Though he was never climbing the while he pounded through its hollowness, Earth weight dragged at him. Breath surged rough in his gullet.
A double door beneath a photomural, Armstrong on Luna- He’d expected to shoot out the lock, but the fastening was a mere latch, a steel bar between two brackets that must have been hastily welded on after he called from space. He cast it loose and flung the portal wide.
Ranked in their hundreds, seats confronted a stage as empty as they were. Nearby, the Emissary explorers rose in amazement. Most were sloppily clad, they blurred together for Brodersen as he sped toward them, until he saw belle-Judas priest, her hair is gray, she’s skinny, well, eight years- He saw the alien, chimerical cross between an otter, a lobster, a seal, a duck, a kangaroo, an alligator, a porpoise, no, none of those really, nothing he could name, nothing his vision was ready for, a brown blur- “We’re springing you!” he bawled. “We’re your friends! We’re getting out of here! Joelle, do you know me?”
“Freedom, freedom, freedom!” Leino chanted.
A tall man stepped out of the group. Brodersen recognized Captain Langendijk. Weisenberg ran to meet him. Brodersen and Joelle stopped, stared, held out hands toward each other.
Weisenberg and Langendijk halted. “This is a rescue,” the engineer said between gasps. “You’re unlawfully held-we’ve come to set you free-make the truth Side 81
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
known-we’ve met resistance- may have to fight our way back to our ship-here, arm yourselves-”
“Dan,” Joelle marveled. Her eyes were enormous, ebony, in the ivory face.
He collected his wits. “Hurry along,” he wheezed, and caught her by the wrist. She in turn gestured at the nonhuman, which moved toward her.
A man joined them. “Daniel!” he exclaimed. “Por todos los santos-”
Carlos Francisco Miguel Rueda Suarez. He had grown bald.
A hefty blond woman followed. Brodersen recalled fleetingly the name Frieda von Moltke. The rest milled, bewildered. Brodersen started back up the aisle he was in. It wouldn’t do to get blockaded.
“Hurry, hurry!” he shouted. Once beyond the doors, Weisenberg and Leino could pass out the stuff they carried. After that, let Troxell beware. His engineers were at Brodersen’s heels, yelling, waving. Still most of the captives dithered. Langendijk urged them on, but they weren’t soldiers, nor bound by the heart to these wild invaders. Clamor and weapons roused an instinct to hide.
They needed a few minutes for comprehension.
Brodersen re-entered the corridor. His right hand gripped his rifle, his left Joelle. The alien tagged close behind her. Leino came immediately after.
Weisenberg paused in the doorway to beckon at the laggards. Von Moltke took the chance to work a tommy gun loose from the bundle on his back. Rueda Suarez started to do likewise.
Down the bend of the deck came Troxell and his men. Their front rank carried by the legs a couple of large tables, tops facing forward-shields.
Brodersen could never afterward quite remember what happened. A new fight erupted. He and those with him backed down the hail; they zigzagged, they knelt, they dropped, they ran further, they kept shooting, and somehow none of them was hit. Somehow the enemy was gone when they reached the next spoke.
He guessed their fire had been too heavy, allowing pistols too little chance to be effective. Or the agents had run low on ammo. Or both. Troxell would have kept enough to hold trapped the Emissary people who’d not moved out at once. A return to the auditorium would be suicide.
Joelle shook Brodersen back to full awareness. “Listen, Dan, we must go to a particular storeroom. Fidelio -the Betan- the alien here can’t eat our food. We have supplies for him.”
“Huh?” he said. “No. Too risky.”
“Not if we hurry,” Rueda snapped. “Almighty God, Daniel, Fidelio’s our link to his entire race!”
“Okay,” Brodersen decided. “Lead us. On the double.”
The storeroom wasn’t far off, nor was it locked, and the rations were packed handily for carrying, apparently mostly freeze-dried. Burdened, the party sought the nearest shaft, piled on the elevator, and rode it to the hub.
They said almost nothing on the way. They were stunned. Brodersen counted: himself, Joelle, the alien, Weisenberg, Rueda, Leino, von Moltke. Four saved; well, that was plenty, if they could bear witness at Earth. If not, he’d be footnoted in history as a desperado who got killed in a raid he attempted for an obscure purpose.