Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [91]
Jerry snapped up his needle gun and shot the German full of steel. He paused, arm curled around the ladder, to repressure the gun, shouting, “Look out!” as the guard rolled off the edge and fell down the shaft.
As the guard’s body thumped to the bottom, Jerry reached the top, his needle gun ready, but no-one was there. Frank had spared only one guard here, being sure that the maze would serve him best.
Everyone else scrambled up, and they all stood at the entrance to the maze while the soldier with the rope paid it out to them. They roped up.
Knotting her bit of the rope around her waist, Miss Brunner looked uncomfortable.
“I don’t like this sort of thing,” she said.
Jerry ignored her, leading them into the maze.
“Keep your mouths tightly shut,” he reminded them. “And whatever happens, keep your attention on following me.”
Their helmet lights lit the way as Jerry walked cautiously ahead, pointing out television cameras to the mercenaries, who shot them as they passed.
Then the first wave of gas hissed into the passageways. It was LSD gas, refined by old Cornelius. The nose filters, sophisticated by his son, could cope with it if they got through it fast enough. Old Cornelius had invented or modified all the hallucinatory protective devices in the house. Frank had added the guns and guards.
Hallucinogenic gases had been old Cornelius’s speciality, though an offshoot had been his hallucinomats such as the rooftop stroboscopic towers.
Old Cornelius had exhausted and killed himself searching for the ultimate hallucinogenic device (“total dissociation in under one second” had been his aim, his war-cry), just as his son Frank was destroying himself fairly slowly by looking for the ultimate kick in the veins.
Someone began to giggle, and Jerry looked back.
It was Mr. Powys.
Mr. Powys had his arms high and was shaking all over, just as if someone were tickling his armpits. Every so often he would stretch out his arms in front of him and make pushing motions at wisps of gas.
Then he began to skip about.
Mouths thin and firm now that they had seen the example of Mr. Powys, Mr. Smiles and Mr. Crookshank stepped in, striving to hold him still.
Jerry signed for the expedition to stop, unhooked the rope from his belt, and went back to hit Mr. Powys on the back of the neck with his pistol barrel.
Mr. Powys relaxed, and Mr. Smiles and Mr. Crookshank hefted him up between them.
In silence they walked on through the faintly yellowish gas that clouded the air of the maze. Those who had absorbed a little of it thought they saw shapes in the writhing stuff: malevolent faces, grotesque figures, beautiful designs. Everyone was sweating, particularly Mr. Smiles and Mr. Crookshank, who carried Mr. Powys who would soon have breathed enough LSD to kill him.
At a junction Jerry hesitated, his judgment slightly impaired. Then he was off again, taking the gang down the tunnel that branched off to the right.
They moved on, the silence sometimes interrupted by the sound of a rifle shooting out a camera.
It was a little ironic, he thought, that his father should have become so obsessed with the problem of increasing incidence of neurotic disorders in the world that he himself had gone round the bend towards the end.
Now Jerry rounded the last bend and the door of the control chamber was ahead of him. He was quite surprised that so far there had been only two casualties and only one of those actually dead.
About fifteen yards before they got to the door Jerry gave a signal, and a bazooka was passed down the line to him. Leaving Jerry and his loader, the remainder of the party retreated down the passage a short way and stood in a disorderly knot waiting.
Jerry got the bazooka comfortably onto his shoulder and pulled the trigger. The rocket bomb whooshed straight through the door and exploded in the control room itself.
A booted foot came sailing out and hit Jerry in the face. He kicked it