• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He had the advantage of a shorter angle to cross, against Millisor's and Rau's disadvantage of their writhing burden. Ethan found himself standing, legs spread apart, blocking the entrance to the flex tube. Perfectly positioned for a fast draw, barring the minor hitch of being weaponless. Help, he thought. "Stop!" he cried.

To his surprise, they did, cautious. Rau had lost his stunner somewhere, but Millisor pulled a vicious, glittering little needler from his jacket and took aim at Ethan's chest. Ethan pictured its tiny needles expanding on impact and whirling like razors through his abdomen. His autopsy would be the godawfullest mess . . .

Terrence Cee yanked away from Rau and spun to stand in front of Ethan, his arms spread wide in a futile gesture of protection. "No!"

"You think I have to keep you alive just because the cultures are gone, mutant?" Millisor, furious, cried at him. "Dead will do, by God!" He raised his weapon in both hands. "What the—" he lurched as his feet rose from the floor, his hands clutching out for lost balance.

Ethan grabbed Cee. His stomach seemed to be floating away independently of the rest of him. He looked around hysterically, to spot Quinn clinging to the far wall near one of the corridor entrances, the cover plate forcibly torn off an environmental engineering control panel beside her.

Millisor's body undulated in midair, compensating expertly for his unwanted spin, and he brought his weapon back to steady aim. Quinn, yelling helplessly, tore the cover plate the rest of the way off its cabinet and flung it toward them. It spun wickedly through the air, but it was obvious before it was halfway across the bay that it was going to miss Millisor. The Cetagandan's grip tightened on his needler trigger—

Millisor's body, haloed for a blinding instant like some burning martyr, convulsed in the booming blue crackle of a plasma bolt. Ethan's head jerked at the pungent stench of burnt meat and fabric and boiling plastics. He blinked red and purpled afterimages of the dancing, dying silhouette of the ghem-lord.

The needler spun away, and Rau lost his grip on the floor in an aborted grab for it. The Cetagandan captain swam frantically in air, swiveling his head in urgent search for the source of this devastating new attack. Quinn's cover plate, rebounding off the far wall, winged by nearly taking Ethan's head with it.

"There he is!" Cee, grappling in midair with Ethan, pointed with a shout at the catwalks and girders. A pink blur moved along them, aimed something at Rau. "No! He's my meat!" Cee cried. With a berserker yell, Cee launched himself off Ethan toward Rau. "Kill you, bastard!"

The only benefit Ethan could see coming from this insane outbreak of martial spirit was that he, Ethan, was pushed toward the outer bulkhead wall. He managed to catch a grip on a projection without breaking a wrist, halting his mindless momentum.

"No, Terrence! If somebody's firing at Cetagandans, the thing to do is get out of the way!" But this voice of reason whipped away in the wind. Wind? The air leak must be widening—explosive decompression at any moment, surely . . .

Cee's and Rau's struggling forms sank to the deck like a pebble dropping through oil, as Quinn gradually turned up a little gravity. Ethan's own body stopped flapping like a flag in the breeze, and he found himself hanging, though still lightly, entirely too far above the deck. He began to climb down hastily, before Quinn decided to try something like Helda's trick with the birds.

Rau threw the smaller, lighter Cee bouncing and skidding along the deck, and whirled to dash for his ship's flex tube. Two steps, and he flared, melted, and burned like a wax image in a brilliant plasma cross-fire, coming from not one but two sources among the girders. He fell with a meaty thunk, and, horribly, lived a moment more, writhing and screaming soundlessly through fleshless black jaws. Cee, on hands and knees, watched open-mouthed, as though himself dismayed