The Chaos Weapon (20 page)

“So what do we do, Marshal?” asked Penemue. “On rough considerations of the thermodynamics, it begins to look as if the ultimate catastrophe could be simulated right here in this station.”

“I’ll tell you what we do—we concentrate on getting away from here by any conceivable means. If I’m not here, the blowup predicted by Chaos will have to be provided by some other phenomenon. So the most damage we could do would be to steal a ship with deep-space capability and take it out of the junction into the old universe. There we could let the catastrophe
strike us somewhere in the middle of the Ra invasion fleet.”

“A scheme which appeals to me in toto,” said Penemue. “It does, however, have one drawback—there aren’t any ships available to steal.”

“There’s that provost-craft coming,” said Kasdeya.

“I wonder if that’s true?” Penemue was deep in thought. “If they plan a substitution, there’s no point in sending a provost-craft—there’ll be nothing for them to collect when they arrive. And if the provost-ship does come, perhaps we’re wrong about the substitution.”

“We
can’t
be wrong about the substitution of effects. There’s no other way in which the difference in timing between the marshal’s catastrophe and their own can be explained.”

“So we have a paradox. I think the chicken could explain it.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if Roamer isn’t responsible for it,” said Wildheit. “She can read Chaos in real-time, whereas the Ra need a few megatons of equipment and a long computing time to achieve a fraction of the data she can see at a glance. That gives her the ability to run rings around them if she chooses.”

“Where you leading, Marshal?”

“What if there was to be a substitution—but one not engineered by Zecol but by Roamer herself? What if she’s using both ourselves and the Ra for some purpose of her own?”

“A bit far fetched …”

“Think about it. Ostensibly she struck a bargain with Zecol, in return for which Mayo was to be released from the Federation yoke. But there never was any Federation restraint on Mayo. Their isolation was self-imposed. So what did she have to gain by buying something she didn’t need?”

“I don’t know.” Kasdeya was uneasy. “But I’d be a lot happier in a ship out in deep-space. We’ve none of us got anything to lose now. Substitution or not,
we’re all theoretically dead men. So let’s get on with the problem of finding a way out of here.”

On the assumption that the provost-craft was not a myth, they conceived a daring plan which involved much organization. With the termination of the Chaos tests, the Ra technical crews had returned to routine tasks, and supervision by the guard detail had become more cursory than ever. The plotters therefore effectively had the run of all except the high-security areas of the station; they used this apparent leisure to familiarize themselves with details of the station’s construction and installations, most particularly with the communications area and with the air-lock facilities that connected with the absolute vacuum outside the spherical hull.

It was Penemue who pointed out that the station had been constructed purely as a working environment and that the possibilities of sabotage appeared to have been overlooked by its designers. The structure was divided by vacuum-proof bulkheads into five main areas, but these were segmented in planes in such a manner that a vacuum failure in the central segment, which contained the store and docking facilities, would effectively cut the station in two and deny access to the remaining half to all but men wearing vacuum suits. In the top portion of the station was located the living and recreation rooms for the staff, with the major laboratories beneath; next below came the store and docking segment; with the lower planes having other laboratories and service functions and the communications rooms associated with targeting for the Chaos Weapon.

Kasdeya’s careful count of heads over several duty cycles revealed that there were critical watch-change intervals during the rest period in which less than five men were below the central docking segment as compared to more than a hundred men who were above it. Therefore the destruction of the integrity of the vacuum seals in the docking area at a carefully chosen moment could award the escapees virtual control of nearly
half the station, including the only means of external communication.

There remained the problem of containing the men trapped in the upper half, who would quickly don suits to cross the vacuum-filled sector. This difficulty was solved by Wildheit, who inconspicuously managed to sabotage every suit he could find in the emergency racks by the simple expedient of removing an airline coupling ring from each and putting the collected rings in the waste destructor. A rack of suits in the lower half of the station he left intact for their own use.

Their main problem was one of timing. Since the plan to seize half the station could only be fully effective when operated at particular parts of the duty cycle, they needed advance warning of the coming of the provost-craft or any suitable alternative vessel. There was a reasonable certainty that if they made a move too soon, those trapped in the upper levels of the station would repair or acquire sufficient suits to cross the vacuum barrier or would devise some way of communicating with the other stations, thus ruining the escape attempt.

It was not possible to obtain information on approaching vessels directly from the communications rooms without attracting attention, so the trio had to content themselves with drawing clues from the makeup of the docking teams in the periods immediately preceding the arrival of the infrequent supply vessels. By identifying the speciality of each docking crew member and noting who was called in advance to make up a particular team, it became possible to make a fair prediction of what type of cargo an approaching vessel would discharge. Thus something of the nature of the vessel itself could be deduced.

The last problem was one of arms. Of the few weapons they had detected on the station, all belonged to the guard detail, and were limited gas-projectiles which could maim or kill if fired within the station, but could not endanger the vacuum integrity of the hull. These guns were carried at all times while roving the station, but during quiet
periods they were laid carelessly around the guard duty-cabin. Wildheit and Kasdeya were agreed that as long as no emergency was suspected in advance, they had a fair chance of entering the duty-cabin and seizing a couple of guns before the occupants realized their intention. Here again, timing was critical, and the optimum moment would not necessarily coincide with the watch-change of the rest period or the arrival of a suitable deep-space vessel.

They still had not resolved this timing problem when Penemue reported unusual activity around the docking area. Call signals had been put out for guards to attend the work-party when the next ship came. This was an unusual procedure that suggested that even if the arrival was not the provost-craft itself, it might still be a better escape prospect than one of the routine cargo-transfer vessels. On this basis Wildheit came to the decision to attack regardless of the less than favorable timing.

He and Kasdeya immediately went to tackle the guard. Such was the acceptance of their presence in all parts of the station that the three men in the duty-cabin actually greeted their entry with a gesture of welcome. The first two were unconscious and the third was dead before the actual intent had been recognized. Wildheit picked up a gun and charged through to the adjoining room, firing as he went. He found the room empty, however, which meant that at least three on-duty guards were somewhere on a tour of the station carrying their weapons. This was an unforeseen complication, but there was no time now to change plans. Kasdeya had already seized the remaining two guns and had leaped outside again to cover the entrance. He was ready to sprint away for the next part of the operation.

Meanwhile Penemue had donned a vacuum suit and was making his way through the stores area on the center segment to where an auxiliary space-lock was located. He had previously analyzed the mechanism of the lock and was confident that he could contrive a
false signal that would make the safety interlocks think that a space-transfer tube was clamped to the outside of the lock and safety pressurized. That way the whole system could be opened.

In view of the adverse timing of the move, it was purely fortuitous that the store area was clear of men at that particular time. He swiftly stripped the covers off the control gear, cursing to find unexpected complications that caused him to make a few ill-considered alterations to his original scheme. Then he operated the master control, praying for the lock doors to swing open to the raw vacuum of the junction domain.

Nothing happened. The doors remained obstinately closed. A series of tell-tales on the signal panel, which would be repeated elsewhere in the station, lit up to indicate a whole series of faults in the lock-control mechanism. All these indicators that should have been quiescent were a dead give-away of his tampering. So it was with something approaching desperation that he used the message given by the tell-tale panels themselves to analyze and correct the fault in his logic which had led to the failure of his sabotage attempt.

Then, with the vast whistle and moan of escaping air, the doors opened. Penemue had precious little time to secure himself to prevent being hurled out into the absolute nothingness of junction space. The safety doors leading to the upper and lower segments of the station responded quickly to the pressure drop, and the clangorous sound of alarms faded swiftly as the departing air left nothing to conduct the sound. Penemue then turned toward the main lock, hoping against hope that Wildheit and Kasdeya were hurrying to join him.

The marshal and the Ra renegade, however, were not finding things going entirely their way. The misfortune of the timing had meant that many more men were in the lower segment than had been anticipated. Initially they were unaware of any crisis, and four had been shot down before the screaming alarms which told of Penemue’s success had alerted everyone
to the presence of danger. Unfortunately, the missing guards had actually been on their way to the dock, and these three had comprehended the situation swiftly and came racing back to surprise Wildheit and Kasdeya in the middle of one of the great Chaos laboratory halls.

While Wildheit drew their fire from behind a large cluster of apparatus, Kasdeya desperately climbed one of the mighty cubes of a Chaos insulator and lay silently on top until the three guards ventured into view. Then he dropped all three with incredible aim and rapidity and returned to help Wildheit clear the corridor of several incautiously brave technicians who had decided to bar their way. This carnage was unpleasant, but necessary for survival. But the confrontation consumed precious time which should have been devoted to putting the communications room out of action.

Wildheit therefore decided to risk the fact that premature communication with the approaching vessel might cause later difficulties; he indicated to Kasdeya that they should don vacuum suits and make for the center section without delay. This operation was complicated by the fact that one of the technicians had a weapon of his own and kept them both pinned against an emergency rack until Kasdeya was able to drop him with a sudden spray of gunfire.

From that point on they met no further resistance. Vacuum-suited, they arrived at a segment door only to find it had no air-lock and therefore could not be opened against a vacuum. The next position, however, did have an air-lock facility, and they were through at last into the docking segment where Penemue was anxiously awaiting their arrival.

PENEMUE had already
managed to disconnect the main lighting at the power infeed, so the only illumination was now the low-level of the emergency supply. Wildheit decided that even this was brighter than what suited his plan, so with a metal rod he smashed away three more of the illuminating strips around the main space-lock entrance. By this time the tell-tales around the lock were signaling the anticipated arrival of a vessel. Nothing, however, in the call array, apart from an illuminated request for a guard detail, gave any hint of what type of vessel was closing to the station. Nor were any further clues provided as the array indicated the seeking and attachment of a space-transfer tube to the outside of the lock.

This was the most critical moment of the whole escape operation, and a great deal depended on whether or not the crew of the docked vessel had already been alerted to the crisis within the station. Wildheit decided to assume the worst, and they acted as if the lock would open to permit the egress of men both alerted and armed. In this decision he was right, because the doors opened on six armed men vacuum-suited in the yellow of the Ra provost-units, seeking instant trouble.

They found the trouble they were seeking, but not in the way that they had hoped. The provost-men searched the darkened dock area warily; but, finding no sign of the would-be escapees, they moved on toward the stores section. Their leader jacked his suit plug into a wall-communicator point and spoke to someone in the air-filled part of the station. It was at this point that what they had mistakenly assumed to be a set of vacuum suits on an emergency rack, inflated by expansion
of residual air against the vacuum of the dock, suddenly came to life behind them. The gas-propelled projectiles they fired did not need to be too accurately aimed, because the suits worn by the provost-men were not armored. The vacuum soon completed any death-dealing the six bullets left unfinished.

Kasdeya jacked his suit phone into the communicator which the fallen provost leader had previously used, and he spoke rapidly. “We have the renegades, but we also have casualties. Therefore we must return instantly into the ship. Please relay this information to our control.”

He then followed over to the spot where Wildheit and Penemue had taken possession of some electron carbines dropped by the fallen men. After examination, they acquired three of these in addition to the gas guns they already possessed. Thus armed they entered the lock, leaving what they hoped was adequate time for Kasdeya’s message to be relayed to the ship outside. An entry was expected, and the lock was cycled externally to permit them to pass into the pressurized space-transfer tube. There, two more yellow-suited men were waiting, but without drawn arms. Both fell before the unexpected fire of the electron carbines as the lock door opened.