In the Hall of the Martian King (20 page)

“If it’s there,” Pikia said, “then I know what I’m going to do for my part of the op.” She sketched it quickly for them, and
they all nodded vigorously. Jak, Sibroillo, and Pikia had the most improvisational parts of the plan; each of them was supposed
to run to a particular location and, at the right time, make the sort of noise and chaos that would cause the Princess’s yacht
to unbutton and give Dujuv and Shadow a chance to get into it in the confusion.

“That’s a first-rate bit of confusion you have in mind,” Sibroillo said when she had explained. “And as Jak has probably quoted
my saying, many times, always sow as much confusion as possible.” Actually Jak seldom quoted Sib at all, and never on that
point, because every time he had taken the advice himself, it had led to disaster. But Pikia had the good sense to nod eagerly,
as if she’d heard it many times. Her gift for deceiving the old gwont was nearly equal to Jak’s own; he was glad for the thousandth
time to have her along.

“Well,” she said, “so there’s at least a tentative scheme for causing confusion … everyone else has an assignment … and somewhere
to be once it’s completed … everyone have the notes they need?” Everyone nodded. “Are we at the point—”

“Mmmph,” Jak said. “I’m going to be obsessively cautious and just recheck the basic things that can go wrong. One, the lifelog’s
not on the launch. In that case, everyone just runs for it, right? Split up and go any way that seems good to you. Two, the
Princess’s beanies and crew might decide they’re safer buttoned up than bringing the thing down. So if you get a chance, anyone,
at any point, hit the cradle machinery, because it safeties to the down position, and once it does that they at least aren’t
going anywhere, and it might help them to think they want to sortie. Three, we’re all tired, easily confused, easily fixated.
Resist that. We’ve got practically no intelligence and no time to reconnoiter. So be alert and keep making it up, because
any idea that’s more than a few minutes old might already be past its expiration date, masen?”

“Toktru,” Dujuv said.

“Any other issues I haven’t covered?”

Shadow ahemed and said, “Just to make sure that I understand your customs … there is good reason to avoid lethal force when
we can, perhaps to damage only property, and to surrender if trapped or wounded?”

Xlini Copermisr said, “Exactly right. If you’re captured they’ll just put you in jail till the Hive can transmit the ransom
for your release. You don’t want your captors to have any reason to be mad at you if you can help it. So try to keep it all
on the level of a major act of vandalism, not war.”

Shadow made a low, ululating whistle, very softly—the equivalent of a human tongue click, a noise of slight frustration and
exasperation. “All right, but this is severely limiting the chances for any real gain in honor.”

“It’s a sacrifice I am forced to ask of my oath-friend,” Jak said. Shadow bowed his head gravely, accepting the request in
that context.

“All right, has anyone else thought of any other problem?”

“You’re sure you can keep up?” Dujuv asked Pikia.

“I ran cross-country in the All-Martian Gen School Meet last year. Make sure
you
can keep up with
me.
”

“All right, you will be running with a panth and Rubahy, you know. Not everyone can.”

“I’m not everyone.”

“Toktru masen. That was my last worry, Jak.”

“Best to get it rolling,” Gweshira said. “We’ll want as much as we can get of that last hour of darkness for fleeing, no matter
how this comes out.”

“All right,” Jak said. “Then tee will equal zero in … two minutes?”

“Five,” Sib said, “I need to go around the back of a dune for a second. I swear to Nakasen and every Principle there is, when
they’re doling out my organs, I pity whoever gets my bladder. If it weren’t for the alternative, nobody would ever want to
live to be two hundred.”

As Jak and Sib trotted over the ridgeline of the third and last anchored dune, Jak glanced to his right; far off, something
flickered for just an instant, crossing the ridgeline perhaps half a kilometer farther west.
Probably Dujuv, Shadow and Pikia—at least they go that far.

Jak turned to look at the broad expanse of the Red Amber Magenta Green landing field in front of him. At least, from this
much better vantage point, he could see that collectively they had been right in what they remembered: the sixty-meter spheres
that were tanks of hot-jet fuel were south of the cradles they served, the main marshaling loop where
John Carter
was trapped between suborbs was indeed south of the main hangar and east of the tower, and as Xlini had said it would be,
Splendor One
sat on the smaller marshaling loop beside Cradle One. As soon as they were safely back in the shadows and off the ridgeline,
Jak pointed that out to Sib.

“Good, Pikia will do something with that,” Sib said. “Weehu. I can still run a few kilometers, but it’s a bigger deal than
it used to be. Where to now?”

“I’d say we run for that underpass where the Pertrans dives under the heavy-linducer line that comes out of the main hangar.
We’ll have to pop over the landing linducer, but we’d have to no matter what, and they’re probably not on alert. We can squat
under the underpass and check out the ground, and then it’s a short dash for you to the control tower and me to the warshuttle.
I don’t see any other good hiding place that close.”

“Toktru.” The older man bent for a minute and sucked in a deep lungful of the good Martian night air; the Chryse Bay, sixty
kilometers away, tended to send warm moist air flowing into this part of the Harmless Zone after midnight every night. Sibroillo
coughed twice and added, “Well, I’ll have to remember not to do anything like this on my
three
hundredth birthday trip.”

It was easy running down the side of the old dune. They blazed across the flat ground, and went up the embankment of the landing
linducer in one swift, smooth, silent rush. They leapt onto the half-meter high concrete track that housed the linducers,
across the shiny metallic slot, and down the other side, neatly and cleanly. They ran onto the main operations area, toward
now-setting Phobos, a narrow, lumpy crescent bowed toward the eastern horizon as it rushed on to meet the sun.

In less than two minutes since they had looked from the top of the dune, Jak and his uncle were squatting in the Pertrans
underpass. Low gravity and a very high oxygen content worked their customary miracles; both men were recovered in a very short
time. “Well,” Sib said, “I see the main door to the control tower, and when you don’t know how to get in—”

“ ‘Always barge in through the front door.’ I could never forget that one, Uncle Sib. I’ll be muttering it on my deathbed.
Don’t embarrass me with your part of the mission, you silly old gwont.”

“Don’t screw up as much as I expect you to, you insolent puppy.”

They shook hands.

Jak trotted along the base of the embankment of the heavy-load linducer line, letting it lead him into the main marshaling
loop. Sib would be in the control tower in no time, and the more noise Jak could make at the warshuttle, the safer his uncle
would be at the tower.

Dujuv squatted on his heels beside Shadow on the Frost, who stood perfectly still. They were in the dark, west-reaching shadow
behind the big fuel sphere for Cradle Two, and for the moment they were about as out of the action as it was possible to be.

Shadow’s feathered, two-thumbed hand dropped onto Dujuv’s shoulder to get his attention; one long articulated finger pointed
toward the stretched silvery ellipsoid of
Splendor One,
just south of them, where it rested behind Cradle One. A lighted square had appeared on the side; in it stood a human figure,
talking to another one, half in darkness. Then there was a flurry of movement, the guard tumbled down the ramp, and the square
of light winked out. Pikia had gotten in.

* * *

When the door opened on the side of
Splendor One,
Pikia had her best “I’m a helpless little girl and I need a nice man to help me” smile glued on tight. She was slightly out
of practice because it didn’t work on Dujuv or Jak and she wouldn’t have given it to Clarbo Waynong in any circumstances,
but the guard seemed to respond the way most male teachers and pokheets did; he tried to appear gruff and in fact his eyes
twinkled as he said, “What can I do for you, miss?”

“I must have gotten off at the wrong Pertrans station, and I thought this was where the Pertrans line would be for me to get
back to Magnificiti, and I’ve been walking just toktru forever, and now that I’m here I don’t see any Pertrans station—”

“Oh, you can always just get back on anyplace you got off, and tell the Pertrans car where you want to go, and it will figure
everything out for you,” the guard said. He looked to be about fifty, his face unlined and his body firm and strong, but self-assured;
he might have been an advertisement for longevity drugs, especially with that beaming, stupid, confident smile.

“You can
do
that?” Pikia tried to sound amazed; she didn’t think much of her act, but the guard seemed to be less of a critic.

“Toktru masen. That’s how it works. Now, there’s a Pertrans station right over there—”

“Over where?” She turned her back to him, staring wildly everywhere except where he had pointed, clasping her hands in front
of herself like a medieval movie actor portraying confusion and helplessness.

“See that low building? That’s the bunker for Cradle One. Now, next to it—” He pointed over her shoulder. She tensed her clasped
hands against each other.

“Next to the big curvy thing?”

He took a half step and extended his arm more emphatically. “Right, toktru, right there where—”

She let her tensed hands fly apart and dropped into a deep knee bend. Her right fist flew away, curving low and back, to hammer
the guard’s scrotum against his pubic bone; she kept contact as she opened her hand and turned her wrist, taking a deep forceful
grip. As the guard pitched forward with a gasp of pain, his jaw met the fast-rising heel of Pikia’s left hand, and his head
flew back, putting him into an awkward position—bending over while standing on his toes with his head up. She caught his extended
wrist in front of her, stood on one leg while thrusting back with the other, and whipped her hands in a big forward circle.
He went whirling over her hip, led by the wrist and pulled by the balls, sailing high into the air in the light Martian gravity,
then falling to the base of the ramp in disorderly thrashing agony.

Pikia did not see that rough landing; she had already slipped in through the open door and pushed the emergency close. She
checked the guard’s display; it showed that there was no one else aboard tonight. She had the flagship of Red Amber Magenta
Green’s Spatial entirely to herself. Taking a few good guesses, and using the skills that were the reason her school records
held high scores in several courses she had never taken, she made a few changes, locking out the rest of the world and opening
the cockpit.

By the time that muffled thuds and shouted threats and insults were coming through the sealed door, Pikia was comfortably
seated in the captain’s chair in the worryball, gobbling a ration pack and a bulb of coffee, watching Fuel Tank One through
the monitors.

Not bad for my first time in action,
she thought,
and I’m starting even younger than Jak did. Now if Jak does his part soon, and Sib is as ready as I am, there will have been
some point to it besides beating up one poor guard.
She plugged her purse into the console through the universal jack. Her up-to-date purse cut through the centuries-old security
system like a red-hot wire through snow; in a few seconds she would be able to do anything she wanted. She found Red Amber
Magenta Green’s standard Spatial terminology guide, and the voiceprints for the crew, and knew that now she had struck pure
gold.

The guard was bored stiff; if it weren’t for the honor of being here, he’d rather have been home, getting drunk and working
through what he thought was the finest collection of viv pornography, certainly in Magnificiti, probably in the Harmless Zone,
possibly in the solar system. (He was wrong; it was in fact a mediocre collection, though perfectly aimed at his peculiar
and limited tastes.) As a second son of minor
noblesse de robe,
he had to hang about the court of the Splendor, which meant he had to have this job. If his father or either of his aunts
had been just slightly higher in rank, he would at least not have to have a night shift, or could be excused the next day
from morning court functions, but there was no such luck in his life.

Many of the nobility, faced with performing minor jobs as guards, ceremonial unit officers, factotums, ministers for nonexistent
affairs, and so forth, made a show of making the job as real as possible, behaving as if it mattered and could only be done
by a well-qualified live human being.

This guard was not one of those people. He was eighty years old but looked like a badly preserved 140, not having kept up
with enough exercise for his doctors to be able to give him the stronger rejuvenation drugs, which were dangerous to the sedentary.
His kitchen automatically supplemented his diet with the usual array of necessary trace chemicals, but nothing could overcome
his love of sweet and gooey food, or his tendency, once he started a bottle, to finish three more. He did not greatly care;
he was bored with life, but having nothing to do with the life he had been given, he had donated it, grudgingly, to family
affairs, and though he would rather not have been here standing about uselessly while robots did his job, there was also nowhere
else he had any real desire to be.

It was thus particularly unfair that no robot had been provided to do the actual fighting, shouting, warning, or improvising
that a real guard might have done, and that when a few seconds of real work turned up, the guard was bored, sleepy, and dyspeptic.
The door covering the entrance to the control tower dilated with a grinding
tchunk!
indicating that repairs were in the hands of people every bit as concerned about their duties as this guard was about his.