Almost immediately the tanks switched on and began pumping a high volume of the colorless, odorless neurotoxin into the Sacred Lodge. She guessed it was going in in the vicinity of the entry hall, but it didn’t really matter. The way the interior climate control worked, the stuff would be all over the place inside of six anxious minutes, and it only took about two parts per billion to paralyze anyone breathing it in.
Now, if no busybody popped up at that point and spotted the probe, and if Vulture was ready for the gas, could neutralize it, switch the rings, and then find where the opening was, all within a very short period of time, they just might make it.
This was certainly the toughest one yet, from a technical point of view. Part of the problem had been access to the inside of the Sacred Lodge, which was difficult even with Vulture, and part had been circumventing the security system. There was, however, one security system they could not circumvent because they didn’t really know it or its capabilities. Nobody really did. That was the internal one inside the Sacred Lodge, beyond even Center’s security control. You could tamper with the monitors and records, those things that had been designed for human interfacing, but not the mechanical guard devices. Those operated automatically whenever the Holy Lama was awake, and the only thing the raiders could guess about the devices was that they were formidable. Clayben had been insistent that their plans take the worst-case approach toward the security system even though it might be less efficient than they feared, and that was as it had to be.
There was no way to get Vulture out of there without blowing a fairly large and hardly unobtrusive hole in the dome and almost certainly triggering all sorts of alarms. The windows and tempting skylight in the Holy Lama’s office were connected to the internal system as well as audible external alarms. They might still have gotten Vulture out, but the odds of a successful getaway after were practically nil. No, success depended on stealing the ring separately and letting Vulture rely on his unique talents to escape at a later time. Nor could they count on Vulture simply becoming the Holy Lama. Not only would the best security system be keyed on both her and the ring, but she could not exit without always being in a crowd. Vulture was hard to kill, but mortal all the same.
Vulture, of course, had already practiced with the specific neurotoxin used, neutralizing it in no time with his absolute cellular control. Awake and waiting, his body and mind sensed the danger at once and moved to combat it. The process was simple but not automatic. He’d been caught unawares by such substances before, but this was different, it was expected and almost on schedule.
The other Seed slept on like corpses. Even if they’d suddenly awakened, they could not have so much as opened their eyes, although their autonomic systems continued to function in a reduced but not harmful manner. Vulture got up, went out into the meditation chamber, and retrieved the duplicate ring from behind a statue of the sacred Buddha. Then he headed for the Holy Lama’s bedchambers.
He stopped and stifled a grin as he saw her in bed, and had to suppress an urge to take advantage of the situation. That was the Chanchukian male part of him, something he could control as easily as the neurotoxin but which took more constant vigilance. She’d actually taken off the ring and put it on her nightstand! He wasted a precious second to lift and look at her finger. The hair had been virtually worn away by the ring and there was some scabbing where it had been. She must have had one hell of a time getting the damned thing off!
Peeling away the disguise layer on the ring he’d brought, he turned it from a high priestess’s signet into a near duplicate of the ring on the nightstand. It wasn’t perfect, but they’d been able to work from blown-up pictures of the Holy Lama’s rare public appearances taken from the computer files at security. However, when not side by side they sure as hell looked identical.
For a moment he had a sudden fear as he momentarily forgot which was the real one and which the fake. After all this it sure as hell wouldn’t do to steal and send the counterfeit back! With some relief, he saw a tiny bit of the foil from the outer wrapping of the disguise still clinging to the back of the fake ring. He scraped it away, inspected it, then put it down on the nightstand.
Time was precious. He had timed this operation at no more than twenty minutes. The storm outside sounded pretty bad, but the SPF was certain to keep popping up to check on it firsthand. Every minute that drone was atop the dome was one minute more it could be spotted and an alarm sounded that would queer the whole deal.
Now the problem was to find the damned opening, not much bigger around than the ring itself, and do it as quickly as possible.
By now the pumps on the drone would have reversed, and the suction would create a strong airflow outward rather than in. With that in mind, he found some papers and a match and lit them, watching the smoke, then tried to follow it before he burned his hand. Since he knew that it would be at one of the six guard positions, if all went as planned, that narrowed down his search some, and he found the proper location with little trouble. Finding and then getting to the probe was more difficult. It had come into the library, and it appeared to have drilled its way right through a bookcase wall about three meters up—or about three times his height. A chair might have helped, but Chanchukians didn’t use chairs—they were built for a different sort of furniture and tended in any event to have seating areas rather low to the floor.
Feeling the seconds tick away, he thought frantically about how to reach the probe, cursing that the whole elaborate scheme might now fall apart because he was too short or the hole was too high. He finally started stacking the largest books he could find one atop the other, some so heavy he had problems with them, then climbing on top. It was just out of reach, and he stretched his arm to the limit on the high, hastily built stack, the ring held in his outstretched fingers, and didn’t quite make it several times. Finally, though, he felt it suddenly taken from his grasp, but he looked in horror as he saw the ring jam up just inside the hole. The probe hadn’t quite reached through, and the wood was chewed up!
Summoning all his strength and concentration, he leaped up and smacked the ring hard with his hand, then fell crashing to the floor, his tower of books in shambles. He was bruised and battered, and nearly broke his neck in the fall. Only the fact that, being the creature that he was, that sort of damage wouldn’t really harm him saved him from a rather obvious hospital call.
He looked up at the opening. He couldn’t see the ring, but he wasn’t certain if it had fallen down or been sucked in or, if sucked in, if it had made it to the tube and been hauled into the probe. He looked around the floor, saw no sign of it, and decided that there was simply nothing more he could do. He would require a few minutes of concentration to repair his bruises and sprains, and then he could only attempt to pick up and reshelve the books and get back to his quarters.
At least the suction, which had been audible in the library, now seemed to be gone. Whether that was because the ring was lodged in the hole or safely inside the probe he wouldn’t know, perhaps for some time, but even if it was lodged it was not a total loss. He alone would know it was there, and it would be easier at some point to retrieve it from that spot than to steal it all over again.
Outside, the sergeant of the guard broke the surface and looked around. The weather was still awful, and the wind was picking up, but she frowned, not quite certain why it didn’t seem right. Something, some sound—no, it was gone now, but its very absence made her more suspicious.
Suddenly conscious of the fact that, if there were intruders out there, she was in a pretty weak and exposed position, she ducked back under. Now was the time to retrieve the guards, lousy conditions or not, and do a thorough check of the exterior!
The probe switched from vacuum tube back to the borer, only now a different mechanism was activated. The effect was to plug the hole with the same material taken from it. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be far less noticeable. That done, Killomen attempted a sweep of the immediate area but found the weather conditions impossible. The false echoes were everywhere, blanketing the screen. She decided that enough was enough, detached the clamps, and slowly eased the probe up to a height perhaps twenty meters over the roofs of the lodges, then began bringing it bumpily back to the barge.
The sensors in the extension mechanism of the drone weren’t all that much; she knew she had grasped something, but she wasn’t certain what or where or if it had gotten inside the drone. That would have to wait for its return and inspection.
It had been audacious, risky, and complicated as all hell—that last being the best guarantee of something going wrong. The fact that they’d gotten away with it even this far was, to Killomen, nothing short of miraculous.
She brought the drone back down to the deck of the barge, drew the tarp over it so that no SPF spy satellite might see anything unusual if it should happen to look, then crawled under. The drone was still warm from its long flight, but she wanted no suspense that wasn’t necessary. The lock to the storage compartment was easily accessible, and she opened it and reached inside.
There was nothing in the compartment.
Damn! All this for nothing…
She calmed down a moment and thought. The lone sensor had indicated that the vacuum tube had picked up something. If it wasn’t in the compartment, it might well have fallen out when withdrawn, in which case it was either on the platform or on the bottom at the foundation of the Sacred Lodge. There was only one other place to look before assuming the worst. . .
She went back to the command console and extended the suction tube, then killed the power and crawled back under. With all the strength she could muster she pulled and tugged at the tube, then finally got a knife, reached in, and cut the damned thing off at its base plate. After bringing out the tube, she felt along it and found, not very far from the opening, a lump.
“Chung! I need very small pliers or a screwdriver or something that’ll cut this material down the side!” she shouted. “We’ve picked up something—but I’m not sure just what. It’s stuck!”
Chung came over and examined the tube, then stuck her longest finger in and felt it—it was close to the opening but wedged in tight.
Taking the knife, and with Killomen holding, Chung cut through the tube on both sides of the object, then sawed the very small piece laterally. After some time and effort, she was able to peel away the thick, tough hose and see just what was inside. It had been nicked a bit by the knife, but was otherwise in pretty good shape.
“So that’s one of the rings.” Chung Mung Wo sighed. “It is impressive, even in the darkness.” She brought up a small service light and they both stared at it.
“Four more ugly birds,” Chung said.
Butar Killomen shrugged. “Makes sense, if we count ’em. Matriyeh’s ring has one bird and a tree. Janipur’s had two but no tree, this is four, and from the pictures, the one on Earth has three. I suppose the fifth one is either five birds of some kind or maybe none. It would make over a hundred possible combinations, all but one of which could kill you. Makes a crazy kind of sense, I guess.”
“Yes,” Chung agreed. “Who knows how strange those ancients were, or how they thought?” She sighed, and they both just stood there for a moment, staring at the ring.
Finally Butar Killomen gave a grin and looked up at Chung. “We did it. This insane, idiotic plan actually worked! We have the ring!”
Chung nodded, always the pragmatist. “Yes, but we had better signal Min to meet us at the rendezvous point. Now all we all have to do is get off this world.”
Butar Killomen sighed, got up, and put the ring in her pouch, then looked up at the dark, cloudy sky. “At least I will not die here,” she muttered to herself. “At least I shall return to where I belong.”
“We have much to do and something of a swim yet tonight,” she reminded Chung. “Let’s get on with it. I want to be well away before that fleet arrives. This plan is not complete unless we get away with the prize, and we don’t stand a chance with Vals and fighters and an SPF task force about.”
Chung nodded but couldn’t help looking back into the fog. “I think we will make it. They were not prepared for this, no matter how elaborate their precautions and their trap. They will not be prepared for our leaving, either. But Vulture…”
“Sometimes I think Vulture is too self-confident,” she acknowledged. “With that much power and knowledge perhaps we would be the same. But there is such a thing as being overconfident. This Colonel Chi is a different breed than we have seen before. I wish her or him or it luck. We have three now, and know of a fourth. But the fifth—without the fifth, it is the same as having none at all. And each time security is tougher: one mistake and we must begin again—and this is taking long enough as it is. Vulture will have to be extracautious with this Colonel Chi . . .”
Chung shrugged. “Well, our part from now on will be in space, where we belong. I never believed that this plan could be pulled off. Now, deep down, I feel our victory may be difficult but is inevitable. Come! If the current carries us out far enough I might even risk the motor!”
The storm activity continued fiercely for a while but died away with the sunrise. The guards came back up and took their positions, but nothing seemed amiss—and why should they think differently? Clearly no one had broken into the Sacred Lodge from above no matter what, or all hell would have broken loose within and without.
Up on top of the cliffs, all hell was breaking loose anyway. The relief guards showed up and discovered the ones on duty still unconscious; an alarm was sounded and a specialty squad was dispatched on the double. When they found the antenna jumpers and the added little box, Colonel Chi, still sleepy, was not far behind and already had issued a general alert.
Within an hour, a team from the science labs aboard the command ship were down, examining the boxes and analyzing the work done inside the station as well. They were cautious, just in case of booby traps, but there were none.
The chief technical officer was quite certain of her results. “Essentially, last night we had no surface-level sweep. We were blind to about, oh, three thousand meters when the orbital probes took over. You could have flown anything in here last night.”
Now, suddenly, there was a careful examination of almost everything. Colonel Chi was livid. If anything really serious had happened, the blame never fell on the foot soldier, it all fell on the commander. Nobody was more aware of this than Chi.
“All right, between two and six hundred this morning somebody knocked out our sensors with a very clever set of devices,” she said to her staff. “Now we must know why. Such devices are beyond the capacity of anyone here to make, so we must assume a tie-in with our missing priestess and her housekeeping staff. The only external threat capable of this is the pirates, and they are after one thing and one thing only. I want the entire Sacred Lodge covered, every centimeter of the exterior and all of the working plant below. I want all guards not just questioned but mindprinted and computer scanned for the slightest details.” She stopped and looked at the officer of the day. “Didn’t you say you sighted a barge far out on the scopes?”
The OD nodded. “Yes, but it was expected. Of course, if they interfered with our scopes, I can’t be certain it was there at all . . .”
“It was there. The scope sighting came a few minutes before the guards were put away on the hill,” said the charge of quarters. “I checked on that.”
“I want that barge. Give me air probes and to hell with regulations! I don’t care what the masses see or what they believe!” She sighed. “And get me the Holy Lama! I don’t care if we wake her up out of her precious beauty sleep!”
But before she could put in the call, another came from the surface guards reporting odd scratches and markings above guard post three. Chi called the tech people and went to investigate. The Holy Lama wasn’t going anywhere.
“Suction clamps,” the technical officer said after a cursory study. “Some high-quality ones specially made for bonding to a wet wooden surface, most likely. The marks aren’t that pronounced—whatever it was was almost certainly designed to do this very job and not much else. We measured the marks and got an estimate as best we could. I’d say it was small—too small to even fit one of us, considering the type of motor it had to have to be that unobtrusive in idle.”
Chi thought furiously. “Too small for us. Might a male have fit in it?”
“Huh? Yes, I suppose—but how would a male get into it? The only hole we found is a circular cut perhaps two, two and a half centimeters across.”
Chi wasn’t certain what her hypothetical creature might be capable of, but even she doubted it could turn itself into a rope or snake and slither through such an opening, particularly while carrying a ring.
It hit her suddenly, and she cursed herself for not seeing the obvious. “It’s big enough to feed that damned ring through! I want that barge and that drone! I want every available trooper and all available technology on this—now! They might have blinded us here, but they certainly did not blind the command ship and the permanent system monitors! They are still on the surface of this planet and I want them!”
She stood there a moment, on the platform, thinking hard. Not only were they still on the planet, but no matter what their mole, their inside operative—whoever or whatever it was—most certainly was still inside the Sacred Lodge.
“Get me a team up here in full security gear and a construction unit with heavy drills and saws,” she ordered. “If they can get in by drilling a hole without triggering the internal security system, we can get in by drilling a bigger hole. I want to be in there as quickly as possible—and no one, absolutely no one, gets out!”
* * *
By zero nine-thirty they had a hole drilled sufficient to make a total wreck of the library wall and large enough to get in both fully armed troopers and equipment. The squad looked eerie in their full battle gear and special suits that were both armor and life support systems. Chi wanted no unpleasant surprises for her people.
By ten-fifteen they had found the Holy Lama still out cold, as well as all nine Seed and the children, all also apparently out cold. Medical took scans and samples and discovered a simple biochemical neurotoxin in the bloodstream. There were traces in the air, but most if not all of it had been flushed out or broken down by now.
“Simple but effective,” the medical officer told Chi. “There is no permanent harm and it will break down in a few hours at most. They should all have serious headaches but little else.”
A sergeant came forward with an object in her gloved hand. “This what they were looking for, Colonel?”
The colonel took it and examined it with some fleeting hope. That little hole had been pretty high. Might it be that they made the attempt but didn’t get what they were after?
“Is it safe to go in just like this?” she asked the medical officer.
“No problem now. Go ahead.”
“Where is the Holy Lama? They could make a duplicate of the ring to fool us, knowing we don’t know enough to tell a valid ring from a phony one, but there is one thing they might have overlooked.”
She was brought to the unconscious figure of the Holy Lama. It was a bit startling to see the great figure of Chanchuk in person; Chi realized that she had never seen her in the flesh until now.
The SPF officer knelt down and immediately saw the finger where the ring had been. She took the ring she had and placed it on the supine figure’s ring finger. It went on easily—too easily. Chi lifted the hand so the fingers bent limply down and the ring fell right off and hit the floor with a clatter. A soldier reached down to pick it up.
“File it as evidence, or a souvenir,” Chi told the soldier. “It’s phony. Look at the ring finger. Clearly our Holy Lama has gained some weight since she put on the ring at her investiture. That ring she had was wedged on tight. See the scabbing? This ring, on the other hand, is at least two sizes too large. It was a nice try, though; I’ll give them that.”
“They’ve got the ring, then?” the tech officer asked.
Chi nodded. “They have—may it poison them! They’ll never get it off this world, I swear.” She turned and looked around. “Medical—you took blood samples from all life forms here?”
“All the ones not our own people, yes,” came the reply.
“I want you to run every test possible on all nine, for the presence of the gas—whoever switched that ring and got the real one out sure wasn’t knocked out. I want every test run that you or your medical computers can think of or remotely imagine. Understand?”
“Yes, certainly. But—what are we looking for?”
“Anything. Any sign that the blood of one of them is not one hundred percent normal. And, of course, any sign that one might have no toxin, or have a greater or lesser degree of it than the others. Don’t neglect the Holy One or the children, either. And pull the internal security recordings and anything else useful and then go over this place with a microscope. And—Doc?”
“Colonel?”
“I want every living thing in here, from the Holy One to any stray microbes, to be packed and sealed and taken to separate isolation cells aboard the command ship as soon as possible. At no time are any of them to be left alone. I want at least two armed troopers with them every moment until they are safely in isolation. Do it now!”
The medical officer shrugged. “All right, but I don’t see what you’re getting at doing it to the children, too. They’re mostly babies.”
“Everyone. No exceptions. Now.” Chi scratched her chin, thinking furiously. “All the rest I can see. A bold plan. But how do they expect to escape?” Suddenly she saw it. “They’ll have to either move before the fleet arrives later today or they’ll have to stay here underground for years! Notify the command ship—I don’t care what sort of ship might punch in in the outer system, I want no challenge unless it moves within range of planetary defenses. I want everything we have concentrated on Chanchuk. I want anything that flies from the surface or from any position within transporter range blown up, no questions asked. Everything. The one who lets anything escape from the surface dies very slowly!”
“Very well, Commander.” The way it was said, though, indicated that the medical officer was wondering if Chi was very long for that position. To her, the precautions seemed cold and callously officious, not the work of a brilliant commander. The colonel was well aware of this.
“And, Doctor—as soon as possible, when things are established, I shall want a mindprint taken of myself. The print is to be filed and also dispatched to the Val commanding the task force.”
The medic was surprised. “Not to headquarters?”
“One to headquarters, too. All right. But I wish it on record for the direct evaluation by Master System.”
“Very well. As you command.”
* * *
Later on the command ship, the Holy Lama and her family were just coming around and not feeling any too good about it, while Colonel Chi was in nearly as much discomfort after the thorough scanning and recording of her mind and memories, when the colonel’s recovery was interrupted.
“We have a punch,” the duty officer reported. “All hands on full battle alert.” Alarms sounded throughout the command ship.
Chi jumped from her cot, the headache pushed away as something she could not afford, and made her way immediately to the command center in the center of the ship.
The command center was a different world from the surface expedition and troop ships. Here SPF officers and enlisted personnel of a number of races worked side by side, each there because he or she was the best at what they did. Commodore Marquette, in overall command of the SPF task force now in place and the only superior on hand that Chi had, was in his command chair studying screens full of data that scrolled so fast only the experienced, trained naval eye could make sense of them.
Marquette was a thick, burly apelike creature who looked as if he could bend steel bars without thinking, his face a hairy mass with two huge yellow eyes peering out from the brush and a mouth that had the teeth and muscles to crush bone. Every race that Master System had carved from the human base forcibly expelled from Earth many centuries before had its counterpart in the SPF, so that they could move unobtrusively in and out of any and all of the colonial worlds as need be, and so that there would be a certain level of understanding between the human fighting forces and the colonials. Chi was of the race of Chanchuk; Marquette’s own people were from a far harsher and more violent world.
“What is happening, Commodore?” the colonel asked.
“Lone ship, relatively small but fast. Punched in just beyond the orbit of Makyiuk. Distance is about sixty million kilometers. It’s kept its shields on and its engines at full power, but it’s keeping just out of range of the fighter screen.”
“It’s a feint,” Chi told him flatly. “They are trying to draw us out so that they can get their people off Chanchuk. They know that we have sufficient force to either cover this immediate area or to make a creditable challenge but not both. I should not be surprised if others show up in mock attack formation.”
The commodore was not totally convinced. “You’re certain? They fought last time, remember.”
“And took tremendous losses. They can replace ships but not people so easily.”
“I could take three such ships, maybe more, with what I have,” Marquette noted. “If you’re right, though, and we get more company, we could wind up as sitting ducks for hit and runs unless we challenge them.”