The Prometheus Project Part 30

There was no one else around. I decided that Novak and Evan were the only survivors. A small ship like this couldn't have held many, especially with a laser cannon crammed into it. And Novak's reference to the lifeboat seemed to confirm it.

"And now," said Novak, "we can get back to my first reason for keeping you alive. There's something about you that makes me feel I ought to recognize you-I a.s.sume you're from the Project-but I can't put my finger on it. What's your name?"

Like a nerve pain of the soul came the memory of my last moments with Chloe. "Blackbeard the Pirate,"

I said dully.

Novak thrust her face down toward mine-I was still crouching-with a glare. "Don't be a smart-a.s.s!

For your information, I'm all that's standing between you and Evan. He'd love to use that knife on you.

He and Victor-the man you killed back there-were very good friends."

"Yeah," I said, eying Evan. "I'll just bet they were."

I didn't quite succeed in covering my rib cage before Evan's foot crashed into it. I rolled over on my back, gasping with pain, and looked up into Novak's face.

"Since you choose not to be cooperative, I think I'll let Evan punish you for that remark in, shall we say,

appropriate fashion." She nodded at Evan, who flourished his knife, smiled, and advanced toward me.Something Hollywood has never gotten right about weapons-grade lasers is the sound they make in atmosphere: a sharp snap! as the air rushes back in to fill the narrow cylinder of vacuum that has been drilled through it. It isn't nearly as loud as a gunshot, but it's d.a.m.ned startling if you're not prepared for it . . . as I wasn't prepared for the sparkling lance of ionized air that speared Evan's chest. He reeled back in a pale pink spray of vaporized blood and water.

My eyes went to the hatch that opened into the control room, and the figure that stood there holding the

Ekhemasu weapon I'd lost on capture. I would never have thought Chloe could have lifted the thing

under this ship's Earthlike gravity field.

Novak saw her too. With a wordless snarl, she swung toward the new arrival-as unfamiliar-looking to her as I was-and brought up her needler.

My body still felt pain, but at that instant my mind wasn't processing it. I sprang to my feet and crashed into Novak, grasping the wrist of her gun hand and forcing it upward. I heard a sinister metallic tinkling as flchettes sprayed the overhead. I tightened my grip and wrenched, and Novak dropped the needler.

She continued to struggle like a wildcat.

Chloe heaved the laser gun aloft and brought its stock down against the side of Novak's head with an alarming sound. Novak went limp. I let her fall to the deck and stared at Chloe, who had dropped the laser gun and was catching her breath.

"How . . . ?" I began.

"I followed you into the access tube," she gasped. "Thramoz tried to stop me, but I wiggled past him.

"Then that explosive charge went off. The tube's connection to our ship was ripped away. But it was still connected at this end, and I had my suit pressurized. I held on inside the tube, and pulled my way forward into this ship, through the hole that had been blasted through its hull. By that time, you'd been

captured; I got inside just in time to see you get led away. I picked up your weapon and followed.

Fortunately, I was inside the airtight hatches before Novak closed them."

I could only stare at her. I still didn't understand her actions toward me, back aboard that other ship, but

it no longer mattered. There were so many things I needed to say to her . . . but first things first.

"The data Novak was taking is in the lifeboat," I explained, gesturing at the forward air lock and, as a matter of ingrained habit, scooping up the needler. "We can get away in it, and just let this ship burn up on reentry. Let's do it now, before we get any farther into the past. I've lost track of how many hours

have pa.s.sed since we went into temporal displacement, at about minus two years per hour, but it hasn't been many."

"Do you know how to disengage this ship's temporal displacement field?" she asked.

"I'm willing to take a crack at figuring it out. And even if I can't, I've got a theory that after the lifeboat

pa.s.ses beyond the boundaries of that field-which it will do just after being deployed-it will drop back into the normal time stream, leaving this ship to keep going back in time until its power runs out."

"That makes sense," she nodded. "The lifeboat doesn't have a time machine of its own.""Right. So one way or another we'll drop back into the time stream, destroy Novak's database, and try to make a go of it wherever . . . I mean whenever we end up. And the further that is into the past, the harder a time we'll have adapting. So let's get busy!"

For an instant, Chloe's face wore that strange, shuttered look again. But then it was gone, replaced by a brave smile whose artificiality I was too preoccupied to notice, although I can recall it now. "Yes, of course, Bob. You're right. It's the only way."

It took us no time at all to locate the switch that activated the lifeboat deployment sequence. It was just inside the inner door of the lifeboat air lock, and it was delayed action, giving the occupants just barely enough time to get into that air lock before it closed irrevocably-this was for ultimate emergencies, remember-and strap into the lifeboat before it was flung free of the ship. All very standard.

The time machine was another matter.

"As nearly as I can figure it," I said, after a frustrating computer search and a tentative examination of instrumentation that had obviously been cobbled onto the ship's control board, "this is also delayed

action. It takes a couple of minutes after you start the shutdown sequence before the field collapses and you snap back into the normal universe."

"But are you sure you know how to actually commence the shutdown, as opposed to just making these

lights flash on and off?"

"h.e.l.l no, I'm not sure! But we can activate this-or try to-and then slap the lifeboat switch and get into the lifeboat. If the field shuts down like it's supposed to, all well and good; we land on Earth and this

ship burns up. If not, then the lifeboat launches anyway and we go to Plan B."

"All right," Chloe said matter-of-factly. Our eyes met. On a sudden impulse, I kissed her. She responded hungrily . . . almost desperately. I tasted tears on her face. I should have asked myself why. But instead I drew away and commenced field shutdown. Then I entered the lifeboat air lock and opened the hatch in

the deck, revealing the lifeboat's tiny pa.s.senger compartment below. Chloe followed. On the air lock's threshold, she paused, her hand halfway to the switch.

"What about Renata?" she asked.

"Huh?" I'd forgotten Novak just as completely as I had the equally motionless Evan. I looked back and

faced Chloe. "What about her?"

"Shouldn't we-?" She turned around and started back into the control room.

With a scream, a face from h.e.l.l reared up in her path.

I'd thought Novak was as good as dead, and certainly immobilized by concussion. I'd forgotten the way

hysterical strength can power a body beyond what is medically plausible, if the restraining band of sanity snaps. And the blood that caked Novak's hair and streamed down her cheek wasn't what gave that face its horror-it was the absolute lack of humanity. It was a mask of hate from which all reason had fled.

She was like a fury out of the darkest reaches of myth. And she was brandishing Evan's knife, about which I'd totally forgotten.

Like a Cossack swinging a saber, she slashed at Chloe with the knife.

Desperately, I lunged forward and pushed Chloe out of the way of that onsweeping edge, into whose path momentum carried me. Pain exploded as Novak whipped the knife across my face, laying my left cheek open to the bone.

Sickened, blinded, I staggered backwards and fell through the hatch into the lifeboat. As I caught myself and struggled back up into the air lock, I saw Chloe tackle Novak and grasp her knife hand before it could commence another swing. She gave a twist. Novak screamed and dropped the knife. Chloe bore her backwards through the air lock door, into the control room. Just beyond that threshold, they grappled, straining against each other.

The left half of my face was a fireball of agony, and blood was already trickling down my neck into my survival suit. But I staggered upright, just in time to hear a voice that was pure Chloe.

"You really don't know who I am, do you, Renata?"

For a moment, stunned realization wiped Novak's face clean of madness, and she loosened her grip. It gave Chloe a chance to wrench one arm free and bring the elbow sharply up into her opponent's face, b.l.o.o.d.ying her nose.

I started to reel toward Chloe. Our eyes met for an eternity that could only have lasted a fraction of a second-a flash of frozen time in which her face held more emotions than a lifetime could or should contain. She opened her mouth and said something to me, but Novak screamed again, so I couldn't hear it.

Then, as though in slow motion, Chloe's free hand came up and slapped the lifeboat switch. The airlock

door began to slide shut."Chloe!" I shouted, stretching my sliced facial muscles and bringing a renewed deluge of blood, and a spasm of pain that almost made me lose consciousness. But even as the universe spun around me, I forced myself forward, toward that inexorably closing air lock door and the two struggling women just beyond it. . . . It clanged shut just before I reached it. A red light began to flash stroboscopically, and a warning siren began to wail I crashed against the air lock door, heedless of my agony, pounding on it with futile fists. I glimpsed Chloe through the transparent bull's-eye for a last instant, before her struggles with Novak took her out of my line of sight. The siren continued to ululate.

"Ten seconds to lifeboat deployment," a robotic voice called out. Ten seconds . . . after which the lifeboat would be gone and the air lock would be open to s.p.a.ce. . . . I was beyond thought. All I could do was react. I got into the lifeboat just before the hatch automatically closed. I had barely strapped into one of the couches when the universe seemed to drop out from under me. I looked through the lifeboat's curving transparency and saw the half-wrecked ship recede rapidly into the weird emptiness of that extradimensional realm.

Then, with mind-shattering suddenness, the real universe was back, and the lifeboat was hurtling down into the tenuous upper atmosphere of the blue planet below. My theory had been correct: as soon as it had left the ship's temporal displacement field, the lifeboat had reentered the flow of time at whatever point the ship had reached. For a heartbeat, I looked up and scanned the blue-black sky of those alt.i.tudes for the fireball that would mark the ship's death. Not seeing it, I felt relief rise in me, only to be smashed flat by the realization that at the moment of my departure the ship had still been in temporal displacement, headed still farther backward in time. So, a.s.suming that my tinkering had succeeded, that fireball had already happened, and by now had faded from the sky.

On the other hand, it might not have happened at all. Maybe I'd failed, leaving that ship a Flying Dutchman of the oceans of time.

Was Chloe dead, or in limbo? The lifeboat began to b.u.mp and vibrate-it was too tiny to mount artificial gravity generators-and I could hear a thin scream of cloven air. Looking forward through the transparency, I could see the craft's nose begin to glow a dull furnace-red. But its design took account of the possibility that its occupants might be incapacitated, or include no qualified pilot. Its automatic pilot was capable of a.n.a.lyzing its surroundings in terms of gravity, atmospheric density, and everything else needful to achieve a safe planetary landing.

So I had nothing to do except grit my teeth against the bucking ride that brought renewed pain with every vibration, and force myself not to think about all I had lost. That would come later.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.