Orion Arm

  "I'll have to make a subspace call to Earth no later than five days from now. Otherwise ... fireworks start."

  "We'll be evacuating you right away. Zone Patrol and Rampart ExSec will come in and mop up the operation a little later."

  "One other thing, Frost..."

  "Yeah?"

  "Go inside. Check out the three genetic engineering labs, then do what's right. My four men .. . you know how this fuckin' allomorph eradication process works?"

  "Yes."

  "My boys... the bastards are using them for tissue-culture donors. They're in dystasis, but once they're freed and put through psychoprobing by CHW, they'll go to Coventry Blue for sure. And you know what happens to corporate enforcers inside the walls."

  I did. Cruel and unusual punishment didn't begin to describe their fate. "Maybe we can work out the same deal for them that I offered you, if they agree to testify against Galapharma."

  He shook his head. "No good. Commonwealth Judiciary will never let all of us walk. Harry Piretti iced Qiu, the CRO. The others took down Clive Leighton and his girlfriend, disposed of Volta, Bransky, and Matsudo, smeared the Starcorp from one end of the Spur to the other." He managed a faint laugh, full of wry satisfaction. "We damn near handed Rampart to Alistair Drummond on a plate before you came along."

  "So, bad luck for your sidekicks," I said coldly, getting to my feet. "Good fuckin' luck for you."

  If I had anything to say about it—and, unfortunately, I didn't—both Ollie and his gang would end up with the book thrown at them, incarcerated in the Blue Disenfranchised Persons Reserve for the rest of their miserable lives. I felt no sympathy at all for the wounded man lying on the ground and even less for his murderous floater pals.

  He knew it, and yet he was actually pleading with me. "You'll get everything you need for your case against Gala from me, Frost. Please! ... Do my boys, save 'em from Blue, and I promise I'll cooperate fully with the psychoprobers. They'll get more out of me, quicker. You know how it works."

  "I'll do whatever I can to get immunity or reduced sentences for all of you. But it isn't my decision."

  "Goddamn Throwaway cop... might have known..."

  Ollie's voice faded. His face had gone translucent and his eyes drifted shut. Bits of smut from the burning Vorlon that Ildy and I had hijacked fell on his pale skin like black snow. The blood flow from his head wound had diminished to a trickle.

  Hauling out my poncho, I began to ease him into it. He groaned once, thrashed about weakly, and then became a dead weight in my arms. Accoutred as I was in helmet and combat gloves, I couldn't tell whether he was alive or not.

  Ildiko came dashing up. "All our prisoners in the wreck are dead. There's a chance the ammo stores in the stern might blow up any minute. Is the prize package still with us?"

  "A good question. Help me get him to a safer spot, upwind of the gas and out of range if the wreck blows. Let's try the hopper pad. The lift lid's bent up. Maybe we can take cover behind it."

  It was a little under a hundred meters away. We hoisted Schneider together and ran for it. No sooner had we dragged him behind the canted elevator deck than our aircraft exploded, sending a wave of dust, smoke, and diluted sleepy-gas rolling over us.

  I lay over Schneider, protecting him with my soft-armored body from the few bits of debris that rained down. I'd lowered the poncho hood over his face, but he spasmed beneath me as AG97 entered his lungs and then fell back limply.

  "Shit," I muttered.

  Ildy pushed me aside and carefully lifted one of Ollie's eyelids. The eye was rolled back. As we watched, it returned slowly to its normal position, the pupil shrunk to a pinpoint.

  "He's alive," she said. "AG97 is supposed to have minimal side effects on a healthy subject. How bad were his wounds?"

  "Maybe not too serious. Hard to say." I was struggling to my feet, resettling my equipment. There was no time to discuss the patient. "You put up a tylar tent here and do what you can for him. I've got to get inside that facility and call for the cavalry.. . if there is any cavalry."

  "Do you have a fallback option, Helly?"

  I surveyed the terrain for a minute. Conical Butte, with its apron of talus, was due west of our position. To the southwest were the original Three Smokes, and behind them, about four zigzaggy kilometers away, the pointed volcanic crags that concealed our tuqo. The intervening plain was rocky gravel with a few boulders. At full magnification my visor showed no patches of cinders or smoky ground.

  "If the balloon goes up," I said, "make for the tuqo. Return to the privateer at top speed and tell Mimo to blast off."

  "Understood."

  "And watch out for survivors coming up the elevator shaft. The gas you pumped in the front door might not have penetrated this far."

  I shouldered my grenade launcher and headed for the entrance to the facility. The hideously mangled dead inside the airlock were a Haluk SWAT team armed with heavy blasters and smart-missile launchers. Alarm bells that were already ringing insidiously in my mind cranked up a notch. Darrel had lied to me. The Galapharma agents at the secret Cravat facility hadn't trusted the xeno guard force with lethal weaponry. So what was happening here on Dagasatt?

  The inner airlock door had been completely destroyed by Ildy's grenade but the semicircular lobby area beyond seemed relatively undamaged. Signs on four wide-open corridors indicated the way to CENTRAL, GE1, GE2, and GE3.

  Red emergency indicators on the walls were flashing, and a computer voice yammered: Alert. Alert. AG90-type gas attack. Antidote is not in defensive arsenal. Alert. Alert...

  Well, that was a break. I hoped the place didn't have auto-sealing doors. Ildiko had pumped in four sleepy-gas rounds, enough to fill the whole building if nothing blocked it. A few molecules of AG97 sufficed to stun a rhino, and the gas swiftly penetrated all but the most advanced niters. I figured that the opposition should be down, unless the building had compartmentalized ventilation systems, or the occupants had managed to put on Air-Paks or oxygen.

  I hustled along the corridor leading into Central, and was suddenly aware that the nagging voice of the computer warning had finally shut off. I'd hung the LGF-18 on my back and drawn my Ivanov pistol. Everytime I passed a closed door, I flung it open in search of conscious combatants. I found none, but there were fallen Haluk everywhere.

  I wondered how many of the aliens were illicit sharers in the human genetic heritage, freed from the allomorphism that had limited their racial progress. Even more, I worried about the humans inside this establishment, and whether Oliver Schneider knew or even suspected what they might be.

  Most of the Haluk I encountered were in the gracile, fully active state: slender, wasp-waisted beings with slate-blue skin, dressed in natty uniforms, fatigue coveralls, lab smocks, or the kind of casual alien clothing I had seen in the underground establishment of Cravat. The two sexes were only slightly different in appearance. Their skulls were finely shaped and had manes of platinum hair, variously styled. Gracile Haluk eyes were disproportionately large, brilliant blue, almond-shaped, and quite beautiful. By way of contrast, their arms, cheeks, foreheads, and long necks had prominent ridges and carunculated areas that seemed hideous by human standards.

  A few of the unconscious aliens were obviously genetically unaltered, since they had entered the transitional or lepi-dodermoid phase of their allomorphic cycle. The Haluk had evolved on an ancestral world with a very eccentric orbit that carried it dangerously near the sun for half of each four-hundred-day year. The race adapted, regularly changing its body form in response to the increased heat, dryness, and solar radiation flux of the deadly summer.

  As gracile Haluk turned into lepidoderms, intelligence declined and bodily functions slowly began to shut down. Lepidos were asexual, thick-limbed, barrel-bodied creatures able to perform only simple tasks. Greatly enlarged heads, scaled to insulate the sensitive brain, grew massive brow ridges to guard eyes that were now shielded by dark protective pigments. Noses and mouths shrank. As the cycle progr
essed toward the Great Change, the lepido body acquired more and more scales, at first dark blue, then changing to dull gold. Movement became ponderous and finally ceased. The ultimate testudinal phase was an immobile golden chrysalid in which the Haluk slept—estivated—for about 140 days. Then the cocoon opened and a fully functional gracile emerged, memories and intelligence intact... but way behind the times.

  Even though the Haluk had long since abandoned their appalling home world and settled on more hospitable planets, the annual cycle persisted. It was no longer synchronous, however. Individuals now cycled at different times from their peers, but allomorphism was still vexatiously inconvenient.

  Especially for a race that yearned to conquer the universe.

  I found Jim Matsukawa alone in the communication room, slumped before a subspace com unit with its viewscreen gone to auto standby. He was a sturdy, well-muscled specimen wearing a red-and-black Galapharma uniform, and although he seemed totally incapacitated, I clamped plastic manacles around his wrists and ankles before tipping him off the chair onto the floor.

  Even before I located him, I'd decided that Jim was going to accompany us offworld. As a material witness and potential informant, he was far superior to poor dead Darrel Ride-nour and his companions. Matsukawa's testimony was going to corroborate that of Oliver Schneider, justifying a full-scale investigation of this genen site by Zone Patrol and Rampart Security.

  Jim's DNA might yield even more interesting evidence.

  If the Haluk had actually demicloned the likes of Ridenour, a mere Gala ExSec Agent 4th Grade, it seemed possible that they might also have replicated other humans assigned to the genen facility staff. In an isolated place like this, a Haluk demiclone-in-training could easily study the background and mannerisms of his unsuspecting donor before taking his place—and eventually moving on to a more strategic venue.

  Duty Officer Jim Matsukawa was a prime doppelganger candidate. An even more likely—and potentially valuable— one was Erik Skogstad, who had supervised the entire operation on behalf of Galapharma. In time, a Haluk mole such as Fake Erik might be able to penetrate the inner circles of Galapharma security—unless he happened to be driving that Haluk starship Joe Betancourt was stalking, in which case his fake-human DNA would soon mingle anonymously with the interstellar dust floating between Dagasatt and Artiuk.

  Taking a seat before the SS com unit, I asked it to tell me what stations Jim Matsukawa had called within the past hour. The list was a short one.

  1. [Encrypted designation], starship on interstellar course within Perseus Spur

  2. [Encrypted designation], planet Artiuk

  3. [Encrypted designation], Toronto, planet Earth

  4. [Different encrypted designation], Toronto, planet Earth

  I figured that the first call had gone to Skogstad, or whoever was piloting the approaching starship. The second alerted Haluk authorities, or Galapharma agents, on Artiuk to the attack on the facility. The third might have gone to Galapharma's home offices on Earth, notifying them of the attempt to grab Schneider. The recipient of the fourth message was a puzzler. It seemed unlikely that Matsukawa would call another Galapharma number in Toronto if he had already reported the emergency to Concern HQ. But who else would rate a priority communique?

  It didn't look as though Matsukawa had summoned any local Qastt gunships himself—at least not through the SS com—but there was always a possibility that others had done it for him.

  I sent out a call to Joe Betancourt aboard Chispa Dos. Over an hour had gone by since I'd told him to pursue and destroy the Haluk speedster.

  He responded at once and told me he'd carried out my orders.

  "It was really strange," Joe said, after I'd offered felicitations on his success and his survival. "I hid in a little dust-nebula and did a fairly typical hostile intercept of the Haluk. The ship refused to surrender, even when I demonstrated my superiority, so we engaged and I finished him off rather quickly. You'll never guess what was trash-talking at me from inside that zippy xeno crate."

  "A human," I said.

  "You got it! But it gets weirder. The pilot recognized Chispa, even though I had the transponder-ID blanked out. Flat out accused me of stealing his Y700 prototype! The man was seriously apeshit—madder about his ripped-off ship than about the fact that he was outgunned and outmaneuvered and about to go plasmatic."

  "Your opponent was very likely a major Galapharma operative named Erik Skogstad. Mimo sort of inherited his blitzboat as spoils of battle. I'll tell you the story later... So, did you get dinged at all in the dogfight?"

  "Not a scratch. My three Qastt passengers didn't even realize that anything hairy was going on until it was all over. How're you and Ildy?"

  "Both okay. We hit the facility successfully and that's where I'm calling from. Operation Q is just about a wrap. We captured the big prize. Unfortunately, Schneider was wounded by friendly fire during the penetration. I hope we can save him."

  A shocked pause. "Well, that's a shit shortcake."

  "The four lesser prizes are probably also still alive, but in no condition to be evacuated. I've taken the duty officer prisoner, and he'll be going out with us as a corroborating witness to what was happening in this damned place."

  "What was?"

  "There's no time to talk about it now. The important thing is for us to get out of here, fast. I don't know whether these clowns called for Qastt reinforcements. If they did, Ildy and I will deal with the situation as best we can. But we won't be able to last long."

  "Helly, you've got to get away from the facility. Take cover in the rocks, or something."

  "Affirmative. That's what I intend to do. How soon can you get back to Dagasatt?"

  "Twenty-three minutes suit you?"

  "Beautiful! You make good on that, I'll adopt you into the Frost family. Megabucks, colorful kinfolks, horseback rides, sunset barbecues, and all the Galapharma shit you can shovel."

  Joe Betancourt howled. "I'll take a pass on everything but the money. I'm gonna need lots to get my charter business going."

  "You'll get a bonus, along with everybody else. Now listen: there are other people you have to contact. First, get ahold of Mimo. Tell him to wait until you arrive to give protective cover from orbit. Then he can fly out on an oh-nine-oh course, hugging the bitumen, skip over the volcanoes, and exit the atmosphere over the Empty Sea. Escort the privateer to some hiding place in the system's Kuiper Cloud, then come back for us. Mimo can fly Chispa's gig down for the pickup while you hold off any Qastt that interfere. If our luck holds, there won't be any Qastt—but watch for other Haluk cruisers coming ex Artiuk. I think this facility may have been very important to them."

  "I copy all that. Any other orders?"

  "Contact Matt Gregoire on Seriphos. Ask her to send any armed Rampart ExSec or Fleet Security starships in the region to Dagasatt to reinforce you. There ought to be a fleet cutter on Cravat, if nothing else. And have her alert Cravat's hospital to expect us with Ollie Schneider—whenever."

  "Copy that."

  "She'll also have to notify Zone Patrol that we have firm evidence of human prisoners being held on Dagasatt, and set up a joint Rampart-ZP assault on this place. But not until we're all safely out of here. Tell Matt I'll contact her when we're en route to Cravat."

  "Anything else?"

  "Just hurry it up, Joe. I'm really sick to death of this fuckin'planet."

  Shutting off the SS com, I drew my Kagi pistol and blasted critical modules of the instrument to melted glop. Then I went off hurriedly in search of GE1, the east-wing genetic engineering lab.

  The central module had a confusing radial layout, and I was grateful for Darrel Ridenour's floor plan. I loped down now-silent corridors, only occasionally finding a fallen Haluk, and came at last to a heavy door, wide-open. Three unconscious technicians dressed in white coveralls lay crumpled just outside, and it was obvious they had been about to lock the lab and flee when the gas reached them. Two of the techs were Haluk and on
e was a middle-aged human woman. She wore a translator pendant and still held a key-card in her hand.

  I stepped over the sleepers into a dimly lit scene of bizarre familiarity. The laboratory was crowded with row upon row of upright, transparent technocoffins of the type used in the most elaborate forms of dynamic-stasis gene therapy. Bodies submerged in thick bubbly liquid floated inside the containers, suspended on intricate frames and connected to arcane gadgetry. The dystasis tanks seemed identical to those I'd seen in the Haluk facility on Cravat.

  Embedded in the gleaming black glass floor was a network of neon-red filaments that connected with the tank bottoms and illuminated the bodies from below, leaving them otherwise in womblike twilight. At the far end of the wing stood a collection of oddball machinery that also looked familiar. Multicolored spheres with pulsating inner lights, linked by more of the glowing red tubing, were mounted on a black glass platform next to banks of exotic monitoring equipment.

  To my layman's eye the assemblage looked more like a light sculpture than scientific apparatus.

  I started down the nearest aisle, examining the comatose floaters more closely. On Cravat the tanks had held what seemed to be hundreds of gracile Haluk—with the single conspicuous exception of my sister!—dressed in long silvery shifts that left only their feet, arms, and heads exposed. At first I believed the xenos were being treated with human DNA, vectored by the wide-spectrum transferase in PD32:C2, so that their allomorphic cycle would be eradicated.

  Later I found out from Eve what was really going on in the Cravat facility. The sickening discovery had confirmed my fears that the Haluk had hostile intentions toward the human race.

  And damned if it didn't look like the same sort of thing was happening here on Dagasatt!

  With an increasing sense of dread, I examined the silver-gowned beings in the tanks and discovered they were paired. Every other subject appeared to be a gracile Haluk, and alternating with them were humans. Or almost-humans. But the allomorph eradication process used a different, simpler technique for transferring DNA.