Redline the Stars

24

The off-worlders' hearts pounded fast and painfully as they continued to make their way along the short stretch that still separated them from the sea and the site of the great explosion itself. If things were so bad here, what combination of the Federation's hells would they find when they reached the source of all this chaos? Would they find anything, living or dead, whole or shattered, there at all?

Rael's gloomy words proved accurate, and they encountered only the dead on the little length that remained of the

ruined street.

They reached its end at last. Both paused, steeling themselves to face the horrors they knew lay beyond, then they

passed between the final segments of the great mounds of

rubble that confined them on each side.

There, they froze. Before them lay the Straight and the remains of what had been Canuche Town's bustling docks.

Now little among these splinters indicated what had once

stood here.

The Regina Man's and the pier at which she had been loading were simply gone. Debris-littered water occupied the place where they had been. Of those who had been battling the fire, there was no sign, nor would there ever be for most of them. They had been atomized under the double impact of blast wave and blast wind, whose force at the point of their sudden creation could well have reached 2,400 miles per hour or more.

Bodies in plenty lay farther back, between their vantage point and the place where the Man's had been. All were grossly damaged by the forces generated by the explosion itself, by fire, or from having been thrown at high velocity and great force against ruthlessly unyielding surfaces. They had died, all of them, before flying debris or collapsing structures could pose any threat to them. They would have to be examined all the same, but that was merely an exercise in humanity with no hope of reward.

Rael shuddered. The loss of life would have been immeasurably worse had they not succeeded in driving most of the spectators off the pier when they had, but what they found here was still purely the stuff of nightmare.

She wrenched her eyes away from the slaughter at her feet. The havoc that had rent the land had not spared the sea. Water and shoreline were dotted with the wrecks of boats that had gathered too near in their interest in the fire. Most had been ripped apart, but a few had only been blown ashore or now silently rode the wavelets, crewless but

otherwise apparently unhurt. The Salty Sue, the only big vessel berthed close to the Man's, had, like those smaller ghost ships, survived surprisingly well. A transport-sized hole had been blown in her prow, and she herself had been more than half beached, but she remained a recognizable entity that could be repaired and put back to work again.

For the first time, the spacers got a good look at the slopes, both above them and on the opposite side of the harbor. Neither shore had been spared, though the nearer, of course, had taken infinitely harder punishment.

As with the seaport and commercial areas, no building remained erect, only part of a wall standing here and there, and smoke seemed to be rising from a thousand different sources. For all the visible portion of Canuche Town, the catastrophe was total.

Of greater significance at the moment than the magnitude of the disaster was the sight of figures moving about amidst the wreckage, some carefully, some rapidly and erratically. Death was not quite as universal up there as it was closer to the sea. Distance had given the residents that much grace.

Even more heartening to see were the masses of people crossing the crest and heading down, a steady, organized flood of them. The remainder of the city had survived, then, and the rescue effort was under way.

"It'll be a while before they make it as far as here," Rael remarked, quelling the hope rising in her heart. There would be more deaths yet before this was finally over and part of history.

She frowned as she looked once more at the scene of carnage around them. "It should be worse," she said tightly. "The detonation had to have thrown out more fire."

"Everything's wet. I'd say there was a pretty big splash, lucidly straight into the air and back into the bay again instead of a slosh and surge over the shore, or we'd have been drowned in our rat hole. The water must have kept the heat off the victims." The ones they could see here.

Those on the ship herself and on the dock nearest her would have ceased to have physical form before they could be incinerated.

All around them was the irrefutable physical evidence of the explosion's power. Not forty yards to Jellico's left, a 150-foot motorized floating dock had been dropped after having been blown a good 200 feet out of the water below.

He tried not to think about what probably lay beneath it, or of what he could see on top of it, either. There lay the incredibly crushed remnants of three firetransports. A fourth vehicle, less heavily damaged, had been brought to a stop against its side. That one bore the black and silver colors of the Stellar Patrol.

Rael saw the direction of his gaze and started for the displaced dock. Her own injuries made her grateful for her companion's help in scaling the monstrous thing, but she refused to give in further to them. If Miceal came to suspect the extent of the damage she had taken, he would pull her out of this hopeless fight, force her to return at once for aid. That she was not prepared to do, not while she herself was in no immediate danger and others decidedly were.

She glanced at the nearest of the Fire Department vehicles, then involuntarily up at Miceal.

The Captain shook his head. "Forget it, Rael," he told her gently. "None of them survived. It's impossible that they should."

Still, they looked at each transport, confirming that there was no life in any of them. They held no dead, either. The blast had carried off the lighter bodies of their crews. Only one corpse was to be seen on the dock, a man's, naked except for one sock of a type adopted by seamen and others engaged in heavy physical outdoor labor the ultrasystem over. Jellico thought he might have been a sailor blown from a nearby vessel or else a dockworker. From the angle at which he was lying, they judged that his back had been broken in several places.

"There's nothing we can do up here," the Medic said.

The gnawing unease was flogging her again, demanding action despite her weariness and pain. "Someone around here is hurt. Let's check out that Patrol flier first and then hunt around the base of this thing. — Damn it, I wish some of those Canucheans would light their burners and get down here! To judge by what we've seen thus far, anyone we come across is going to be in a pretty bad way."

"You're not in such a good way yourself," he said sharply after seeing her wince as she lowered herself to the dock in preparation to scramble over its side.

"I don't pretend to be as tough as you, Miceal Jellico," she told him irritably. "These muscles are going to be singing me a sad story for some time to come. — You could give me a hand down if you'd like to be helpful."

"Down here! Help!"

Both froze.

Jellico went to his knees beside his companion. The cry seemed to have come from the wrecked flier.

They could see two people. One was lying across the rear seat, one in the front, the latter almost concealed by the great, jagged metal shard that had felled him. Had they not been studying the machine so closely, they would have missed seeing him.

The spacers made no delay in climbing down. Rael hastened first to the victim in the back, that one being the more readily accessible.

After a few moments, she drew back, her mouth twisting. First aid had been attempted, but injuries of this magnitude rendered any such effort worthless. The woman had been eviscerated, and the damage done to her lungs, while not visible, must have been greater still. How the poor creature had survived long enough to receive any treatment at all ...

"Rael! Over here! He's alive!"

She hurriedly backed out of the flier and ran to its opposite side, where Miceal was already beside the vehicle's second occupant.

The woman caught her breath in horror. "Keil!"

The Patrol-Yeoman did not look like the same man. He appeared years older, his face marred by pain, fear, blood, and plain dirt, but there was no doubting the accuracy of her identification. As if to confirm it, he turned his head at the sound of her voice. It was about the only part of his body, certainly the only visible part, with a full range of free movement. "Doctor Cofort?"

"That's right, my friend."

"Gayle? Yeoman Argile? She's dead?" There was more statement than question in that.

She nodded. "Aye. That was inevitable anyway. Most of her lungs had to have been ruptured."

His eyes closed in the infinite weariness of defeat. "I know. I had to try to get her out, though. — I was farther away and only got flattened, and the flier somehow wasn't damaged at all, so I took it and went back to the dock.

Where it used to be. Gayle was near there, still alive. No one else was."

He paused, then went on. "I did what I could for her and tried to make a run for it. That's when this thing hit me and made an end of me, too. I think it's part of the supports of one of the fuel tanks . . ."

"Nothing's made an end of you, not yet!" She squeezed down beside him to try for a pulse count and to peer into his eyes. The pupils were even, at least. . . "Let me push in there so I can get a better look at you."

"I'm finished," the Yeoman stated flatly, his manner calm and quite certain but with an urgency underlying it.

"So are you two if you hang around here any longer. Maybe you are no matter how far you can run now."

"What do you mean?" Jellico demanded sharply. Whatever one felt about the agents of the Stellar Patrol, they were not given to displays of hysterics even under gross provocation.

"See that ship over there?" he asked, pointing toward the Sally Sue with a toss of his head. "She's got several holds full of that damned ammonium nitrate, too, nine thousand nine hundred tons of it, plus a couple of thousand tons of sulphur and I don't know how many barrels of benzol on deck and below. She's on fire right now, or if she isn't, the pier right next to her certainly is in several places. One blaze or another will get to her soon enough, and she'll go up with a bang that'll make the Man's explosion seem like a harmless little puff of a dry run."