Hell's Gate

CHAPTER 19

Moog's war party moved with astonishing cat-like grace and silence, considering the size of it and the size of each member. There were thirty-one in the party aside from Salsbury, all the men their settlement contained. Those left behind were women and children; even some of them had been anxious to go along, to fight the hated enemy. The decision had been to go for broke, to seize all or nothing. It was thought all men were needed (though a slaughter of them by the vacii would mean a virtual end to the colony), but that women, untrained for combat, would only get in the way.

Once, they met a party of vacii still searching the compound, walking the alleyways with electric torches. The war party was quicker, for it was expecting trouble. The arrows were swift and silent. Six dead vacii without one managing a scream was a testimony to the accuracy of the archers.

They went on to the starship.

That portion of the great hull which, Moog assured him, was on the outside of the ship's armory, was pressed close against the white walls of a building, hidden in welcoming shadows. The war party stationed itself along the walls, taking advantage of the pitch darkness, while Moog and Salsbury walked along the hull to the place the hairy one chose as the most advantageous for forced entry.

“There will be no one in the armory,” Moog said. “There will be an armory officer stationed just outside it, in the antiroom. But by the time he realizes we are in the ship, we will be armed and ready for a fight.”

“I hope you're right,” Salsbury said. Moog had assured him that the hull sensors were inactive and would not go active until the ship was preparing for spaceflight. Still… he worried.

“I most certainly am right,” Moog said, shaking his burly head. “Let's begin, eh?”

Salsbury ran his hand along the hull, sampling the coolness of the metal. He rapped, heard only a faint booming sound. “It's thick.” He rapped again, listened. “It'll take some time. I think we better fire sideways so the metal chips will be propelled away from us. You stand behind me.”

Moog obliged, moving softly, quietly.

Salsbury aimed, fired the first pellet. There was a sharp pinging noise and the rattle of metal chips on the curve of the hull. He ran his fingers over the spot he had shot at. It was hot, though not hot enough to burn him. He found he had made perhaps a quarter to a half inch indentation in the alloy, rugged, with sharp edges, perhaps half a foot across. To make a hole large enough to admit these fellows, he was going to have to do much better than that. He set the pistol to machine gun status and prayed there were enough of the little droplets in the gas bottle cartridge to do the job. Then he depressed the trigger and held it down.

The pinging grew louder, harsher. After two minutes of continuous fire, he stopped, waited until the echoing ring had ceased, then looked closely at what he had done. There was a rugged hole three feet across and four feet high. Only the center, big as a penny, had broken clear through. Resetting the pistol to a single shot basis, he began chopping away at the stubborn alloy, enlarging that penny-sized aperture.

Ten minutes later, he had a hole big enough to crawl through. “Let's check it out,” he said to Moog.

They went through into the dark interior, letting their eyes adjust. At last, when they could see well enough, they found they were only through the outer hull, in an air space full of beams and supports; three feet away, there was another wall, the inner wall, the partition that was part of the armory.

“Well? “Moog asked.

“If this is as thick as the first, we're in trouble,” Salsbury said gloomily. “The gun is getting lighter; it's low on gas.”

“Nothing to do but try,” Moog said, slapping him on the shoulder.

Salsbury tried. They were fortunate indeed, for the wall was of half-inch steel which parted much more easily under the gun's assault. When a second hole had been cleared, they stepped into the darkened armory, looked around joyously. Moog went back to usher the others inside.

Fifteen minutes later, the cache of vibratubes and slug guns the size of shotguns had been broken open. They were armed to the proverbial teeth. No, clear up to the hairline. Moog stationed himself by the door to the anti-room, looked back to make sure everyone was prepared. Then he swung it inward and went through fast, a vibratube in one hand, the heavy bulk of a frag slug gun in the other.

The others followed. Salsbury was fourth in line, willing to let two other of these Earthmen follow Moog before sticking his own tender neck out. When he entered the chamber, the vacii armory officer was lying in a crumpled heap to the left of its desk. The vibratube had done the job. It was quieter than a frag slug, but every bit as effective.

When the last member of the war party had filed in, Moog recited the plans that had been gone over so hastily before their departure from the caves. The layout of the ship was not complex. Thanks to Moog, the Earth-men had a rough blueprint in their minds. The party divided into six groups, five men in each of the first five parties, five men plus Moog and Salsbury in the sixth. The others were to spread into selected portions of the starship as fast and efficiently as they could. Since the vacii in the ship were not generally armed, the battle would be heavily weighted in the Earthmen's favor. The sixth group's objective was to get Salsbury to the teleportation room. They would destroy vacii and vacii machinery as the other five groups, but only as the opportunity arose during their flight to the teleportation cart.

Moog opened the door, and they went into the corridor, leaving the other groups to go their own ways, intent now on reaching the transportation that might or might not take Vic back to his basement, back to Lynda. They raced along the main corridor, not bothering much about quiet now. Behind, the detail assigned to this hall was already opening doors and cutting down the vacii within. The noise was nearly deafening. Farther away, echoing from other parts of the ship, more sounds of battle arose.

They rounded a corner and confronted a small group of vacii that had come out of the rooms to see what the noise was all about. One of the men beside Salsbury pumped three frag slugs at the assemblage. The vacii dropped in twos and threes. The six still standing got themselves vibrabeamed by Moog. Then they went over and around the bodies, trying not to breathe in the stench of burned alien flesh.

Two turns and six dead vacii later, one of the boys in their group got his chest pounded open by a guard's personal pistol. Moog fired at the vacii. So did Salsbury. Their vibrabeams caught it from both sides of the head, finished it messily.

“This is it,” Moog said, turning into a room on the right. He bounced back, a vibrabeam sear along the top of his right shoulder.

Salsbury went down, rolled, narrowly avoided a second blast from the vacii operator's weapon. When he came onto his back, he fired, swept half the room, nearly cut the alien in two. The thing fell forward, trying to groan, and was very still. He went back to Moog. “How is it?”

“Just a burn. Nothing important.” He wasn't even clutching at the wound. Not even moaning. Or grimacing.

“That's the cart,” Salsbury said.

“Do you know how to operate it?”

“I can try. The worst I can do is blow myself up,” Salsbury said.

One of the men from the doorway called something. Moog looked concerned. “A heavy vacii force is at the head of the corridor. They must have guessed we broached the hull with your aid and that we would be coming to the cart. We'll hold them off. I think we out-gun them anyway. But get moving as fast as you can.”

Vic nodded, started for the cart, then went back and shook the Earthman's hand.

“Maybe when all this is straightened out,” Moog said, “we'll be able to piece together the vacii machines and find out what made them tick. Maybe we'll be able to build a cart for traveling the probabilities. That would be something.”

“That surely would,” Salsbury said. Then he climbed onto the cart and fiddled with the controls while Moog went to direct the battle with the aliens.

There was a keyboard on the dash, much like that of a typewriter, except that the symbols made no sense to him. He tried punching them, found they were stiff, like the keys on the locked board of an electric typewriter. He tried all of them, then in desperation snapped down the spacing bar. Instantly, the walls around him faded.

He flicked from probability line to probability line, heading home. He could see no way to control the cart, no way to make it stop. Perhaps it would go past the probability line from which he had started; more likely, it was set to return to the place from which it had come, the probability line directly before his own. At least he hoped that was the case.

In the teleportation rooms in each probability line, vacii operators looked up, astonished that a human being was riding without benefit of guards. Some of them tried to reach him before he flicked on to the next line, but that was futile. Others turned toward their master consoles, but were not fast enough to stop him. He continued, fluttering backwards, hopefully toward the world-line where the vacii had first captured him.

There was nothing to do but think, think about Moog and the others. Would the spunky creature make it, or would he die in the battle? It seemed almost certain the starship would be defeated. But what would that mean to the vacii installations across the worldlines? Would they, cut off from the mother ship, eventually disintegrate? Moog had assured him their connections with the star-ship were essential to their survival. Salsbury hoped so. Because that would mean that they had not just liberated one worldline from the vacii, but many. He thought about his own safety now and the safety of his worldline. If he were taken back to the worldline next to his, he could get through into his own basement. The 810-40.04 could detonate the micro-bombs, and his worldline would be permanently safe, because the destruction of the starship on One Line would ensure an end to vacii expeditions into other worldlines. The future from which he had been sent by desperate men almost without hope, would be different. All the timelines beyond his own which the vacii had conquered after 1970 would also have different futures, for they would never become alien dominions now. He had changed their futures too. But he could not bring himself to feel heroic. He had been built to accomplish much, had been trained in the arts of combat by the computer; Lynda had given him a driving motivation; Moog had saved his life and initiated the final bold plan. He had done his part, nothing more. Anyway, he could not be bothered now with any thoughts but those about Lynda. Green eyes, crooked tooth, healthy, warm body… The only island of reality in this entire affair was her smile, her kiss, the entire marvelous sum of her.

Abruptly, the cart stopped. The flickering ceased.

He knew he was in the right place.

The operator stood against the wall, chewing on a drug stick. Salsbury bolted from the machine, brought a fist into the skinny throat before the vacii could issue alarm. It went down, rolled over, drew its knees up and passed out.

He left the room and walked to the prober chamber, hesitated at the door, wondering what he would find inside. It was still the same night as when he had entered this worldline, though several hours had passed. It would be getting near dawn. The vacii might very well have discovered the mess in the projection room, might already have invaded his worldline. Lynda might be dead.

“Sees tusga ji gasta!” A vacii voice erupted behind.

He whirled. At the far end of the hall, four vacii stood, one with a pistol. It raised the weapon, fired. The vibrabeam connected with the back of Salsbury's right calve. He dropped to his knees in pain, then realized he had no time to worry about something so unimportant as agony.

The vacii were closing at a run.

Shaking, he gained his feet, shucked the rucksack with its bombs, and went into the prober chamber. The mess had not been discovered. Lynda still sat at the beam projector beyond the wall. The same number of bodies littered the floor, all but one of them robots. He weaved across the room, favoring his wounded leg, and stumbled through the portal into his own basement.

“Detonate!” he shouted to the 810-40.04 as it floated toward him.

“As soon as-”

“Quickly!”

Beyond, in the other worldline, the vacii slid open the door to the projection room.

“Now, dammit!” Salsbury roared.

The vacii started across the room.

The computer detonated the micro-bombs and, in nearly the same instant, swung on the beam projector and destroyed its lens with a bolt of orange light. The bubble closed in time to prevent the force of the explosions in the other worldline from carrying through into this one.

The spot on the wall was gone.

“You succeeded,” the computer said.

He had been going on adrenalin and nothing else for more than five hours. Now that pressure lessened and the flow of magic juice was cut off, he felt as if a million tons had been lowered onto his shoulders. He tried to speak, to say something witty to mark the occasion. He dropped over onto the basement floor.