The mirror showed him the jagged scar across his face and the massive purple bruising around his broken nose, already yellowing at its borders.
“Bastard,” he said.
Henderson McGill was standing in his bedroom, holding a set of blue dumbbells, doing wrist pulls with them, horrified at his own weakness.
He dropped to the floor and tried some one-arm push-ups.
Kyle had a lethal hunting knife in his hand. He was stroking the razored steel edge against his cheek, his eyes far away.
Carrie was lying back on her bed, irritated that the hair dryer wasn’t working properly. The main thing that she’d taken from her personal locker was a Walkman, with earphones and lithium batteries. Now it was playing through the long, slow darkness of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.
Like Steve, she was crying.
Pete was working out in his room. His martial-arts training had never been put to practical use, but he was always ready. Now, with gunmen outside the heavy door, this might be the chance he’d been waiting for. Since Janey’s death he’d practiced and practiced, hoping he would one day face overwhelming odds. Kill some of the vermin, and then be killed himself. So he could go join his dead wife.
Now it might soon be happening, and Pete Turner would be ready. As he turned and kicked and punched the air, he was smiling.
Jed Herne was patiently rubbing surgical liniment into his damaged knee.
Jim Hilton had found something else in his locker, and he had laid it on his side table.
Thirty-five ounces of blued steel. Six-inch barrel. Single-action revolver, the chamber holding six rounds of .44 full-metal-jacket ammunition. The hammer was low set, deeply checkered and wide spurred. Wide trigger. Full-length ejector shroud and a cushioned grip with engraved walnut inserts.
The Ruger Blackhawk Hunter, Model GPF-555.
It had cost Jim nine hundred and fifty dollars, and he’d bought it three months before taking off from Stevenson.
There was a small box of ammunition. Forty-two rounds, he counted.
Everyone had changed, after the hot baths, into their own clothes, opting for casual comfort rather than style. Jeans were universal, with shirts or sweatshirts. Jim had dug out his hiking boots, though most of the others picked trainers. He also had on a thick jacket in patched browns, greens and grays that he used on his survivalist hiking trips. The pockets easily swallowed all the ammo for the powerful revolver.
He picked up the Ruger, feeling its familiar shape and balance, and leveled it at himself in the mirror on the far wall.
“Bang,” he said.
AS THE HOUR CAME to its ending, Carrie and the seven men drifted toward the main dining section of mission control.
Jim perched on the edge of the table, the Ruger bolstered on his right hip. A sheath knife balanced it on the left side of the belt.
“Right,” he said.
“I have to get to see a doctor about my nose and this cut,” said Jeff. “How’s about some kind of transport off base?”
“Have to get past the guys with the rifles and shotguns,” Mac said.
“You got your gun, Captain,” said Jed Herne, wincing slightly as he lowered himself into one of the deep chairs around the walls.
“Sure. Six-shot revolver. Better than nothing, I guess.”
“We get out that back exit,” said Pete Turner, “and if they’re there, we go down fighting.”
“Simple, Peter. But not that effective.” Carrie looked at Jim. “The radio?”
“Not working,” replied Steve Romero. “Like on the ship. We just pick up plenty of nothing clear across all the wave bands.”
“I want to try for home.” Mac’s voice broke into the silence, expressing what all of them were privately thinking.
There was a ragged chorus of agreement, stopping as Jim Hilton held up both hands.
“Yeah. Me, too. Need some thought and planning. There’s plenty of hi-con food in the stores, travel packs, maps. No weapons. I just wish we had a better idea what’s been happening here—or any damn idea at all.”
Kyle half lifted a hand. “One thing’s been bothering me. And I just realized what it is.”
“What?”
The tall black navigator had been leaning against an empty coffeemaker. “Zelig’s message. Left for us. For you, Skipper.”