The Price of the Phoenix

CHAPTER IX

The Commander took her Kirk’s face in her hands as if she could soothe his cheeks, which bore white imprints of hands. Had her hands done that? She had thought she had been gentle enough even for a Human. This Human.

Where had he been?

He was here now. Trembling, but here.

The door,” she repeated, turning his face to it, away from the screen, averting her own eyes. There was work to do. “Jim—?” she said tentatively.

“Call me—James,” he said distantly. And then brought his eyes into focus on her face. “I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

She started to release him, but the cheeks tightened convulsively under her hands to the sound of a heavy blow. Every muscle in his body—She held him against it.

She felt her eyes widening. She had seen him in glimpses while she worked on the door, seen his helpless rage turn to trancelike absorption, seen the faint movements of body language backing the other’s fight

But he was feeling it in truth, in his own body.

“Are you—able?” she said, shocked.

He set himself with monumental effort, as if drawing on some strength he did not own. There was another slap and he reeled, but caught himself. “I’ll move. Let’s move!”

“Behind me,” she said, leveling the nearly exhausted sidearm and impacting the heel of her boot solidly against the last of the lock to snap it.

She followed the motion of the kick through into the candled room, prepared to fire but finding the candles guttering out in emptiness.

So, the doubled or tripled guard would be out in the corridor. Count on Omne for that. He knew they would try to come.

The last remnants of the weapon’s charge which she had saved might or might not get them through the first contingent—might get them no more than a dozen yards.

She saw no chance, in fact, of reaching Kirk.

But she could not tell this one that he could not try.

“Crawling with guards,” the Human said quietly.

She nodded.

This door, she had noted, did not lock. It opened out, in fact, in the antique fashion which Omne maintained throughout much of the place.

She turned the knob silently and burst out, feeling the door slam into hard flesh.

She mowed the guards down without word or hesitation. The sidearm’s stun effect accounted for four before she cut it off, jammed it in the holster, and went for the two shaken ones behind the door with her feet and the edges of her hands.

It was over before the man behind her could get past her and into the action. She bent and collected two of the ancient guns, jammed them in her belt, indicating one for him. “Useless until we reach him,” she said. “They make too much noise.”

She saw him looking a little stunned, but she turned toward the turbo-lift.

He caught her shoulder. “No turbo-lifts.”

She raised an eyebrow. How would he know?

“Spock,” he said. She nodded and turned him toward the emergency slide-poles and ladder tubes Omne had cheerfully pointed out to her on his guided tour. He had been proud of his miserable maze, confident that it could block any effort to break it. Letting her know that. And now—

A dozen levels down and an unknown horizontal distance through unknown turnings. U-27-E-14.

She kept her hand on the Human’s arm, feeling him fighting against turning his attention inward-winning, but losing at certain moments when he could not suppress the reaction of his body.

She locked her hand into the stretchy velvet tunic and the wide hip-band as she stepped off before him to catch the slide-pole.

For an instant his startled eyes said damn it, he could look out for himself. Then he countered the argument himself and caught the pole a little above her, letting his legs circle her thighs around the pole, and locking one arm around the pole, one around her, until she felt that she had a more secure hold than the thin material—but did not let it go. Was there another Human male in the galaxy who would not have delayed, defending his pride? She kicked her foot out of the stop-stirrup and let them slide.

And in fact he even let her Romulan muscles take the greater share of the strain of braking against gravity in the long slide—a slide designed for Romulan muscles and not for his, though he might have managed it on a normal day. At need, he would have managed it today, if it killed him. But it might have.

She counted the levels mostly by feel and caught the stop-stirrup with her foot, wondering whether it would have broken his ankle. Possibly. The heavier gravity here was more like Romulan or Vulcan, too, not meant for his fragile strength.

But he was quick and active in swinging off onto the level and he caught her hand and pulled her up and after him.

She let him set the direction. It was as good as any other. The tour had showed her that the doors appeared to be numbered normally, but in fact were numbered by no system known to man—or mathematics. Forty-seven unblushingly followed eighty-three and led to 16-C. As far as she could tell, only the level numbers counted and made sense.

It was an astute security system, really. A man who had business there would memorize the relevant parts of the maze. The rooms could be referred to by number for the turbo-lift, and the computer would select the nearest stop. But with the lifts off, a stranger could spend hours checking every door, even to find a known number.

Hardly a road map.

She had not thought it wise to say so.

That was doubtless one of Omne’s little laughs. He could have removed the number from Kirk’s door if he had not wanted to create, at some point, precisely that hope.

She wondered if Spock had noticed the numbering on his way to the candled room—under that stress. But, yes, almost certainly, with that Vulcan mind. Now the Human must have told Spock the number. Some link—although how they were managing that at a distance she could not fathom. But the Vulcan would have known that the hope was false. Where was Spock now, knowing it?

The Human was just finding it out, turning to her with another look she hoped not to see again.

She nodded with effort and freed her left hand from his to take his arm. Nothing to do but look. He staggered from some blow and she steadied him.

A dark figure rounded a corner in front of them, and her eyes determined that it was not Spock while her gun hand flashed to the sidearm. The guard dropped and the weapon tingled in her hand, signaling emptiness.