Hylander frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, launch it back through the passage, before the damn thing shuts for good.”
They all looked at the tornado, still dimly visible, hovering in the middle of the street.
“As I understand it,” Ryan went on, “even though the gate’s closed on the other side, stuff from here can still get sucked back the other way. That’s how Nara and I got pulled in.”
Do you have any idea what would happen if we launched the missile into the passage?” the colonel said.
“Enlighten us, please,” Doc said.
“For starters, it would take off the top thirty stories of TC complex.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” Ryan said. “Does anybody else?”
The companions all shook their heads.
“Sounds good to me,” Hylander said.
“Hey, I’m up for it, too,” Ockerman said. “Give the bastards back their techno-rubbish and hand them their heads at the same time.”
“Why don’t you sit down for a while, Colonel,” Ryan said, “and let your boys see to the details?”
Gabhart sat heavily on the curb, his head in his hands.
With Krysty by his side, Ryan watched as the crew turned the mobile gantry, then carefully lowered the nose of the missile until it lined up with the shimmering bit of space in the middle of Moonboy.
“We left the countdown at T-minus four,” Hylander said.
Gabhart raised his head. “Once you reinitiate the sequence,” he said, “we’d better all move to safer ground. There’s no telling what will happen.”
They took cover behind the collapsed porch roof across the street.
When the numbers fell to zero, orange flame fifty yards long whooshed from the rocket’s tail nozzles. That was all that happened for a few seconds. Then when sufficient thrust was built up, the clamps fell away, and the missile surged forward.
The hole in space gobbled it.
And when the tail fins vanished, the canyon resounded with a solemn thunderclap that announced the end of a world.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The door hit Dr. Huth so hard that it knocked him off his feet. He hurtled backward onto the computer workstations along the wall and bounced to the floor. With laser fire zipping into the room from the hall, he lay on his side behind a pair of ergonomic chairs and pretended to be unconscious.
When he heard the intruders, captained by the one-eyed man, struggling to dump the catwalk, he lifted his head slightly. What he saw made his heart sink. The wounded man with the beard sat guard by the door, cutting off any hope he had of dashing across the catwalk. Pushed by Cawdor and the other two, the bridge to survival scraped off the edge of the pad and dropped, slamming into the wall on his side of the canyon.
There was nothing Huth could do.
He had to stay there, biting his lips, while the trio made good their escape, perhaps stealing his only chance to do the same. After the third thunderclap, Huth jumped to his feet and snatched up one of the chairs by the backrest. He rushed at the legless sentry, swinging the chair high overhead.
The bearded man glanced over his shoulder as Huth brought the chair down. The metal wheels and undercarriage smashed into his head. Huth swung again as the rifle dropped from the man’s hand. The crunching impact jolted all the way to his shoulders. He raised the chair a third time.
The sentry slumped to the floor, his face badly gashed and spurting blood. Huth tossed the chair aside, snatched hold of an arm and dragged the unconscious man to the edge of the chasm. Without a moment’s hesitation, he kicked the body over the side. He didn’t watch it fall.
“We can still make it!” he shouted at the technicians cowering on the floor. “Help me pull the catwalk back up!”
His staff slowly stood, but made no move to join him.
Huth picked up the laser rifle the sentry had dropped and menaced them with it. “You’ve got a choicehelp me or die!”
They decided it was in their best interest to help.
Raising the catwalk again wasn’t easy. A rope had to be fastened to the bottom end to gain additional leverage. Even then, it took all their combined strength to lift it. Once they had slid it back across the gulf, Huth ran to the other side. From the shimmering air in the center of the pad, he could see the passageway was still intact. The gate to Shadow World, however, had most definitely closed.