Permanence

The smoke made normal vision impossible, but her suit's HUD display showed a sketchy view of her surroundings, rendered from laser or sonar. It wasn't an inscape display; she and her men had their inscape temporarily disabled as a precaution against spoofing.

Sola's men were diving and rolling into the side corridor now and she heard taser fire. She hurried after them on wobbly legs. She had just rounded the corner when somebody swept her legs out from under her and she fell on her back. Bright flashes and the sound of gunfire surrounded her. Rue righted herself and looked ahead— catching confused sonar glimpses of man-shapes wrestling in the smoke. Somebody's discarded taser lay near her and she picked it up before thinking to unholster the one on her belt.

One of the fighting figures went down (others ru

Two spider robots and three space-suited men lay on the deck. The prone men's suits were all R.E.-issue. Rue's own men were already moving on toward the hub of the corridors.

Rue got to her feet unsteadily. She couldn't help looking down at the faceplate of the man nearest her.

She recognized the face behind the glass. This was a man who had sometimes joined her crew at lunch in the cafeteria. He was quite a joker. Now he was unconscious and turning blue as he tried to breathe.

"Captain!" Barendts was waving at her to hurry up. Rue knelt down and undogged the man's faceplate. Jared, that was his name. As soon as the glass was open he sucked in a deep breath.

"Come on!" She stood indecisively. There was no time to examine the other two. Rue ran after Barendts, feeling sick at what they were having to do.

The others were already going up the spiral staircase at the hub of the four spoke corridors. Rue caught up to them at the top of the stairs. There had originally been two more floors above this one, but now the staircase continued up in its cylinder past two sets of sealed doors. The ceiling visible through the opened doors on Rue's level was bunched and bundled. The walls had been partly dismantled, so that they only rose to head-height now, like partitions.

Rue nodded when she saw this. "If they're on board, they'll be here," she said. "Crisler wouldn't house any of his own people in such a dangerous spot." One pressure leak and the whole level would be in vacuum.

"We lost our hunters," pointed out one of the men. Sola shrugged.

"Search the old-fashioned way, then," he said. "Two men stay here; you two take that way and we'll go this way. Clockwise when you get to the ring corridor." This was Rue's chance to show she had learned her infantry-tactics lessons well; she covered Sola while he ducked through the doorway, then he knelt and waved her through. She ran past to the first door and flattened herself next to it.

The door was shut; Sola ducked past her and she hit the switch then dropped to a crouch. The door snicked open. Sola had it covered and nodded curtly to her. Rue poked her head around the corner.

The odd billowy ceiling made this wedge-shaped room look like it was half-filled by a solidified cloud. It must be cold up here: Icicles hung from the folds of hull fabric. Boxes were stacked around the room's periphery and the single table held two plates with halfeaten meals on them. There were no chairs; but another door beckoned on the far side of the room. Rue eased inside and Sola followed.

This time Rue took up position behind a stack of boxes and Sola went to the door. He was three steps from it when it flew open. A crimson flash caused her faceplate to polarize momentarily; then she saw Sola tumbling backward, his chest smoking. Another flash and the boxes in front of her exploded.

Rue rolled across the floor, firing her taser as she came back to a crouch. Sparks flew around the doorway, then someone leaped through it. The man was in a pressure suit and held an antiperso

The laser looked just like the one she'd seen dangling from an arm of the submarine back on Oculus. This might even be the man who'd shot Max.

Rue jumped to one side just as he fired. She fired back, raising another cascade of sparks from the boxes where he now crouched. Even a near miss with the taser might short out his suit's systems, leaving him helpless— but she was having no luck.

Fire engulfed her hand. The taser exploded and the slap against her palm spun Rue around. She fell back against the smoking remains of the table.

He stepped out from behind the boxes, between her and the i

He glanced back, then casually took aim at Rue with the laser. She flinched and scarlet light blinded her.

There was no pain. As her faceplate depolarized she saw the man in front of her collapse to his knees and then fall on his face. The back of his suit was a blackened mess.

The soldier who had fired stepped over his body and knelt in front of Rue.

"Are you all right?" The voice was that of a woman. Rue shook her head in confusion.

The soldier reached up and undogged her own faceplate. "It's me, Mina!"

Mina. This was the woman Rebecca had begun seeing when they were aboard the Envy. She was one of Crisler's people, but obviously not on his side.

Suddenly Rue understood why Rebecca had left Oculus with Crisler. "She came back for you," she stammered.

"Come on," said Mina. She extended her hand to help Rue to her feet. "I've been managing to swing shifts so I could be with your people," she said. "It paid off, I guess."

Rue stooped to examine Sola. His eyes were open and lifeless.

She forced herself to turn away. With difficulty she made sense of what Mina had just said to her. "Are they here?" she asked.

"See for yourself." Mina pointed to the i

Rebecca and Blair both ran forward when they recognized her. They were alone in this small room. Both began talking at once and Rebecca grabbed onto Rue's gloved hand like a free-faller reaching for a safety line. A hot stab of pain in her hand made Rue pull back. She looked down and realized with a shock that her right glove was burned and fused. Waves of pain were radiating from her hand.

"I've been shot," she heard herself say. She had to keep her priorities, she reminded herself. "Where are Cori

"They're aboard the cycler mother," said Mina. "Crisler's using them as explorers."

The room was spi

This place had been set up as a prison cell. The walls were cut off near the top, as elsewhere on this level, but here they'd been stapled into the folds of hull material. There were four cots, a small table and a footlocker.

Blair was grimly rummaging through the locker. Rue's men clustered around Sola; he was obviously dead.

Rebecca was crying. "Rue, you're alive," she said. "They told me you'd drowned."

"How did you get here?" asked Blair. He was filling a satchel.

"It's a long story," she said, trying to smile. "Are those your records, Blair?"

He nodded to Rue, looking grimly relieved. "They were going to wipe it all. All my work." He had recorded everything, from the day they left Erythrion to Rue's discovery of the Lasa habitat builder at Jentry's Envy.