Captives of the Flame Part 24

Nearby was a ladder that led to a trap door which would put him in the hall of a tenement. He climbed it, emerged, and then turned up the regular steps to the roof. He walked across the tar-paper surface to the edge, leaned over, and peered into the alley. Two men, who may have been the people following him, approached from opposite ends of the alley.

The sky was deepening toward evening and it was cool. The two men met, and then one pointed to the roof.

"d.a.m.n," Tel muttered, ducked backward, and bit his tongue with surprise.

He opened his mouth and breathed hard, holding the side of his jaw. The helicopter was coming closer.

Then something very light fell over him. He forgot his bitten tongue and struck out with his hands. It was strong, too. It jerked at his feet and he fell forward. It was not until it lifted him from the roof that he realized he was caught in a net. He was being drawn up toward the sound of the whirling helicopter blades.

Just about that time the order came through. He didn't even have time to say good-bye to Clea. Two other mathematicians in the corps had shown appropriate awe at Clea's discovery and proceeded to locate the generator. The next-in-charge general, working on a strategy Tomar did not quite understand, decided that now was the time for an active strike. "Besides," he added, "if we don't give them some combat soon, we'll lose--and I mean lose as in 'misplace'--the war."

The shadow of the control tower fell through the winds.h.i.+eld and slipped across Tomar's face. He pulled up his goggles and sighed. Active combat.

What the h.e.l.l would they be combating? The disorder, the disorganization was beginning to strike him as farcical. Though after the poisoned fish, the farcical was no longer funny.

The buildings on the airfield sunk back and down. The transit ribbon fell below him and the six other planes in the formation pulled up behind him. A moment later the island was a comb of darkness on the glittering foil of the evening sea.

Clouds banded the deep blue at the horizon. There were three stars out, the same stars that he had looked at as a boy when his sunup to sundown work day had ended. Between hunger and hunger there had been some times when you could look at the stars and wonder, as there were now between times of work and work.

The controls were set. There was nothing to do but wait for land to rise up over the edge of the world.

As the end of the metal ribbon was a transparent crystal sphere, fifteen feet in diameter which hovered above the receiving stage. A dozen small tetron units sat around the room. By one ornate window a bank of forty-nine scarlet k.n.o.bbed switches pointed to off. Two men stood on the metal catwalk that ran above the receiving stage, one young man with black hair, the other a dark giant with a triplex of scars down the left side of his face.

In another room, the corpses of the elders of Telphar sat stiff and decomposed on green velvet seats.

It was evening in the solarium on top of the General Medical building.

The patients were about to be herded from their deck chairs and game tables under the gla.s.s roof back to their wards, when a woman screamed.

Then there was the sound of breaking gla.s.s. More people screamed.

Alter heard the roar of helicopter blades. People were running around her. Suddenly the crowd of bathrobed patients broke from in front of her. She touched the cast that covered her left shoulder and arm. People cried out. Then she saw.

The gla.s.s dome had been shattered at the edge, and the flexible metal ramp ran a dark ribbon from the copter to the edge of the solarium. The men that marched across had the insignia of the royal guards. She clamped her jaws together and moved behind the nurse. The men marched in, fire-blades high, among the overturned deck chairs. There were three stars visible, she noted irrelevantly, through the bubble dome.

Good lord! They were coming toward her!

The moment the guards recognized her, she realized the only way to get out was to cross the suddenly immense span of metal flooring to the stairwell. She ducked her head, broke from the crowd of patients and ran, wondering why she had been fool enough to wait this long. The guard tackled her and she heard screams again.

She fell to the hard floor and felt pain explode along the inside of her cast. The guard tried to lift her, and with her good arm she struck at his face. Then she held her palm straight and brought the edge down on the side of his neck.

She staggered and she felt herself slip to the floor. Then someone grabbed a handful of her hair and her head was yanked back. At first she closed her eyes. Then she had to open them. Night was moving above her through the dome of the solarium. Then the cracked edge of the gla.s.s pa.s.sed over her, and it was colder, and the blur and roar of helicopter blades was above.

"On course?"

"Dead on course," said Tomar back into the microphone. Below, the rim of land slipped back under them. The moon bleached the edges of the vari-colored darknesses beneath them; then went down.

"What are you thinking about, Major?" came the voice from the speaker again.

"Not thinking about anything," Tomar said. "Just thinking about waiting.

It's funny, that's most of what you do in this army: wait. You wait to go out and fight. And once you go out, then you start waiting to turn around and come back."

"Wonder what it'll be like."

"A few bombs over that generator, then we'll have had active combat, and everyone will be happy."

A laugh, mechanical, through the speaker. "Suppose they 'active' back?"

"If they cripple our planes like they've done before, we'll make it to the island again."

"I had to leave a hot cup of coffee back at the hangar, Major. I wish it was light so we could see what we were doing."

"Stop b.i.t.c.hing."

"Hey, Major."

"What?"

"I've invented a new kind of dice."

"You would."

"What you do is take fifteen centiunit pieces and arrange them in a four-by-four square with one corner missing. Then you take a sixteenth one and shoot it within forty-five degrees either way of the diagonal into the missing corner. It works out that no matter how you do it, if all the coins in the square are touching, two coins will fly off of the far edge. Each of those has a number and the two numbers that fly off are like the two numbers that come up on the dice. It's better than regular dice because the chances are up on some combinations. And there's a certain amount of skill involved too. The guys call it Randomax. That's for _random numbers_ and _matrix_."

"I'll play you a game someday," Tomar said. "You know, if you used a smaller coin than a centiunit for the one you fire into the missing corner, say a deciunit, the chances that it would hit both corner coins would go up, that is your randomness."

"Really?"

"Sure," Tomar said. "My girl friend's a mathematician, and she was telling me all about probability a few weeks ago. I bet she'd be interested in the game."

"You know what, Major?"

"What?"

"I think you're the best officer in the d.a.m.n army."

Such was the conversation before the first battle of the war.

Such was the conversation Jon Koshar monitored in the laboratory tower of the Palace of the Stars in Telphar. "Oh d.a.m.n," he said. "Come on, Arkor. We'd better get going. If the d.u.c.h.ess doesn't get here with Geryn soon.... Well, let's not think about it." He scribbled a note, set it in front of one visiphone and dialed the number of another that was on a stand in front of the receiving platform of the transit ribbon.

"There," he said. "That's got instructions to follow us as soon as she gets here. And she better not miss it." They went down the metal steps to a double doorway that opened onto a road.

Two mechanical vehicles stood there, both with pre-controls set for similar destinations. Jon and Arkor climbed into one, pushed the ignition b.u.t.ton, and the car shot forward along the elevated roadway.