Chapter Six - A Short Walk
The doors yawned open revealing empty red edged blackness.
A vacant place.
Deserted, dark, dreary,
Cold as space.
Breen's synthesisers wailed like banshees in his mind, screaming like the winds of Hell.
But the winds couldn't scream, there was no sound in space. And they couldn't be seen. It looked so calm and peaceful out there, there was no sign of the violent forces that waited to snatch at him.
Graeme Dezlin smiled as he tore the brightly coloured packet into ragged strips. Effortlessly he crushed them between his long fingers into tiny balls. Then he contemptuously cast them into the tall, dreggy beer glass. They lay there, pathetic on the sediment soaked bottom, twisted, broken, dead.
In the beer glass that was the black hole.
One of the black holes.
Fenton stared into the unyielding darkness. Millions of kilometres away stars and planets glittered. Pandemonium was closer, nestling in the eye of the storm, poised between the lethal currents. Graeme had calculated their effects but he hadn't been able to explain them. He'd reduced them to equations so insane the laws of physics would have to be rewritten, unless the source of those deviations wasn't natural: his alien artefact.
Aliens. He'd tried to come up with a rational explanation for all this, speculating about murderers or SSD conspiracies but now on the brink of infinity Graeme's fantasies suddenly seemed plausible.
'Think of it as a puzzle, an intelligence test. ''You're bright kids. You've made it this far into space. But are you smart enough? You've found our door but can you get close enough to knock? Or can you open it yourselves and come in and shake us by the hand.'' Or tentacles,' Dezlin laughed, '''or share our thoughts,''' he whispered in hoarse excitement. 'Just imagine if Hell was the gateway between the dimensions, after aeons in the nursery mankind's finally allowed to come and play with the big boys, if we can just open that door.'
Perhaps Graeme had opened his door and found his aliens. His Chinese box had turned out to be Pandora's: the benevolent gods he'd been looking for had been vindictive daemons. That was what had killed him. That was what was waiting for them.
He was terrified.
Beyond the hatch there was a sudden burst of jagged white light. Then it was dark again.
He was shivering. His heartbeat was too fast. His breathing, ricocheting around the empty helmet was accelerating, changing to a ragged pant. Fear coiled in his intestines.
Brozmam slowly turned then confidently launched himself off the floor, soaring gracefully into the cage, drifting up through the red light to its latticed ceiling. Noiselessly he caught a girder. He pulled himself along, swinging from bar to bar like an ape in soundless slow motion, the hungry hatch gaping beneath his dangling feet. Fenton watched, appalled. He was almost at the end when he kicked up with his right leg. His boot made silent contact with the skeletal wall and stuck. He lifted his other leg, simultaneously releasing his grip. His body tumbled backwards as his foot rose and connected with the side. He hung there, floating horizontally, anchored by his boots to the vertical scaffolding, his body parallel to the open hatch.
He started a swaggering walk up the wall.
Fenton gaped in amazement. Reaching the curved edge he walked onto the ceiling. He was facing Fenton and Javer, hanging upside down like a bat. He turned round slowly until he was facing the wall. He reached out. Pulling on the rungs he swarmed headfirst down it like a monstrous cockroach, crawling to the black pool at the bottom. Then he was out into the darkness.
Fenton was dumbstruck. They couldn't expect him to do that. He'd be ill. He glanced at the bulbous red black insect that was Javer. He was gesturing with the Thoron blaster. They did. He shook his head. He was so tired. Javer's waving was insistent. His panting was getting faster.
'PANIC SYMPTOMS APPROACHING DANGER LEVELS - INJECTING TRANQUILLISERS'
He felt a stab of pain at the base of his neck as a needle penetrated. He was furious; they'd planned to sedate him all along. Then he realised it was an automatic response. The suit was just doing its job, keeping him alive. The drugs hit instantly. His fear subsided. He knew he should be petrified but a warm euphoria seeped through him. He kicked out, rising to the ceiling of the cage. He stretched out his arms, opening his fingers to grasp the bars.
He missed.
His metallic digits failed to connect. He bounced off the ceiling. He was floating down, feet first, accelerating in the frictionless vacuum towards the open hatch, the gateway to Hell. The drugs had made him strangely calm, his breathing distant but normal. His arms flailed out to grab at something but it was no good, he missed the side by millimetres. Rungs were flashing past his head. He was almost at the bottom! He made one last desperate lunge. He was flung backwards by the sudden movement. His torso slammed into a wall. He lashed out. He was still moving, tumbling downwards. The rungs ended and he could see nothing but blackness. It was over. He was outside.
With a sudden jerk he stopped. Looking up in surprise he saw his metal hand clamped round the last rung. He'd grabbed it! With a whoop of joy he swung his other arm up and seized the ladder. He felt his legs floating up as he hauled himself in.
But something was stopping him. Something was pulling him back. He'd slipped out too far, the currents had got him. No, he could feel pressure on his ankle. Something had got hold of him. He looked down. He could barely make anything out through the red edged haze. Then he saw it. There was a hooked pincer wrapped round his leg. It belonged to the creature beneath him. It was staring up at him with its empty face and sightless eyes. It was dragging him down.
It was Brozmam.
He was standing on the ship's underside, at one hundred and eighty degrees to Fenton. His free hand was opening and closing furiously. Fenton got the message. Reluctantly he let go. Brozmam yanked him out of the ship then abruptly released him, sentencing him to Hell. He was drifting helplessly away but then Brozmam roughly seized him, spun him round and slammed him down on the ship's hull.
For a second he stood there, his head level with Brozmam's. Then he dropped to his hands and knees, bowing his head, averting his eyes from the emptiness around them.
'MAGNETIC KNEE PADS ENGAGED'
Cautiously he looked up to see Javer's smooth oval helmet appearing out of the hatch. He crawled lithely out on all fours, a predator gaining ground on its fleeing prey. He stood, towering over the prone Fenton. He waved his claw up, ordering the cowering Fenton to rise.
He didn't want to. He wanted to fling himself down onto his stomach, close his eyes and clutch the ground, anchoring himself to its glassy surface. But there was nothing to hold onto, it curved and snaked away. The horizon, the edge of the world, was just metres from him. And Javer had the Thoron gun. Slowly he stood.
Javer motioned with his claws. He wanted him to back up. Fenton obeyed, his mind oppressed by the screaming silent vacancy embracing him to infinity. He wasn't there anymore. He was no longer Mark Fenton: he was just a single conscious cell futilely firing, lost in the maze of neurons that had been his mind. He was just a hollow, empty spacesuit where dry, parched breath echoed.
My world's without you.
It yawns incomplete.
Empty and lonely,
A vacant place.
Deserted, dark, dreary,
Cold as space.
Javer and Brozmam had assumed positions either side of him.
There was another searing flash of lightning.
'SWITCHING TO REMOTE CONTROL – PLEASE RELAX'
The arms of his suit moved stiffly, dragging his with them. He resisted. It stopped.
'REPEAT - PLEASE RELAX - REMOTE CONTROL'
The arms moved again. He remembered Brozmam's warning. He forced himself to be calm. They crossed over the thorax, claws folding in, fists parking in the shoulders. The two agents had assumed the same stance.
'DEACTIVATING MAGNETIC SOLES - ENGAGING TRANSIT JETS'
They were about to blast off. He couldn't even clench his fists in fear, his fingers were locked in position. The suit was a coffin. Claustrophobia packed his mind. But then the jets fired and he was soaring off into space and it was the fear of that empty ocean that filled his thoughts.
But it wasn't empty. The currents buffeted him. He was pitched to the left, the right, spinning helplessly. He squeezed his eyes shut, screaming obscenities. They'd missed the path.
The crazy motion continued but he was still alive. This must be it, Graeme's course. It had to be, otherwise he'd be dead by now. He'd stopped shouting and was drawing in breath, gulping oxygen. There was an ominous creaking noise. It was the suit. It was under enormous pressure. Graeme was right, he was being tossed like a pinball. He opened his eyes. Unbelievably Brozmam and Javer hovered at either side of him, maintaining the same position. How long would the walk take? He couldn't cope with this for long.
Radiation! Thirty minutes maximum Graeme had said. They could be out here for that long. He closed his eyes again. He was swaying wildly. The suit's wailing was getting louder, more acute. He wanted to fling his hands to his ears but they were trapped, only his head was free. He jerked it round the helmet. It could split at any moment. No. The stresses must have been calculated, the visor was strong enough to withstand the pummelling. So long as they stayed on course they would be safe.
Provided the radiation didn't get them.
It was too much. He had to think of something else. His unfinished book. He closed his eyes and forced himself to think.
Month five, day seven of the year seven hundred and eighty nine of the New Calendar, two days after the Great Collapse, when Teel Five's population realised the truth: The System had died and they were on their own. There would be no more supply ships, no more food. Communications were down and the central navigation computer was unreachable. Without the data it provided the encoding satellites it would be impossible to make an interstellar jump. It was the end. Their whole economy was geared to the production of luxuries. There was no agriculture on Teel Five. If The System was re-established the planet would be bottom of the emergency supplies list, and it was out on the edge, en route to nowhere. They would all die.
Month five, day seven, the day Governor Merrius imposed martial law by passing Emergency Order One, dissolving the committees, making himself absolute ruler. It was the start of his survival plan, the absolute rationalisation of the population to ensure the most efficient use of remaining supplies. The day he drew up the death lists detailing the millions of unsupportable lives to be sacrificed for the benefit of those with the skills for survival. Mass murder on a scale unseen before, or survival purges as Merrius had called them. Communities had been torn apart, families splintered, loved ones separated forever.
He hadn't seen her for over three years.
There was a blinding flash, so bright it penetrated his eyelids. His eyes snapped open to see Pandemonium, the size of the model, consumed in a fiery ball of fierce red light, the metal latticework bathed in a lurid halo. It must be exploding. He would be shattered by the shock wave.
He blinked, then felt a wave of heat as the searing light blossomed further, radiating outwards. But Pandemonium was intact. He gasped in relief.
'SUNRISE – COMPENSATING'
The vision compensators shifted shrinking the light's intensity to a tolerable level. A sun had emerged behind Pandemonium revealing it from the darkness that had cloaked it, a crudely sketched disk of criss-crossing black lines, silhouetted against the blazing sun, light beams surging through it. It was growing at an alarming rate as they rushed towards it, their speed now horribly apparent. Their trajectory seemed to have settled down to a straight line. They were flying right into the sun.
And your world's without me.
So full and so bright.
Your presence alone,
Turns my darkness to light.
He had been alone in his room at Gadder. It was the start of his second year, after that disastrous holiday when Culris had forced him to work with him, training him, preparing him to take over when his course finished. He'd been so angry, Alizen and Graeme had gone touring together, the tour they'd all planned to go on before they'd paired off and their little gang had fractured forever. He was stuck in a dull office with his duller guardian. 'Call me Grigor,' Culris said, desperately trying to change from the distant guardian into the affable business partner. He'd got behind on his reading and he was going to have problems this term.
He'd been alone in his room when she'd arrived. Alizen. She was almost crying. His arm was instinctively round her, comforting her, or rather trying to. Graeme had left her and she was devastated. Her tears hurt him, hurt him hard. He hated to see her unhappy, hated to see her grieve for Graeme Dezlin. But deep inside there was a sullen spark of selfish joy, a first ray of misty hope rising then flooding his mind like the light from a sun emerging from a dark planet and flaring into space.
Graeme was a fool.
He half held her, feeling her warm body pressing against his. Her head was buried in his shoulder. He could smell her perfume, the aroma of her golden hair. She'd been hurt and she'd come to him. It was a wonderful, petty victory. Was it the first step? He wanted to embrace her, kiss her, tell her it was alright, he'd look after her, never hurt her, never let her down. He wanted to tell her he loved her, he'd loved her desperately for the last ten months. She'd filled his thoughts. The holiday had been empty without her. He'd been jealous of Graeme and so angry: angry at him, at her, at himself. Then she was tearing herself away and running for the door and he realised he'd said it all. He called after her but it was too late. The door slammed shut. He knew he mustn't follow. He was left alone in his solitary room in the rippling darkness of his despair.
Pandemonium had loomed up before them, its edges vanishing, its bulk blotting out the sun beyond it. Only the twisted shafts of light lancing through the gaps in the structure were visible, shooting into space like searchlights. They strafed them illuminating Brozmam and Javer in brilliant subliminal flashes of light. They hung there apparently unmoving. Then the light passed and they burst back into blackness.
Dark, dark, throughout the night.
Dark, dark, without the light.
Dreams of light burn away.
Intellectual shadows
Scar my day.
The surface details of the station were now clearly visible, becoming more intricate at a horrifying rate. He was glad he hadn't realised they were going so fast before. He wished he didn't know now. They would never pull up in time. He screamed as he hurtled closer, his voice deafening in the confined space. The girder work grew, every dark metal beam now clearly visible, each one widening and stretching, far too quickly. They were going to hit. Any second now....
With a flurry of white vapour the suit's front jets cut in, belching out streams of air. Fenton hurtled into the cloud. All he could see was the readout uselessly telling him the braking jets had engaged. He was decelerating rapidly. It couldn't be fast enough. He would be dashed to pieces.
The mist dispersed, lost in the void like a raindrop in an ocean.
He was hanging dead still, a metre and a half above the darkened crust of Pandemonium. The red tinge had returned now he was out of the light again. Brozmam and Javer floated at either side, maintaining position. He breathed heavily, shaking his head in wonder that he was alive. The helmet failed to follow. He was still on remote control, the suit still a prison. He could feel claustrophobia closing in on him again. But at least they were out of the storm. Were they under the cover of Pandemonium's protective shields?
With a whirr his helmet cranked up. He craned his neck and he was looking across the station's superstructure. It curved dizzyingly away into the distance, punctuated spasmodically by blazing pillars of sunlight shooting from the ground. They were surging up through the bottomless chasms that riddled the station, crossing and connecting deep inside Pandemonium's labyrinthine intestines. There was no
entry here. The surface was a colossal mantrap and they'd have to cross it. He shivered at the thought, imagining himself stumbling into one of those shafts, tumbling down it until Pandemonium ended and he was spewed back out into Hell.
'ENGAGING JETS'
They kicked in and he was hurtling along, hugging Pandemonium's surface. Details flashed by beneath him, a thick light ray, a bank of instruments, a darkened observation window, all blurring into each other. The vision circuits frantically re-compensated to the wavering light. A small antenna protruded from the ground ahead of him. He screamed as the suit reared up, skating over it before plunging down again on the other side. A mast loomed out of the darkness. The suit swerved round it. In the distance the corona on the horizon was thickening, the subdued red tinge changing back to a brilliant white glare. They were about to emerge from Pandemonium's dark side and into the sunlight.
Everything flared up. The ground around him burned with searing white light, his grotesque inky black shadow beneath him the only relief. They were flying over blazing fields of solar panels. He was baking inside the suit, perspiration streaming down his face, the fetid smell nauseating. He blinked sweat away. There was something ahead, shimmering in the white haze. For a moment he thought it was a mirage but as he raced nearer it solidified. It was a flaming mirrored mushroom blooming from the fiery ground.
The heat was unbearable; he was going to pass out.
They were almost there. It was a dome, or rather a curved solar panel raised on spindly metal arms forming a canopy, an oasis of shade in the scorching desert. Gouts of white braking vapour spurted out in front, the mushroom tilted then vanished as the supporting bars rushed to meet him. At the last moment they swerved out of his way and he was inside, floating in the shade.
He panted, a crazy combination of relief, exhaustion and heat. Brozmam and Javer were still either side of him, unmoving, arms crossed. They were all face down, horizontal to the ground below, parallel with the roof above them. By its shadow the ceiling was a circle with a ten-metre diameter. Beyond it were flaming seas of fire, kilometres of white-hot solar panels stretching off into the distance.
His helmet cranked back, accompanied by the hum. In this unearthly, ghastly silence any noise, no matter how trivial, was welcome.
Javer was gently spinning, his feet rising to the canopy above them, his head tilting down to the surface. Fenton strained to see into the shadows below. It wasn't solid at all. They were hanging over a gloomy tunnel. It was impossible to make out its depth. The brilliant shining mirrors around them were interfering with the vision compensators. They were locked on their most extreme setting to filter out the glare, stopping the infrared from functioning.
There had to be an airlock down there. He was floating over an opening that probably twisted its way right through to Pandemonium's dark side. He swallowed nervously. But they weren't going all the way through. They were going to enter. He breathed a sigh of relief. The sigh echoed hollowly away. Danger awaited them inside.
He glanced at Brozmam. He too had rotated. They were both hanging at ninety degrees to him, vertical, poised like daggers. They were going to dive down. So why was he still hovering like this?
They were going to leave him.
'MANEUVERING'
Brozmam was moving headfirst into the gloom, arms uncrossing, reaching out, fingers uncurling, feeling the darkness. He was ascending, moving away from Fenton yet he was descending into the cavernous interior of Pandemonium, down towards its centre. He was being abandoned. He glanced back at Javer in alarm. He wasn't moving, he was staying with him.
Something smashed into his back, knocking the breath from him, his suit ringing with the impact. He was defenceless, he couldn't move. He jerked his head round to see. His helmet was pressed up against a sheet of metal. A few metres away Javer's feet were rooted to it. He blinked in surprise. He'd hit the roof. It had been him and Javer moving backwards not Brozmam going forward. Zero gravity was confusing.
'ALL REAR MAGNETS ENGAGED'
He was prone on his back, arms across his chest like a sarcophagus, glued to the ceiling by all points, a fly bound up in a spider's parlour. Javer's bulbous form was silhouetted against the glare. Fenton struggled to think. It looked like Javer was standing on the ground and he was lying on it but they were both hanging over a chasm, anchored by magnets. Impulsively he looked down.
Inky blackness arced away. Brozmam floated headfirst over it, ready to dive down.
His vision swam and blurred. He snatched his head back in alarm to Javer. He was moving, arms unfurling like a moth's wings, the left swinging down, the Thoron gun rising past his head, pointing up, down into the pit. His knees bent as he assumed a combat stance, ready to fire. Even in the suit the body language was clear: Javer, normally cool and confident was nervous, alert, ready for sudden movements.
They were expecting trouble.
He swallowed nervously. What if the assault didn't come from down there? What if Dezlin's daemons came hurtling at them from the fiery wastes they'd just crossed. He shook his head at his fantasy. There were no daemons. There were no aliens. There never had been in all these thousands of years of exploration and there never would be. Mankind was alone.
A black curtain swished across his vision extinguishing everything.
A flaming, roaring devil's head burst into snarling scarlet flame.
Fenton screamed.
And screamed.
It didn't move. It was static, flat. It was just a design, a logo.
'Graeme!' he screamed, 'you bastard! If you're not dead I'm going to kill you!'
Then he howled with laughter.
'VISUAL REPROGRAMMING COMPLETED - PERIPHERAL VISION ELIMINATED - INTERFERENCE ELIMINATED - VISUAL FIELD NOW NINETY DEGREES -TUNNEL VISION'
The edges of his visor were totally opaque, cutting out the light around him, allowing the compensators to focus on the darkened pit above/beneath him, illuminating it in red haze. He was staring down a steep sided corridor. It wasn't bottomless but it was at least twenty metres deep. He couldn't see the top edges, they were blanked off by his visor, but he could see the end. The devil's head was at the end.
'Pandemonium,' smiled Graeme, 'doesn't just mean uproar and confusion, its literal meaning is place of daemons. Don't you think that's clever, a space station in Hell named after the high capital of Satan and his peers? Appropriate too, Pandemonium floated in a sea of senseless chaos, just like mine will. I thought you'd appreciate it.'
That was what he wanted and the administration had indulged his every whim. He shivered. He just hoped Graeme's sense of humour wouldn't be the death of them. The high capital of Satan and his peers. That must be a quote, something to do with that poet Graeme had been so keen on. Pre New Calendar, pre colonisation. It might even have been before the rocket age, millennia ago. Milvern, or something like that. Graeme's parents had rediscovered him. They'd been cultural historians and had devoted their lives to recovering data lost in the Great Collapse. They'd expected Graeme to follow in their footsteps, keep the faith, not do sciences. He'd wondered if that was what had caused the split.
Culris had wanted him to read business. He had seen no use for history. But then he wouldn't: nasty, subversive subject. Don't think about big issues. Don't speak out against the administration. Just keep your head down and make lots of money.
He rolled his head, trying to spot Brozmam or Javer. He could only see the bottom of the pit. Where were they? He was panicking. Had Javer's vision been adjusted too? He wouldn't be able to see if someone crept up on them. The Thoron gun would be useless. And Javer was his only defence; he could do nothing frozen in the suit. He looked back to the lurid red light, to the daemon.
A dark shape reared up in front of it.
It was Brozmam, travelling headfirst down the corridor, shrinking in size, dwarfed by the leering face at the bottom. Reaching the end he somersaulted with balletic grace landing noiselessly on the devil's head.
Vertigo hurtle
d in. With this new aerial view of Brozmam it was obvious the pit was deeper than he'd guessed. It didn't matter he told himself. It was impossible to fall, there was no gravity. It didn't help. He was sweating. It was almost over. There had to be a door down there. This was the worst it was going to get.
There was a loud shriek, deafening after the long silence. Red letters were flashing before his eyes accompanied by a wailing siren and a soft, impossibly calm voice.
'DANGER - DANGER - IMMINENT DANGER FROM RADIATION - EXTREME BIO-HAZARD – DANGER - CURRENT ESTIMATE OF MEDICAL COMPUTER NINE MINUTES FIFTY FIVE SECONDS - FIFTY FOUR SECONDS - SEVEN PER CENT CHANCE OF DIAGNOSTIC MISCALCULATION - EXTERNAL CONDITIONS INIMICAL TO OPTIMUM COMPUTER PERFORMANCE - SUIT SHIELDS UNDER EXTREME STRESS - BIO-HAZARD - NINE MINUTES AND FORTY SECONDS'
'SHIT!'
He felt the needle at his throat again.
'STRESS SYMPTOMS EXCEEDING DANGER LEVEL'
The siren was still howling.
He was laughing uncontrollably. That must have been some dose of the happy stuff. Beneath him the tiny figure of Brozmam worked away, an instrument glittering in his claw. He was using it on the wall, his languid movements conveying a sense of urgency. His arm moved back releasing the tool. It floated away, drifting towards him, growing as it rolled closer. Screwdriver. A flat panel followed. It fell up, spinning like paper in the wind.
'NINE MINUTES - EIGHT MINUTES AND FIFTY-NINE SECONDS'
Brozmam was now holding a bulbous device. Vacuum welder? Its end vanished into the cavity he'd just opened. There was a pause. Too long. What was he working on? There had to be an airlock down there. He was working on the access circuitry. But wasn't there an open button? He shouldn't need to hotwire it.
'EIGHT MINUTES - SEVEN MINUTES AND FIFTY-NINE SECONDS'
He was immobilising the sensors! They had less than eight minutes and Brozmam was worrying about being detected!
Not enough time. There couldn't be enough time.
Seconds passed, priceless, irrecoverable seconds.
Brozmam pulled his hand away. A flurry of shining metallic fragments spilled out. His hand crawled to his midriff.
'SEVEN MINUTES - SIX MINUTES AND FIFTY-NINE SECONDS'
His ears were ringing from the siren. His head ached. His eyes were stinging from staring into the grainy redness.
Agonisingly slowly Brozmam's claw slipped back into the opening.
'Come on!' Fenton hissed.
It had to be six minutes by now. It had been an eternity since the voice had spoken. He waited in horrid expectation for it.
Nothing.
Brozmam was standing still.
Nothing.
'SIX MINUTES - FIVE MINUTES AND FIFTY-NINE SECONDS' Fenton jumped at the voice.
Brozmam stepped s-1-o-w-l-y back. He raised his right arm, stretching it as far as it would go. Stretching. S-1-o-w-l-y s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g. His claw was just centimetres away from the wall.
Javer rolled into vision, shrinking, spinning, landing by Brozmam on the daemon, crawling black beetles scuttling across a tapestry.
He'd been abandoned.
'FIVE MINUTES - FOUR MINUTES AND FIFTY-NINE SECONDS'
Javer had reassumed his stance, the Thoron gun pointing directly at the door. He was covering Brozmam, ready for an attack from something in the airlock.
The siren screamed and bayed.
A probe emerged from Brozmam's right wrist. It impaled itself in the access panel. His left hand reached for the wall.
Something was happening.
A crack had appeared. It widened.
The airlock door was opening.
'FOUR MINUTES - THREE MINUTES AND FIFTY-NINE SECONDS'
The walls were too steep for Fenton to see inside, there was just a darker patch of red where the wall had been.
They couldn't leave him out here.
Javer's gun arm dropped. The airlock must be empty. Now he would come back for him.
Javer's powerful form disappeared through the doors.
'NOOOOOOOOOOO!' screamed Fenton.
He felt a kick in his back as jets engaged. He was speeding down the tunnel to Brozmam, hurtling towards the hard floor. A spasm of relief jerked through him, he wasn't being left behind. His vision widened again as the devil's head grew, the mouth leering. Any minute now the breaking jets would cut in.
They didn't.
He slammed into the floor, the impact jarring him, knocking the breath from his body, the suit ringing.
'FRONT IMPACT SUSTAINED - SUIT INTEGRITY MAINTAINED - LIFE SUPPORT EFFECTIVE'
The voice cut in again: 'THREE MINUTES - TWO MINUTES AND FIFTY-NINE SECONDS'
He was drifting up again, away from the floor, back up to Hell.
Brozmam snatched him. Effortlessly he rammed him through the opening. He lurched helplessly inside.
Javer stood by the wall, the Thoron arm moving. Centimetres away the surface was splitting. He had moved quickly. He had almost carved out a complete thirty centimetre square.
He was still moving. He smashed into the opposite wall, bounced off it.
Brozmam marched in.
The Thoron gun's work was complete.
Javer's spindly fingers clawed at the crack. The panel popped out, spinning away through the open door.
A maze of circuitry glittered through the gap.
'TWO MINUTES - ONE MINUTE AND FIFTY NINE SECONDS'
'Shut the door!' Fenton croaked, his throat dry. They didn't have time to disable security. He didn't care who knew they were there. What if they shorted something and they couldn't close the door?
He was drifting back to the open hatch.
Javer caught him.
Brozmam was at the wall, the probe extended.
The control panel was dark.
Of course. No power. The arm extended from Brozmam's claw was a power line. He was feeding the airlock with energy from his own suit. Pandemonium must be dead. So, no life support. How long would the suits' oxygen last them? Was there any protection from the radiation inside? What about navigation?
Brozmam's probe moved closer. His other claw reached for the controls.
'ONE MINUTE - FIFTY-NINE SECONDS - FIFTY-EIGHT SECONDS - FIFTY-SEVEN SECONDS'
The klaxon was driving him mad. His breath was short and ragged.
The probe connected.
The panel burst into watery light.
'FIFTY-SIX SECONDS'
Brozmam hit a button in triumph.
'FIFTY-FIVE SECONDS'
Javer was holding him, stopping him from floating out. He wrenched his head round to see the outer door closing.
It wasn't. It was still open. It had refused Brozmam's command.
The siren moaned. The emotionless voice grated on.
'FIFTY-FOUR SECONDS - FIFTY-THREE SECONDS'
Brozmam's finger stabbed at the button. Again and again.
Nothing. Still nothing.
'FIFTY-TWO SECONDS - FIFTY-ONE SECONDS'
Brozmam's emotions were obvious: urgency, anger, frustration, despair. It was almost funny: Brozmam, the man with the gun, impotent.
But it wasn't funny. They were going to die. Here. Now.
'FIFTY SECONDS'
A light winked on.
Fenton's head jerked back to the door.
'FORTY NINE SECONDS'
Bulkheads were emerging from either side, sliding towards each other.
Fenton almost cheered.
They were moving slowly.
Too slowly.
'FORTY-EIGHT SECONDS'
They'd each moved about twelve centimetres. The airlock doorway was two and a half metres across.
'FORTY-SEVEN SECONDS'
A quarter of a metre each. A two metre gap between them.
'FORTY-SIX SECONDS - FORTY-FIVE SECONDS'
Half a metre each. One and a half metres to go.
'FORTY-FOUR SECONDS'
They looked thick. Thick enough? Radiation proof?
'FORTY-THREE SECONDS' One more
metre and they would meet.
'FORTY-TWO SECONDS' They were crawling, sluggishly dragging themselves across the opening.
'FORTY-ONE SECONDS' Half a metre between them.
'FORTY SECONDS' He glanced at Brozmam, his faceless smooth head blank and unreadable. Javer's visor was just as vacant.
'THIRTY-NINE SECONDS'
The edge of the left door vanished behind the right. They hadn't met! They were outer and inner doors sliding past each other.
'THIRTY-EIGHT SECONDS - THIRTY-SEVEN SECONDS'
The compartment wasn't sealed. Radiation was still seeping through.
'THIRTY-SIX SECONDS - THIRTY-FIVE SECONDS'
The doors would have to go all the way across. He gritted his teeth in frustration. He wanted to bang his head against the faceplate.
'THIRTY-FOUR SECONDS'
The door was just half a metre from the end.
'THIRTY-THREE SECONDS'
There was still every chance.
'THIRTY-TWO SECONDS'
'THIRTY-ONE SECONDS'
'THIRTY SECONDS'
'TWENTY-NINE SECONDS'
The inner door hit the frame.
An indicator flashed: AIRLOCK SEALED.
Fenton held his breath.
'TWENTY-EIGHT SECONDS'
He breathed out shallowly. The radiation couldn't still be at danger level. They had to be safe here.
But the countdown continued.
'TWENTY-SEVEN SECONDS'
They were doused in violet light.
'TWENTY-SIX SECONDS'
A display winked hysterically.
DECONTAMINATING
The wailing's pitch altered.
The voice spoke, passionless as ever.
'RADIATION INTENSITY REDUCING'
'TWENTY-FIVE SECONDS'
How long would decontamination take?
'TWENTY-FOUR SECONDS'
'TWENTY-THREE SECONDS'
'TWENTY-TWO SECONDS'
'TWENTY-TWO SECONDS'
Christ. A malfunction. Could he trust any of the data the suit had given him?
'TWENTY-SECONDS'
He must have misheard. He hoped he had.
'NINETEEN SECONDS'
How long?
'EIGHTEEN SECONDS'
'SEVENTEEN SECONDS'
'SIXT-'
The voice broke off.
Silence.
Processor failure?
Suit failure?
A brief moment of eternity.
There was a ringing tone. The voice spoke again:
'CLEARED - TOLERANCE LEVELS ACHIEVED - BIO-HAZARD AVERTED'
The violet light faded as enigmatically as it had appeared. Soft red again.
Fenton drew in a deep wonderful breath of canned, processed air.
They'd made it. They'd escaped from the baleful influence of Hell. They'd locked it out. They were safe inside this cramped compartment.
The wailing had stopped. The voice had died. Silence again. Wonderful, peaceful, pure silence.
Unearthly, eerie, empty silence.
They were on the brink of Pandemonium.
Part Two - Deadly Revelations