“We’ll see,” Fuchs whispered back.
A light flashed momentarily in the darkness and a man yowled with pain. Amarjagal, halfway across the landing, had fired her gun at someone creeping silently up the steps. But not silently enough. The Mongol woman had heard him and shot him with her laser pistol. Its beam was invisible, but the fabric of the guard’s clothing flashed when it was hit. Fuchs heard the man tumbling down the carpeted stairs.
We need some light, Fuchs said to himself. If I can set this drapery afire we can use it as a torch.
Another spark of light splashed against the table, just past Fuchs’s ear. He smelled burning wood.
“Behind us!” Sanja screamed in his native Mongol dialect.
Fuchs turned as both Sanja and Nodon fired blindly down the hallway. There’s another staircase! he realized. Fool! Fool! You should have thought of that, should have—
Nodon screamed with pain as a bolt struck him and grabbed his shoulder. Fuchs snatched the gun from Nodon’s fingers and fired blindly down the hall. In the corner of his eye he saw Amarjagal shooting at a pair of figures crawling up the steps.
Dropping Nodon’s gun, Fuchs bunched the drapery fabric in one hand and fired his gun into it. The stuff smoldered. He fired again, and it burst into flame. So much for fire-retardant materials, he thought. Put a hot enough source on it and it will burn.
“Shoot at them,” he ordered Sanja. “Keep their heads down.”
Sanja obediently fired down the hallway, even picking up Nodon’s gun and shooting with both hands.
Fuchs scrambled to his feet and plunged down the hall, bellowing like a charging bull, firing his own gun with one hand and waving the blazing drapery over his head with the other. Whoever was down there was still ducking, not firing back. Fuchs saw the back stairwell, skidded to a stop and threw the fiery fabric down the steps. For good measure he sprayed the stairwell with his gun.
He saw several men backing down the stairs as the drapery tumbled down. The carpeting on the steps began to smoke and an alarm started screeching in the flickering shadows.
Humphries had gone from his office into his adjoining bedroom, eyes wide with fright. He could feel his heart pounding beneath his ribs, hear the pulse thundering in his ears so loudly he barely heard Ferrer shouting at him.
Somebody’s broken into my house, screeched a voice in his head. Somebody’s gotten into my home!
The emergency lights were on and the cermet shutters had sealed off the bedroom from the office and the hallway beyond it. Nobody can get to me, Humphries told himself. There’s two fireproof doors between me and them. I’m safe. They can’t reach me. The guards will round them up. I’m safe in here.
Still in her white terrycloth robe, Ferrer grabbed him by both shoulders. “It’s Fuchs!” she shouted at him. “Look at the display!”
The wall screen showed a stubby miniature bear of a man charging down the hallway outside, swinging a blazing length of drapery.
“Fuchs?” Humphries gasped. It was difficult to make out the man’s face in the false-color image of the infrared camera. “It can’t be!”
Ferrer looked angry and disgusted. “It is! The computer’s matched his image and his voice. It’s Fuchs and three of his henchmen.”
“Here?”
“He’s come to kill you!” she snapped.
“No! He can’t! They’ll—”
“FIRE!” the computer’s emergency warning sounded. “FIRE IN THE REAR STAIRWELL.”
Humphries froze, staring at the wall screen, which now showed the rear stairs blazing.
“Why don’t the sprinklers come on?” he demanded.
“The water’s off,” she reminded him.
“No water?” Humphries bleated.
“The building’s concrete,” Ferrer said. “Seal off the burning area and let the fire consume all the oxygen and kill itself. And anybody in the burning section.”
Humphries felt the panic in him subside a little. She’s right, he thought. Let the fire burn itself out. He stood up straighter, watching the wallscreen’s display.
“Anybody caught in there,” he said, pointing shakily, “is going to get burned to death. Fuchs is going to roast, just as if he were in hell.”