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Most of the other passengers had disembarked, and the chief stewardess was glancing in Qui
He walked towards the airlock hatch, and summoned the energistic power, mentally moulding it into the now familiar pattern. It crawled over his body, needle spears of static penetrating every cell. A swift groan was the only indication he showed of the grotesquery he experienced passing through the gateway into the ghost realm. His heart stopped, his breathing ceased, and the world about him lost its glimmer of substance. The solidity of walls and floors was still present, but ephemeral. Irrelevant if he really pressed.
The chief stewardess watched the last passenger step into the airlock, and turned back to the bar. Secured below the counter were several bottles of the complimentary Norfolk Tears and other expensive spirits and liqueurs which her team had opened. They were careful never to leave much, at most a third, before opening a new bottle. But a third of these drinks was an expensive commodity.
She began inventorying all these bottles as empty in her stock control block. The team would split them later, filling their personal flasks, and take them home. As long as they didn’t get too greedy the company supervisor would let it pass. Her block’s datavise turned to nonsense. She gave it an a
“What—?” she grumbled. Power loss was just about impossible in the lift capsules. Every component had multiple redundancy backups. She was about to call the lift capsule’s operations officer when the lights steadied, and her stock control block came back on line. “Bloody typical,” she grunted. It still bothered her badly. If things could go wrong on the ground, they could certainly go wrong half way up the tower.
She gave the waiting bottles a forlorn glance, knowing she was giving them up if she logged an official powerdown incident report. The company inspectorate authority would swarm all over the lift capsule. She carefully erased the inventory file she’d started, and datavised the lounge processor for a cha
The call never got placed. Instead she received a priority datavise from the arrivals complex security office ordering her to remain exactly where she was. Outside, an alarm siren started its high-pitched urgent wailing. The sound made her jump, in eleven years of riding the tower she’d only ever heard it during practice drills.
The siren’s clamour sounded muffled to Qui
Ah well, something to remember.
Thick security doors were rumbling across the end of the corridor, trapping stragglers among the passengers. Qui
The arrivals complex on the other side was made up from a series of grandiose multi-level reception halls, stitched together by wave stairs and open-shaft lifts. It could cope with seventy passenger lift capsules disembarking at once; a capacity which had been operating at barely twenty-five per cent since the start of the crisis. As Qui
Down below on the main concourse, a huge flock of people was ru
Up on Qui
Qui
Even though God’s Brother had granted him a much greater energistic strength than the average possessed, he would be very hard pressed to defend himself against all eighteen of them firing at him. Earth was obviously taking the threat of possession very seriously indeed.
A new group of people had arrived to move methodically among the whimpering passengers. They weren’t in uniforms, just ordinary blue business suits, but the security officers deferred to them. Qui
Qui
People huddled round the barricaded exits felt his passage as a swift ripple of cool air, gone almost as it started. On the plaza outside, more squads of security guards were setting up; two groups were busy mounting heavy-calibre Bradfield rifles on tripods. Qui
The lift took them a kilometre and a half straight down, opening into a circular chamber three hundred metres across. The station’s floor was divided up by concentric rows of turnstiles, cha
Qui