers waved and shouted at the commuters and pa.s.sers-by, inviting them to examine and purchase the novelties and artefacts they waved about or in nearby open air stalls. From above, lighted globes, strung close beneath the dome, cast a harsh, grotesque glare across the city.

People swarmed, and a raucous clamor shrilled along the tightly packed streets and alleys. Men, women and children in all shapes and sizes: tall, short, stocky, slender, organic, bionic, robotic, and combinations thereof. Hairstyles ranged from totally shaved skulls to elaborate hair-puffs, and garments from dreary, simple s.h.i.+fts to flamboyant, complex robes that twisted, circled, and knotted around their wearers.

This was Planet Pluto post-secession: a mixture of migrants from across the system. The tank town took them all, for itself or for Slingshot, or both.

Those who stayed procreated, natural or clone, according to their customs or inclinations. The effect was a mixture of breeds whose interactions had brought out a bewildering patchwork of hybrid cults, philosophies and arts. Behavior ran the gamut; newcomers accepted or were overwhelmed.

k.u.miko pointed ahead. The Condor loomed, a sprawling, multi-storied, down-at-the heels apartment-hotel, its surface colors akin to the low, drab rise on which it stood.

Disembarking the strip, the companions a.s.sembled, slipped into an alley and entered a portal into the crowded lobby. Joining the laughing, chattering throng, they squeezed their way to the desk robot, and registered as a group. Individual identicards ejected from an aperture, a.s.signing them to a small apartment with sleeping cubicles off a common room.

The communal lavatory and electronic bio-shower were down the hall.

Entering the apartment and tossing their gear into a corner, they kept up a running chatter. Hodak's main concern was where their next meal was coming from.

"Gotta find jobs or we don't eat," he barked as he hoisted his pack on to a sleep pad and tore at its flaps.

k.u.miko and Adari opened and slammed cabinets, checked housekeeping supplies and "ooh-ed" and "ah-ed" each discovery. Myra and Brad stomped into a sleeping cubicle and heaved the sleeping pads first one way, then the other.

"Look in the corners," Hodak bawled across the narrow hall, "that's where the little b.u.g.g.e.rs build their nests."

Myra shrieked and drew her sidearm as Brad stepped back. She set the ray-spread to conic and ran the beam from one end of the pad to the other, into the corners and along the walls. They inspected the results, laughed loudly, and went on to the next cubicle to repeat their exuberant performance.

Zolan strolled from one room to the next, sharing the action with his noisy friends, meanwhile scanning the walls, ceiling, floor, lighting fixtures, visi-screens and cabinets.

He rounded toward Brad and brushed against him. His fingers pressed their message. The others, watching, drew the correct conclusion.