Serpent's Walk

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Wednesday, October 5, 2050: 1730 hours

“Pull over! Pull over!” Goddard howled at Chuck Gillem, who was driving the armored car they had commandeered back in Annandale. “We can’t get through!”

Their caravan was approaching the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge from the southwest. Ahead, across the Potomac, six big military helicopters buzzed and whirled and twirled like khaki-hued dragonflies above the headquarters of the Party of Humankind. Rocket trails crisscrossed the mist-tattered sky, and the thunder of bursting high explosives struck at them like multiple hammer blows. The top of the building was invisible beneath a pall of smoke, amidst which tongues of flame leaped and undulated like graceful, scarlet dancers. Traffic on the bridge was stalled. Cars were turned every which way, and their occupants peered out like fearful, little insects to watch the gods do battle above their heads.

“They’ll have the hotel cordoned off,” Lessing shouted above the din. “Korinek knows we’re here, and he’ll be waiting for us to try to punch through.” He raised the hatch to check. Their other three vehicles were close behind, as were the fire engines. The police squad cars and unmarked PHASE vehicles were scattered farther back in the milling chaos on the freeway.

“Get your city cops out to direct traffic,” Lessing told Goddard. “Pretend that we think this is an ordinary hostage situation or a big accidental fire. Push the fire engines through with our paramedics and rescue teams.”

“You want to help Korinek?” Wrench cried in Lessing’s ear. He uttered a nervous giggle.

“Of course not! But with too many witnesses Korinek can’t shoot our people out of hand. Meanwhile, we stop here and load our best troops into our ambulances. Then we try for the basement parking entrance. We pick up our survivors…” he refused to think about Liese “… and get the hell out of Washington, contact our support, and decide what the pog to do next!”

“This won’t be another Ponape,” Goddard promised grimly. “They kick ass, we kick ass. Only we kick harder.” He leaned forward to tap Dan Grote, their corn-link man, on the shoulder. “Get on the horn and see if you can raise our friends at the Pentagon out at Andrews… Fort Meyer.”

“Fort Meyer’s close,” Gillem called from the driver’s seat. “I can get us there in a few minutes. We pick up some military heat of our own, come back, and… whango!”

“No good!” Lessing countered. ‘Korinek’ll have knocked the hotel flat by that time. Our people’ll be dead or captured… if he’s taking any prisoners!”

“Jesus…!” Goddard swore. “It is time… it is long past time… somebody fixed that duiker’s wagon!”

They halted on the bridge. The SWAT-men manned their vehicles’ 7.62-mm machine guns, but the helicopters did not attack. It seemed to take forever to choose twenty men, arm them from the armored vehicles’ store of combat weapons, and transfer them into the ambulances. Goddard sent the city police fanning out ahead to clear traffic and restore order, while the rest of their SWAT teams were detailed to push straight through with their armor and create a diversion on the western side of Korinek’s cordon One unmarked PHASE car raced off to inform Mulder’s headquarters in Virginia. Their foes were probably jamming radio transmission, and the TV stations were almost certainly wrecked, under arrest, or singing Korinek’s song in whatever key he chose!

At last they got underway again and careened on across the bridge with sirens blaring. Metal clanged and crunched as their armored escorts smashed obstructions aside. People scuttled, screamed, and dodged for cover. One of the armored cars battered a furniture van right through the bridge railing and over into the river. The driver made a last-second, flying leap back onto the parapet and saved himself.

Then they were through, spilling into the tangled interchange that led north past the Glorious House of Christ Arisen — what had been the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts before the Born-Agains got hold of it. The congestion thinned as they approached Virginia Avenue.

They met their first opfocs at an intersection near the Whitehurst Freeway: two old M551 Sheridan tanks with their Army insignia blacked out and a cluster of smaller vehicles. A man in paratrooper camouflage uniform leaped out and waved at them, but Gillem only yelled “Red Cross!” and kept going. The fire engines were right behind.

“Full speed ahead!” Wrench yodeled.

Lessing had a sudden flashback of a rolling ship and a storm-driven sea. A lantern-jawed captain hung bravely onto the helm. Goddamned movies! He had thought he was over that!

“Roadblock!” Gillem squawked.

“Go straight through!” Goddard yelled back.

“Can’t… tanks!” Their ambulance skidded and fishtailed to a stop.

They might have ploughed right through the hastily built barricades of boxes, dumpsters, and road signs piled in front of them, but the Porter laser cannons of the three M717 Cicero IFV tanks demanded obedience. A score of camo-uniformed soldiers rose cautiously from behind emplaced machine guns, and an officer trotted over, signalling them to turn around and leave.

Gillem pretended innocence. He leaned out, pointed at the oily smoke visible over the rooftops ahead, and banged on the red cross painted on their ambulance door. His meaning was clear.

The officer, a lanky Black youth, came on over. “Listen, man,” he said, “didn’t you get the dinkin’ message? Nobody but nobody’s goin’ through here tonight!”

“God damn it, we’re medical,” Gillem protested. “There’re people in there. You can’t—”

“We just did.” The other grinned and spat. “Once we git them terrorists out… dead or surrendered… you’re welcome to patch up what’s left.”

“Terrorists?” Goddard pushed forward. He had taken off his PHASE cap, but his collar tabs still identified him. “What terrorists? Look here, I’m a doctor…”

Thankfully, the Black didn’t recognize the insignia. “I don’ care if you’re jumped-up Jesus Christ! Turn that muh-fuh around and bong before I put you all under arrest… or turn you into hamburger!”

“Come here!” Goddard crooked a finger. “What?”

“Come here, you Black, mother-fucking, nigger son of a bitch.”

The officer’s features turned two shades darker. He marched up to the ambulance, his hand on his holstered pistol.

Goddard pointed what looked like a commando knife at him. He pressed a stud, and the blade leaped out of its hilt to fly across the intervening four meters and bury itself in the officer’s chest. The man opened his mouth and craned forward to see what had hit him. His knees started to sag.

“Always wanted to try one of these babies!” Goddard exulted. “The Russians used to make ‘em: a spring-loaded knife that shoots its blade like a poggin’ arrow.”

Gillem was out of the cab at once. He slipped an arm around the Black officer’s shoulders. The man tried to call out, but his eyes were already glazing over, and a ribbon of red had begun to trace its way down his chin. Gillem walked carefully toward their ambulance, keeping the dying opfo between him and the soldiers watching from the barricade thirty meters away. He and Goddard pulled the man up into the cab.

If they were very, very lucky, it would work. The excitement and the fading afternoon light would make it appear that the officer was getting into the ambulance of his own accord. Too, the men at the barricade had no reason for suspicion.

Gillem clambered back up into the driver’s seat, surreptitiously pushing the officer’s dangling legs in ahead of him.

“Now!” Goddard panted, “Drive this mother! When we get up to those tanks, Wrench, you reach up from behind and wave this bastard’s arm! Make him look real lively and friendly! Wipe the blood off his dinkin’ face!”

“You are absolutely crazy!” Lessing shook his head in dismay. “They’ll have passwords… orders…”

“So what else do we do?”

No answer came to mind. The initial shock was wearing off, and Lessing’s mental combat-control was coming back to life. They had to get into the hotel. Liese was in there. So were Mulder and a lot of others.

They drew up to the barricade, the Black officer sandwiched between Goddard and Gillem, with Wrench leaning casually on the backrest behind them.

It was amazing: nobody noticed. People see what they expect to see.

A young White soldier came out, squinted up at the cab, then signed to the tankers to let them pass. Wrench waved the dead man’s arm energetically.

“Don’t overdo it, you pogger!” Goddard growled.

“Hey…! Wrench the puppelmaster!” the little man crowed. “Sings, dances, plays de banjo, waves de arms like a darky!”

“Zip itup!“Lessing rapped. He pointed out the window at several clumps of soldiers waiting beside tarp-shrouded trucks along the road. Weapons gleamed dully, and the ruddy firelight glinted off combat armor, helmets, masks, and battle-gear. He estimated the mop-up force at two hundred or more.

“What do we do?” Wrench’s jitters returned.

Goddard twisted around to confer. “We go in first,” he said. “We’re the innocent medical team that never got the message not to come to this party. As far as we know, this is a terrorist spesh-op, and the bastards’ve set the hotel on fire. We’re here to rescue people. Once we’re inside, we go up to Mulder’s suite and get him and our other people out. Then we take the penthouse elevator down to the basement power tunnels. Lessing, didn’t you map an escape route through there?”

Lessing only grunted assent.

“Something the matter?”

There was. He jabbed a thumb at the corpse lolling between Goddard and Gillem. “Knifing this fellow with his troops right behind him was the dumbest, most reckless thing I’ve seen in a long time. You damned near got us all killed. We might have talked our way in if you hadn’t been so impatient.”

“Jesus!” Goddard snarled. “I’m tired of talk. Now is the time for killing, not talking!”

“And I’m tired of you, Goddard! You’re a fucking fanatic.”

“Fanatic? Fanatic! You’re God damned right! Fanatics are people who change things! Otherwise we’d still be back in the caves! A fanatic is a guy who believes enough in his cause to win! Alexander the Great was a fanatic. He endured godawful hardships, and then cried when he thought there were no more lands to conquer! Jesus Christ was a fanatic. Why die on the cross when it would’ve been so easy to shut up and run his old man’s carpenter shop? Muhammad, Gandhi, Columbus, Cortez, Edison, Joan of Arc, the Wright brothers, Henry Ford, Florence Nightingale — the First Führer — history’s full of fanatics who spent their lives humping for what they believed, rather than sitting at home on welfare drinking beer and watching TV! It’s the safe, timid, little people who never win big, never lose big, never do anything, and never are anything. Oh, they bitch and whine about ‘fanatics,’ but they’re happy to profit from those fanatics’ blood and tears, their discoveries, their inventions, their struggles, and their martyrdoms! Damn it, we’re up against people who know what racial survival is all about! Those people play hardball. Either we play better than they do, or we’re out of it! Now, Lessing, you join the game or get the fuck off our team!”

He lapsed into angry silence.

There was no time for more argument. They turned a last comer and saw that the helicopters had finished their deadly work and were leaving. Burning debris and ashes still drifted down from the upper floors of the old hotel ahead, and they bounced over beams, chunks of concrete, and broken glass to reach the parking entrance at the side.

Somebody had belatedly decided that ambulances ought not to be where they now were, and a jeep full of soldiers came racing after them. Gillem maneuvered the big vehicle into the darkness of the garage, made a hard left turn, slammed on the brakes, and shut off the engine. Four of Goddard’s PHASE-men leaped out and took up positions behind pillars. Their second ambulance roared in, just seconds behind. The fire engines slewed to a stop outside, and their crews began to unlimber equipment. That ought to put a crimp in Korinek’s style!

The opfoes’ jeep never had a chance. As it entered the garage, gunfire chattered briefly, and the little car coasted placidly on to crunch to a stop against a shiny-black Dceda sedan. The six soldiers inside were dead.

Goddard retrieved his spring-loaded blade and dumped the Black officer’s body roughly out onto the concrete. He detailed Gillem and four PHASE-men to stay with the ambulances; Korinek would send more than just a jeep next time. Ten others, equipped with fire-resis- tant garments, oxygen tanks, and rescue gear, were ordered up the main stairs to find survivors. Lessing, Wrench, and Goddard himself took five SWAT-men equipped with light anti-personnel weapons and rescue gear. They would go up by the penthouse elevator if it still worked; if not, they would take one of the staircases. The remaining five men were to spread out in the lobby and lower floors and snipe at any opfoes coming in. The weapons of the jeep’s erstwhile occupants — M-25’s, combat shotguns, grenades, a laser rifle, and even a light machine gun — would come in very handy.

The elevators weren’t working, but the stairways were open. The ringing tramp of their feet became increasingly hypnotic as they ascended. On the landing between the third and fourth floors they encountered their first survivors. The man was a clerk from Records, Wrench said; he needed oxygen, and they gave him what they could spare. The second victim was a terrified, fortyish matron who worked in Liese’s printing and publicity section. She had not seen Liese.

Goddard pointed them down the stairs, toward the ambulances: the best he could do.

Tendrils of smoke began to drift down from above, and they halted to don their oxygen masks and tum on electric lanterns. On the seventh floor they passed several bodies jumbled together in the stairwell door. These people had died of asphyxiation and from being trampled by their comrades. Lessing called out into the red-lit darkness, but the only reply was the hiss and drip of the fire-sprinkler system, heroically doing its job in the face of impossible odds. They went on.

The top two floors of the building were completely gone.

Above the mouth of the last shattered stairwell, towers of flame hurtled up to meet the sky. Steel girders and sections of concrete wall extended up above the devastation like broken branches out of a bonfire. Somewhere a parapet crumpled and went thundering down into the inferno, and embers and sparks pattered upon their plastic fire-coats. The heat was blistering.

No one could live up here.

“So much for the penthouse,” Goddard wheezed. He shielded his face and backed down into the relative coolness of the stairwell.

“Maybe so much for Mulder too,” Wrench agreed. “God, what if he’s thumbed?“He looked stricken; the possibility seemed to have just dawned on him.

“Back down,” panted Lessing. “My place. Liese.”

They retreated into the smoldering, stifling gloom once more. Around and down, around and down, until Lessing’s thudding heart told him they had reached his floor. Small efficiency apartments had been assigned to Party officers on the upper-middle floors of the hotel, to use whenever they were in Washington. Lessing and Liese had a suite here, as did Goddard, Wrench, Jennifer Caw, Morgan, Abner Hand, Tim Helm, and a few others. There were also guest rooms for occasional visitors, such as Grant Simmons.

The stairway door opened upon a hallway in Hell, a place filled with flames, smoke, and the stench of burning. At the far end of the corridor, where Wrench’s suite had been, an air-to-ground missile had torn a huge hole right through one comer of the building. They looked out upon open sky and billows of angry, spark-filled smoke roiling up toward the gunmetal clouds overhead. Far below, Korinek ‘s searchlights, vehicle headlamps, and red flashers blinked evilly upon black velvet. The building creaked, and as they watched a great comet of blazing debris plummeted down into the darkness outside. The thunder of its falling was lost in the clamor of the flames above them.

“You’re not going in there!” Wrench cried. “That’s crazy… suicide!”

“Like hell.” Lessing thrust the little man aside. “My room looks okay from here. I have to look for Liese.” “Stop him. Bill! Hey, you guys…!”

Lessing rounded on them. “Nobody stops me. Go back. Go on without me. I have to know.”

He advanced down the passage. Flames licked out at him from both sides as he went. The wallpaper developed a black, charred spot, and an eye of fire opened in it. He came first to Abner Hand’s suite. The door was ajar, and he could see the place was empty. On the opposite side of the hallway Goddard’s door was closed. Smoke eddied through the keyhole and around the panelling. Death would be waiting inside.

Sam Morgan’s apartment was next to Hand’s; it was apparently undamaged. Lessing moved past without stopping. His own suite was just beyond. He found his feet dragging, holding him back. The door hung open, but he did not want to enter.

A body lay on the threshold: a man.

It was Gordy Monk, his features unmarked and peaceful in the flickering scarlet light He had died of smoke inhalation.

Lessing checked his oxygen mask and stepped gingerly over the body. Inside, his room looked normal except for the swirling smoke. The mustard-colored carpet, Wrench’s empty coffee mug, the percolator in the kitchen nook, all were as he had left them He stooped to lay a palm against the floor; it was not hot. He prowled on over to the bedroom door. A woman’s body lay sprawled there. He caught his breath and turned her over. She wasn’t Liese, thank God! This was Janet somebody, a telephone operator from Communications. People must have retreated up here to get away from Korinek’s troops below, then found that the roof was ablaze and there could be no helicopter rescue from that direction.

He touched the bedroom door. It, too, was not hot. Oddly enough, it felt cold. Gently he swung it open.

And almost lost his balance.

The bedroom was mostly missing, fallen away into a jagged, shattered, red-glowing, charred abyss! The missile had sheered off more than just Wrench’s suite; it had gone in one side and diagonally out through the adjacent wall, leaving a cavernous, windy hole five meters in diameter! Lessing teetered on a cracked and charred concrete tongue that extended half a meter out over nothingness!

Around the comer to his left, three meters away, Lessing could see into part of his bathroom. It looked amazingly intact: the sink, the taps, the medicine cabinet — all were perfect. Even his blue-and- white-checkered bath towel still hung askew on its rack. The angle kept him from seeing more than just one end of the bathtub.

Beside the tub, on Liese’s pale-azure bath mat, a woman’s leg was visible. The leg was long and slender, the ankle well-turned and tapering, encased in a grey, silk stocking, without a shoe. Lessing thought he could just make out a wisp of grey fabric beneath the calf. He couldn’t see any other garment. He leaned out to see more, could not, reeled, tottered on the shaky footing, nearly fell, and grabbed onto the door jamb. Emptiness yawned beneath him.

Liese?

Was that Liese over there? Oh, my God!

Liese! It was Liese! This morning she had worn a dove-colored dress and grey, silk stockings. She must have come back to look for him.

The raging fire above gave just enough light to show that there was no way across the chasm. Lessing shouted Liese’s name, but she did not answer, nor did she move. After a while it was clear that the woman across the way was dead.

Wrench and Goddard found him huddled upon the living-room carpet, his oxygen mask off and his pack discarded beside him. They half-carried, half-dragged him back outside, down the corridor, and into the stairwell.

“Maybe it wasn’t Liese.” Wrench made calming motions.

Lessing answered only, “It was.”

“Wait’ll we get across that hole and… uh… see who it was… is.”

“God damn you.” He was very tired. “Leave me alone.”

“You’re coming with us,” Goddard stated. “As soon as our guys come back from scouting, I’ll have ‘em take you down to the ambulance.” He put out a tentative hand.

For some reason Lessing found the gesture comforting. He let Goddard help him up.

“You look like shit,” Wrench said, not unkindly. “Go back down. We can finish looking for survivors, though I’ll bet there aren’t any. If poor Mulder was up here he’s thumbed now. Our people must’ve headed out the main doors, right into the arms of Korinek’s doggies. He wouldn’t shoot the little fish, only Party officers… like us.”

“Liese is probably among the prisoners,” Goddard said. “Even Korinek wouldn’t shoot a woman.” Big Bear Bill: the eternal sexist! Somehow he didn’t sound very confident.

“Look, I’m green light,” Lessing told them. “We’ve still got a job to do. I’ve lost buddies in combat before.” A snapshot-bright vision rose before him: a pretty, thin-faced girl in a dusty, military uniform. The girl was dead, her limbs stretched and twisted at odd angles in a foxhole fringed with dry, yellow grass and heaped about with whitish mud-bricks. Where had he seen that? Syria?

Then, too, there was… ice-blue.

“God… catch him!” Wrench yelped. “He’s going down!” Things got dark inside as well as out.

Later he found himself sprawled between Goddard and Wrench on a hard stairstep in near darkness. One of their electric lanterns sat on the floor nearby, its beam a bright bull’s-eye on the smoke-black- ened wall. The reek of burning was strong here, but the air was cool and damp from the sprinkler system. They must have come down a floor or two. He couldn’t remember.

Liese. Oh, Liese!

“He’s coming around,” Wrench muttered. “…Hate to lose Liese,” Goddard was saying. “The Party needs her.”

“Yeah. As if that were your only reason!” “She

“I know,” Wrench said. He reached across to lay a hand on Goddard’s arm. “I know, man. You were in love with her too.” People almost never spoke this personally to Bill Goddard.

Goddard took no offense. “More’n you know.” Lessing felt his grief like a physical blanket swaddling them.

“I remember when Lessing married Jameela,” Wrench continued. “You wanted Lessing and his golden bint-baby out of the Party, so that you could have a chance with Liese.”

Goddard’s nostrils flared; at least Wrench had succeeded in changing the subject. “Lessing was wrong to marry Jameela Husaini! He didn’t know jack-shit about race, about genetics, about eugenics! He still doesn’t! Just Mr. Average American Fuckhead, brainwashed by the media and what passes for an ‘education!’ Maybe you shouldn’t blame somebody for being ignorant, but Lessing tries extra hard! No ambition, no goal, no particular morality, no ideology… no reason to come in out of the goddamned rain!”

“Innocent as a baby’s bunghole, that’s our Alan.” Wrench’s fingers pried at Lessing’s right eyelid. “God, he’s still in shock. What do we do?”

Goddard ignored him. “Lessing never liked me. I’m the fanatic, the guy who doesn’t back off from violence, the one who’s just as ready to stand up and fight as our enemies are. He never understood about racial survival, the wrongs of race-mixing, the real nature of our opposition.”

“No,” Wrench said slowly. “I don’t think he ever did. He ought to now…”

“Liese…” Goddard whispered her name, very quietly.

Wrench lurched up to lean on the metal banister. “We’ve got to get going. Where the hell are our guys, anyhow?”

“I sent ‘em to see if they can find a way out of here. Korinek and his gubbin’ Jews have us trapped.”

“Always the Jews. Fanatics…,” Wrench snickered nervously, “…like us.”

“Yeah. They do what they have to do: their terror gangs, their pressure groups, their money, their media control. Even after Pacov, after all that’s happened, they’ll be back. I don’t blame ‘em; I just fight ‘em. Guys like Lessing think that if we’re nice to ‘em, lean over backwards to be ‘unprejudiced,’ give ‘em more than their share of our goodies, let ‘em run our government and our media, let ‘em scare us with their accusations of ‘anti-Semitism,’ then they’ll live with us in beautiful peace and harmony. It’s all so ‘ecumenical,’ so bullshit ‘liberal’!”

“Makes a great Sunday school lesson, you gotta admit.”

“Propaganda! For two thousand years the Jews have worked their butts off to take over our society. They get in, they get accepted, then they take charge. They’re smart: it’s hard to make people see what’s happening right under their goddamned noses.”

“You don’t have to tell me!” Wrench would let Goddard talk, nevertheless; it helped work some of the grief and anger out of the big man’s system.

“We have two choices: we export ‘em, the way the Germans did before World War II, or else we take ‘em out entirely. I don’t balk at either solution. They do what they have to do, and so do we. The end does justify the means when racial survival is at stake. The only morality is the morality of the living.”

A boom and a prolonged hammering echoed up from below. Wrench jumped convulsively. “What’s that?”

“A grenade!” Goddard exclaimed. “Gunfire! Shit, we better think up a plan! If Korinek’s doggies come charging up the stairs, ws’Tefungled!”

Wrench waved a hand before Lessing’s face. “What do we do about this gubber? He’s in dinkin’ shock… out of it.”

Lessing swam up from a hundred leagues beneath the sea. He said, “No, I’m green light now. Give me a jack up.” He hauled himself erect. “Hand over your M-25, Wrench. I can use it better than you can.”

He felt like a thousand-year-old ship raised from a watery grave. He clung to the masthead and pulled seaweed and flotsam from his rotting bones. The Ancient Mariner? Davy Jones? No, that was some other movie!

He stumbled over, picked up the automatic rifle, and staggered off down the stairs, leaving the other two to follow.

One, two, three floors they descended in silence, Lessing in the lead. Wrench in the middle, and Goddard bringing up the rear. The sprinkler system was still working on some of these floors; on others there was no sound, no light: only a dank and smoky darkness that stank of burning.

Feet grated on the stairs below, and Lessing held up a hand. He signed toward the fire-door on their landing, and Wrench and Goddard slipped through and took up positions behind it. He himself went back up half a flight to the between-floors landing and hunkered down behind the steel banister where he could see who was coming. He checked his M-25 and laid the Belgian automatic beside him as back-up. Then he turned off the electric lantern.

He waited.

Pallid light dipped and danced below.

“Nobody,” a voice whined. “We got ‘em all, every one….”

“That little redheaded babe Johnson found down on five. She was so fuckin’ scared she….” The rest was unintelligible. The accent was Latin American, probably a foreign recruit in the U.S. Army.

“Why’n hell did he have to shoot her?” Another soldier, a Black from the deep South by the timbre of his voice, complained. “We all coulda had a thump-a-dump.”

“Shut up!” somebody else ordered in a higher, reedier tone. The voice was almost certainly Korinek’s! “There may be more survivors up here.” The footsteps halted. “Hey, Thomson, scout upstairs, will you? Make sure nobody’s lying doggo.”

A single pair of boots crunched cautiously on the ashes and debris littering the stairs, and a bright oval of light picked out stark shadows on the walls. Lessing prepared to duck back up another flight.

The acoustics in the stairwell fooled him. Before he could retreat, he found himself looking down at a shiny, faceless, plastic helmet visor tilted up toward him. He strove to get the clumsy M-25 up in time, realized it was too late, made himself as small as possible, and gritted his teeth in anticipation of the lethal barrage to come.

The soldier lifted the muzzle of his weapon.

Then slowly lowered it again.

The man’s right arm sketched the Party’s stiff-armed salute. The other hand lifted the visor. The doggie was young and blonde. He smiled and silently mouthed, “Colonel Lessing?”

Lessing went limp with relief. He didn’t know this boy, but that wasn’t unusual. He hardly remembered any of his newer pupils. Maybe this kid had seen him only on TV.

With his left hand the doggie pantomimed “eight” and pointed downstairs. Then he held up two fingers, pointed down again, and gestured at Lessing and himself: two more friends of the Party. Korinek had unwittingly picked three very unsuitable helpers.

Maybe they could get the drop on the bastard and end this the easy way.

It didn’t happen. The tableau was torn asunder by gunfire from the landing below: a shrieking, snarling, sustained racketing of automatic weapons, punctuated by four blasts from a combat shotgun. Shouts and screams echoed up.

Lessing hit the floor and rolled back behind the banister post. Bullets yammered after him; the young soldier had involuntarily let off a burst from his M-25. Cement chips flew like bees above his head, whining and buzzing and stinging.

A fragmentation grenade went crump downstairs. The noise, the smoke, and the concussion were indescribable. The boy shrieked, eyes and mouth stretched wide; then he rose up and flew forward like a thrown dishrag to smash into the stair steps just below Lessing’s landing. His limbs convulsed, and he lay still.

The firing stopped.

Lessing got to his knees in the ringing silence. He ran shaky hands over his body and found himself unhurt except for cuts from flying cement chips. His hearing would probably never be the same, but at least he was alive. What about the others? Who had thrown the grenade? Probably Goddard, who hadn’t any idea what the thing could do in this confined space.

What now? He clutched the wall. God, he was getting too old for this! You stopped playing Captain Marlow Striker when you hit forty, or else you hired stunt men to do the rugged bits for you. His knee hurt, and he saw it was bleeding. Heplucked an inch-long sliver of metal out of his calf: a souvenir of the banister.

Lessing bent to lay trembling fingers against the young soldier’s throat He could feel no pulse. He turned him over and saw he was dead. Shrapnel from the grenade had ricocheted up the stairs and around the comer. The plastic helmet had protected the boy’s head, but his shoulders and back were a mess. Lessing was lucky; he had been almost completely around the next comer higher up.

He crept on down to the landing below. Several bodies lay there in the reeking gloom. He couldn’t tell how many. Blood was everywhere. One of the electric lanterns still worked, and he took it to search further. The fire door was open, hanging on its hinges; the steel-pipe banister was twisted and shredded; and the fire-emergency cabinet from the opposite wall lay smashed on top of one of the bodies.

Lessing lifted the cabinet and pulled the fire-axe and coils of hose away. The body had no head. The torso didn’t look like Korinek, though, and it certainly wasn’t Wrench or Goddard. He shuddered. Then he saw a trail of red spatters that led away, down into the stairwell. Korinek — or his rear guard — must have escaped.

Lessing had to find Wrench and Goddard and get the hell out of this part of the hotel before Korinek came back with more opfoes. He approached the fire door, afraid of what might be behind it.

He saw a foot, then a blood-drenched leg in camouflage pants. They were not connected to anything else.

“Wrench?” he called warily. “Goddard? Hey!”

A thin, gasping wheeze came back.

He found Goddard ten feet farther on, slumped against a door. His face was pasty-pale, and he clutched his abdomen with both hands. Lessing had seen gut-shots before, out in Angola and Syria. Many such wounded lived, provided they got medical care in time.

“Christ…!” Goddard struggled to speak. Froth bubbled at his lips. Lessing noticed another red-oozing hole next to his breast pocket. A lung-puncture would be the proverbial last straw.

“Okay, okay. Don’t talk. Just nod if Wrench is all right.”

“Sent… find… scout… stair “

“Stay still, damn it.” Without medical stuff he could do nothing. He prowled. This floor was mostly Party offices, he remembered: correspondence, liaison, accounting, procurement, membership, newsletters, and other business functions. He raised his head to listen with his less-damaged ear but heard only the hiss and gurgle of the failing sprinklers. Water puddled at his feet.

Almost at once he discovered a first-aid kit on a shelf in a long room full of copying machines. It held only bandaids and a bottle of iodine though, as much use as a peashooter against a rhinoceros. He had to do the best he could for Goddard and hope that Wrench was miraculously alive and bringing back some friendlies!

Goddard’s eyes were closed when he reached him. Lessing felt for his pulse; the man was alive — barely.

“Hey, Bill,” he said, as brightly as he could. “You with me?” Something ice-blue kept flickering at the edge of his vision, and he tried to brush it away.

Goddard rocked his head from side to side. He looked a trifle better, and he struggled to sit up. Men often recovered like this, just before they died. “I’m here, Lessing. But not for long.”

“Don’t be an asshole. We’ll get you out.”

“Sure. Santa and his reindeer comin’ to rescue me?” Goddard wiped his lips with his sleeve.

Lessing applied iodine and plugged the chest wound with apiece of Goddard’s shirt. It was useless. The damage was too severe.

“Really fungled your uniform, Bill.”

“I’ll get it drycleaned.”

Something pricked at his memory, but he was too preoccupied to catch it. All he said was, “Green light. Wrench’ll be back soon.”

Goddard squinted up at him. Lessing wasn’t a very good liar.

“Listen!” Goddard pleaded. “Mulder… Liese ” His lips and jaw worked, but only droplets of blood spilled out. If Bill Goddard had any brave last words for posterity, he would never get them out now.

“Save your breath. You need it. I understand.”

The strange thing was that he did understand. A day, even a few hours ago, Goddard’s opinions would have struck him as harsh, violent, bigoted, fanatic, and “Draconian,” as Wrench put it. Now they sounded right.

Goddard had been right all along.

There could be no compromise. This was war. If the Aryan race did not win, then it would lose. It was that simple. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. You get your gang of killer apes, and we get ours, and we whango. Toughest tribe takes all the bananas.

The only loyalty is to the ethnos. Racial survival means personal survival. Weakness is failure, and failure is death.

How many times had Liese said these things? How many limes had he stupidly, blindly, ignorantly argued with her?

Liese! Oh, Liese…!

Ice-blue flickered again at the comer of his vision. He swore, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and made an effort to focus. He looked down.

Goddard’s eyes stared stonily up at him. He was dead.

Lessing sat in the companionable darkness beside the man who had never been his friend and communed, sometimes with himself, sometimes with Goddard, sometimes with Liese, and sometimes with another woman, who wore an ice-blue gown.

A figure loomed up at the far end of the hallway, in the smoke-haze by the silent elevators.

“Wrench?”

“Hello, Lessing. Or should I say ‘Ek?’ Long lime, what?”

“Who…?” A dream: a nightmare out of his past, a snowy landscape, a cold, frightening labyrinth, a dangerous task of some sort.

“Me, you bloody bastard, me! Hollister… your dear friend Teen.”

It was hard to think. “Marvelous Gap?”

“Jerkin’ right! Where else?” The man advanced, a big, clumsy weapon at the ready: a military laser rifle. “And how’ve you been?”

He knew that this bitter-faced man would kill him, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. What did he have to live for?

Ice-blue

Lessing sighed. Yes, there was that. He didn’t know what he had to do or why, but he couldn’t let it end here. Not yet.

“Christ, pay attention! ” The man swung the heavy weapon to and fro. “I’m going to blow your bleedin’ balls off, one at a time. Then I’m going to kneecap you, shoot you through each arm, and “

Lessing didn’t want to hear Hollister’s catalogue of horrors. He asked, “Why?”

“Eh? Ehl Why? Why what! Why am I about to unzip you? You stupid dongo, at Marvelous Gap 1 was supposed to, if you got off the bleedin’ siring. Then when you started thumbin’ us, one by one….”

“I never did.”

“Liar! Couldn’t find you then. When you did lum up, you were safe in India, surrounded by Nazis, the bastards I hate most. I’m a Jew, you know… Halperin’s the name I was born with, not Hollister… then you became irrelevant until you got your Ponape operation going. I missed you there, but Richmond found you. He knew a lot I didn’t… never discovered what. After Ponape you disappeared… seein’ the sights in Russia, I heard later. Then you popped up again like a bleedin’ bad penny in Mulder’s fortress and became a ‘colonel’ of your murderin’ Cadre. Then you became relevant all over again. Almost got you in Oregon, what?”

“You got a lot of other people, including some kids.”

“Casualties of war, Herr Ober-fucking-gruppenführer Lessing. You ought to agree with that. Your lads gassed enough of us.”

“Hmm… I disagree; not enough, I think. For whom are you working?”

“Like to know, wouldn’t you?” The other man jeered; “Ah, I don’t suppose it matters now. Me and Korinek, we both work for a coalition, y ‘might say: some Jews, some Gentiles, some business interests, some military, some religious. You could call us the status quo. The bloody Establishment!” He whinnied with laughter. “Too bad you’re about to get dis-established!”

“You… your coalition… used Pacov?”

“Too right! We had to.”

“My God!”

“Oh, don’t sound so poggin’ pious! You’d have done the same in our boots. We used Pacov to save Israel from the Russians. The Soviets were plannin’ a bit of surgery on the Middle East: conventional warfare under the pretense of ‘stopping Israeli atrocities against the Arabs. ‘ With the Americans busy elsewhere, it would’ve been easy for Moscow to push Israel back to its old boundaries… before Cairo and North Africa, before the Baalbek War, like it was in the 1990’s. So we were going to do the world a grand favor: pot off the Soviets, occupy Mother Russia, sweep up the pieces, give some spoils to Israel and some to our pals… and incidentally become the supreme power on earth. Amen, brother, amen!”

“But…? Starak?”

“Things went wrong-o. We didn’t realize the Russkies were so ready with Starak! They retaliated. We wanted things as they were, except with us leadin’ the band. We never meant to see the Western world destroyed, though it did work out better for us in the end… fewer enemies to fight. Our biggest regret is that Israel got thumbed!”

Lessing smiled. “Oh, the Russians didn’t thumb Israel. I did that… with the Pacov I stole at Marvelous Gap.”

It took a moment to sink in. The other man’s features went pale, then red, then purple with rage. “You? You what}”

“That’s right. Me. All by myself. I gave Richmond two vials of Pacov. Then I saw to it they got wet. In Jerusalem.”

That wasn’t strictly true, but it served the purpose: Hollister-Halperin’s hatred became almost palpable in the air between them. He might try to kill Lessing quickly. An angry opponent makes mistakes.

The laser rifle hissed, and Lessing rolled desperately to the side. The beam wasn’t aimed at him, though; it had cut off one of poor, dead Goddard’s legs at the knee. Both edges of the wound were cauterized, and the floor beneath the body smoked.

“That’s a sample! You’re next, you dinkin’ Nazi bastard! Maybe an ankle, maybe a wrist.” The weapon came up again, its recharger humming. Hollister was too experienced to make a really dumb mistake, but maybe he could be outwitted.

Lessing rolled and scrambled again. This time the beam ploughed a fiery furrow in the gold-flocked wallpaper behind his right ear.

“Did I miss? Oh, too bloody bad! Sorry! Here, let’s have another go!” Hollister fired again.

Lessing both felt and saw the beam this time. The sword of light opened a black hole the size of a pea in the underside of his left biceps near the armpit. The pain was excruciating; he expelled an unwilling hiss of agony from his lungs and felt consciousness starting to slip away. He skidded on the water-soaked carpet, fell, and tumbled against a sand-filled corridor ashtray.

“And now, ladeez ‘n’ gents, for the final encore…!” Hollister crooned. He hoisted his weapon. He was not a big man, and the laser rifle was awkward. Not that it would do Lessing any good: one hit almost any where, and he was unzipped! He cast about for something to throw.

The ashtray, a ceramic cylinder nearly three feet high, made a passable bowling ball. Lessing sent it rolling toward Hollister’s feet. The man danced aside, and the unbearably bright beam gouged a sizzling trough in the roof.

Lessing tensed his muscles to leap. It was his last and only chance.

Hollister gaped upward, over his head.

The ceiling groaned, creaked, and sagged. Plaster silted down, followed by a thin dribble of water from the long cut the laser had made.

The water quickly increased to a rivulet, then to a deluge.

Water is heavy. The run-off drains for the sprinklers on the floor above must have been blocked. A short laser burst could not sever the steel supporting girders, of course; the rocketing from the helicopters already had done that. But the laser did open a hole through wood and lath and plaster, which was all that was holding up that part of the ceiling.

A torrent poured down into Hollister’s amazed face, followed by a rushing flood of heavier debris.

Hollister vanished without a sound.

Chaos. The building squealed like an animal in its death-agony.

Cold, black water surged up around Lessing’s ankles, then his thighs. He lost his footing, sank into a muck of churning rubble, rolled head over heels, and found himself hanging onto the very lip of the elevator shaft, bruised and dazed, buffeted by broken woodwork, furniture, and slimy, soft, invisible things. The icy river rolled over and past him, down into the abyss. He clawed at the ironwork grill of the safety door and hung on.

The water diminished to a trickle. He staggered up, slithered over the wrack now almost blocking the corridor, and looked for Hollister. He saw that the section of hallway where they had been was now a jumble of cement blocks and beams and ruin.

Hollister lay under a tilted length of steel girder, almost completely submerged in rubble. Furiously, Lessing dug boards, laths, pipes, and bricks away to free the man’s face.

Hollister opened eyes like red-rimmed marbles in a white-smeared mask. He coughed, choked, and moaned, “Help me!”

The pretty lady in the ice-blue gown handed Lessing a shard of broken glass. This was a time for mercy, she said.

Lessing had to agree. He used the shard to slit the Jew’s throat.

The walls trembled. More cave-ins were imminent. Somewhere below explosions boomed. Was Korinek going to bring the building down? It would make it easier to explain, of course: a savage firefight against terrorists who blew up themselves and the hotel rather than surrender to the forces of goodness and love.

Lessing didn’t care. There was no more to do here. He wiped his bloody hands on his shirt and arose, hugging his injured arm. He would go upstairs, to his own apartment, and wait.

He would be with Liese when the end came.

He picked his way through the destruction, muttering to the lady in ice-blue as he went. Somehow he found a usable staircase on the opposite side of the hotel.

His apartment was cold when he got there. The door to the chasm that had been his bedroom was open. He closed it. He didn’t want to think of Liese lying in the bathroom beyond, unreachable and still.

He heard a noise outside in the corridor. This time he looked before calling out.

It was Sam Morgan, just emerging from his apartment, a black, leatherette briefcase under his arm, for all the world like a young executive on his way to a board meeting!

Morgan uttered a gasp of surprise. “Jesus! Lessing? You still here? Didn’t think anybody was left alive…!”

He nodded wordlessly.

“Can I help? My God… your arm…!”

“No matter now. Where’s Wrench?”

“Wrench? Haven’t seen him. We’ve got to get out of here! Come on!”

“How long you been in town?” An idea was forming at the back of Lessing’s mind. His mental slide-projector clicked, and he blinked at the brilliance of the visual memory.

“Got in today. What the devil does that matter?”

“Nothing. What’s in the briefcase?”

Morgan peered, then came over to take Lessing by his good arm. “Hey, you really have been pounded, man! God! Come on, we’ll get you to a doctor.”

“Through the power tunnels? Right under Korinek’s feet?”

“Of course. We can make it out of Washington and get to our headquarters in Virginia.”

“Sure. Nobody’ll be watching, of course. Sam, what’ve you got in the briefcase?”

“Important Party papers, dammit. First things first. Downstairs “

Lessing reached out and took the briefcase. Morgan made a futile grab after it.

“Sam, all flights into Washington were booked up a week in advance. How did you get here from Chicago?”

“Car, of course,” the other sounded annoyed. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Here, let me carry my own briefcase. You’re wounded.”

He held it back. ‘That’s green light. You had a long drive. All night, then through Korinek’s cordon, through the shelling… through the power tunnels. You must be tired. Thought you might’ve been here for a few days already. Shacking with a girl in a private house somewhere?”

“Fast and lucky, you know me! No, I just got in today.”

“I asked before: what’s in the briefcase? Korinek let you through to pick up some papers? Papers the Jews and their buddies in the ‘coalition’ can’t risk having found? Papers about Pacov?”

“What Pacov? Jews? Coalition? You’re…”

“Crazy? Yeah, I am crazy.” Lessing drew a deep breath. The lady in ice-blue was standing by the bedroom door, watching. “Sam, / know.”

“Know what?” Morgan’s eyes were fixed on him, as a mongoose stares at a cobra.

“The house in Annandale. The clothes there are your size. They’re the kind of thing you wear.” He gestured at Morgan’s elegant suit. “You’ve always had great taste, Sam, rich and fancy.”

“I haven’t a clue…!”

“I do. I have a funny sort of photographic memory, Sam. I see pictures: click, like a snapshot, every detail in living color. Right now I see you at a table in a big room, like a church, with stained-glass windows. It’s an expensive restaurant. You’re talking to somebody, but I can’ t see who it is. You’re wearing a beautiful sport coat, sort of a tweed, I think it’s called… grey. Anyway, you’re rubbing the left sleeve. There’s a blackish stain there, like when the drycleaners can’t completely get a spot out. You remember that?” “Of course not!… And so what?”

”Printer’s ink, I think. That’s what Eighty-Five said ‘James F. Arthur’ had the dry cleaners in Detroit try to take out of his sport coat.”

“You are deranged, Lessing. Give me my goddamned case, and get out of my way…!”

“Aren’t you curious who ‘James F. Arthur’ is, Sam? Anybody else would ask. But you don’t need to… not when you’re ‘James F. Arthur’ yourself. Is that your real name or a pseudonym? ‘James F. Arthur’ is the guy who arranged for the Marvelous Gap spesh-op. He started Pacov to keep the Russians from re-arranging the Middle East, to give Israel some Lebensraum, to help the Jews and their ‘coalition’ take all the marbles. ‘James F. Arthur’ is the greatest genocide who ever lived, and he is you, Sam. You killed half the world!”

“You’re raving, Lessing! AH this just from a spot on my coat?”

“And other things: after we picked you up on that flight to meet Outram in Colorado, our enemies always seemed to be half a jump ahead of us. ” His odd, eidetic memory was dropping slide after slide into his mental projector. “You had to get out of the car before your doggies in the helicopter got there; otherwise they would’ve thumbed you along with Mulder and Wrench and me. And Ponape: who gave the Izzies the plans of our installation? And later, in Oregon “

Morgan relaxed against the door frame. “Okay, Lessing, okay! Let’s say you’ve put it all together. Say I’m a kikibird, a weasel planted way back when Mulder was just another happy, little Nazi kid getting his neighborhood SS gang together. Don’t you think I’m right! Don’t you think it’s right to rid the world of the Nazis once and for all… to stamp them out, eradicate them root and branch? What are they but a bunch of gangsters who ‘re always trying to rock the boat, to stir people up so that they can take things away from their rightful owners?”

“What things?”

“The world, man, the world!”

“And who ‘re its rightful owners?”

“The same ones they’ve always been… the people I work for. They deserve to be on top, because they ‘re smarter and tougher than the Nazis… and a lot more realistic. They understand the way the world works, and they know how to keep the people contented, keep everything on an even keel.”

“Keep everything bland, Sam?” The woman in ice-blue smiled, and he nodded at her. Morgan peered in her direction but didn ‘ t seem to see her; Lessing wondered why. “Mulder trusted you.”

“Trust? Nazis don’t deserve trust!”

Lessing watched Morgan’s fingers inch toward his righthand coat pocket. Wounded as he was, he could break this man’s arm in three places before he got his little popper out

“Mulder and his people are loyal to their ideals, loyal to their movement, and loyal to each other and to those who support them. What kind of saints have you got in your gang?”

Morgan chewed his lower lip. “Look, Lessing, I just do my job. Remember how Wrench used to sing that stupid Christmas carol about ‘four FBI, three CIA, two kikibirds, and an Israeli in a pear tree?’ I’m one of the kikibirds. Cleverer than most.”

“Why, Sam? Are you Jewish? You sure don’t look Black.”

“Me? The Great White Hope of the Party of Humankind? Shit, no, I’m no kike! I’m in it for money and power… two of the three reasons for everything that happens on earth, the third being sex, which I get enough of anyway.”

“Kinky sex, judging by your Annandale basement.”

Morgan shrugged. His index finger was caressing the flap of his pocket.

Lessing smiled. “You guys wanted me thumbed. Why didn’t you do it yourself, Sam? You had opportunities. Why send Richmond and Hollister?”

“I’d have blown my cover. You weren’t important enough for that.”

“You had better things to do?”

“Much better. I still have. If Mulder’s really dead, there’ll be a struggle for control of the Party: Grant Simmons, Wrench, if he’s alive, Borchardt, Goddard…” Morgan couldn’t know that Goddard was dead “… Abner Hand, and the rest. It’ll be a free-for-all. Our coalition will see to it that I win. I’m your next Führer, Lessing! Give us a big Sieg Heil, brother, and a high five! ” Morgan remembered where he was and sobered. “Hey, look, none of this was personal, man!”

“We have to go now,” Lessing said. The lady was beckoning.

“Where?” Three of Morgan’s fingers were inside his pocket.

Lessing hefted the briefcase. “Downstairs, to Korinek, of course. I’m sure he’ll want to see me.”

Morgan began to smile. “Aha, bandwagon time! You’ve served different masters before. You’re a mere, and you want to be on the winning side. We should be able to work something out. I know you’re no ideological Nazi.”

“What’ll Korinek give me if I come over?”

“Your life for starters. If you’re good, you can have a job, money, a nice bint-baby or two… not Anneliese Meisinger, of course; she’s too wound up with Mulder and the Party!” Morgan’s hand began to withdraw from the pocket — without the gun. He had always preferred doing things the easy way.

“Liese! Oh, Sam, I almost forgot Liese is in there… in the bathroom.”

“She’s where!”

“In there. She’s hurt, Sam. She can’t move.” Lessing paused to listen to the lady in the ice-blue robe. “Would you help me, Sam? Help me move her downstairs?”

The other man grinned. His hand was out of his pocket now — empty. “Why, sure. Of course. Look, I spoke too fast. We can arrange it so you can have Liese. Without Mulder, she’s just one more….”

“Hundred-lira bint-baby. A good Cairo pog.”

“Christ, you’re raving, Lessing.” Morgan reached for his briefcase again, but Lessing moved away, toward the bedroom door. “Not that I blame you, after all you’ve been through.”

Lessing set the briefcase down. “Here, Sam,” he said kindly, “let me help you through.”

He opened the door and gave Morgan a gentle push.

He didn’t even watch.

Later, he awoke again from a dream of an ice-blue maiden with tawny, golden skin and dark-blonde hair. She looked like Liese sometimes, and like somebody else sometimes.

A man in a black helmet and tunic knelt beside him. There were other black uniforms as well. He saw booted feet and glittering weapons, and he smelled gunpowder and smoke and charred wood.

“Here’s the doctor!” a voice said. “My God…!”

“The briefcase,” Lessing husked. “Don’t lose it.”

“Don’t worry,” the black-garbed man soothed. “Hey, he’s green light!”

The sable uniforms in the background shifted. Lessing tried to recall the man’s name. Tim? Tom?

Lights sprang up on his mental photographic stage. The homely, Midwestern face before him was Tim Helm, wearing black Cadre battle-dress. How had he gotten here?

Helm said, “Colonel Lessing, Korinek and his bunch are in Cadre custody. We came up from Andrews and surrounded them. Got support from General Dreydahl and some sailors from Admiral Canning. General Hartman’s under arrest, and our people are in control of most of the military bases across the country. Miss Caw phoned from L.A. to say her folks are green light there too.” He hesitated. “We lost Mr. Mulder, though. His wife as well. Their house in Virginia is a crater.”

“Excuse us, sir!” A soldier in paramedic uniform motioned Helm aside to make room for an antiseptic-smelling man with grey hair. “Get that arm first, please. That’s the same one he almost lost in Oregon.”

Pain sparkled in his left biceps, then was replaced by numbness. “Liese,” Lessing muttered. “She’s in there… in the bathroom… get her out! Please, get her out!” A wave of fluffy, grey mist was rolling up to wash away the lonely little lighthouse of his mind.

A smaller Figure leaned close. Through distant, booming surf Lessing recognized Wrench. He stretched out his good hand. “Liese… out of there.”

Helm asked, “Out of where? The bathroom!” Lessing heard muttering from others in the room.

Wrench squatted beside him. “Sorry, doctor. Make way.”

There were footsteps, familiar footsteps. He struggled to see, but the leaden wave kept erasing everything.

Someone else was there.

Something warm and wet touched his cheek. Somebody took hold of him and clutched him so tightly it made him wince. He smelled perfume and both felt and heard the rustle of silk.

He knew that fragrance.

It was Liese’s perfume.

It couldn’t be Liese.

A purring, choppy, and utterly beloved voice said, “Mr. Mulder asked me go get Grant Simmons. Nobody else… go. Dulles Airport. Oh, my darling, my darling….”

The voice broke off. Warm tears stung abrasions on his face that he hadn’t known were there. The embrace grew too tight to endure, but he endured it gladly anyway. Now he really couldn’t see: both eyes were blurry. Have to get new ones.

Damage control reported to the bridge, but the skipper refused to abandon the wheel. Salt water blinded him, and the hollow thunder of the storm reverberated in his ears. Nothing and nobody could keep this ship from getting through! Ahead he saw the harbor lights of home. Victory was his!

Wrench growled, “Leave ‘em alone for a bit, doctor.”

“Who is the girl in the bathroom?” Tim Helm asked from the lowering darkness.

“We’ll get to her,” Wrench replied. “She’s probably one of the kids from Communications. She must’ve hid up here when the firing started and got thumbed by the missile concussion. Lessing… me and Goddard too… thought it was Liese. She was wearing grey, silk stockings. A lot of the women copy Liese.”

“I can see why.” Tim’s voice faded away.

“Yeah,” Wrench said. “Liese is a lady.”