Planet Wrecker

-71-

It was dark inside the long exhaust tunnel that extended deep into the asteroid. Space marines used infrared to see where they were going. The sides of the rocky surfaces were coated with high-grade photon-fiber.

“I don’t like this,” Omi said.

The photon-fiber produced an odd bounce in the radio transmissions. It sounded to Marten as if Omi were a million kilometers away.

“If you feel a thrum,” Osadar said, “it will mean that death is seconds away.”

“Thank you for the update,” Marten said. “Now let’s move, people. Since we don’t have to worry about flying off the asteroid anymore, I want all of you to run. Watch your heads, though. I don’t want any of you to crack your helmet.

Suiting words to action, Marten began to take long, loping leaps. He glanced back, and saw the many red forms that indicated space marines. Then he concentrated on what he was doing. The exhaust tunnel was huge, like an immense cavern. When the mighty fusion engine had been going, it must have sent an exhaust plume an easy one hundred kilometers behind the asteroid.

“What was that?” Omi asked.

Marten had felt the sudden vibration too. Did that mean the cyborgs had turned on the fusion core?

“Faster,” he said. And now Marten moved. He’d spacewalked early as a lad on the Sun-Works Factory. It was something that felt natural. Osadar kept up with him and so did Omi and a few other space marines. The others fell back, as they weren’t as good at this.

Back in the Jovian System fifteen months ago, he’d studied Carme Moon for weeks. Marten recalled its exhaust-port and tube. There had been repair hatches in that asteroid’s exhaust-port. He was hoping for the same thing in this one, as his plan was predicated upon it.

The vibration in the tunnel grew.

“They must be starting up the fusion core,” Osadar said.

“We know they can’t start it right away,” Marten said. “And it’s likely been off for a long time. I’m counting on that.”

“Hope is futile once they turn on the core,” Osadar said.

The exhaust-tube changed now. It was no longer simply bored-out asteroid with photon-fiber coating. The chamber possessed the same polymer as one used in a warship’s exhaust-tubes.

“What if the repair hatches are locked?” asked Osadar.

“Keep a sharp lookout,” Marten said. He’d been using his HUD and reading a Carme Moon file.

“There!” Omi shouted. “I see a hatch.”

The growing vibration made Marten leap harder. If the fusion core started while Nadia and the slower space marines were still in the tube….

Osadar landed near the repair hatch. She walked to and tried it, but the hatch remained closed.

A space marine cursed profusely. “There’s no way she’s strong enough to force that hatch. The thing was made to take the pressure of—”

“I didn’t see this,” Osadar said. She turned something in the hatch.

On Marten’s infrared HUD, the hatch opened into blazing red heat.

“We have to pass the coils,” Osadar told them. “They’re on and it’s hot in there.”

“Don’t talk,” Marten said. “Go, go, go!”