Turning around and bracing himself against the ladder, he leaped through the air towards
the top of the next vat some five meters away. Again, his leap seemed agonizingly slow
to him as Vesa’s low gravity worked lazily to pull him down. One of the men below him
spotted him during his leap and fired a blaster bolt up at him, but it passed harmlessly a
meter away as Jules finally came down on the catwalk around the rim of the vat he’d
aimed for.
As he landed, the forward momentum of his leap almost carried him headfirst into the
vat, but he managed to grab the railing and stop his motion. As he was leaning over the
vat, though, he got a good strong whiff of its contents-hundreds of thousands of liters of
human waste products. Though efforts had been taken to neutralize the odor they were
never a hundred percent successful. The fumes were so overpowering that Jules sank to
his knees, gagging and retching. This is obviously the recycling plant, he thought as he
knelt there helplessly for a moment. And if I don’t want to get recycled myself, I’d better
get moving again.
Still choking, he pulled himself to his feet and raced around the perimeter of the vat.
Shots were fired up at him, but none of them came close. One shot did hit one of the
overhead pipes, however, burning a hole in it and showering the entire area with a
steamy, salted liquid. Keeping his head bowed down so that none of the fluid would get
in his eyes, Jules continued running. Below him, he heard Garst chewing out his men and
telling them to be more careful about how they shot.
From his lofty vantage point, Jules could see one man off to one side, separated from
the rest of his fellows and out of their sight. With an outward leap, Jules plunged off the
catwalk toward the ground, falling much faster than the normal gravity would allow
because he had given himself a push in the right direction. In midair he twisted his body
around like a cat so that he was falling feet first. A fall from such a height under Earth
gravity could be fatal to an untrained person, and even on Vesa it could have serious
consequences, but Jules knew precisely what he was doing.
His feet hit the lone gangster squarely in the chest just under the chin. The man crumpled
to the floor with his ribs caved in, but his body broke Jules’ fall and cushioned the landing
impact. The DesPlainian rolled to his feet, grabbed the man’s gun-only a stunner,
unfortunately-and began running. He reached another vat and began climbing the ladder.
making it halfway up before he was spotted again. The man who saw him gave cry, but it
was the last thing he ever did; Jules mowed him down with one perfectly placed shot,
and his stunner was set on ten-instantly lethal.
He made it to the top of the vat and looked around. The contents of this tank was
garbage of various sorts, but the odor was no more pleasant than the last one. From this
spot, though, Jules could get a clear look at the door and the two men standing guard in
front of it. Since they weren’t part of the chase, they had no definite idea as to where he
was. Their eyes scanned the room nervously, waiting for him to make a break in their
direction so that they could gun him down.
Two quick shots were all Jules needed to fell that pair in their tracks. He had hoped that,
in the excitement, no one would notice that he had gotten them and he would be able to
slip out the door. But Garst’s sharp eyes spotted their deaths immediately. Barking crisp
orders, the leader of the murderers sent another pair of his men to guard the egress, but
this time he told them not to stand immediately in front of the door unprotected. Instead,
he bad them take up positions behind the vats with their guns trained on the door.
Anyone trying to get out would be instantly killed in the crossfire.
A blaster bolt struck the handrail just centimeters from Jules’ hand, turning the rail to
molten slag in that spot and making it too hot for Jules to hold onto. He backed away and
aimed a fast shot at the man who’d fired at him, but the other had ducked back under
cover too quickly.
There are just too many of them, Jules thought as he recovered his breath and prepared
to move to a new perch. I can’t keep hopping around like this indefinitely. Sooner or later,
one of them’s bound to get lucky and hit me. But he knew there was no choice he had to
try.
Just as he was preparing for another leap, though, the doors to the plant burst open
inward and Yvette raced in, stunner in hand. She stopped for a moment to evaluate the
wild scene before her, and everyone else stopped as well, startled by this unexpected
development. The guards watching the door also hesitated; they were expecting to shoot
someone trying to get out, not trying to get in, and they were undecided what to do.
Their indecision would only last a second, though, and Yvette was a sitting duck in her
exposed position unless she could be warned.
The age-old circus danger call of “Hey, Rube!” had survived through the centuries, albeit
in an abbreviated form. So Jules’ cry of “Rube!” evoked an instant response from his
sister. She dived forward, low to the ground, just as two blaster bolts criss-crossed
through the space where her head had been a split second earlier. She hit the deck,
rolled, and came up ready for action.
Yvette’s sudden appearance made Jules feel reborn. The odds of twenty to one had
seemed almost hopeless, but now they were down to ten to one. Why, that was
practically child’s play.
With renewed spirits, he suddenly changed role from hunted to hunter. Each opponent be
could pick off would reduce the odds that much more, and each of the men on the ground
knew that they no longer had only one quarry to contend with. They had to watch from all
angles at once, lest they be picked off by Jules’ new ally. They sensed immediately a
change in the atmosphere, and switched to a defensive posture.
Yvette was a hurricane on legs as she raced about the vast chamber in a cold fury. She
seemed to have no fear at all as she ran at top speed between the vats, sometimes
straight at groups of the killers. At one point she felled four of the men in half as many
seconds by coming on them by surprise, before they had a chance to react. She was
driving the stranglers frantic with her relentless assaults on their positions-and if any of
them was careless enough to move too quickly out of her way, Jules was usually
perched right above to pick him off from that direction. Steadily the number of opponents
dwindled until, after only a couple of minutes, it was they who were on the defensive
totally, just trying to stay live between this Scylla and Charybdis of DesPlainian fury.
Jules had never seen his sister so worked up, so absolutely coldblooded about her
business. She took risks some of them quite unnecessary, in his opinion-as though she
had no fear of death. She’s a demon today, he thought as he watched her flit like a black
shadow across the floor. I wonder what’s gotten into her. But he was kept too busy
shooting it the murderers to spend much time thinking about it. He recovered his breath
and his strength as he concentrated on his target practice.
Soon the number of the enemy had been whittled down until only Garst was left alone.
He had taken to hiding at the far corner of the room, protected by machinery on several
sides. But now, with the attention of both DesPlainians focused solely on him, he knew
he would never be able to hold out. In desperation he bolted from the spot, running along
the back wall of the plant in an effort to reach the door before the two SOTE agents
could get to him.
Jules found he was entirely out of position to try to capture Garst, and the crime boss
was out of stunner range. Instead, the DesPlainian started leaping from vat to vat,
working his way across the room in an attempt to reach the door before Garst could.
Yvette, who was already down on the floor, would have a better chance of confronting
Garst directly.
Garst had a good lead on her, but Yvette was moving at superhuman speed at the
moment and closed the gap between them rapidly. Stopping in front of a large opened