Boundary 2: Threshold (21 page)

"Helen? Answer me, please!" She was tempted to try to answer, but she suspected the result would be painful. Whatever these people were up to, they were serious.

Modofori fiddled with his radio. "Nothing on our frequencies. Don't know which one she's on."

A.J.'s tone changed, this time to the sharp, wiseass tone that preceded a truly heroic temper tantrum. "Modofori, Zaent, Salczyck, if you are there, better answer this, or you're not going to like it."

At their names the odd trio had stumbled, bumping into each other and jostling Helen. Something just brushed her nose, and she almost screamed in pain.

"Damn." Modofori grabbed the communicator. "What is it?"

She could just make out A.J.'s face on the little screen. "We know what you were up to, guys. Now it's over. Head to the main lounge and give yourselves up."

"I don't think so." Modofori looked like he was thinking furiously. "I'll call you back when
I
am ready to talk to you. And in the meantime, you remember whose communicator you were calling on. And stay quiet." He pointed the communicator camera in Helen's direction. "See? Now, I'll call back on this communicator when I'm ready. And if you play along, I think everyone can come out of this okay. If not . . ."

"I understand." A.J.'s voice was as cold as she had ever heard it.

"Good." Modofori switched the communicator to off, using the hard-off switch. And pulled the power cell for good measure. "There." He glanced at the others. "Let's move."

"I'm getting a very weak response from Joe's comm, mates."

"Thank God. His suit wasn't destroyed, then." Madeline allowed herself to feel a little hope.

"Apparently not. Whatever hit, though, did one scary lot of damage." Bruce's voice was grim. "Scattered debris over miles and miles in this low gravity." His tone shifted. "Okay, Maddie, we'll be landin' soon enough. Then we drop Jackie off at the site so she can assess the damage, and we can search for Joe."

"Thank you, Bruce." It occurred to her suddenly that she hadn't heard from A.J. in quite some time. "A.J., are you there?"

There was no answer for a moment, and she began to really worry. Then his voice came back, sounding oddly flat. "I'm here."

"Is everything all right? Did you get our fugitives?"

"It's not all right
yet
," A.J. answered. "But it will be."

"What's going on, A.J.?" She knew evasion when she heard it. "Don't try to handle this if you can't—"

"Don't go there." The cold reply brought her up short. She hadn't ever heard him use a tone like that, not even when he was furious at her. "I said, it
will
be all right. I'm taking care of it. You have my word. You just go find Joe and get things running again."

She thought a moment. "Is Helen all right?"

"She will be."

"Ah. Crazy bastards." She thought she understood now. But . . . "You're sure?"

"Absolutely. I gave you my word."

She knew that A.J. did not use that phrase lightly. It was acutely painful to her to not step forward, but . . . in his position, if she was sure she could handle it . . . "All right." She offered a short, silent prayer to whoever might be listening that A.J. really knew what he was doing, and then deliberately let the matter drop from her mind. Agent's training was what was needed here.

The
Feynman
was barely settling into place as she bounded out to meet it. "Let's go find Joe," she said to Bruce as the door opened.

"Righto."

The impact site was barely a hop away; in fact, using
Feynman
would have been overkill if they hadn't intended to use the shuttle as a search-and-rescue vehicle in the area anyway. Maddie sent several of the Locusts, which she could control nearly as well as A.J., on a survey of the area as Jackie made her way into the shattered hulk of the prefabricated building that had housed the control center for the reactor. Part of it had practically
splashed
on impact.

"That's bad," Jackie said matter-of-factly. "Punched through the main controls like a bullet. A bullet that must've been bigger than my two fists. And with atmosphere present . . ."

"Big boom." Maddie glanced around the room. It was actually startlingly clean in some ways, probably because the blast and air escaping had thrown everything
out
. There was still a film of dust here and there—and what was
that
?

On the floor, the dust showed a faint, odd pattern: light streaking, then two dark streaks like expanding cones, wide ends pointing toward the wall. The dark streaks, she saw as she bent closer, were really areas with a lot less dust. "Jackie?"

The dark-haired engineer saw the pattern, too. "Joe."

"He must have been standing here when the thing hit."

Jackie nodded. "Well away from the very center. I think I can get
Nobel
to give me at least an estimate of the force of impact. Hold on."

A few minutes dragged by like hours as Jackie set up the parameters for the model. Then: "Maddie? He could have survived. But it was awfully close. Depends on what he hit on the way out, where he landed, how exactly he was standing . . ." Jackie trailed off. "We'll just have to find him."

"Bruce!" Maddie said, pushing her emotions aside. "I've had the Locusts circling the area. Can
Nobel
tie in and compute a fix on Joe's location?"

"Sorry, luv, no joy. Signals seem to be bouncing off the base material, getting absorbed, multipath all over. No way of tellin' which of six directions to look in. If we can't narrow it down . . . well, he's got Buckley's of being found in time." Bruce got a dark amusement out of the fact that Joe's last name was, and had been for years, Australian for
hopeless situation
.

"Then," Maddie said briskly, "we'll just have to narrow them down, won't we?"

"We'd better do it quick," Jackie said. "The rest of the base isn't going to last forever without power. We have to get things running again."

"How long to replace the controls?" Bruce asked. "Do we even have the parts on hand?"

Jackie's gestures showed she was consulting her own database. "Actually, we do. But it's going to take four, five days at least. And that's longer than the emergency backups will last. We can probably save all the people, but there'll be major losses in other areas if it goes that long. We'll lose infrastructure to frozen pipes and all that kind of thing. We need to get at least minimal power flowing faster." She shook her head, gazing down at the immense hole punched through the area the consoles had occupied. "I might be able to rig something up, but I'm not sure. The reactor itself may have shut down when the controls went, which means I'll need the controls before I can start it generating again."

"How much juice do we need?" Bruce asked. "To keep things moving along until you can fix 'em?"

"More than a portable generator," she said reluctantly. "For everything, we probably want a hundred kilowatts or more. That won't run any of the heavy stuff, of course."

"Right, then. No worries—
Nobel
's got that and to spare."

"Yes, but—" She cut off. "No, Bruce, you're crazy!"

"Hey, it's a fair sight better than losin' half the base, now, ain't it? And won't it be something to add to my resume?"

"And what about Joe?" Jackie demanded. "We're talking about saving the base, but what about him?"

"We have to narrow the search area," Madeline said. "And Jackie, I think you can do that."

"Me? How? Maddie, you know I'll do what I can, but I don't see what I can do."

She pointed to the tracks in the dust. "You were able to do a quick model to see how hard he was hit. But we assembled all of the stuff here. It's all in the engineering database. If you can get a good handle on the force of the explosion from A.J.'s sensor readings, can't you model what happened to Joe and find out where he went?"

Jackie froze, clearly struck by the idea. Slowly she straightened up. "Yes. Yes, we could do that. We can't get an exact answer, not even close. . . . But if we can even get a good sense of direction and distance . . ."

"Then do it fast, Jackie." She looked at the clock in the upper left of her field of view, a phantom row of numbers projected on her retina by the miracle of laser light. "If I guess right, Joe has maybe four hours left."

"But . . . Look, Leo, what're we going to do?"

For the first time since Helen had seen him, Leo Modofori smiled. "A.J. Baker can get us past any of their security. He runs it, along with Fathom. With his help, we get what we came for. Then he gets us to
Hunin
. They'll have to let us back on board if we get close to
Odin
, and then, well, okay, they'll put us in jail for a bit. But if we've got what we're after, we'll be out and rich before you know it."

Jimmy Salczyck grinned back. "So, I did the right thing."

Modofori snorted. "Sometimes impulse and luck works, Jimmy, but we still should've talked. Anyway, it's over now. First we have to get somewhere we can hide out. Which isn't here. Baker knew where we were with the comm. We have to lose him so he can't set up an ambush, keep moving until he comes through."

"Won't he just have us nailed when we get to
Hunin
?"

"Not if we rig it right. He saw that we have his wife. We just make sure we get access to the monitors around the
Hunin
first. If it's all clear, fine. If not . . ." He didn't look at Helen, but it was obvious what was implied. "We need to cut through the unpressurized areas and come up somewhere else—the third lab, I think. There's a terminal we can use there, when the time comes. But we want to leave no trail for him to follow."

Zaent glanced about him uneasily. "These corridors seem narrower." He gave a nervous cough.

"This is not the time to develop claustrophobia, Alex," Jimmy said. He sniffed at the air. "Does feel kind of stale, though. . . . Now you have me thinking it!" He grabbed at his helmet with his free hand.

Modofori growled in his throat. "Exactly. Don't go putting ideas into your heads—or mine, for all that." He cleared his throat and then took a deep breath. "There's air enough down here to last us for quite a while. Hours of air. Houdini managed hours in something the size of a coffin, and we've got a mansion's worth, so cut it out. No, leave the helmets off until we get to the lock. Hold up a minute."

He moved in front of them with the smooth action of someone completely accustomed to the low gravity; even in her pain, Helen had to admire that. She wasn't that good, and she'd been here a lot longer. "Sorry about the rough handling, Doctor. Can I trust you to not try anything stupid on us? Because I promise you that if you do try anything, it will end up hurting a lot worse."

She nodded, trying not to look scared—although she definitely was. This was about as bad a situation as she could think of. The crash on Mars had been worse in some ways, but that was an accident. What might happen here wouldn't be.

"Good. Now, hold still a moment. This will hurt, but it will help in the long run." He glanced at Jimmy. "Hold her head still."

Helen closed her eyes. There was a moment of terrible, sharp pain, a twist, and suddenly much of the pain was fading away and she felt she might be able to breathe through her nose again. "Thank you," she said faintly.

"You're welcome. If your husband is half as smart as I have heard, we should all come out of this quite well. He
does
care about you, I hope?"

"Yes," she said. It was one of the things she had no doubts on.

"Good thing for us all, then. Now please get into your suit and don't give us any trouble. We have to move fast, and I can't afford the time to babysit you."

Modofori apparently had a VRD with a system that included a detailed layout of Ceres Base, because he led them onward with barely any hesitation, occasionally gazing into empty air before taking a particular turn. Shortly they came to an airlock, where he had them all appropriate additional air bottles.

Once through the airlock, there followed a bewildering series of twists and turns through alien-designed tunnels, the only signs of human passage being occasional marks in the eons-old dust and temporary markers on walls. Many of these tunnels actually had never had a human being pass through them, only one of the unmanned probes. And there were still many miles of corridors left unexplored. A.J. had once compared it to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. "Except that we have to wear our scuba gear all the time here, and we probably won't have to wiggle through washtub-sized holes too often."

Helen tried to think of some way she might help out—get away from these guys and get somewhere she knew—but it didn't look hopeful. Impulsiveness aside, Jimmy Salczyck was as alert as a Doberman watchdog, and she already knew from personal experience how fast and strong he was. Despite the training both A.J. and Madeline had been giving her on the side, she doubted she could take on any of these guys, even the diminutive Axel Zaent. Her own VRD didn't have the extensive maps that Modofori's did, and with the main base systems apparently still down—something that clearly worried Modofori almost as much as it did her—she couldn't get any additional data out to guide her. So even if she did somehow give them the slip, she might end up wandering deeper into the base instead of getting out.

Finally they came to another airlock. Modofori brought out a small case and performed some complex set of operations on the controls and around the door seal. "What are you doing?" she asked impulsively.

He apparently didn't mind the query. "Making sure that it appears that this door does not open. It would be rather dense of me to spend this time in unmonitored corridors only to announce myself as I enter. Emergency power, while limited, does extend to keeping the door systems active and monitored, even if the full-scale hallway systems are down. I have no idea why power is still off, but for the moment it is an advantage I intend to exploit fully."

The airlock opened, and they passed through—Modofori first, then Helen, followed by the others. "Good. The lab I want is this way. The air's good, so unlock your helmets and save the tanks."