Once they were past the bulk of the mob they were able to move faster. The two unharmed blasterbats had disappeared out the side door by now, which made speed all the more imperative. The Bavols raced backstage, where they encountered not a soul, and out the stage door. There were only a few aircars on Purity, but Yvette and Pias, pulling rank by using their code names Periwinkle and Peacock, had appropriated one from the local SOTE office for just such a situation. This one was not as fancy as the one Jules and Vonnie had with them on Nampur, but it would serve its purpose.

  The agents hurried inside their vehicle and Pias turned on the antigrav. The aircar shot straight up into the sky, unmindful of any other air traffic; after all, a small town on Purity didn't have any other air traffic. From their lofty vantage point, Yvette and Pias could survey the scene around the meeting hall with almost godlike objectivity.

  In the darkness below however, they could barely make out the shapes of the audience milling in confusion outside the auditorium. A pair of headlights could be seen moving at well over a hundred kilometers an hour down the narrow streets of the village away from the hall. Since mechanized traffic on Purity was so slight, those lights could only represent the getaway car being driven by the two escaping gunmen. Yvette pointed, but Pias had already seen the lights and was flying their car in that direction.

  "Not too low," Yvette cautioned him. "We don't want them to spot us. After all, we want them to get away."

  She smiled as she added, "Or at least we want them to think they did."

  Chapter 10

  Ambush under the Sun

  The day after they arrived on Slag, Jules and Yvonne were to be shown how the base searched for its raw materials, and how those resources were mined and transported back to the plant for processing. George Chactan, their host, begged off from the trip, claiming he had important work to do in his office; instead, he left them in what he assured them were the capable hands of his plant manager, Ray Furman.

  Along with a crew of seven workmen, the d'Alemberts and Furman boarded a small rocketbus and began the long flight away from the base. The rocketbus was a boxcarlike craft, operating on a combination of antigravity and rocket propulsion. It was basic transportation for use under conditions similar to Slag's, with few amenities available for its passengers. The rocketbuses in use here had been specially adapted for this environment, with a shiny exterior hull that reflected most of the searing radiation it received every second from the sun that hung motionless overhead.

  Although they were completely enclosed in the rocketbus, all of them wore their space suits fully closed, in case of an accident. The space suits, too, were not the standard issue. The soles of the boots were triply reinforced and insulated against the rigors of Slag's heat. The exteriors, like the hull of the rocketbus, were highly reflective, and special design considerations had gone into ensuring that the cooling systems were as effective as man knew how to make them. The helmet faceplates were extra thick and highly tinted, to minimize the glare from the rocks all around.

  One of the workmen piloted the craft, leaving Jules and Yvonne nothing to do but gaze out the window at the startling scenery below: Both d'Alemberts had visited airless worlds before--particularly Jules, who had done significant work on the moon Vesa - but they had never experienced anything quite like Slag.

  It was a w ; Id of stark contrasts. Where the sunlight shone on bare rock, the glare was nearly blinding, even through their dark faceplates. In places where the rocks cast shadows along the ground, the darkened area was pitch black, without hope of illumination. High, ragged chains of mountains shot up out of nowhere from barren plains whose floors were cracked and crisscrossed with crevices. Occasionally they could see silvery pools lying placidly, like enormous globules of mercury. Temperatures could range from 350 Celsius in direct sunlight to 240 within the inky shadows.

  As they passed over the ground, Yvonne spotted some machinery busily working below them. "What's that?" she asked Furman, pointing out her window.

  The plant manager leaned over to look. "'that's an automated mining station. Our geologists found a good surface vein of something there. I'm not precisely sure which station that is, so I can't say what it's mining. It digs up the ore, loads it into homing cargo rockets, and sends it to the base. The rockets then return for another load."

  "Can we stop and see it?"

  "There's really nothing to see. We're going to a site that has a little more potential, one we have to check out to see whether it's worth putting an automated station there. That should give you a lot more to see. We'll be there in just a little bit."

  As Furman predicted, it was only a few minutes later that the rocketbus began settling toward the ground near some low hills. Their pilot was so skillful that they landed with just the gentlest of bumps. "Ride's over," Furman announced. "Time to get to work. Everybody out."

  Even though their suits were well insulated, Jules and Yvonne experienced a psychological effect as they walked out into the bright sunlight, like walking into an oven. They knew better than to look straight up at the sun, which would have appeared to be the size of a large dinner platter held at arm's length; nonetheless, the temptation to peek at it, to view its corona and prominences with their own eyes, was a strong one. They had to content themselves with a look at the stars near the horizon in the daytime, spelling out unfamiliar constellations.

  Furman's voice came over their helmet radios. "Our geologists tell us that the vein we're looking for is at the base of those hills over there. Why don't we all go over and look?"

  Jules and Yvonne began walking in the indicated direction, their boots crunching over the powdery surface. It was Jules who first noticed something wrong, an itch at the back of his mind that things were not happening as they should. In a group of workers like this, under hazardous conditions, there was always friendly banter, an undercurrent of conversation to help take their minds off the rigors they faced. He had seen plenty of it back at the base, both in the mess hall recreation room and in the factory area. The men were always joshing one another, making ribald comments, engaging in small talk about the most insignificant subjects to ward off the boredom that would otherwise set in on a lonely outpost planet.

  Now the radio was completely silent. The only sounds he could hear were his own breath, the slight noises of nine other people breathing, and the sound of the blood rushing through his ears. He put a hand out to touch his wife's shoulder, cocking his head at a quizzical angle to ask in an unspoken way whether she thought anything strange was happening. The act of tilting his head let his eye catch a motion behind them, and he spun quickly around to see what was going on.

  Fur-man and the seven workmen were grouped tightly together about ten meters back. All of them were armed with blasters, as were Jules and Vonnie; it had been considered prudent, since their partnership had not yet been fully confirmed. The motion Jules had caught out of the corner of his eye was Furman slowly reaching to his belt to grab the blaster he carried. Others of the men were reaching for their weapons as well.

  At first, Furman froze when he saw Jules whirl quickly around to face him. Then after a second's hesitation, he stopped trying to be secretive. There was no point in hiding his intentions any further. Pulling his blaster violently out of its holster, he aimed straight at the DesPlainians. "Fire; men!" he ordered.

  But that split second's delay had given the d'Alemberts time to start some action of their own. Seeing her husband's movement, Yvonne had also partially turned to find out what was happening behind them. Her mind was just as quick at assessing the situation as Jules's. "Break!" Jules cried, giving her arm a slight push, and--seeing the drawn blasters in the workmen's hands--she needed no further instructions.

  Bolts of potent energy leaped from the barrels of the enemy's blasters, but the targets were no longer where they'd been. The surface gravity on Slag was eighty percent of Earth normal-enough to make Furman and his cohorts feel livelier and a little faster than they normally would have, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with a pair of well-trained DesPlainians.

  Jules and Yvonne were moving in opposite directions, so quickly that they seemed scarcely more than a blur to the men aiming at them. Jules was headed for the foothills a dozen meters away, hoping to find cover behind some rocks. The bulky space suit slowed him down a bit, even more so than normal because it was not the proper size; Vonnie and he were shorter and stockier than average, and the suits they'd been given were an awkward fit. Nevertheless, desperation lent extra speed to his feet, and Jules fairly flew across the open ground to the safety of the rocks. He was tempted, as the blaster bolts cleaved through the empty space he'd vacated, to make a long leap and dive behind the boulders, but he knew that would be a foolhardy maneuver. One tiny tear in his space suit would finish him just as surely as a dead hit by a blaster beam. He made it behind the rocks on his feet, then drew his blaster to return fire.

  Yvonne did not have as easy a time of it. There was no readily available cover in the direction toward which she broke when the trouble began. There were better than twenty meters of open ground to cover before she could reach the dark shadows of the range of hills, but once inside those shadows, even though there was nothing physical between herself and the gunmen, she would be reasonably safe. On an airless world like Slag there were no atmospheric particles to diffuse sunlight into places the sun itself did not reach. When an area was in shadow it was totally black, and she would be completely invisible to the men standing in sunlight, while she'd be able to see them perfectly.

  The problem, though, was living long enough to reach the shadowed area. Even as she sprinted for safety, Yvonne drew her blaster and fired a shot in the general direction of the men behind her. She was moving too fast to aim well, but the effort did remind them that they too were in an exposed position. A couple of them started to look for cover of their own, now that the ambush had failed to achieve its objective, and that gave Vonnie a few extra precious seconds.

  Jules, seeing his wife's plight, was now in a position to help her. From the security of his hiding place, he fired out at the enemy grouped in the open. They had already started to break up and take cover after Yvonne's shot, so they were not quite as easy a target, but Jules was a crack shot. His beam hit one man dead center. There was a hissing sound through the radio receiver, and then a soul-shattering scream that died out quickly as the man's air supply rushed out of his suit, through the hole the blaster bolt had left. A small cloud of vapor surrounded his spacesuit momentarily, then vanished as the oxygen molecules rapidly dissipated into the vacuum.

  Jules's beam continued slashing outward, catching a second victim along the back of a leg. Although the wound would not have been fatal on most worlds, it was the hole burned in his space suit that killed the man. He died with the same scream of agony, the same cloud of rapidly dispersing gases as the first.

  The rest of the men had, by now, managed to take cover, either behind scattered, small rocks or alongside the rocketbus itself. Vonnie too was now out of sight, hidden most effectively by the shadow in which she stood.

  "Why the double cross, Furman?" Jules asked over the suit radio. "If we don't make a favorable report, our two organizations- will never work together as partners."

  "It's hard to picture us working as partners with SOTE anyway," Furman replied. "Too many differences of opinion."

  Jules's heart sank. If his and Vonnie's cover as SOTE agents had been pierced, it would be impossible to talk their way out of the situation; all the forces at Chactan's disposal would be after them. Still, he had to try making one last attempt to continue his bluff. "SOTE? I don't know what you're talking about. We hate them as much as you do."

  We checked that list of 'customers' you said you had. None of them exists anywhere except in SOTE's files. And not even there until you made the list up."

  Jules was certainly impressed with this gang's informational sources. He had expected them to need a week or better to track down that list and come to any conclusions; instead they seemed to have the data almost instantly. Their intimate knowledge of what was in SOTE's files, as well as in files elsewhere in the galaxy, bespoke computer taps that rivaled those of the Empire.

  He was trying hard to think of something to say that might salvage the situation, but Yvonne spared him the trouble. From the shadowed darkness, her blaster raked out at the men in hiding. Her beam caught one who'd been slightly careless, leaving his flank exposed; she had walked calmly through the darkness of her shadow, assured of invisibility, and gotten him from an unexpected angle. As her bolt continued to play across the open area, it hit the rock behind which another man was hiding. The rock shattered and flew apart, but the man behind it managed to escape uninjured. He fired quickly back into the shadow at the approximate point where Yvonne's shot had come from. The SOTE agent had to back away quickly to avoid being hit.

  The enemy gunmen now unleashed their firepower into the shadowy area. Even though they couldn't see Yvonne, they knew she was in there somewhere, unprotected by rocks or other obstacles; if they played their beams throughout the area, they were bound to hit her. Jules realized that, too. Taking a deliberate risk, he stood up and sprayed them with fire of his own. The parched ground cracked and blew apart as the searing ray from his weapon burned across the landscape. The opponents ceased their shooting into the shadow as they had to cover themselves from the attack from the other direction, thus giving Yvonne more time to hide herself once again.

  Jules ducked back down behind his rocks after accomplishing his objective of taking the fire away from his wife. "It's a stalemate, Furman," he said over the radio. "We can keep trading shots back and forth all day without much result. We're going to have to come to some agreement."

  "We still outnumber you, five to two. You can't keep dodging all our beams forever."

  "It doesn't have to be forever," Jules pointed out.. "All our oxygen tanks are the same size. I estimate we've got less than four hours apiece before they have to be changed, or we'll all die of asphyxiation."

  "There are more tanks inside the bus. We can get to that and you can't."

  In response to that, Jules fired a shot at the ground right in front of the bus's hatch. "Anyone who tries won't live to make it inside. Care to risk it?"

  There was silence from the other side for more than a minute, as Furman thought over the possibilities. Jules was comforted by the knowledge that at least the other men could not be conferring on secret plans; they were so spread out that their only means of communication was via helmet radio, and the SOTE agents would be able to overhear everything they said.

  At last Furman broke the stillness. "Cover me, men," he said. "I'm going to try to make it anyway." White rays of intense energy poured out of the gunmen's barrels as the space suited figure of the plant's manager ran across the open ground to the bus.

  Jules tried to get a shot at him, but he was pinned down by fire from the workmen's blasters; there was no way he could reach a good shooting position without exposing himself to those deadly bolts. Yvonne too dared not shoot, lest she give away her position in the shadow. The DesPlainians could only watch helplessly as Furman reached the bus's hatch and dived inside safely.

  "Khorosho, men, I did it, now it's your turn. Once we get in the bus, we can let them have this place if they like it so much. Or they can try to walk the three hundred kilometers back to the base."

  As a group, the four remaining gunmen broke from their hiding places and ran for the rocketbus. They tried to keep up their blaster fire as they did so, but it was harder for them to shoot and run at the same time, and they were not nearly as effective as they'd been before. Realizing that if they did not act now they would never have another chance, Jules and Yvonne began firing back at the fleeing figures.

  Two of their shots hit home, and the men died, sprawled out on the baked ground just a few meters short of their destination. But the other two men succeeded in reaching the hatch and climbing inside the bus. The instant they were in the door slammed shut, locking the agents out from their only mode of transportation.

  Seconds later, the craft gave a slight shudder and began lifting soundlessly into the darkened sky. Jules and Yvonne, no longer fearing any blaster fire, raced out of their hiding places toward the spot where the craft had lain. Jules fired upward at the belly of the receding bus, hoping to hit something on the unshielded underside and disable the vehicle. Vonnie added her firepower to his, and the twin blaster beams scored the bottom of the rocketbus.

  Nothing happened for several seconds, and the rocketbus lifted higher off the ground. It was at the very limit of effective blaster range when the continued beams from the d'Alemberts' weapons finally burned through the casing and hit some of the vital machinery. In this case, it was the antigravity generator that was most severely affected.

  There was a flash of sparks and the bus suddenly lurched to one side. As the pilot-Furman, most likely-realized what had happened, he tried to compensate by firing the rockets on the other side. In his panic, he fired too long, and the vessel began to roll over, turning the antigravity field away from the body of the planet. With the field weakened by the damage to the generator and the ship no longer oriented in the proper manner, the antigrav drive could not keep the bus aloft. It began plummeting to the ground with all the grace of a dead condor. The pilot, in those last few seconds, tried several desperate maneuvers with the jets and the gyros, but to no avail.

  The rocketbus hit the ground with a jolt the d'Alemberts could feel even through their thickly padded boots. It was a strange, silent crash with no explosion; the craft just caved in, as though it had been made of wet cardboard, then lay deathly still on the bright plain of Slag.

  Jules and Yvonne ran over to the wreck with guns drawn, just in case there might be some survivors-but there weren't. Looking at the twisted mass of metal, the agents knew that no living thing could have lived through a crash that bad. The wreckage was so badly mangled that there wasn't even any way to get inside without professional salvage equipment. Furman and his two remaining henchmen were undeniably dead.

 

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