James Axler – The Mars Arena

“How far does the cave system go?”

“This one?” Hoyle responded.

“Yeah.” Ryan kept his gaze moving. So far they hadn’t been attacked by any more skikes, though they had seen a handful of the creatures skimming by underwater. There’d been no gunfire from farther back in the cave where they’d left J.B., Doc and Mildred, so it was a good bet they were still safe.

“This one goes on for a couple miles more. Then you have some daylight for another fifteen miles or so. Another cave system after that where you have to make a decision about where you want to go. The river forks in three directions and continues on for various distances.”

“As far as Colorado?” Ryan asked.

Hoyle nodded, then asked, “What’s in Colorado?”

“My son,” Ryan replied. And he gave the man that, just enough to let Hoyle know he wasn’t going to brook any arguments later when answers were called for. “Mebbe you want to tell me what you’re doing up here.” There was enough edge to Ryan’s words that Hoyle would know taking a pass on the question wasn’t a good idea.

“Working a job.”

“What job?”

“Guide.”

“For Bernsen?”

“And his friends.”

Ryan followed the turn of the river, going cautious, the SIG-Sauer blaster covering the terrain ahead of him in case there were any lurking skikes. Only parts of the cavern lay in shadow, and beams of sunlight from crevices in the ceiling glinted silver off the unsettled river. “How many friends?”

Hoyle made the story short, saying that the men were scientists and all of them had been killed but Bernsen. Three of them had been chilled during an encounter with the brushwooders a couple days earlier. Two had died by skike poison after they’d gotten away from the brushwooders. And Mellelan had fallen to break his neck only the day before when they’d been hurrying through the mountains trying to beat out the approaching storm.

“Saw a tattoo on Mellelan,” Ryan said when the man had finished. “Spotted one on Bernsen, too. And you.”

Hoyle scratched the inside of his arm absentmindedly. “They got a thing about identifying each other. In some places they ain’t too welcome. Ten, fifteen years ago old David Napier tried telling a few folks up north to be on the lookout for certain things. Some of those folks took objection to what he was preaching, called him a heretic and strung him up. Made the other people of the Heimdall Foundation kind of shy about being noticed.”

“Heard mention of that Heimdall name, but what is it, this foundation?”

“You’d have to ask Bernsen to get the real particulars of that,” Hoyle said. “Basically these people use telescopes and stare up at the sky all night long. They got books, vids and some comp progs that talk about all that stuff up there. Call it astronomy.”

“All that looking, they got to be looking for something.”

“Falling stars,” Hoyle answered.

“That what brought you from Montana?”

Hoyle narrowed his eyes. “How do you know about Montana?”

“Mellelan had a map. Heimdall Point was marked on it.”

“Now, that’s a fool thing to do.” Hoyle spit in disgust, “I hope you took up that map.”

Ryan nodded.

“Don’t need something like that falling into unfriendly hands. The Heimdall Foundation ain’t set up proper to repel an attack.” Hoyle shook his head. “These poor bastards, they been in their damn little towers too long looking up at the sky if you ask me.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” Ryan said in a harder voice.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve been guiding these assholes around a few places, going here and there for the last four years. Pay’s good. I get some jack at the end of every trek successful or not, and I manage to steal enough predark stuff along the way to hock through some friends I got in a few places to keep myself living comfortable.”

“Get to it.”

“Over the last few months they took a special interest in a star they started calling Shostakovich’s Anvil .”

“Twisted name for a star.”

“That’s what I thought. But they don’t ask me before they go naming them. And the way they talked, it sounded like somebody else had already named this one.”