Killing Time

CHAPTER 8

We proceeded along the narrow passageway to an intricately carved and richly carpeted wooden staircase. As we climbed the stairs, the humming of the ship's propulsion system — driven, as Larissa had just told me, by superconductive magnetic generators capable of producing unimaginable (not to mention clean) levitating and propulsive power — began to soften, and I could feel that we were moving forward. There were occasional dips and swells in the motion — not unsettling but noticeable — and when we reached the upper deck, I found myself facing a round transparent panel in the fuselage or hull. Looking out, I saw that we were traveling about a hundred feet off the ground, hugging the contours of the suburban landscape like some enormous cruise missile.

Larissa tugged at my arm. "No time for astonishment now," she said, pulling me forward along the passageway. "There's a small task force of local and state law enforcement on the way, and the federal boys won't be far behind."

"But," I stammered as we reached a ladder that led up through the ceiling of the passageway, "you've only got this one ship, can it really—"

Larissa spun around and put a finger to my lips, her eyes now positively shimmering. "Take a peek up there." She indicated the ladder, and I ascended.

Above was a circular space about fifteen feet in diameter, not unlike the turret of some fantastic tank, except that its shell was transparent. There was an enormous gun fixed in the center, on which was mounted an empty seat. To one side of the turret was a bank of tracking equipment, before which sat Eli Kuperman, carefully monitoring the many readouts. Glancing at the gun again, I noted that it looked somehow familiar; in fact, it seemed a giant version of Larissa's sidearm.

"They're both rail guns," she said, again reading my face as she climbed up, squeezed tight against me on the ladder, and drew out her smaller weapon. "It's a simple concept, really: the projectiles are propelled by completing a circuit between two conducting bars, instead of by a gas explosion. The electromagnetic field behind the projectiles multiplies the acceleration — you've seen the effect. Now, then—" She reholstered her weapon and gave my face a last touch. "I could stay here talking killing power with you for hours, but Malcolm really is anxious to meet you."

"Look, Larissa," I said, her closeness making me comfortable enough to reveal how uncertain I felt. "What is all this? Why am I here?"

She smiled gently. "Don't worry. All appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, you're in one of the last sane places on Earth. And you're here because we need you." She slipped by me into the turret, settling into the seat on the big rail gun. "Just keep going forward— you'll know the right door when you see it."

Eli Kuperman turned, his face all business. "The first of them are moving in fast, Larissa."

Larissa gripped two hand controls in front of her seat. "Better get going, Doctor," she called to me with another smile. "I'd hate to take your head off so early in our — acquaintance."

She tilted the controls to the left, and suddenly the entire floor of the turret began to rotate; in seconds it would close off the hatchway in which I was standing. I scrambled below, landing on the corridor floor with a jarring bump. Then I pushed on forward, past more wood paneling, more paintings, and more doorways, until I arrived at a portal that I took to be the one of which Larissa had spoken, as it was more elaborate than the rest and bore a legend painted in elegant gold and black:

I ran through the medical Latin I'd learned years before, but to no avail; and so I was left with nothing to do but head on in and meet my host, a prospect that I found not a little daunting. Given the vessel I was in, the sister I had met, and the actions for which I knew he was responsible, I calculated that this Malcolm Tressalian — and again there was something very familiar about the name — must be an intimidating, perhaps overpowering, character, both physically and personally. But the encounter was now inevitable, and so I resignedly knocked on the door and stepped inside.

The nose of the vessel was a conical superstructure sheathed entirely in the same transparent material I'd seen in Larissa's turret, and the three levels of the space it housed — an observation dome up top, a helm and guidance center in the middle, and a small conference area below — were connected by bare metallic staircases. In fact, the fittings generally were in the high-tech mode I had originally expected to find on boarding; but coming as it now did on the heels of the rather anachronistic decor outside, the style was unexpected and even jarring.

The doorway through which I'd come was to the rear of the nose's control level. Though there was little to see by, I could tell that there were two men sitting before the guidance panel, and beyond them the decaying malls and decrepit housing developments of suburban Florida spread out before us. I began to move forward with trepidation; and then the man on the left spoke, cheerfully enough but without facing me:

"Dr. Wolfe! Excellent, you managed to escape Larissa — which is far more, I suspect, than our pursuers will do."

And then he turned, or rather the entire seat he occupied did: for it was in fact a wheelchair, one that even in the near darkness I could see contained not the formidable physical specimen I'd anticipated but a frail, somewhat pitiable form that did not seem to match the vibrant voice it produced.

"I suppose I should offer you some melodramatic welcome," the voice continued in the same amiable tone. "But we're neither of us the type, eh? No, I suspect that what you'd really like is some answers."