James Axler – The Mars Arena

“You believe in my powers, don’t you, Doc?”

“Believe in them, my dear, without a doubt. My ability to understand them is lacking. Though there were definite experimental studies being done within the Totality Concept, based loosely on scientific research. I never got too close to them. Speculation you cannot adequately quantify is something I never took to very much.”

“I have a theory.”

“That, my dear Krysty, is a phrase every scientist loves to hear. For with the existence of such a hypothesis, a catalyst may be introduced whereby events may be suitably weighed and measured. Of course, it is possible that your theory will be disproved, putting you squarely back where you started.”

“I have to ask myself a couple of things. First I have to ask myself if seeing them mebbe kill each other in that place was the only event that vision really showed me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose I saw them, but I couldn’t do a thing about it. Couldn’t stop it. Suppose my mind couldn’t handle seeing such a thing and just created the parts where I went to them and talked to them.”

“Ah, my dear, you have truly twisted this puzzle. Was the whole event a fabrication, or were parts of it? If so, which parts?”

It sounded worse coming from Doc.

“So it could be that Ryan and Dean are going to face off against each other, the one never knowing the other was there, and mebbe kill one or both,” Krysty said.

“Or possibly you have managed to intervene in some fashion,” Doc said. “Or will.”

“It’s just as possible, though,” Krysty replied, “that the reason I won’t be at Ryan’s side when this happens later, is because I can’t be.” She turned and went farther up the mountain, avoiding the chasm Ryan had walked around. “It’s just as possible that I could be chilled by then, and no help to him at all.”

“I shall make you a promise, my dear,” Doc stated in a gentle voice. “As long as I yet live, nothing shall harm you until we see the truth of this vision. I shall become your shield and buckler, and may all that remains holy in this accursed land keep my strength unflagging.”

Krysty looked at him. “You’re a good friend, Doc.”

“It is simple to be a good friend,” he replied smiling, “when you’re in the company of good friends.”

When Ryan went down suddenly in front of her, Krysty at first thought her lover had fallen over a piece of the broken terrain. Then the sound of a blastershot rolled over her.

Chapter Sixteen

The only thing that warned Ryan the sniper had a bead on him was the glint of sunlight against glass. But it only amplified the feeling that something predatory was eyeing him. He went down to his right, throwing himself at a stand of grayish green rock jutting up from the broken earth.

The heavy bullet whizzed in, big enough to sound for an instant like incoming artillery. The round smashed a misshapen rock the size of a pumpkin into fragments where he’d been standing.

“Fireblast!” Ryan yelled as he slammed up against the outcrop. His back took the brunt of the impact, but his right ear bumped up against the stone surface hard enough to rip flesh. When he reached up to check it, he found the ear still in one piece but bleeding profusely. He rose to a kneeling position behind the rock.

The second bullet clipped a fist-sized chunk from Ryan’s cover and sent stone slivers stinging into his face. He narrowed his eye instinctively. Sinking back behind the rock, he looked to his rear. “J.B., do you know where he’s at?”

“Got a perch up there about four hundred yards away. At eleven o’clock.”

Ryan checked back along the trail. “Anybody hit?”

They all answered back in short order, letting him know they were intact.

Slithering around the rock, Ryan went lower, staying on his belly against the hot stone. Peering around the corner of his cover, he studied the horizon.

Another glint sparked like white fire nestled on the dark of the stone perch J.B. had to have seen. Ryan moved his head back an instant before another heavy bullet cracked against the rock with enough force to cause a vibration.