The Silent War

BRUSHFIRE

Fuchs backed slowly along the brick path, a nearly spent laser pistol in each hand, his eyes reflecting the lurid flames spreading across the wide garden that filled the grotto. Burn! he exulted. Let everything burn. His garden. His house. And Humphries himself. Let the fire burn him to death, let him roast in his own hell.

Coughing, he finally turned and sprinted heavily up the path toward the airlock hatch that they had come in through. The others were already there; Nodon was even standing on his own feet, although he looked pale, shaky.

Fuchs was panting as he came up to them. “Hard … to breathe,” he gasped.

Amarjagal wasted no time on the obvious. “The airlock is sealed. The emergency code doesn’t work.”

Fuchs stared at her flat, normally emotionless face. Now she was staring back at him, cold accusation in her eyes.

Sanja said, “The fire … it’s eating up the oxygen.”

“Get the airlock open!” Fuchs commanded. “Nodon, try all the emergency codes.”

“I have,” Nodon said, almost wailing. “No use … no use…”

Fuchs leaned his back against the heavy steel hatch and slid down onto his rump, suddenly exhausted. Most of the garden was ablaze now, roaring with flames that crawled up the trees and spread across the flowering bushes, burning, destroying everything as they advanced. Gray smoke billowed up and slithered along the rough rock ceiling as if trying to find an opening, the slightest pore, a way to escape the inferno of this death trap.

Humphries was coldly logical now. The closet in his bedroom was built to serve as an emergency airlock. There was even a space suit stashed in there, although Humphries had never put it on. The Earthbound architect who had designed the mansion had been rather amused that Humphries insisted on such precautions, but the knowing smirk on his face disappeared when Humphries bought out his firm, fired him, and sent him packing back to Earth.

The mansion had been completed by others, and the emergency airlock built to the tightest possible specifications.

Knowing that there were two extra tanks of breathable air in there, Humphries headed for his closet.

“What are you doing?” Ferrer screamed at him. “We’ve got to get out!”

“You get yourself out,” he said icily, remembering the slap she had given him. “I’ll stay here until this all blows over.”

He slid open the door to his closet. All that Ferrer could see was a row of clothing neatly arrayed on hangers.

“What’ve you got in there?” she demanded from the other side of the bedroom. She no longer looked smoothly sultry, enticing. Her dark hair was a disheveled tumble, her white robe rumpled, hanging half open. She seemed frightened, confused, far from alluring.

“Enough air to last for a day or more,” he said, smiling at her.

“Oh thank god!” she said, rushing toward the closet.

Humphries touched the stud set in the closet’s interior door frame and an airtight panel slid quickly shut. He saw the shocked surprise on her face just before the panel shot home and closed her off from his view.

He heard her banging on the steel panel. “Martin! Open the door! Let me in!”

He walked back deeper into his closet, trying to shut out her yammering. Pushing a row of slacks aside he saw the space suit standing against the closet’s back wall like a medieval suit of armor.

“Martin! Please! Let me in!”

“So you can slap me again?” he muttered. “Go fry.”

The chief of the emergency crew nearly dropped his handheld when he recognized who was coming up the corridor toward them.

“Mr. Stavenger!”

“Hello … Pete,” Stavenger said, after a quick glance at the crew chief’s nametag. “What’s the situation here?”

Stavenger could see that a team of three men and four women were assembling a portable airlock and sealing it over the hatch that opened onto the grotto. The crew chief said as much.

“How long will this take?” Stavenger asked.

“Another ten minutes. Maybe twelve.”

“Once it’s ready, how many people can you take through it at one time?”

The crew chief shook his head. “It’s only big enough for two.”

“There are at least thirty people in there,” Stavenger said. “They’re running out of oxygen pretty quickly.”

“We got another crew working on the water lines. If we can get the sprinklers working we oughtta be able to put the fire out pretty quick.”

“But those people need air to breathe.”

“I know,” said the crew chief. “I know.”

Fuchs saw dark-clad figures stumbling up the path, coughing, staggering. He scrambled to his feet and picked up one of the nearly spent pistols.

“Stop where you are!” he shouted, coughing himself.

The closest man tossed his pistol into the bushes. “Let us out!” he yelled. “The fire…”

The others behind him also threw their guns away. They all lurched toward Fuchs, coughing, rubbing at their eyes. Behind them the flames inched across the flowers and grass, climbed nimbly up the trunk of a tree. Its crown of leaves burst into flame.

“The hatch is locked,” Fuchs told them. “We’re all trapped in here.”

The security guards didn’t believe him. Their leader rushed to the hatch, tapped frantically at the keyboard panel.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he growled. “Of all the sonofabitch fuck-ups…”

“It’s automatic, I imagine,” said Fuchs, resignedly. “Nothing we can do about it.”

The security guard stared at him. “But they should have emergency teams. Something—”

At that moment a voice rumbled through the heavy hatch, “This is Selene emergency services. Is anybody there? Rap on the hatch.”

Fuchs almost leaped with sudden joy and hope. He banged the butt of his pistol against the steel hatch.

“Okay. We’re setting up an airlock. Once it’s ready we’ll be able to start taking you out. How many of you are there?”

Fuchs counted swiftly and then rapped on the hatch eleven times, thinking, We might live through this after all. We might get out of this alive.