It stood open. Brodersen waved his partners through. When they were gone, his free hand grabbed a rail, he swung himself into the companionway.
A pistol crack whipped him to a halt. Twice. Thrice. It stabbed his eardrums. He twisted about where he stood. The bunch of agents was breaking up like a glob of dropped mercury. Men scampered off or flopped to the deck, drew their guns, and fired. Zarubayev’s raved, a couple of bodies below crumpled, then he reeled back. Blood spouted from his neck and belly.
Brodersen blazed into the foe. Through him there flashed: A fanatic, a devotee, a hero . . . must’ve hunkered down a bit when two or three others hid him . . . yanked his rod out and let fly knowing he’d almost surely miss, but he’d trigger a fusillade-I’ll never know who it was- He heard Troxell below, saw the survivors retreat, when Dozsa reached the platform, crouched above Zarubayev, and sprayed the corridor with metal. It wailed as it ricocheted, through the rattle of explosions. Troxell’s party disappeared up the curvature of this world.
He won’t continue a fire fight under these conditions. Pistols are too inaccurate, especially here . . . low weight, Coriolis vectors, the sighting Side 80
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
wrong- Two men sprawled dead, their shapes gone graceless, their features hideous. Three more were badly wounded. One dragged himself away, legs trailing, one stared at a shattered kneecap and whimpered, one sat slumped against a bulkhead, going into shock. Zarubayev’s blood dripped off the platform, slow and scarlet, slow and scarlet. Dozsa snarled at the edge. Caitlin stood by him now, wild of countenance, cursing in a torrent, but swinging her weapon steadily back and forth.
What Troxell will try to do is to block us from freeing the prisoners.
Brodersen’s paralysis broke. It had only lasted a few seconds. “Hold the fort!” he shouted. “Keep well covered! We’ll be back!” He swarmed along a short circular staircase to the elevator.
Weisenberg and Leino were there. The senior engineer had obviously had to restrain the junior from rushing up to join the battle, which would have been useless or worse. They were still wrestling. “Let’s go,” Brodersen said, and pushed the button for it.
The elevator was little more than a steel slab at right angles to a belt which carried it. Three more served the same passageway. Between them, easy to step onto, were ladders, liberally supplied with resting places. Those were for emergency use. The shaft extended almost nine hundred meters. Staring into its bleakly illuminated depths, Brodersen saw it converge in perspective on an atom-small terminus, and dizziness touched him.
Weisenberg sagged down onto a bench and stared at the floor. “Eli, Eli,”
he mumbled, “that this had to be.”
Leino, on his feet, gripped the rail as if to crumple it and shook his rifle aloft. His Upland speech came raw: “They fell on their own deeds, they swinehounds.”
“We’re not done with them yet.” Brodersen’s response was mechanical.
Most of him howled, I led Pegeen into this, Pegeen. “I feel sure they hope to catch us at the auditorium.”
Weisenberg glanced up, instantly alert. “Can they?”
“Dunno. You heard what I managed to worm out of Troxell concerning the layout here. I didn’t dare push too hard.”
“Jesu Kriste,” Leino groaned, “this thing crawls.”
“It’s meant to,” Weisenberg told him. “Change of gravity and air pressure. You need time to adapt. Whichever the enemy takes won’t be any faster.
And they retreated spinward from us. The auditorium is antispinward from here.
We’ll have a slight jump on them.”
“Yes, and just the three of us have them outgunned,” Brodersen added.
“Sit yourself, Martti. Recover your strength.”
He set an example, after choosing a rifle from Leino’s load, but his mind gave no cooperation. Pegeen. Lis. Barbara. Mike. The stars.
Once as a boy, on a sail cruise through the San Juan Islands, he’d developed a galloping earache. There was nothing to do but endure until the drum broke and relieved the satanic pain. That took a couple of hours. This five-minute ride felt longer.
But then it ended. He led the way in a rush, up a stairwell which continued past the hatch to the deck. For the hundred-odd meters he could see until curvature blocked vision, the corridor lifted before him like a ramp.