Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [32]
Luntee closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and prepared to lose. But he never ran, never even attempted to protect himself or change what had been choreographed either by random order or by Keller’s manipulation. Keller ducked the tendrils and the electrical crackle and watched Luntee a couple more seconds before he finally snapped.
“Aw, hell, why aren’t I rotten? Braxan, down! Braxan!”
“Where are you!”
“Never mind! Get off the Grid! Get off! Run!”
He swung around, cupped his hands at his mouth, and shouted to the crowd on the perimeter. “Donny! Arc spike!”
Donnastal was ready. The boy seized the nearest spike, raised it to his shoulder, and heaved it like a Roman pilam. The fifteen-foot spear flew poorly, but enough to sail over Luntee’s head toward Keller. In a maneuver that would’ve been impossible a year ago, Keller bunched up his body and propelled himself into the air. With his high hand he knocked the spike out of its path. It cartwheeled once and thumped to the mats ten feet from him.
He came down it seemed to take a month on one knee, and rolled until his hands made contact with the spike. The long device leaped into his grip. He hugged it, rolled again, and turned the spear-end upward. With one hand he found the bitter end, cupped it, and gave a mighty shove.
The body of a free dancer was fifty percent guts and fifty percent hot air. The long spike punched through the hide with skill honed of thousands of hunts over thousands of years. Like a fish scaler, it knew its job to perfection. Oily glue poured over Keller’s hands, but he didn’t stay to receive the rest of the spillage.
Rolling to his knees, he kept a grip on the end of the spike and endured the deafening whine of the injured free dancer over his head while he plunged at Luntee. He caught the other man with the point of his shoulder and drove him down. Once on top of Luntee, Keller dug his fingers into a seam between the gum mats until his fingernails scraped metal.
The planet’s surface!
With all the strength in his lean and muscled arm, he hauled back on the woven gum. With the other hand he grounded the arc spike’s blunt end into the now-bared spot of surface metal and rolled for his life.
A conflagration erupted over them. The gum mats coiled around him and Luntee. Keller kept rolling until the mats were tight around them both in a rubber coffin.
Crushed against him, Luntee made a strangled shout and hammered his fists against the gum.
“Stop it! Lay still! I mean lie still!”
He couldn’t hear himself over the giant frying pan that sizzled around them. The free dancer was grounded. All its stored energy flashed into the planet in a single, instant, roaring display of pyrotechnics and raw voltage.
The gum mat became instantly hot. From outside the lightning flash was so bright the opalescence even penetrated the layers of woven rubber. Keller crammed his eyes shut. His skin was burning! Luntee’s body jolted against him. They were frying!
Cramped tightly against him, Luntee let out a long cry of panic. His elbows tucked tight, Keller buried his face in Luntee’s body and determined not to make a noise. The rubber box vibrated and jumped with them in it, slammed down, jumped again, rolled, as they were nearly cooked inside. Every hair on Keller’s body stood up and spun. His back and legs tightened inside the rolled mats, trapped, yet every muscle contracted as if he were running full out.
Grounded!
What he felt on his skin, though his body, he saw as an ultimate picture of destruction in his mind. The free dancer had made direct contact with the planet instant, complete energy transfer.
Indescribable heat had soon filled up his brain and broiled away his thoughts. Time lost meaning. He was aware only of a terrible hammering from outside, as if the rubber roll and its pathetic inhabitants were instead the head of a mallet.
The planet surged up under the great