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that goes all the way beneath the river.”

After the guards and secret police had scattered following their chief’s orders, Petty easily

kept pace with the other three. Jommy wished the slan hunter had abandoned them, but

apparently he trusted the slans to know a better escape than his own people. Petty directed

them to a high-speed lift, but the doors were sealed and the controls refused to operate. The

secret police chief pounded the wall in frustration. “We’ve got to get down to shelter!”

Gray nudged him aside. “This is one of the palace’s private elevators, high-security, limited

access.” He slid aside a hidden metal covering to expose a translucent plate and several code

buttons. He pressed his open left eye against the scanner and keyed in a code. A bright beam

played across his retina, mapped the patterns there, and confirmed his identity. The lift

hummed, then whisked open. “I
am
the President, after all—no matter what Mr. Petty says.”

The slan hunter glowered at him.

Jommy urged them all inside, then turned to the control plate. “Thirty-eighth level would

be our best starting point.” He punched the number. The doors closed, and the private car shot

downward.

Only seconds later, the palace was engulfed in a roar of light and fire.

Shockwaves slammed into the descending elevator car, making a sound as if they were

trapped within a bronze church bell. The bright ceiling light went out, and the car shuddered

to a stop, dislodged from its tracks. More explosions thundered overhead. The walls trembled.

“Brilliant idea, Cross,” Petty said in the darkness. “Now we’re stuck here.”

“We would have all been happier if you’d stayed in the command-and-control center,”

Kathleen retorted. “Why did you bother coming along with us?”

“I couldn’t let three slans get away. That would be shirking my duty.”

Trying to solve the problem he faced, ignoring the heated conversation, Jommy felt with his

fingertips along the metal wall of the chamber. He found the crack in the sealed lift door. “We

have to pry it open, get out of this elevator car, then climb to an access hatch.” Gripping with

his fingers and palms, he pressed with all his enhanced strength, straining until the doors

began to peel apart. “There … making progress!”

Then, with a squeal and a groan, the stalled elevator dropped farther down the shaft,

grinding along its tracks with a spray of sparks. They were in free fall for a moment, plunging

out of control. Through the crack he’d been able to open in the door, Jommy watched one

floor, then another and another streak past as the detached elevator picked up speed. Then it

slammed to a clamorous halt, caught again in precarious balance.

“Have we hit the bottom?” Kathleen asked after a moment of stunned silence. “Why didn’t

we crash?”

“We’re jammed in the shaft again,” Jommy said. “But it’s unstable.”

“We could figure that out for ourselves,” Petty added sarcastically. “Maybe we’re almost to

the bottom.”

“There’s at least sixty more levels down,” Gray said. “I suggest we get out of here before we

drop the rest of the way.”

Applying all his strength, Jommy wrenched the door open farther. The tracks in the

elevator shaft had been knocked severely out of alignment from the bombardment high above.

One of the broken rails had twisted to one side, and the falling car had wedged to an unstable

balance. Two feet above them, Jommy saw another hatch that opened to a floor—their way

out. “Kathleen, I’ll boost you up. You can open the door from within the elevator shaft.”

She didn’t hesitate, and Jommy was surprised at how easily he could support her weight.

As she reached out through the open door, though, the elevator groaned uncertainly. If the car

fell now, Kathleen would be sheared in half.

Kier Gray moved to the other side of the elevator to compensate for the weight shift. They

all knew the car could drop at any time and plunge screeching and sparking for sixty floors

until it struck the bottom like an asteroid impact.

Kathleen stretched out her hand, and with the barest tip of her finger she managed to hit

the emergency hatch control. Lights blinked and, with a sedate hum, the emergency hatch slid

aside to reveal a corridor well-lit by flickering ceiling lights.

Jommy gave Kathleen another boost, and she scrambled out of the elevator and through

the hatch. Once safely inside, she called for her father to come up. As Gray moved to the open

door and the emergency hatch, the readjusting weight made the elevator groan ominously

again.

Showing no sign of fear, Gray accepted Jommy’s assistance to climb out, leaving the young

man trapped in the elevator with the slan hunter. Anxious not to be last, Petty lurched toward

the door. He was sure they meant to abandon him—and with good reason. Petty could shield

his thoughts well enough, but even so Jommy sensed the building panic in the secret police

chief.

As Petty stepped across the floor, the elevator gave a sickening lurch and dropped eighteen

inches. The man froze, terrified, refusing to take another step.

Jommy stared at him. “Are we going to just look at each other until the elevator falls to the

bottom, or do you intend to move and get out of here?”

Petty didn’t need to be encouraged again. When Jommy offered him a hand, the other man

refused. “I don’t need help from one of your kind.” He reached up for the bottom of the

emergency hatch in the shaft wall, which was now more difficult to reach. From the safety of

the hall, Kier Gray looked down at the man who had overthrown him. A simple slip, a nudge

at just the right moment, and the slan hunter would fall to his death.

Nevertheless, Gray grabbed his rival’s arm and hauled him up.

Now mostly empty, the elevator creaked, began to work itself loose from the tracks.

“Jommy, hurry!” Kathleen reached down beside her father, both of them trying to grab him,

stretching out their hands.

The binding metal began to slip, grinding away the twisted track. With only a second left,

Jommy tensed and sprang upward. His leap carried him at least two feet higher than a normal

man could have jumped, and he hooked his elbows inside the emergency hatch. Gray and

Kathleen seized his shoulders, his shirt, and pulled him into the hall. Jommy squirmed out of

the shaft and pulled himself into the corridor just as the elevator jarred loose. When the last

obstruction broke away, the elevator plummeted in a wail of sparks and grinding gears, falling

down into the depths.

Panting, Jommy recovered and got to his feet. He glanced up. Petty was just standing there,

arms crossed, watching, then the slan hunter turned around and began marching down the

hall, as if nothing unusual had happened. “Well, now where do we go?”

Jommy studied a numbered plate on the wall to determine where they were. “We still have

to go down seven levels.” The President again used his ID to provide access to a restricted

stairwell, and they hurried down the metal steps, one flight after another.

Petty continued to find reasons to question. “If you’re an outsider, Cross, how is it that you

found a secure passage to get into the palace? Even my secret police weren’t aware of hidden

tunnels down here.”

“The slans built them long ago. I received information, partly from old records, partly from

certain telepathic broadcasts in the palace specifically attuned for someone able to hear them.

Someone with tendrils, I mean.”

He opened the door at the appropriate level. The hall looked like any other, but inside his

head he could detect the thin, dull tone, a guiding beacon his slan senses could pick up.

Kathleen looked at him, amazed. “I can hear it.”

Gray nodded. “I was aware of these, but I didn’t investigate because I feared being

observed. I couldn’t let anyone—especially Petty—know what was down here.”

“Just like you kept a full space navy secret from me?” Petty snorted. “I still should have

kept a better eye on you, and on Jem Lorry.”

“Lorry isn’t one of us,” Gray insisted.

“Seems like he did a good job sabotaging the Earth space ships, from what we saw on the

battle screens.”

Not knowing what trials they might face once they worked their way into the besieged city

itself, Jommy wished he still had his father’s disintegrator weapon. That invention would

provide options they wouldn’t otherwise have, but Petty had locked the confiscated device in a

secure vault for secret police analysis. It was probably still intact, even with the collapse of the

palace, but it could be buried anywhere. Long ago, he had added a tiny tracer to the

disintegrator, but he had no time to construct a detector to pick up the signal. Right now, they

had to get safely away from the ruins of the palace. And for that, they needed his special

vehicle.

Jommy moved down the hall, trailing his fingers along the painted cement blocks. He

found a spot that looked no different from the rest, but when he depressed the blocks in a

certain sequence, a hidden door slid inward and then aside to reveal a well-lit tunnel that

extended a great distance.

“Inside there, not far down, is the old maintenance tunnel that goes all the way under the

river. The slans commandeered it for their own purposes a long time ago, and it’s been

completely forgotten. We can follow it outside and get to the forest where I left my armored

vehicle. I’m sure it’s still there and safe.”

The embedded detectors recognized him as a slan, and Jommy felt a rush of relief. Once

Jommy had opened the secret door to the tunnel, Petty did not wait for the others. He pushed

forward, taking the lead. No one but slans had entered this tunnel for many years.

Jommy’s tendrils suddenly picked up a shrill vibration, a distinct sensation of uneasiness

that built to panic. A Porgrave transmitter, one of the special broadcasters that only slans could

hear. The signal focused, and he could understand the words: an automated warning installed

by long-forgotten slan inventors. The Porgrave signal shouted in his head:
Non-slan detected.

Unauthorized presence
.

Jommy felt a thrumming in the air as retaliation devices swung into action. Also

recognizing the signal, Kathleen backed abruptly into her father. Petty, though, was unaware

of anything unusual. He strode forward.

Defense systems activating. Targeting … now
.

“Petty, look out!” Jommy lunged forward, grabbed the slan hunter by the back of his shirt,

and yanked him off his feet.

The burly man stumbled and cried out angrily just as a spiderweb of searing yellow-white

beams criss-crossed the air where he had been. A smell of ozone accompanied the whip-crack

sound of deadly defenses.

Nonplussed, the slan hunter got back to his feet and brushed himself off, shocked and then

angry. “You saved my life.” He seemed more upset than relieved that Jommy had saved him.

He lowered his voice. “Don’t think you bought yourself any mercy from me because of that,

Cross.”

Kathleen let out a quick, bitter laugh. “If you think mercy is something that can be bought,

Mr. Petty, then you don’t understand mercy at all.”

The slan hunter gave her a dismissive wave. “Oh, you’re just angry because I shot you in

the head.”

They followed the dim passage for at least a mile, trending always upward. Jommy

remained alert for other booby traps and defensive measures, deactivating several, though part

of him longed to just let the evil slan hunter get himself fried by the systems. It would have

been what he deserved, a poetic justice.

“Explain again why we should bring you along, Petty?” Jommy asked, pausing before he

deactivated another security system. “As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have any redeeming

qualities.”

Buried far underground, and now lost inside a labyrinth of booby-trapped tunnels, the slan

hunter looked alarmed. “You need me. I can be useful.”

“Exactly how?” Gray said. “You overthrew my presidency.”

“And killed my mother,” Jommy said.

“And shot me,” Kathleen added. “You haven’t done much to endear yourself to us. I say we

should just leave him here.” She looked to her father for support. “There’s a slight chance he