The Fellowship of the Hand (17 page)

“Agreed,” Ambrose said. “But I’m not convinced”

He was interrupted by a loud buzzing from the console. “Emergency alarm,” Blunt told them. “The water level may have reached the main entrance. If so, we’ll have to evacuate.”

He flipped on a closed-circuit video screen which showed the lake bed under water. But it was something beyond the water that glued their attention. Two rocketcopters stood at the edge of the lake, disgorging a score of armed men.

“My God!” Ambrose exclaimed. “Who are they? Government troops?”

Crader squinted at the screen. “Do you have a zoom lens?”

Blunt twisted a knob on the console and the running men jumped into sharp focus. Crader recognized Euler Frost and someone who could have been Graham Axman. “HAND,” he said quietly.

“What?”
shouted Blunt, halfway between a gasp and a scream.

“You’re under attack by HAND. They want to blow up your computers.”

“My God!” Stanley Ambrose’s right hand shot beneath his jacket and came out holding a laser gun. “Are you all armed? We have to stop this!”

“Close the entrance,” Crader ordered.

Blunt snapped two switches, and then a third. “I can’t! The water has reached the controls!”

“We must have them outnumbered,” Ambrose said, regaining his composure a bit but still keeping the laser in his hand. “We have two hundred men and women down here.”

“But HAND is armed.” Crader pointed to the screen. “That black man is carrying hydrobombs, just for a start.”

“What’ll we do?” Blunt asked.

In that moment, Crader ceased to think of them as revolutionaries. They were merely frightened businessmen who saw their major investment in jeopardy. “Get out there and hold them off! I’ll contact Washington.”

Blunt and Ambrose ran for help, with Stevro following, but Masha stayed at his side. “Will they kill us all?” she wanted to know.

“Not if we’re lucky. They’re after the machines.”

He couldn’t find an open circuit to the New White House, so he punched up New York, hoping that Earl was in the office early this morning. The vision-phone screen crackled and swam, finally settling down to show Judy at her desk.

“Judy, is Earl in? Emergency!”

“He’s here. Wait till you hear what happened down in Lexington!”

“No time now, Judy. Switch me.”

“Right.”

Earl Jazine came on the screen. “I just finished checking out those former Nova employ——”

“We’re under attack, Earl. HAND is attacking the Utah complex. Get help here!”

The screen went blank, and Crader didn’t know if Earl had hung up or some relay point had been cut. He only hoped the message had gotten through.

“Come on,” he told Masha.

“Where?”

A dull, booming thud reached them, shaking the room and bringing terror to her eyes. Before she could speak, he said, “That was a hydrobomb. They must be inside. Is there a back way out of here?”

Jason Blunt appeared at the door, his eyes terror-stricken. “They’re blowing up the place!”

“Are they inside?”

“A few of them. We’re fighting them at the entrance, and they haven’t gotten down the elevators yet.”

“I’d suggest getting your wife out of here. Is there an emergency exit of some sort?”

“There is one,” he confirmed, “but it only leads up to the desert. She wouldn’t be safe there with these HAND people prowling around. I could get you down to the far end of our complex, though, near that exit. If HAND breaks through, you’d be close enough to escape.”

“Good. I called for help before the vision-phones went out, but I don’t know if my message got through.”

Blunt ran to the console and confirmed that outside communications were cut off. “I’ll have somebody guide you,” he said. “As you know, Crader, it’s very easy to get lost down here.” He spoke over an intercom system to some unseen person. “Vikor, I’m sending some people down to you. Take them to zone seven and wait there with them.”

At that moment Stevro reappeared from somewhere, his chest heaving with the strain of some unaccustomed exertion. “They’ve got lasers and stunners! And bombs! They want to kill us all!”

“No,” Crader said. “Not us—only the machines.”

Blunt saw at once that the big Turk would contribute little to their defense. “You’d better go with Masha and Crader,” he said. “Out that door and down the passage to the end. Vikor will be waiting there to take you the rest of the way. Zone seven should be safe, since it’s beyond the machine areas, back in the living quarters. They won’t bother to come that far. And if they do, Vikor will show you the escape hatch. Trust him. He’s a good man—one of our best technicians.”

A series of dull thuds reached them, like the concussions of distant bombs. “Let’s go,” Crader ordered.

Jason Blunt put a hand on his arm. “One thing—you know some of those people. Could you talk to them? Stop them?”

Crader shook his head. “I’ve called for help. That’s all I can do.” He knew that Frost and Axman would not be turned aside now.

“All right. I just think of all this equipment, all my computers …” He sighed at the thought. “Go now, down this corridor to the end. Vikor is waiting.”

His office door slid shut behind them, and Crader led the way quickly down a long passageway lit by a radiant stripe along the ceiling. Behind them there were more dull thuds, not as loud as the first hydro-bomb had been. “What are those?” Masha asked.

“Both sides are using stunners. In a confined space, the concussion from a stunner makes a noise like that. That’s the least of our worries. When it gets too quiet it may mean they’re using laser guns.”

“They’ll kill my husband,” Masha said without emotion, making it a simple statement of fact.

“He may be lucky. They just want the machines.”

Panting to keep up with them, Stevro said, “If he dies you can come back with me, Masha dear.”

“What? To be sold again?” Her anger flared briefly.

“No, no. I am out of that business.”

“Sure! Now you only try to shake down millionaires like Jason with your sad bits of information.”

“I thought I was doing him a favor.”

“By telling him only part of the truth? By turning him against Stanley Ambrose?”

Crader could see the end of the corridor, where it intersected another, wider passageway. A man waited there in the shadows for them, his right profile showing smooth, nondescript features.

“Are you Vikor?”

“Yes. Come this way. Quickly!”

He led them to the right, down the wider passageway, to an area Crader had missed on his first visit. There were sleeping quarters for the technicians, and even small apartments for those who lived here with their families. In some rooms as they passed he could see the artificial sunlight bathing the sparse furnishings in a sort of golden glow.

A woman came out of one of the rooms and asked, “Are we in danger?”

“No,” Vikor told her. “Go back inside and slide the door shut.”

“How many are there here?” Crader asked.

Walking slightly ahead and to his left, Vikor merely grunted. He did not seem willing to give out any unnecessary information.

Presently they reached a widening in the passage, apparently designed as an underground recreation area. There was plastic grass in an odd shade of emerald green, and picnic tables clustered around a little stream. Artificial sunlight made it almost as bright as outdoors.

“Sit down,” Vikor instructed them, motioning toward the tables. “We will wait here.”

“The exit is nearby?” Crader asked.

Vikor nodded. “Nearby.” He gestured toward a spiral stairway.

“Will we be safe here?” Masha asked.

“You will be safe as long as you stay with me,” Vikor said. “I will take care of you.”

He turned to face Masha as he spoke, and for the first time Crader saw the odd tattooed design on his left cheek.

A
T THE BEGINNING THE
attack went well.

Running along behind Euler Frost, carrying his laser rifle, Axman felt the old surge that impending combat always brought him. He had decided back on the farm that there was no point in opposing Frost openly for control of HAND. It was better to go along with him and attack the Nova complex. Anything could happen then. In the midst of the battle, Frost might even be killed or captured—and then the problem would no longer exist.

The months in prison had changed Axman, as he would have been the first to admit. They had radicalized him, but in a particular way. No longer was he content to smash out at those institutions that would use the machines as a substitute for free will. Now he wanted to smash all institutions, beginning with the government which had imprisoned him.

But there was time.

First, the attack on Nova. Then, later, when he was fully in command again, he could turn his attention to the New White House.

Right now, as the entrance to the underground city loomed up before them, his thoughts were on the battle of the moment. He could see that the level of the lake water had reached the lowest of the air intakes, which meant there would be some flooding below. And the open entrance was awash with shallow splashing as Euler Frost ran to it. Though the rain itself had stopped, water continued to empty into the lake bed.

“Get that one!” he shouted suddenly to Frost as a head popped up in the opening. Frost fired a quick blast of his stunner and the man toppled back inside. Then they had gained the entrance, jamming the door so it couldn’t be closed.

Frost glanced around, like a general surveying the battleground. “Sam!” he called to Venray. “Get ready with your hydrobombs. Graham—use the laser rifle on that communications relay!”

Axman nodded and sighted along the rifle. It was no more effective, really, than a laser pistol, but its wider beam made cutting jobs go quicker. He squeezed the trigger and watched the beam shoot out to the distant hilltop, slicing through the supports of the relay tower. As the tower toppled over on its side, he released the trigger and followed the others inside. At least no one down below would be using a vision-phone or radio relay.

Below ground they had forced open the doors of the elevator shaft and Venray dropped a hydrobomb inside. There was a thudding boom that seemed to shake the entire earth, filling the upper level with smoke and dust.

“Masks on,” Euler Frost ordered. “We may have to use smoke bombs.”

It was the Federal Medical Center all over again, only this time he wouldn’t be captured. This time it would be Euler Frost who took the fall.

There was a series of dull thuds ahead as someone opened fire with a stunner. Frost had found the stairs by the elevator and started down. Sam Venray glanced over at Axman and said, “Stay close. We’ll need that laser.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Below, when they reached the main level, the sight was staggering. Huge rooms, their walls covered with computers and teleprinters and information retrieval systems. Wires and lights and telescreens. The very latest in cathoid ray equipment. And all bathed in constant light from radiant ceilings.

“I’m impressed,” Axman shouted to Frost over the thud of the stunners.

“Get to work with the laser. Sam, plant your hydrobombs.”

But it was not to be quite that easy. Ahead, counterattacking through the smoke and haze, came a score of armed technicians. Some carried stunners, and at least one had an old-fashioned bullet-firing revolver. There was a single shot from it and the man on Axman’s right screamed and toppled backwards, grabbing at his chest.

Sam Venray cursed and went down on one knee, hurling a hydrobomb like a hand grenade at the nearest machine. There was a fiery blast as the bomb went off, then a shower of sparks from the electrical fire.

“Smoke bombs!” Frost shouted, seeing another of his men topple before the counterattack.

In the instant before the smoke closed in, Axman aimed his laser rifle and cut through the stomach of the man with the revolver.

“Don’t kill unless necessary,” Frost yelled at him and turned away.

“That was necessary.”

He shifted the laser ever so slightly, targeting Euler Frost’s back in the sights. Then the smoke closed in and he lost him.

“This way,” Sam Venray said after a moment, reaching out to guide him, and Axman wondered if the black man had X-ray eyes that penetrated the smoke. Then he realized that some of the HAND people were wearing night-goggles, and he wished he’d brought a pair himself.

Venray finished attaching hydrobombs to each of the computer banks and then pulled Axman along down a corridor that led deeper into the underground city. Frost already stood before a locked metal door marked
EXECUTIVE OFFICES
.

“Use the laser,” he ordered Axman. “I think they’re inside.”

The beam cut quickly through the metal, circling the locking mechanism until it fell away. Then Axman used the barrel of the rifle to slide the door open.

It was a massive office, with white foam chairs and a large desk console at one end. There were two men inside, both holding laser pistols. When Axman saw them, he started to swing his own rifle around, but the man with the short black beard fired first, slicing the barrel of his weapon.

“Those rifles make an easy target,” he said calmly. “Stand where you are.”

Euler Frost stepped forward. “You must be Jason Blunt. We meet at last.”

“Frost?”

“Yes.” He turned to the other, a slim, pale man, and said, “Stanley Ambrose, I presume. We never had the pleasure of meeting during my stay on Venus.”

Ambrose bowed slightly, his grip steady on the laser pistol in his right fist. “You presume correctly. And this is my first meeting with the forces of HAND.”

“And your last,” Euler Frost said. “We’ll give you an opportunity to clear everyone out of here before we blow it all up.”

“But we seem to have the lasers,” Ambrose pointed out, gesturing to include Jason Blunt at his side.

“My men have wired hydrobombs to all your machines. If you kill us they’ll be detonated by radio waves and this whole place will go up—or down, as the case may be.” He let his eyes travel to the radiant ceiling.