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CHAPTER EIGHT

Three minutes later, we were inside the Icarus launch module. McKell knelt down at the control board and punched in Alpha’s address, and we headed up the extension arm toward the glowing gray section.

I found myself staring at my gloved hand as we floated toward the sphere’s center, McKell’s comment a few days ago coming suddenly to mind. “You said something living had to be touching the extension arm in order to trigger the launch,” I reminded him. “How come we can do it with vac-suit gloves?”

“I said you needed a living hand to trigger it,” he corrected. “I didn’t say the hand had to be touching it directly. And no, I don’t know how the portal knows the difference between a vac suit around a living hand and a vac suit around nothing. But it apparently does.”

“Convenient,” I said, frowning. Back on Alainn, Selene had spoken of the portal there being dead. I still didn’t know if that comment had been literal or figurative. But if the mechanism could detect life through a vac suit, that might be a strong vote toward the literal side of that question.

Or it might simply be sensing heat, a pulse, a subtle electromagnetic field, or any of a dozen other factors that life had and nonlife didn’t. Chasing down all of that was presumably on the Icarus Group’s to-do list.

Luckily, it wasn’t on mine. I knew how we got from here to there and back again, and that was all I cared about.

We reached the gray section, I felt the tingle as the universe went black, and we found ourselves floating in the center of Alpha’s receiver module.

With vac-armored Marines lying on their backs at five different spots around the curved deck, heavy military-class lasers at the ready.

My whole body went stiff, a flash of panic flooding over my brain, the old phrase shooting fish in a barrel flashing to mind. Five EarthGuard Marines against the three of us. Them armed and in fixed positions, us unarmed and floating helplessly in the middle of a forty-meter sphere.

“Ixil?” McKell’s voice came in my earbud. “How’s our timing?”

“Still within our window,” Ixil’s voice came back. “But I need Selene out here as soon as possible.”

“She’s on her way,” McKell said as we began drifting toward the surface.

Still no response from the Marines. I frowned down at them, wondering what they were waiting for.

Only then did my eyes and brain pick up on what I should have spotted right away. The men lying on their backs down there were indeed heavily armed, but none of their weapons were pointed at us. In fact, now that my reflexive panic was lifting, I could see their lasers were only loosely gripped in their gloved hands and were merely lying across their chests.

And McKell had only wanted five of my knockout pills. “I can’t wait to hear how you got all five of them to drink with you,” I said. “What was it, a toast to the new Alien Portal Agency?”

“Hardly,” McKell said. “While we’re inside Alpha these suits draw from the local air supply, keeping the tanks in reserve for contaminants or emergency decompression. Did you know that if you grind those knockout pills into an exceedingly fine powder, your target can inhale them without even noticing? And that they work even faster than if you dissolved one in their drink?”

“Didn’t know that, no,” I said, peering down at the Marines and wishing I could see the slow rise and fall of their chests to confirm they were still breathing. But of course that kind of subtle movement was impossible to see through vacuum armor. “I hope you tested a sample first to make sure it was safe.”

“We did,” McKell assured me. “Which means Nhu over there will probably wake up a few minutes before everyone else.”

“Okay,” I said, still a bit doubtful. I’d never tried using the knockout pills that way.

“The alternative was for you to sneak up behind each one, crouch down, and let one of us push him over you,” Ixil offered.

“Point taken,” I said, tucking my concerns into a back corner of my mind. McKell and Ixil had been working this game a long time. They presumably knew what they were doing. “What’s next?”

“Ixil is outside with the grav generators and all the relevant numbers and vectors,” McKell said. “Selene will go out and help him set everything up while you and I lug the Marines across to Icarus.”

“And then?”

“Then we all high-tail it back home,” McKell said, “and cross our fingers really, really hard.”

“Probably while in custody,” Ixil added calmly. “That part will be for General Kinneman to decide.”

“Probably,” I said, rather pleased at how calmly that word had come from my lips. Calm, determined, and confident.

And a complete lie.

But McKell and Ixil wouldn’t know it until it was too late. And for once, with all of us encased in airtight vac suits, I didn’t have to worry about Selene and her hypersensitive nose catching on.

We landed on the inside deck and Selene immediately headed for the boxy airlock, moving as quickly as the vac suit allowed. “You sure you don’t want me out there instead of her?” I asked as I headed for the nearest snoozing Marine. “I’m usually the one handling the grav beams on the Ruth while Selene pilots.”

“Is she as good as you are at shoving a hundred fifty kilos of vac-armored Marine up into a launch module gravity field?” McKell countered.

“Probably not,” I conceded. Selene had many superhuman abilities, but massive upper-body strength wasn’t one of them.

Which was a shame, because that would have made things easier. “Okay, let’s do it.”

By the time Selene was settled into position at the grav controls on the portal’s surface, I had lugged my first sleeping Marine across the sphere, dumped him there, and was lugging my second in the same direction. By the time Ixil announced that they’d activated the beams, McKell was in the launch module and we had the first of the five Marines floating gently in the interface.

“You sure the beams are working?” I asked, frowning as I took stock of my body’s responses. Inner ear, balance, weight—nothing felt the least bit different. “I don’t feel anything.”

“You wouldn’t,” McKell said. “Not in here.”

“Trust me, they’re working,” Ixil said. “The instruments out here aren’t affected by the internal gravity fields, and they show us decelerating precisely on the correct vector.”

“Sounds good,” I said cautiously. “What is that vector, by the way? You never told us.”

“We wanted to land Alpha somewhere near the light we saw during the bioprobe run,” Ixil said. “It’s the best way to get a look at who our natives or visitors are.”

“And hopefully not squash their town in the process?”

“That was something else we decided early on,” McKell said. “Fortunately, there was an obvious answer.”

“Our single clear look showed those mountains east of the lights to be fairly rugged,” Ixil said. “We decided that was the area most likely to be uninhabited.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, frowning. “You’re bringing Alpha down in the mountains?”

“On their western slope, yes,” Ixil said. “That will unfortunately put us ten to fifteen kilometers from the area of interest. But with our height advantage and the proper ranging instruments, we should get a reasonably clear view.”

“And if we decide to visit, it’ll all be downhill,” McKell added. “You ready?”

“More or less,” I said, getting a grip on the bobbing Marine’s oxygen pack.

“On three,” McKell said. “One, two, three.

I shoved down on the pack with my full weight. McKell, on the other side of the gravity flip, pulled upward.

We got nowhere. My side of the portal wanted to push him through to McKell’s side, while McKell’s side wanted equally hard to shove him back to mine.

“Try bending him over at the waist,” I grunted, trying to hop up on the underside of the sleeping man’s oxygen pack to add as much of my weight as I could. “Or maybe I should come in there and we both pull?”

“Hard to bend him with the vac armor on,” McKell said with a grunt.

“Can we get him out of it?” I asked. “I don’t know why we need vac suits in here anyway. Is Kinneman worried about the airlock seal or something?”

“Let’s just say he’s cautious,” McKell said, peering at me through the gap between the Marine and the edge of the interface. “Bonding between known and unknown materials can sometimes be a little tricky. Hang on—let me try something else.”

He moved away out of sight. “McKell?” I asked, shifting around and trying to look past the Marine.

A waste of effort. With his military vac armor far thicker and bulkier than our civilian models, he was blocking most of the view. “McKell? Where’d you go?”

“I’m lying on my side with him facing me,” McKell said. “I’m going to get a grip on his arms, roll away from him, and try to pull him through.”

“Sounds good,” I said, getting a fresh grip on the oxygen pack. “Say when.”

“I’m set,” he said. “On three. One, two, three.

Once again I shoved with all my weight. This time, instead of the Marine floating back toward me, he slid neatly through the interface and disappeared into the launch module.

“Did it work?” Ixil asked.

“Like a large and very lumpy charm,” McKell confirmed. “Okay, Roarke. Roll the next one into position while I drag this one out of the way.”

It took us another fifteen minutes to get the other four Marines into the launch module. “We’re ready to start sending them back,” McKell reported. “How are things going out there?”

“Looking good,” Ixil confirmed. “Fourth braking sequence is done, and the instruments say we’re right on course. Two more to go, and we’ll be ready to head in.”

“Good,” McKell said. “Roarke? Time to send our sleeping friends back down the rabbit hole.”

I’d been wondering exactly how we were going to pull this off without one or both of us having to babysit the travelers back to Icarus and then return to Alpha for the next load. With the unavoidable delay generated by a passenger’s leisurely decent from the receiver module’s center to the floor, a couple of round trips would cost minutes that I wasn’t at all sure we could spare.

Fortunately, McKell had a plan. First step was to punch Icarus’s address into the control board, double-checking as usual that he’d done it correctly. Then, working together, we got the first Marine to the extension arm and more or less upright in McKell’s grip. With one hand, McKell wrapped the man’s gloved hand around the black-and-silver arm, then wrapped his own free hand around the arm above the Marine’s, and as the gravity reversed they both floated toward the center of the sphere. McKell waited until they were just to the arm’s gray trigger section, then let go with both of his hands, leaving the Marine’s hand pressed loosely against the arm as the only contact. An instant later, the launch sequence triggered and the Marine vanished.

“Okay, that worked,” McKell said with relieved satisfaction as gravity once again reversed and he floated back down to join me. Apparently, he hadn’t been a hundred percent sure of his plan, either. “Go ahead and tee up the next one.”

He was headed up the extension arm with the final package when Ixil reported that he and Selene were coming in.

“Everything look okay?” McKell asked.

“According to all the readings, Alpha is precisely on target,” Ixil confirmed. “Whether the calculations Tera gave us are accurate is, of course, an entirely separate question.”

“She seemed pretty sure,” McKell said. “I guess we’ll know soon enough. Any reason I shouldn’t just go through with our last Marine?”

“None that I can think of,” Ixil said. “You can go too, Roarke, if you want.”

“Thanks, but I’ll wait for Selene,” I said.

“No problem,” McKell said. “Ixil, make sure they get back all right. I’ll see you back at base.”

“We’ll be there shortly.”

I watched as McKell and the Marine reached the gray section and vanished. Then, making my way to the interface, I rolled into the receiver module and headed to the airlock.

Or rather, to the blockade balloon tethered beside the airlock. It was floating three meters above the deck, bobbing gently in the breeze created by my movements. The end of the cord was fastened securely to the deck, and I took special note of the quick-release knot holding the balloon in its current lowered position.

Yes. This should work.

I was facing the airlock hatch, watching the monitors run through their cycle sequence, when it swung open and Selene stepped out. “You all right?” I asked, taking her arm and peering through her faceplate. The tinting obscured her pupils somewhat, but I could see a calmness there. Whatever doubts she might be feeling about her part in this dangerous path we’d set ourselves on, she seemed to have come to terms with it.

“I’m fine,” she assured me. “It looks like we’ll have about ten minutes before Alpha starts hitting noticeable atmosphere.”

“Time for us to go, then,” I said as Ixil exited the airlock and closed the hatch behind him. “I don’t suppose we’ve got time to bring in the grav generators or bioprobe?”

“Hardly,” he said, the outriders on his shoulders looking around as if searching for McKell. Probably just wondering when this would be over and Ixil would get them out of their vac suits. “One of many things about tonight’s work that General Kinneman won’t be happy about.”

“He can run us a tab,” I said, turning toward the launch module. I wasn’t sure how well Ixil could read my face, but I knew Selene was dangerously good at it and I didn’t want either of them getting even a hint that I was up to anything. “Better get moving. You know how McKell worries.”

One by one, we rolled in turn into the launch module and then gathered around the extension arm. “Fingers crossed,” I said as we all took hold of the extension arm and started up. “I wonder if they’ve got McKell in custody yet.”

“Hard to tell,” Ixil said. “The orders we sent from the admiral’s computer should have kept everyone out of Icarus for another hour, but there’s always the chance he or Kinneman or someone else might have gotten a heads-up and decided to investigate.”

“Spurious orders can do that,” I agreed, watching our ascent carefully. The timing here had to be perfect. “All it would take would be a flag query to Graym-Barker for the balloon to go up. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

“Hopefully only figuratively speaking,” Selene said. “Ixil, you checked that the balloon was securely tethered, didn’t you?”

I tensed. Unintentionally, Selene had just handed me the perfect opening. “Maybe I should go double-check,” I suggested before Ixil could answer. “It would be the final ironic line on our tombstones if it broke free and blocked entry to Alpha for the next five years.”

“It wouldn’t come to that,” Ixil assured me. “As Colonel Kolodny mentioned when you first arrived here, the balloon will fail within six to eight months. It was deliberately designed that way so that such a long-term blockage couldn’t happen. But don’t worry,” he added as I let go of the extension arm. “I checked it before I went outside, and it’s fully secure. Grab on again—we need to be going.”

“Right.” Briefly, I wondered if I should try grabbing lower down on the extension arm, which might give me a bit of additional time.

But I really didn’t know if shifting my grip would make a difference. More importantly, since I was still floating upward at the same rate of speed as the others, the only way I could take hold anywhere except where my hand had originally been would be both obvious and suspicious. I couldn’t afford either of those, especially with several seconds yet to go. Making a face inside my helmet, I took hold of the arm again.

Nearly there. I found myself watching Pix and Pax as I counted down the seconds, the odd thought striking me that I wished I could be there to see the outriders’ reaction when this was over. My mental countdown reached zero—

And with maybe a quarter second to go, I opened my hand, letting go of the extension arm. Before either Ixil or Selene had time to react, they hit the gray section and disappeared back to Icarus.

I tensed. No, not Ixil and Selene.

Just Ixil. Facing me from the other side of the arm was Selene, her own hand wide open where she’d also let go.

“What the hell?” I demanded as gravity reversed and we started floating back downward. “Selene? What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question,” she said coolly.

“You need to go,” I told her stiffly. “Grab the arm—come on, grab it.”

“You know that won’t work,” she said. “It has to complete its cycle before it can send anyone else.”

I clenched my teeth hard enough to hurt. “Selene, you have to get out of here,” I said, anger, frustration, and fear tumbling together in my voice and brain. “It’s not safe. If we’re wrong about Alpha, you could die.”

“So could you,” she countered.

“I have to,” I said. “I don’t—look—”

“And while we argue,” she interrupted calmly, “Ixil will be screaming at the top of his lungs for McKell. If we don’t get the balloon back in the center of the receiver module, none of your reasons will matter.”

Because we would both be unceremoniously hauled back to Icarus the minute Ixil or McKell could get here. “Yeah,” I ground out. “Okay. Balloon first, talk later.”

We hit the deck and hurried toward the interface. I got there first, rolled into the receiver module, and took off toward the balloon at a dead run. A tug on the tether’s quick-release knot sent it soaring rapidly toward the center of the module. I watched it go, pulse pounding in my throat, wondering if McKell or Ixil would pop in at the last second.

But they didn’t. The balloon reached the center of the sphere and stopped, the radial gravitational field holding it firmly in place.

And with that, Selene and I were free to stay.

To stay, and perhaps to die.

“All right, we’re here.” Selene lowered her eyes from the balloon and focused on my face. “Tell me why.”

“It’s—okay, it’s probably silly,” I confessed, suddenly feeling intimidated. I’d run all the possibilities through my mind a hundred times, but I’d never thought I would have to say any of this out loud. “I’m worried that the collision will break Alpha in such a way that people will still be able to get here from Icarus but won’t be able to get back. I thought…well, I decided I was the logical test case. I mean, if I can’t get back it’s not a huge loss. If McKell or Ixil can’t, it is.”

“It would be a big loss to me,” Selene said quietly.

I winced. When I first decided on this crazy scheme I’d tried to tell myself that if this didn’t work she’d be fine without me.

But down deep, I’d known all along that wasn’t true. The Kadolian remnant moved around the Spiral a lot, and in the years since Selene and I teamed up she’d gradually lost track of them. I was really and truly all she had left.

Which meant, if I was being completely and brutally honest with myself, I’d been willing to risk a friend’s life in order to save a stranger’s.

As my father used to say, In the end, friends are the most precious treasure you will ever find, and the one thing you will absolutely regret losing.

“I know,” I told her, feeling as bad as I’d ever felt in my life. “I’m sorry, Selene. I wasn’t thinking about…look, there’s still time to go back to Icarus if you want. For both of us to go back.”

She looked up at the balloon. “No,” she said, her voice low. “If this doesn’t work, I’ll probably lose you anyway. Won’t I?”

I hesitated. But even with my scent blocked by my vac suit she would probably know if I tried to lie. “Probably,” I said. “We’ll both go to prison, or I’ll go by myself while Kinneman keeps you working for the agency. Either way, you’ll be mostly on your own. But at least with Kinneman you’d be safe and living in a civilized society.”

For a moment, she was silent. Then, reaching up, she unfastened her helmet. “You, too,” she said. “Take off your helmet. Please.”

“Sure,” I said, though I didn’t know what gauging my emotional state was going to prove. As my father used to say, Facts usually don’t care about your opinion about them. She let her helmet dangle from one hand, I tucked mine under my arm, and we stood gazing at each other while her nostrils flared and her eyelashes fluttered.

“Civilization means nothing to me except that it’s the structure within which you and I live,” she said at last. “If you truly believe the Icari built their portals strong enough to survive crash landings—and you do believe that—I’m willing to accept the risk.”

“I’d feel better facing this unknown if I knew you were safe,” I said, trying one last time.

“As would I,” she said. “But since neither of us can have that assurance, I would prefer we face it together.”

I sighed. “All right,” I said, conceding defeat.

And if I was again being completely honest with myself, I had to admit I was glad to have her here. If for no other reason than that if this was to be our last hour together, we’d at least have a chance to say good-bye. “Any suggestions on where we should settle in for the ride?”

She looked around the receiver module, and I saw her eyelashes again fluttering. “I think we should be in the launch module.”

I looked around the hull at all the workstations and storage cabinets, my stomach tightening. I’d gotten so used to the way portal gravity fields casually hung stuff over my head that I’d mostly forgotten what would happen if those fields ever failed. “I see what you’re thinking,” I said. “If the things in here aren’t secured, and the gravity fails during or after the descent, they’ll all tumble to the bottom of the sphere.”

“Where you and I will also be if that happens.”

“Right.” Though if the gravity cut out on our way down we were likely to have deeper worries than just a bunch of expensive equipment raining down on us. The problem inherent in an eleven-kilometer-per-second impact with the ground, for one. “Launch module it is.”

“Yes,” she said.

I looked closely at her. The word had been confident enough, but her pupils looked oddly disturbed. “Something?” I prompted.

“I don’t know,” she said, that strange look still there. “It’s just that…that’s not the main reason I wanted to be in the launch module. It sounds crazy, but I think Alpha is…frightened.”

“Frightened,” I repeated, listening to the word bounce around my brain. I was accustomed to her reading emotions and intentions, mine as well as everyone else’s.

But up to now those insights had been with people. Humans, mostly, since that was who we usually hung out with, but also a whole range of nonhumans.

Now, she was pulling this feeling from a machine? A machine, moreover, that was similar to one she’d once declared dead?

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” she said, her pupils going all defensive as she picked up on my confusion and doubts. But there was also an intensity there that warned me not to simply brush it aside. “But I think—I feel—”

“It’s okay,” I said, taking her arm and heading for the launch module. “Truth to tell, I’m not feeling all that brave myself right now. If Alpha wants some company, I’m more than willing to hunker down in there.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I wish I could explain it.”

“As I said, no need,” I assured her. “Any idea when we’re going to hit the heavier atmosphere Ixil mentioned?”

“We already have.”

I frowned. Everything felt exactly the way portals always did. “You sure?” I asked. “I’m not feeling anything different.”

“Neither am I,” she said. “But that was Ixil’s timetable.” She hesitated. “There’s also…the air smells a little different. Like the portal is…I don’t know. Straining?”

As in straining against the wind buffeting against the outer hull? Maybe fighting against the increased heat or gravity? Maybe all of the above? “Hopefully, that’s a good sign,” I said. “Or at least not a bad one.”

We reached the interface and I gestured to it. “Ladies first,” I invited. “Let’s go in and see what the end of the world looks like.”

She shivered as she lay down by the interface. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Let’s.”



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