Good Lord--was  this alien thing admitting  a grudging respect for  Fly
Taggart?
     "Few  ssstrong,  like  you ssstrong . .  . mosst good  for  ssslavesss.
You-man ssslavesss."
     A thought  buried deep behind my  ears thrust itself forward. I  wasn't
too fatigued to pick up that slip of the tongue;  even a tongue as thick and
brutish as this one. Few strong--others strong . . . there must be other hu-
mans who were still themselves and still breathing!
     When hell came to Phobos, I had to keep hope locked up in a small space
without a zip code.
     I kept a  poker face; the  monster might  be  smart  enough to  spot my
eagerness at the possibility that one of the living might be Arlene.
     Any human survivor would change the  Phobos  situa- tion  dramatically:
food and water were minor problems, but I could only operate so long without
sleep. With no one to stand guard, giving in to exhaustion  was suicide. But
I couldn't keep going forever; and if I couldn't rest,  all the ammo  in the
solar system would not save me.
     "I'm touched by your concern for my survival," I said.
     "Deal," he unexpectedly offered, ignoring the sarcasm. "You . . . live;
you work; you help."
     All I  had to do was work with the alien invaders and help them conquer
the  human  race,  and they might graciously allow me to  live  as  a slave.
Jesus, how tempt- ing, I thought.
     I decided that I liked the ones who grunt better. What did these creeps
want from me? "I've got a great  idea. Why don't  you  tell me what the hell
you're after?"
     The thing laughed. The sound grated on my nerves like a ripped bagpipe.
"Hell...  we  after,"  it  declared.  "Ssssurrender .  . . help;  you  live,
you-man."
     "As a zombie?"
     "You live, not deadwalk; you sssee othersss."
     "What others? Who else survived? Did a girl  survive?" Great, Fly; nice
and subtle. Does it even know what a girl is? Does it care?
     "You help . . . you sssee othersss."
     I stared down at the loathsome thing. I knew I had gotten all the intel
from it that I could. "Let me answer,"  I said at  last, "louder  than  mere
words can do. Tell me if this is tough enough."
     Without another  thought, I pointed the  shotgun at the monster's upper
chest  and pumped a round  at  point- blank range.  The  alien  jerked--then
amazingly, stared up at me, still alive by a thread.
     The alien grimaced, facial muscles  finally  growing rigid. Then for  a
moment  it  relaxed. "We could eat  anybody  onccce," it declared.  Then  it
stopped moving; even the cilia in its mouth stood up straight and froze. The
demon was dead.
     After catching my breath, I started getting angry. It  was one thing to
fight a human enemy, but battling malignant demons? Every  time I killed one
of these  humanoid things, I felt like  doing a hundred  more. That might be
the  only good to come of this latest encounter. Give no  quarter  and kill,
kill, kill. Kind of reassuring to learn that all that Marine training hadn't
been a waste of time.
     Of course, the rational  portion of my brain still made plans. I wanted
to  climb  down  and  out  of this  hangar and reach my next  objective, the
nuclear  plant. The plant  was  the  most dangerous item to fall  into enemy
hands. Better it should fall into my hands.
     Making one last circuit of the zombie bodies, I scav- enged for blessed
ammunition. I'd have  killed for a decent backpack;  come  to  think of  it,
that's probably how I would have to get one.  I  was  running out of pockets
for the ammo.
     So, how to get out of the hangar? My playmates found their way in;  all
I had  to do  was reverse  the process. First thing was to  hug the wall and
make a nice, slow circuit of the big, ugly room.
     The  damned  monsters  bothered  me  a lot less  than  the architecture
changing on me. I'd never been in Phobos Base before, but I'd talked to guys
down  on  Mars  who knew  these  installations; there was no way  this place
hadn't  undergone  a change  as  bug-nut  crazy  as the  demonic  characters
themselves.
     And what  made that more upsetting than the monsters was the  idea that
the floor you walked on, the wall you brushed against, the  damn place could
turn on you and  become something else. Like a cartoon world that sud- denly
turns everything into rubber . . . except you.
     If this kept  up,  Yours  Truly was  going to  place his imagination on
short rations.
     I leaned against  the wall,  and suddenly it was like those  old Abbott
and  Costello  movies  back Earthside: the  wall had  a hidden  door. I even
tripped going through the blasted thing. In my mind a laugh track played and
played and played.
     I  fell into a  new corridor, which  I followed to a rising wall at the
south  end of the hall.  There was another of those crazy platforms near  at
hand. Instinct told me to give it a  wide berth, and  who am I to argue with
my most cherished faculty? When I reached the wall, I  found another switch,
which I flipped.
     The  wall  shooooshed  up,  revealing  a  down  staircase;  it  was  an
encouraging sign--the  nuke plant  was down  another level or two, I vaguely
remembered. Cautiously, I  started  down  the  stairs,  grateful  for steady
light. My reward was the biggest slime pool yet, waiting  at the bottom.  If
only I'd remembered to  bring swimming trunks, I  could  have  gone in for a
dip. Best toxic sludge in the whole solar system right here--come  one, come
all.
     Skirting the pool,  pressed against  the  wall,  I finally  ran  out of
hangar. Along the narrow corridor past the  toxin, I found the shredded body
of  another  one of those brown- leather, spiky demons. If it were a talker,
someone had already silenced  it forever  with seven  or eight rounds from a
Sig-Cow. Score another for the Corps.
     The  bug lay  against a  sliding door that belonged on  a dumbwaiter. I
yanked it open, happy to take out my frustrations  on  something that didn't
shoot, claw, or flame me back.
     Sure enough, it was a lift, barely big enough for a  big guy to squeeze
into. I spotted a  funny mark on the wall, as if someone had started to draw
a map  using  a bright, red paint  stick--we  use  them  to  blaze trails in
forests  or urban environments.  Whoever it  was had been  inter- rupted  in
mid-map. I studied it for  a bit, then shrugged; whatever he was  trying  to
tell me got lost in the transla- tion.
     I scrunched  inside  the tiny lift,  wondering which of the two buttons
would take me down to the  plant. Staring  at the labels,  I decided to push
the  one marked "Nuclear Plant." And they say you don't get  an education in
the service!
     With a jerk, the  tiny lift sank, swerving and rattling all the way, as
much  as screaming out Here I come!  to the whole world. Well, to  the whole
Phobos pressure zone, I guess.
     I  didn't have to guess  whether  this  important part of the  base had
fallen into enemy hands. The minute I stepped off the platform, I was in the
soup up to my neck. This  particular recipe called for  more zombies  than I
thought could be crammed  into such a small space.  Come to think of it, the
space wasn't all that small. I  guess when it's wall-to-wall corpse-sickles,
it's easy to lose track of the finer points of design.
     For  the first  time  in  my  life  I  felt  what  it  was  like to  be
claustrophobic from  being surrounded  by  walls  of  hu-  man  flesh--well,
formerly human flesh. I couldn't un- derstand why I wasn't dead meat.
     Two   things  worked  in  my   favor:   first,  so  many  zombies  were
sardine-canned in the  room, they could hardly move, and most of them didn't
even know I was  there.  Second, it  had become clear  to me by now that the
only  use for brains in a zombie was for gray and  white color contrast when
you blasted their heads like rotten fruit. Even Gunny Used-to-Be-Goforth had
been operating on motor reflexes, and he was the most dangerous one yet.
     There was plenty of time to  think about such things because  there was
really nowhere for me to go, and I was waiting for one of them to notice me.
Then one  of those wonderful moments of dumb luck  added  the final spice to
the soup. Another contingent of zombies trooped into storage, and one of the
shambling creeps elbowed  aside another, simply trying  to find somewhere to
stand. In the  tiny,  new space created,  I noticed an undamaged map on  the
wall!
     By  this  time, I'd  arrived  at the conclusion that  zombies  were not
responsible  for the  destroyed radio  equipment, the vandalized  maps,  the
deliberately  wasted weapons.  The advantage of attending  my  first  zombie
convention  was that there  apparently wasn't room for the demon monsters to
get  in  here  and do their  damage;  the space was  being  used  for zombie
storage.
     Trying to look dead on my feet--not difficult--I shambled  a few meters
to where I  could get a better  view of the map--it was  a full schematic of
the entire station seen  from  the  side. Unfortunately,  it  didn't include
overhead views  for each  level; but at least I could  see  how far down the
station went. My God, it even had a You Are Here arrow!
     I was indeed at the nuclear plant level; above me was the hangar, while
still below  were the Toxin Refinery-- didn't that sound appetizing--Command
& Control, the labs, Central Processing, and MIS. Jesus .  . . only six more
levels to clear; I was afraid it would be thirty!
     Funny  how what I was seeing triggered memories  of malls and shoppers.
Best not to dwell on that. . .
     Somewhere in  the back of my head a shrill voice screamed for me to get
the hell out of that room. I figured this situation was too lucky to last.
     Without false modesty, I can say I was proven a prophet. In that sea of
pale, dead faces, two dry as dust eyes  came  to rest on Yours Truly. Hoping
the unfocused eyes would continue their survey of the room, I  didn't move a
muscle .  . .  which was normally what  the zom- bies did  when they had  no
orders and had not spotted a human: they stood and did nothing.
     Except, that is, for the one who wouldn't stop staring at me. I  wasn't
about  to make  the first move.  I'd been through a lot  lately but  I could
still count.
     It seemed  like  this could go on forever;  but then, out of nowhere, a
zombie-child separated  itself  from the  rest  of the throng  and  stumbled
toward me.
     Jesus!  For  a second  I didn't recognize  that she was as dead  as the
rest.  Seeing  plenty  of zombies  recruited  from soldiers made it easy  to
forget the UAC civilians that had  been on this base. But somehow  I'd never
dreamed there would be children here.
     The kid headed straight for me, mouth opening and closing but no sounds
coming out. Then  those soft, wet,  cold hands were rubbing on my arm .  . .
and I couldn't stifle my reflexes. I put my arm around her to comfort her.
     All hell broke loose.
     Staring-boy opened his mouth, too; but instead of words, he  belched an
inarticulate roar. But he was so hemmed in by his fellows, he couldn't raise
the pistol in his right hand. Impatient guy that I am, I acted: I  tilted up
my shotgun and squeezed the trigger.
     A dead-center blast helped a lot. I pumped the slide, then pounded home
another shot to clear a path.
     Then I was running as fast and  hard as I could  to the left. In  close
quarters like this there  was  no opportunity to use  the rifle. My best bet
was to find elbow room where I could at least make a stand but that wouldn't
put me in a cul de sac. The  sounds  pounding in my  ears told me that  they
were following me, but I wasn't about to turn around and take a head count.
     I ducked into an open doorway, then turned like Custer at bay. Three of
the  creatures shambled  past, not even noticing me--the  fourth  was not so
obligingly stupid. It pushed through the doorway, and I raised the shotgun.
     Just before  I turned  that  face  into an explosion of red,  something
about  it reminded me of my grandfather. I wish that hadn't happened. I  was
doing all right until then.
     The  trouble  was that  every time I made careful calcula- tions  about
what I could do in terms of stamina, willpow- er, and even strategy, the old
emotions got completely away from me. I'd thought I was a better Marine than
this. Then again, they'd never trained us for a nonstop horror show.
     I needed  a break.  I  needed to lie down  for  five minutes because my
lower back was killing me and there was a muscle  spasm in my right shoulder
blade. A nice cold drink of water would have  gone a long way toward cooling
the fire in my brain. But seeing old Granddad's face on the umpteenth zombie
was the latest straw breaking the latest camel's back.
     I couldn't shoot. I just  couldn't! I grabbed it  by its  coveralls and
shoved it backward with superhuman, adrenaline strength.
     It bowled over some of its buddies; then one in the back  rank raised a
lever-action rifle and tried to blow my fool head off.
     I slapped the deck face first, and the bullet scorched the air, blowing
apart one  of  the  zombies that had missed  the turnoff a few seconds back,
splattering the other two with what passes for zombie brains.
     The creatures went mad. That shot must have kicked their  IFF off-line,
because  they  opened up on  their zombie brethren, who cheerfully  returned
fire. In sec- onds, every zombie was shooting wildly at anything that moved!
     I stayed very, very  still, frozen  on  the ground, trying as hard as I
could to look like a "dead" zombie.
     9




     When  the ammo  finally ran dry, the  jerking bodies  above  me started
tearing each  other limb from  limb, as if auditioning  for modern ballet. I
seized the opportunity to roll out  from under the forest of legs; the rifle
was strapped  to my back, but in the chaos of the moment, I left the shotgun
behind.
     I  ran,  and this time  I  wasn't followed. After thirty heart-pounding
seconds, I  was alone with me, myself, and I. And somewhere along the route,
I had stooped and grabbed  a pack, one of Fox Company's--but I had no memory
of having done so!
     I  was utterly lost. I silently cursed at being reduced to  the Sig-Cow
and wandered more or less aimlessly . . . terrified of  shadows,  where half
an hour ago I stalked with  confidence. With just a  pistol and a  semi-auto
rifle, I avoided confrontation wherever I could.
     With no map, I wasn't sure what part of the plant I had reached; then I
pushed through another of those trick doors--I would have missed  it  had  I
not been sliding along  the walls like a mouse--and found the computer room.
The lights were blinking on and off, just what I needed for a headache after
everything else. When the light was  on,  it  had a sickly blue-green  color
that didn't do my empty stomach any good.
     So far as I could tell,  I was alone here, at least  in this section. I
wasn't happy  about  the  way  the  corridor  went  up  a  little  ways  and
disappeared around a bend. I decided then and  there if I ever try to  be an
architect,  all  my  buildings   would  borrow  from  my  old   high  school
gymnasium--a big, empty space where you can't possi-  ble hide anything. May
not be much in the way of privacy, but there are advantages all right.
     Placing my back firmly against a wall, I took inventory of the contents
of my  new pack. First thing that  jumped out at me was ammo for the missing
shotgun.  I was  going  to have  to replace that  as soon as possible.  Dude
Dardier  would have wanted it  that way.  I had  some  10mm rounds  for  the
Sig-Cow that also fit  the pistol,  a bit of water or  other liquid, chewing
gum .  . . and a small, little metal  object that  appeared  to  be  a shiny
flashlight battery. I  had  no  idea what the  last was; the  UAC  logo  was
printed on the side, not the globe and eagle of the Corps emblem.
     First order of business was checking the liquid. I was worried it might
be vodka or gin or rubbing  alcohol or something other than what I wanted it
most to be. But at long last I was in for a bit of good  luck: it was water.
While I took a first  grateful sip,  repressing the  desire to finish it off
with one gulp, I picked up the batterylike object with my other hand. Then I
realized what it was. I'd heard about, but never seen, a rocket this small.
     Correction: I had seen  one in a UAC weapons  demo video when they were
trying to sell it to the Pentagon. (We didn't  buy it--I wish we had!) Yeah,
these were special little babies, all right. But no one from Fox Company had
been carrying any rocket  launchers.  This  kind of ordnance  was for desert
fighting. Where had this rocket come from?
     I laughed out loud. Not smart in this situation, but it was  becoming a
bad  habit. If evil demons could  be lurking anywhere,  and  the  walls  and
floors were meta- morphosing into Halloween  decorations, why couldn't there
be a state-of-the-art tac rocket in a forgotten  backpack? Maybe I'd find  a
tomahawk next.
     At least I'd stopped laughing. The rational part of my brain was trying
to figure out where I might find a rocket launcher. Made sense. I was trying
real  hard  to listen to the little voice that  made sense. Only trouble was
that a much louder voice  was roaring from  somewhere lower in the brain. It
wanted  me to find  the rocket launcher,  too,  but for  a  less  defensible
reason.
     I  guess  I'd  been  more  upset  by  the roomful of zombies  than  I'd
realized--or  maybe I'd been  this freaked-out  all along, and  was only now
realizing it. My God, did I really  want to find  that missing launcher just
so I could eat a rocket?
     Suicide isn't in  my nature. I'm an extrovert type, more likely to frag
someone, say a  certain butthead lieutenant, than snuff Yours  Truly. That's
sort of  a job requirement  for the  Marines.  The battlefield  doesn't cure
depression.
     But the  tac-sit here on Phobos  was  a lot  worse than a  battlefield.
Having  to go through the same  crap over and  over  is just part of life. I
know guys who have been married.
     But  what had happened on Phobos  was  so  far beyond normal repetition
that  it turned me totally cold  and numb. If I could just  find  one living
person!  That  thing had  said  . . . had implied that someone  still lived.
Jesus, if there's  such a thing as the soul, then mine had been beaten black
and blue.
     Maybe I wasn't being completely honest with myself. I could have killed
myself with the rifle.  There  are other ways, too, God bless our  training.
Waiting for the launch- er could have been just a good excuse for postponing
the inevitable. Maybe. Or maybe if I found the launcher, I really would  put
the tube in my mouth and, as they say, "fire and forget."
     Fortunately, I never had to make that decision. I found something  else
instead.
     I stood in  a long, steel  corridor that curved  off to the right;  the
only  light came from a bluish, fluorescent tube that curved  along the left
wall and a sporadic white overhead spot. I crept as near  as possible to one
of those white-light areas . .  . somehow  I  felt better surrounded by more
natural colors, even though it made me more of a target.
     Then I glanced to my left and saw it.
     I didn't  trust  my eyes  at  first. They hadn't  been  doing  much  to
encourage trust lately. But  if what I was seeing was real,  then I wouldn't
be fooling around with any more self-destructive fantasies.
     Directly in front of my  nose, scrawled with the same  red  paint stick
that had started drawing a map in the dumbwaiter, were two  capital letters:
A.S. An arrow was drawn by the same  dye marker, pointing to the right  at a
downward angle.
     I stared at  the mark, memory working  furiously. Two  years back I had
gone to see the old James Mason movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth. I
didn't  know who Jules Verne was--but Arlene  had insisted. She loved sci-fi
of any type.
     We made a big event out of it. We had just come off a three-month stint
in Peru,  torching  coca-leaf fields  so  they'd  never  be  processed  into
cocaine,  and we  were ready  for an  old-movie orgy. We didn't usually  eat
junk, but for this special occasion, we gorged on the unhealthi- est popcorn
we  could  buy, even  including  black market  liquid  grease-butter.  I can
honestly say that I have never enjoyed a trip to the movies so much.
     In  the  movie, Arne Saknussem, world's greatest adven- turer, was  the
first to explore the secrets of Earth's  inner world; he leaves his initials
marked in candle  soot at different levels, so  anyone  coming afterward can
follow  his  route. The arrows point out the path he  took when  the caverns
branched off.
     I stared at the mark. A.S.--Arne Saknussen; A.S.. . . Arlene Sanders.
     My gut dropped to  my boots. Arlene! Arlene was alive? It had to be ...
what other explanation was there? She was alive . . . and she was doing just
what I  was doing: going deeper into the station,  hoping to find a radio or
another living  human, or  maybe  her old pal, Fly. She was drilling  deeper
into this hell, hoping to find a way out!
     There was no doubt in my mind: A.S. meant my bud was still alive ... or
at least, she'd  been  alive up to that point,  alive and still herself. She
must have survived the firefight that killed her platoon.
     All thoughts of self-destruction were wiped away  in an instant. I felt
supercharged.  For the first  time since stepping foot on  this damned space
rock, I was  happy! I moved forward, military discipline reasserting itself,
putting some breaks on the warrior who would still be needed for the killing
time.
     Following the  arrow led directly to an exit  to a patio. I took it. As
always when entering a new locale, I braced for a potential zombie attack or
another encounter with the monsters.  But now I had a new objective: to find
Arlene--and for that, I had to find a new shotgun. Neither waited  for me on
the patio; something brand new was there instead.
     This  one  took  the  cake,  and it was  nobody's birthday.  Picture  a
perfectly round sphere floating in the air. No strings attached here. A blue
sphere,  as  pure  a blue as a perfect spring day back home, with  one extra
touch: there was a face on this ball. I didn't have very long to  appreciate
how butt-ugly the mug was because no sooner had I registered all this in the
brain department than the sphere rushed me and smashed into my head before I
could even twitch, bursting all over Yours Truly.
     I figured I'd had it. For a  moment I  couldn't breathe with that weird
glop all over me, running down the  length of my body, reaching the floor so
I could  conve-  niently take  a header, which  I did.  My first thought was
poison! I could still breathe, though, once my mouth and nose cleared.
     With  the  first swallow,  I felt something cold and  invigorating rush
through  my body.  Taking a deep breath, the air seemed  cleaner  and tasted
better.
     Suddenly, I felt  great. If this turned out  to be a strange symptom of
the alien poison,  I could recommend it. Special Endorsements available from
Flynn  Taggart's coffin  . . . reasonable  rates. Sitting up, I  expected an
attack  of dizziness; but it never came. The liquid had mostly evaporated by
now or maybe absorbed into my body.
     With another deep breath--which felt  better  than ever--I  stood up. I
hadn't been poisoned--just the opposite, in fact. This crazy floating sphere
had been good  for me! It  was perfectly reasonable to assume that any weird
creature coming through one  of the Gates would be bad, and worse, deadly to
all things  human.  Discovering that lovely  A.S. had been the most pleasant
surprise of  the day (yeah, I  know day and night are pretty tricky concepts
when you're stranded on a space  rock the size  of an  average-sized garbage
dump); but the second piece of  good news was  how this blue sphere had just
made me feel like a billion dollars.
     Now that I  was feeling like a new man,  I was more dedicated than ever
to the proposition of finding Arlene and  exiting  the nuclear plant. Easier
said; Arlene's arrow pointed me to the  blue sphere--but was that all? Maybe
I should follow the arrow down the computer-room corri- dor, I thought,  and
forget  the door leading to the patio. Then again, maybe she didn't even see
the hidden door, and I just stumbled through it, misreading her arrow.
     I returned to the computer room and headed in the direction of Arlene's
arrow.  After  twenty minutes of winding through the  maze, I ended up right
back at the arrow again! "Well, that was a real brainstorm," I grumbled.
     I  decided  to leave a small mark of my  own,  a simple F, next  to her
initials whenever I found them. This would prevent my mistaking one mark for
the next--and anyone else, Arlene or maybe  the  "Ron" twins,  who came this
way again would know he was not alone.
     I followed  her mark again, this time picking a different route; and at
last  I  made eye contact with some  company,  however unwelcome. One of the
familiar  brown  mon-  sters  with  the  painful,  white  spikes  was eating
something, its back to me.
     Up to now  I'd been  spared seeing them eat. It sat on a table, hunched
over, making hard, crunching noises. I caught a glimpse of something red  in
its jaws as it turned its head to the side; fortunately, it didn't check its
six.
     If I'd found another shotgun by now, I would have blasted the blasphemy
from behind  . . . but sometimes frustration is the father  of fortune,  for
suddenly I heard a whole bunch of the bastards walking right past me--on the
other side of the thin, computer-maze wall.
     If I had followed  my gut  instincts  and shot  the demon- ic  son of a
bitch, I would have  been ambushed.  Shaking from  a retroactive  adrenaline
rush, I silently told myself that my objectives  were to find Arlene and get
the hell out of here, off Phobos, and find a radio somewhere!
     Then a thought hit me like a ton of slag. Arlene wouldn't bother taking
time in  this hellhole to scribble her mark unless  she had  a  damned  good
reason. Not just  to  point out the sphere--if she knew it was there,  she'd
have used it herself like a good soldier.
     The  only logical conclusion was that the arrow pointed the way  out of
the  nuclear  plant--the way Arlene San-  ders had  already gone. Like  Arne
Saknussen, she marked her own trail for all who followed.
     So why hadn't I found it? Same way Arlene  missed the patio door: there
had to be another hidden door nearby that I had missed.
     Third  time's  the charm. The damned  door couldn't have been more than
five feet from  the one I had found. One good push and it  was open, leading
to a  beautiful  piece of straight,  well-lit  corridor that reached its end
with a clean, massive metal  door that had printed on it the welcome letters
EXIT--obviously  a holdover  from the plant's mundane days as a  hangout for
humans.  Feeling  bold and  unstoppable, I walked right  up to that door and
discovered that it required a computer key  card before  it would  bless the
lonely traveler with an open sesame.
     Great. Now I could be miserable again.





     10




     Something I'd learned at age fourteen: when your mind is working, don't
give it  a reason to stop. I'd reasoned it out this far, fitting pieces into
place. Why should I be stopped by one minor impediment?
     When you welcome thoughts,  they come. There had  been something  wrong
about the sound of the crunching from the  monster that was eating. At first
I was certain it was chowing  down on the remains  of  one of my com- rades;
but now I realized the sound was all wrong,  too high, too sharp. And when I
saw the color code on the EXIT door--bright red--I acted on my hunch.
     I didn't want to run into any more of those monsters, so I took it nice
and  easy getting back  to the one  having its Happy Meal;  with that  troop
trooping around some- where, silence  was definitely golden. My main concern
was that he might be gone. I needn't have worried.
     Now I know why God invented bayonets.
     The thing died gurgling without a scream, a roar, or  a gunshot to call
monsters  from  the vasty deep. I missed  my  chance  to find out  if  I had
another intellectual demon.
     Flipping  it on  its back,  I  saw something red in its mouth--a clear,
red, plastic computer key card on which it  had been chewing. Next to it was
a  pile of plastic  cards, mangled  beyond repair, small red  and blue globs
suggest- ing the remains of more key cards. Fortunately, the one I carefully
fished out of its mouth was still in one piece.
     The red  card  worked;  the exit door  slid  open,  revealing an access
ladder. I climbed down as quietly as I could . .. but I still hadn't found a
new shotgun.
     The toxin refinery; such a lovely name. The dump was another step down,
in more ways than one. At first  it seemed as though  I'd  entered a zone of
peace  and tranquility. Greeting me was a wide-open space lit by  a sun lamp
so bright that for a moment I thought I was back on Earth in the middle of a
pleasant  afternoon. The  abundance  of  weird-looking machinery  raised  my
suspi- cions,  however; I could easily imagine monsters and zombies  lurking
behind equipment of that size.
     As I began to explore the area, I was grateful for the first sight of a
barrel full of the toxic  sludge. I'd certainly  changed my mind about green
slime!  Now that I knew  the stuff was as explosive as nitro, finding it was
like coming across another weapon.
     I searched frantically for another mark by Arlene. I remembered another
afternoon  we  spent at  the rec-hall  flicks.  We watched one of those  mad
scientist  movies,  and the  laboratory  was stuffed with more switches  and
levers than humanly possible. The more I checked out the toxin refinery, the
more it seemed like that make- believe lab.
     Not all the  switches had  to be activated by hand, either. I made that
discovery when  I walked past  a green section of  wall, the color of a ripe
avocado. The immedi- ate whirring sound had me spinning around and ready for
action.  But  nothing was coming  to get me this time. The motion detector I
had just activated stimulated  my  memory. CNET  used  to show  us  training
videos, and I remembered that Union Aerospace used movable archi- tecture to
transport the liquid metals extracted from Phobos ore.
     I watched the  corridor  behind me slowly shift  out of sight;  it sure
beat the hell out of coming into a room and finding stone and metal that had
grown scales or pulsing veins. No  horror faces here! The  bad part was that
as the physical layout changed,  the  corridors would realign; the route  in
was no longer the route out.
     With so many hidden triggers, I never  knew when  I was going to  shift
everything all over again. Stepping on a land mine would be a lot worse; but
this situation was still unpredictable enough to be a major pain in the ass.
I tried avoiding  the sensor eyes,  but  they were  too well hidden.  Once a
motion detector activated, I couldn't undo it; I had to love it or lump it.
     When I tossed out the old religious baggage, I thought my superstitions
had  gone with it. Well, Phobos might not drag me back where the nuns wanted
me, but it did reintroduce me to every superstition I ever had as a kid.
     So the first thought that  leapt to mind when something cold brushed my
face was Ghosts! Peripheral vision warned me something was definitely there;
but when I turned to face it, all I saw was a blur.
     I was still debating  when something big and fast knocked me on my ass.
I still couldn't see it, but I figured any ghost that can knock  you down is
a ghost you can return the favor to.
     Jesus and Mary, did I miss that shotgun now! The wide blast  dispersion
was tailor-made for shooting something you can't  see. But if the  rifle was
all I had, the rifle  was what I'd use. I was a Marine,  damn it--and  every
Marine is a rifleman first.
     Scrambling  back from  where I'd been attacked, I readied  my  Sig-Cow,
aimed at nothing in particular, and waited for  the first blurring of vision
that meant either I was having a stroke or I'd found a new kind of monster.
     The  wall  in  front  of  me  went  a  little  watery,  like  something
insubstantial was in front  of it.  Without staring  and losing it, I  fired
four quick taps.
     I  expected  to draw blood;  I didn't  expect an  explosion.  The ghost
screamed and seemed to collapse; I wasn't sure. Then something hot and heavy
pounded me from  behind, and I finally tigged what had really happened: more
damned fireballers! The first shot had missed me and killed my "ghost."
     I  whirled  around, diving sideways; two spikys,  two  zombies, one big
barrel  of  sludge.  Ignoring  the  monsters,  I  concentrated  fire  on the
stationary barrel. It took a couple of rounds then exploded spectacularly.
     I wondered if my "intellectual" demon could spell KA-BOOM?
     I approached cautiously and examined the remains. At least the  aliens'
blood was red and the  internal  organs bore  a strong  resemblance to human
plumbing.  Just  beyond  the primary  gore site I noticed another  tangle of
human arms and legs.
     Catching my breath, I went closer. It  was a relief when I saw the bits
and pieces were from zombies; for a moment, I'd been worried.
     It was Christmas when I saw the riot gun clutched in one severed hand .
. . but  it was  Valentine's  day, hearts and flowers,  when  I  spotted the
missing rocket launcher!
     The  shotgun was  a  little fancier  than the last  riot  gun,  a  more
old-fashioned model.  It took  the same twelve-  gauge,  but it also  had  a
muzzle device so you could adjust the pattern spread for close work or far.
     I allowed  myself to feel  real gratitude  for the  zombies,  who  were
turning out to be my best pals. If not for them, I  wouldn't have  a  single
functional weapon. Even when the aliens deliberately destroyed radios, maps,
and  anything  else  decorative or useful, they had  to  keep their  zombies
armed. We  don't come  equipped with claws or armor plate.  At least, not we
guys.
     Looking around,  I was disappointed  there was  no  one  else to shoot.
Then, as if receiving  a good  grade  for  a job well done,  I  spotted  the
glimmer of another A.S. on a distant wall.
     I  ran to  look. It  was! Arlene had come through again. Once again the
arrow  showed me  where to go,  and I wasn't complaining. It seemed like she
had an uncanny knack for shadowing the demons until she found the way down.
     Clipping the  rocket  launcher to  my webbing gave me an odd feeling. I
had thought  to use  it to frag  myself; but  Arlene  and her  Magic Markers
changed that plan.
     The rocket launcher was  serious  firepower. This  one looked  in  good
shape,  but it didn't have the two  pre-  loaded  rockets that were standard
issue. I was going to have  to make my  one rocket round count. I  loaded up
then let it dangle.
     Armed  for  very big bear,  I followed Arlene's arrow through  a narrow
opening;  I could barely squeeze past.  The UAC  designers evidently did not
have  big  men wearing combat armor in  mind  when  they built  the  "Manual
Vertilift Bypass Route."
     The doorway led  to a spiral escalator down. It was not operating, so I
crept down as silently as possible ... not very.
     The escalator led down to the Command Control level, as I recalled from
the map I  had seen  above. C&C  was  the nerve  center; if there  were  any
working radios in the facility, that's where I expected to find them.
     Once there, I wondered if it had been  worth the trip. The architecture
of  this  place  was the most depressing yet, heavy, gray,  very much in the
style of military garrisons from World War II. I had to wonder why any human
would build thick, fortified walls deep inside Phobos--if a human had. Maybe
we inherited this, too.
     Making my way down the longest  corridors I had seen  yet, I was struck
by the grotesque  combination of black  moments from human  history with the
inhuman quali- ties  of the invader. A  heavy  whiff of diesel fumes had  me
coughing  so  badly I had to  stop  and catch my breath. Diesel  fumes? That
couldn't be right. But that's what I had smelled.
     My  footsteps  echoed so loudly, they sounded like mortars. I  was glad
when I reached the first open  space, if only because the echoes wouldn't be
deafening. The kind  of  stone  forming the  floor changed,  and  the higher
ceiling gave the sound somewhere to go.
     I was  at the edge of a huge  room, shrouded in darkness  except  for a
couple of  shafts of  bright light shining through glass  skylights. I don't
know whether there  were  spots  behind the  glass or  whether  I was seeing
actual daylight; but the squares of brilliance lit up two spots as bright as
freeway construction sites.
     One  of  the two  bright-lit squares contained  a  table; on top of the
table  was  an AB-10 machine pistol.  God, did I  want that pistol! I  could
almost taste it. I stared from the doorway, trying to estimate the odds that
the pistol  was  bait  for  a  trap;  I kept  getting  an unacceptably  high
probability.
     Turning in the opposite direction, I crept along the wall, rolling each
step, just as they'd taught us in SERE School and SurvInfil. Every few steps
I stopped abruptly, listening for someone shadowing my footsteps.
     I tracked the  wall  to the left,  followed  it  for a right  turn, and
finally approached a hulking machine of  some  sort that  almost touched the
wall, leaving a slight gap.  I slid through the gap as silently  as I  could
and poked my head out.
     What I saw made me  smile grimly. Behind a pile of boxes, ten feet past
the  machine  pistol, were  no fewer than a dozen of those  brown spinys who
would never make  Smokey  the Bear's Christmas list. They were hiding behind
the boxes, staring  greedily  at the  well-lit  gun and  waiting for someone
stupid enough to march up and try to grab it.
     Allow me to introduce myself, . .
     I let  my new  shotgun  dangle, shouldering  the  mini- rocket-launcher
instead. I  only had  one round, and I had never fired one  of  those things
before; my first shot would have to be a damned good one.
     I closed  my  eyes and  visualized the  UAC sales  video:  raise  range
finder; grab plastic propellant tag and pull-- which mixes the volatiles and
incidentally engages  the  primer  firing  pin;  thumb-off  safety; aim  and
squeeze trigger. Pulling the trigger halfway produced a tiny, red laser dot;
I lovingly moved it across to sit directly on the rump of the biggest demon.
     One of the other demons noticed the spot and reached out to touch it. I
squeezed the trigger the rest of the way.
     The  rocket  exploded  with  a  bang  so  loud, I  thought  I would  be
permanently deaf.  While my ears still rang, I dropped  the  rocket-launcher
and retrieved my scattergun.
     I  humped toward  the remains  of the  ambush  crew; there  were a  few
survivors, crawling along the ground  looking for their legs and arms. I put
them out of my misery.
     I counted thirteen heads and fourteen left arms, so I must have slipped
a digit somewhere. Shotgun in hand, I slowly approached the AB-10, alert for
a second line of attack.
     I was still seven meters away when I  heard the sound, and it was a bad
one; the worst  one yet ... a low, piglike growl, a snuffling sound  turning
into a wet, animalistic grunt. I froze, the image of a giant boar filling my
mind. Slowly, I backed  away from the AB-10. I did not want to meet whatever
made that noise.
     11




     Damn!  I thought, furious that even after ex- pending my only rocket, I
couldn't  get the machine pistol; I was right back where  I  started, except
one rocket lighter. I had squandered my gift!  I felt like the guy who found
a lamp that would grant one wish, and he says, "Jeez, I wish I  knew what to
wish for."
     I  moved on, warier than before.  The simplicity of the layout  and the
big  blocks of stone made secret  doors less  likely here, although I  would
pause  occasionally and try pushing against  anything that  looked  remotely
promis- ing. The fact that the alien monsters had set  a trap worried me; as
I went deeper into the base, it seemed like they were getting smarter.
     I  was becoming  concerned that I hadn't found  any  more messages from
Arlene. Was I still following her trail, or did I take a wrong turn?
     Through a doorway arch, I found  another  room with a light blue motif.
The UAC logo was repeated regularly, over and over, in the floor; evidently,
I was back in original, human architecture.
     The room contained a number of  kiosks,  four  that I could  see.  As I
neared  the  center kiosk  I must  have  triggered  another  of those motion
detector switches.  All the  doors began to rise as one.  A filth  of aliens
tumbled  out, and this time  I  had no  rocket and no convenient barrels  of
toxin.
     I  fired a quick  shell,  dropping  one; then the rest  fell on me like
ravenous in-laws. I dropped the shotgun to the ground and  barely managed to
swing my semi-auto Sig-Cow up to take the shock as the first alien hit me.
     The damned thing impaled itself on my bayonet--but it was too stupid to
die! It  clawed forward, stopped only by the bayonet  hilt,  and  grabbed my
padded shoulders with death-grip talons, dragging me back against the wall.
     Saved  my  hide,  it did. The alien's broad  back  shielded  me as  its
brethren  flung  their fiery,  mucus wads;  the  fireballs  burst,  spraying
flaming,  red liquid that dribbled down my dance partner's legs  to  pool on
the ground, lighting the room with a hellish, red glaze. I fired nine or ten
times, finally blowing a hole clean  through  the alien ... a  gory loophole
through which I turned on the rest.
     I guess  they refused to believe that  the firewads weren't frying  me;
they stubbornly kept throwing  them, ignoring the  burning  pool around  the
feet of the first,  dead monster.  I got lucky; two  of the aliens  jostled,
then turned on each  other, fang and claw. The  weakened survivor  fell to a
single shot from my Sig-Cow . . . abruptly, I realized I was alone with  two
hundred kilos of alien brochette on my bayonet. What a life!
     Evidently, I had  not  met all my  playmates yet. I decided  I liked it
that way.
     The room  had  a  central  kiosk, which I  entered.  There  was a  blue
security  card in there.  I grabbed it on the chance I'd find a use  for it.
Then it was back to the search for signs of Arlene.
     Edging  up a shallow set of steps, I finally found  Arlene's next  A.S.
and arrow.  Grinning, I  followed  her  trail through  a room  stuffed  with
computers. Most  of these centers had the same basic  floor plan; but I  was
absolutely,  one hundred  percent  unprepared  to  encoun-  ter  a  freaking
swastika! Some sick joker had arranged eight Cray 9000s to form the "crooked
cross" that a certain  Austrian corporal had appropriated in the mid- dle of
last century. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I doubt it.
     This was  all  getting a little  too  weird  for me.  The  River  Styx,
zombies,  demons, flaming skulls . . . what kind of intelligence was  behind
this? Whatever it meant, I de- cided not to think about it.
     I  could  easily have gone through the computer room  without noticing,
but  an  undamaged  map to  the  section  made it impossible  to ignore  the
swastika floor plan. My adventure with the kiosk had been dead center in the
largest circle. Above it and  slightly  to the left was  the swastika of the
computer room. Walking through, one might figure  it  out. At certain angles
one couldn't help but recognize that the bloodred design of the floor had  a
certain association. The map was like a slap in the face.
     It barely bothered me  when I triggered another of those  damned motion
detectors. They were  becoming  routine by  now. Of course, there was always
some element of surprise. In this case, the  swastika-crays lowered into the
floor,  real slow  with a  grinding sound like the bones  of a  million dead
being  rendered  to powder, and  I  expected  to see soul-shattering horror.
Instead, I won another jackpot.
     I'd just  found two boxes  of  rockets,  five  to  a box. And I found a
yellow security card with a  note that if  I were trying  to  find the  card
where it was supposed to be, north of the  "maze" at the northwest corner of
the  installation  (maze? talk  about feeling  like a trapped  rat), well, I
wouldn't find it there because it was here instead. Safe and  sound with the
rockets. The note was signed A.S.!
     Man, I was going to have a lot of questions  for that girl when I found
her. It was hard enough staying alive without going to a lot of  trouble for
a  hypothetical fellow  soldier,  who  on a wild  off-chance  might still be
breathing  and putting  one foot  in front  of  the other. She had performed
incredible feats here. As Arlene found sup- plies along  the way--everything
from weapons and ammo to these ugly key cards--she took  only what she could
carry and stowed the rest where a thinking man might find it.
     Anyway,  the  least I could do  under the  circumstances was  load  the
battery-sized  rockets  into  my pack (aside from the two I loaded  into the
launcher), pocket the yellow card next to the blue one, and blow this horror
show.
     I ran into one minor obstacle along the way. I should say I avoided it;
I  was just about  to barge through a flimsy, narrow  door, en  route to the
exit from Command Control, following Arlene's latest arrow, when I heard the
horrible pig  sound to which I'd taken an instant hatred. This  time it  was
accompanied by heavy footfalls suggesting tons of flesh waddling ponderously
in the  artificial gravity of  the base.  These  pig  noises  were sloppier,
wetter, deeper than before.
     Part  of me  wanted to kick in that door and face the creature; part of
me had had enough. I had rockets; from the sound, this pig thing was made of
flesh and blood-- plenty of both to spare.
     The  rational part of me said I'd probably  find out sooner rather than
later whether  I could  kill  this  new monster  or not. Why race it to  the
grave?
     While  I  was  having   this  debate   with   myself,  the   pig  thing
thumped-thumped  on past the door. I  waited a  few more breathless minutes,
then opened the door a crack and listened. Nothing.
     But the instant my book crossed the threshold, I heard a warning  grunt
from my right, down the black-dark hallway, followed by a heavy, meaty tread
accelerating toward me like a main battle tank.
     I  could barely  make out a bulky shape  shambling out of the night  to
starboard;  but directly  in front of my  nose was a heavy, armored door,  a
pressure  hatch, rimmed  with blue lights.  I  bolted  across the  corridor,
jamming my hand in my pocket and fishing out both key cards.
     The first one I tried turned out to be yellow. The door buzzed angrily,
and I began to smell the rotten stench of corruption that comes from animals
that chow-down on decayed carrion.
     Swallowing panic, I yanked out the yellow and in- serted the  blue. The
door  chimed and  ponderously  rolled  up;  I  darted  through,  unslung  my
scattergun, and waited, shaking, for the Thing Without a Name.
     The heavy security  door rolled shut,  mocking me  with  its  lethargy.
Fortune loved  me  this  time; slow  as the door was, the nightmare was just
that much  slower. The door  shut, and  the frustrated pig-thing beat on the
heavy metal and howled its rage and hunger.
     And still I hadn't seen even one of the things in the light.
     Knees weak, I followed a  trail of three marks and three arrows to  the
next door--which wanted the yellow card, surprisingly enough. This door  led
to a  lift  that  wasn't working, naturally;  but the  open  shaft had guide
cables along the sides, and that was good enough for the human  Fly. I  slid
down almost fifty meters before finding another open lift door.
     I swung  through  the  hatch  and saw the  level-schematic on the wall;
Welcome to Phobos Laboratories.
     Five minutes in the Phobos lab convinced me that Command Control hadn't
been all that  bad. It didn't escape me that  every  time  I went  to  a new
center, it  was a  level farther  down than  the previous one. Living condi-
tions were not  improving, not  by a long shot. However, none of that really
mattered. If Arlene had come this way, then so would I. I had to find her; I
had to find any other human survivors.
     All of this  made a lot of sense to me intellectually.  Emotionally,  I
was willing  to jettison honor, duty, and loyalty and run like a  thief as I
contemplated my first real swim in the toxic goo. Semper fi, Mac.
     I'd talked myself into wading through the  toxin  way up above, and the
protective  boots that  were  part of  the armor  sizzled like bacon on  the
griddle. But the material  was plenty thick, and the corrosive liquid hadn't
reached my tender flesh yet. And like last time, there was no way around the
horrible stuff.
     Got to be some way to avoid full body immersion, I thought. But without
a  heavy-duty flashlight that I didn't have and wouldn't dare show if I did,
damned if I could find it.
     Arlene's  arrow  pointed across the  pool. Grudgingly, I  had to  admit
there was no way to proceed without a little swim.
     I was damned glad for the edge that blue face-sphere had given  me when
it exploded all over me, making  me feel healthier than I have in years.  If
ever I needed that edge, it was now.
     I took a deep breath. Then I took a few more. Man, I did not want to do
this! But it was the only way to get past a wall  that blocked me from going
any farther  along the trail  Arlene blazed;  I had  to go under  the damned
thing.  Thinking of  how  much  I  hated monsters  from beyond  the stars, I
splashed down.
     Only one  advantage  over before:  this time,  I  was prepared  for the
freezing pain, so it wasn't quite as unexpectedly horrible. Just a throbbing
ache that sapped my strength, leaving me enervated and  gasping  for breath.
One way  or  the  other, the swim  wasn't going to last very long. The toxin
glowed with an eerie, green phosphorescence, and  the light helped a little.
It showed me a metallic object that I would have missed otherwise.
     I snagged it in passing, a small, hand-sized television thing,  showing
a ghostly schematic.
     If  I struggled,  I  could  pretend  the  liquid  was  nothing  but  an
algae-infested  swimming hole I'd haunted as a kid.  Yes, I  wanted to think
about water instead of the thick, toxic crap I was in right now.
     The wall  did  not  extend all  the way  to the  bottom of the  pool. I
pinched my nose, squeezed my eyelids  tight,  and ducked  underneath.  I was
starting to tremble in the icy liquid; I felt sick, like a monster flu.
     Then I  surfaced as fast  as the  law of buoyancy  allows, grabbing the
opposite  catwalk, and the swim was over. Air never tasted  better, even the
stinking  stuff in  this  place.  Two  or  three  breaths later,  I put  the
breathing filter back in place. Too bad I hadn't had a full environment suit
with  its own oxygen supply, but I'd already  regretted that  absence before
and nothing came of it. A Marine couldn't have everything.
     For example, I couldn't keep the blue  glow forever. I had taken it for
granted  until I realized what this swim  could  mean. Now I felt sapped and
drained.  I was all  set  to curse  my lousy luck until I realized something
very  important: without that earlier boost to my system, this  dunk  in the
sludge would have killed me.
     So what about Arlene? Could she have come this way? Could I have passed
her body  in the green murk? Had  to  think this through--there was no arrow
immediately beyond the toxin; maybe she found a better route. She might have
a decent flashlight or light-amp goggles so she could see. Or she might have
had a full environment suit.
     Or what  the  hell, maybe she  had a touch  of  the blue medicine show.
There were all kinds of ways she could have survived.
     But maybe she didn't. I refused to think about it.
     It was time to move on.





     12




     I was back to trusting the old Fly instincts again.  There  were plenty
of more unreliable  things, such as any decision by Lieutenant Weems. Hadn't
thought of Weems  for a while. My  lip curled;  Weems was probably the first
zombie; reworking him would take the least amount of effort.
     I  felt something in my hand. I stared--the thing I'd fished out of the
sludge! I held it up close, staring in  confusion. Then it clicked--it was a
map, a video  schematic of  the  labs.  Jesus and Mary ... I guess even  the
greenest cloud can have a silver-screen lining.
     I decided  to follow  the same road map I'd been  on for several levels
now: down, down, down ... no reason to stop. I might as well see what was at
the very bottom level--which, according to the map  I'd  seen in the nuclear
plant, was the main computer station, two floors down. But in the absence of
Arlene marks, I'd have to plan the route myself. . . just as soon as I could
make tops and bottoms out of my new toy.
     I suddenly felt a wave of weakness and fever; I hoped I  hadn't already
given myself a death sentence from the toxin.
     Phobos Lab  was dark. Phobos Lab stank like an open sewer. But if there
was anything left of the original  installation here,  then medical supplies
had to be near at hand, if they hadn't been left in the typical condition of
guns and  radio sets. I picked  that  as  my  first  priority; I  needed  an
all-purpose antitoxin and a stimulant.
     Leaning against  a wall for support, I found a weapons  locker the hard
way: I leaned against it and the door collapsed inward.
     Guns! I  pawed through my treasure trove, scooping up as much ammo as I
could shovel into  my  pack. Then I stared in reverence; beneath the  shells
and bullets rested a state-of-the-art, AB-10 machine  pistol.  The  question
was, did it still work after scores of zombies and spinys had monkeyed  with
it?
     I checked it out, cleaned the barrel, then reloaded it. I almost pulled
the trigger to do the only test that really counts, but stuck to my original
policy of not making any more noise than was absolutely required.
     I cleaned the machine pistol as thoroughly as  I could before adding it
to my arsenal. There  was  little  doubt of this lethal  package receiving a
test real soon, with  a real target, and hopefully with a margin of error to
try something else if it failed. The best choice might be to have the pistol
in one hand and the shotgun in the other. Nothing wrong with insurance, even
if it made me feel a bit like a Wild West gunfighter.
     As I stood, shifting the backpack to be more comfort- able  and finding
a place for all the weapons,  a sudden  attack of  dizziness hit me  like  a
grenade. Medical atten- tion had just become my number-one priority again.
     I  studied my hand map, working the buttons  to make the pretty picture
slide up and down. First  task was to find  me--no helpful "You Are Here" on
this puppy. At last I found the  wall crossing a trench ... no sign of toxic
sludge on the map, of course.
     I  must have been living  right, because  the nearest infirmary--marked
with a red cross--was located just  a quarter klick away, spitting distance.
I  found it, and there wasn't  a single monster doctor  or devil nurse. Here
I'd  been  expecting  a typical medical  establishment  and  was  pleasantly
surprised.
     And there were  lights, the first fully operational light  I'd found in
the complex. If the lights had survived, maybe the doctoring stuff was still
here and intact.
     I  resisted the impulse to cross my fingers  as I  unlatched and opened
the  first  promising cabinet. Mother lode  . .  . thanks,  Mom. I removed a
Medikit  with the  seal still unbroken  and popped  her  open.  Inside  were
bandages, antitoxin compounds, even  ointment for burns. (My face still felt
as  hot as if I had a sunburn, for which I could thank a fireball instead of
a weekend at the beach.)
     I  found a  clean room,  a metal  table next to a mirror, all  kinds of
light,  even a shower cubicle. It was  time for Dr. Taggart to  make a house
call.
     I  didn't do too  badly, really. First off, I  locked the doors, turned
out all the lights except the one in the room with the table and the shower,
placed  the shotgun right up against the stall, where I could  grab it in  a
second, and, facing the  closed office door the entire time and leaving  the
shower door ajar, I took the risk of bathing.
     Sick as I'd been feeling since immersing myself  in the ooze, the  mere
act of washing it all  away  made me feel  considerably better. I turned the
nozzle for Hot up as high as I could stand it and felt the cuts and  bruises
sting,  then  feel  better. My  burned face didn't  get anything  out of the
shower but pain, but the rest of my body was doing too well for me to care.
     If the shower was heaven, then  the  fresh  towel  was a piece of Eden.
Here I  had struck a mortal  blow against the shores  of hell. The  rest was
pretty  simple. I put antibiotic and bandages on the worst of  my wounds and
cuts,  taped my  bruised ribs  (didn't even remember where I  got them), and
took my time smearing the cold, soothing ointment on the burns.
     The  only  moment when Doc Taggart almost failed  his patient was  when
he--when I--noticed thirty or forty hypodermics, all neatly labeled  GENERAL
STIMULANT. I don't like needles. Never have.
     But  there was  good  reason to pick up  one of those needles and  give
myself a shot. Just as good  a reason to pack some in  shock-proof  carriers
and take them along. I  could run into Arlene, and she might need a  lift. I
might run into some other  survivor. And if I were going to do all that, the
only reasonable thing was for me to give myself an injection first.
     You don't need to  do that, said the little voice in my head. Just find
another blue-faced sphere.
     I argued  with  the voice: "It  might be a once in a lifetime  fluke. I
can't  count on  that  happening  again." That's  when I noticed  that I was
talking to myself. Sheeesh,  all this  just to  avoid sticking myself with a
needle!
     No  more. I bravely wielded the needle, got out the alcohol  and cotton
swab. This couldn't  be any worse than what I'd  been  going through lately.
Well, not by much anyway.
     I  wolfed some  food from  the small  refrigerator,  then  hunted for a
flashlight. Alas,  all I  found  was one of those  pencil-beam lights; if  I
wanted  to  find out  if a zombie had a sore throat, or any throat at all, I
was set.
     According to my map, I had to go north to find some sort of route down.
At  least  my  compass was  still  functioning.  I hated to leave,  but  the
infirmary  had  done  its  job. I was  tired,  not  exhausted,  hungry,  not
starving, and not  shaking  like  I had amebic dysentery. The  only problem,
aside from demons, two-legged pigs, and mur- derous corpses, was that  I had
lost  Arlene's  trail;  if  she  were hurt,  laying  up  somewhere, I  might
accidentally leave her behind on an  upper level. The point was that I could
concentrate again.
     The last thing  I did before stepping out again into the dark was check
the  boots.  They'd  held up better  than I  thought,  but  I  stuffed  some
pillowcases in for added insulation.
     Outside, it was just  as dark as before, but I wasn't as bothered  this
time;  the  human race may  not have blue spheres,  but we do  all  right. I
stayed  in  that  frame  of  mind  as I  went north.  I  scuttled  along the
corridors, letting my shotgun  peek  around corners first, until I reached a
huge chamber. It was dark, but not  the pitch-black I had just come from. At
least I could tell I had entered a larger area.
     The next  moment I was under  attack. Claws  raked  across the shoulder
plates  of the battle armor I  had just reinforced. When I tried to fend off
the  enemy, I half expected to  feel the  crocodile-type hide of the  spiked
monsters; but instead, my hands sank into a pulpy mass. And the contact made
my flesh crawl even through my thick gloves.
     The  light was on, and I  should  have been able to see the scum, but I
was getting nothing. Then as I pushed against the jellylike stuff and took a
few faltering  steps back, I saw a familiar shimmering. The  same thing  I'd
seen when  I  thought I was  fighting a  ghost.  That  time, the  issue  was
resolved by a miracle fireball; this time, I was on my own.
     Didn't this goddamned, jelly-shimmering, half-assed, invisible son of a
bitch know the rules? Ghosts can't hurt  people--they can only scare them to
death! Then the Caspar pounded me,  knocking  me back on my butt and kicking
the wind out  of me.  I thanked Mary for the armor as I shoved the barrel of
the shotgun right into the shimmering effect and  pulled the trigger, hoping
that  if this thing had a mouth, that was  exactly where he was going to get
it.
     I don't know if I killed it. I  don't know if it can be killed. But  it
didn't bother me anymore after that. Not  liking the idea of  being followed
by more invisible spooks, I jogged for a  while, hoping to be done with this
part as soon as possible. I also kept both eyes open for a pair of light-amp
goggles, but I'd used up my good luck quotient at the infirmary.
     To exit the labs, I had to enter the darkest room yet, black as coal. I
wasn't surprised.  This was at the  north  end of  the  installation, where,
after groping in the dark by touch and even daring to  use my tiny penlight,
I finally found a small opening. This led down a narrow corridor to a tight,
metal, spiral staircase going down--way  down. I started to get very  dizzy,
spinning around so many times.
     Central  Processing had more tight, narrow corridors than anywhere else
on Phobos. Good  thing I'm not claustrophobic. The light was better than the
labs;  but  that's  like saying  L.A.  cab drivers  are more polite than cab
drivers in Mexico City.
     And  at  long,  long  last,  I  found another  A.S.!  I  stared  at it,
overwhelmed by  inappropriate  emotion.  She  was alive! She  got this  far!
Relief was a physical thing, perched on my back.
     The arrow pointed to a  branching  corridor that seemed small enough to
give a midget a backache; but crawling down it was a good move. At the other
end was a completely intact map of this section. The bad guys must have been
getting careless lately. If this kept up, I might find a functioning radio.
     Central Processing  was  laid out in  a rough triangular shape. Made me
think  of a  robot riding  a  motorcycle. Maybe I  was  more wasted  than  I
realized.
     The  southeast  corner  was made up  of four  intercon- nected rooms. A
warning note was attached that three motion detector triggers will close any
door  in the facility for a span of thirty seconds as a security precaution.
I could just see myself getting caught in  a room with wall-to-wall  enemies
while I counted off: "Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight . . . notify next of
kin."
     Unfortunately, I couldn't take the map with me, unless I ripped  it out
of the wall  and  dragged it along,  and my hand map  still showed the  labs
above; if there were a way of changing the view, I couldn't find it.
     It occurred to me that  we  humans needed  to learn everything possible
about these bastards; otherwise, Earth was a sitting duck. We couldn't shoot
it out with these things and expect to  survive. We had to outsmart them--or
die.
     I was surprised that  I had survived  this long.  I  was  a pretty good
Marine. There was no false modesty about that. But Arlene was remarkable; if
I could  survive, surely  she could! Hoped  she  would  keep it up.  Hoped I
would, too; but this nonsense couldn't go on forever.
     As  I  looked at the map, I  knew, I just knew, that  the thirty-second
security rule about doors meant there was a welcoming committee  waiting for
me. Well, you knew the job was dangerous  when you took it, Fly. They'll get
you in the end.
     But who were "they?"
     They weren't the pitiful wrecks that  looked  human though dead inside.
They weren't  the spinys or metal  skulls or ghosts, either. The one  making
snuffling pig sounds gave me the creeps; but somehow I knew the creature was
mentally no more than an animal. If I hadn't encountered the one monster who
enjoyed talk- ing, I'd be tempted to conclude  we were  being  invaded by an
alien barnyard.
     But  the  intelligence was there; just  well-hidden. Even  without  the
talking demon, the alien technology itself was proof of a "mastermind."
     So why didn't the intelligence simply organize the monsters and zombies
into a naval search pattern and be done with it? Why were Arlene and I being
allowed to play Gypsy,  entering one  level after  another, shooting it  out
with  pretty much  the  same cast  of  characters,  en- countering  the same
hazards . . . and beating them over and over and over again?
     Maybe it was all  a pre-invasion test, or worse still, a sadistic game.
But test or  game, it had to be teaching the Enemy Mind something important.
The  important ques- tion for the survival of the human race  was:  What the
hell was I learning?
     I hated to admit it, but so far the answer was not much.
     13




     One  thing  I  was learning, though:  speed. While I debated the  finer
points  of philosophy with myself, a mob of zombies and spinys burst through
the  door at the back end of the corridor, the one I'd come through  myself,
as if they owned the damned place;  they noticed me and tore down the narrow
corridor.  I  did  not  take  longer  than  a  microsecond  to  resolve  the
question--I ran like a bat out of hell, a bat trying  to get the hell out of
hell.  Although finding the  commanding  officer  of  the  invasion  was  an
important issue, I decided it could wait until later for review. Much later.
     With this many  of the  enemy breathing down my neck,  the shotgun  was
useless. Maybe  my new machine pistol  would  have  worked . . .  but what I
already had in my hands was the rocket launcher.
     For an instant I considered the narrow corridor  that might channel the
blast  right back in my face, the proximity of  the nearest spiny ... for an
instant. Then I dug my heel in and spun, ready to rock 'n' roll.
     The explosion  was  so loud that I didn't hear it.  I felt it. A giant,
invisible hand threw me  to  the ground.  My eyes  were open,  and I saw the
whole contingent that was on my tail vanish in a spray of blood and fire.
     The sight was  something  to think about; especially  since  it was the
last sight I saw.
     I must have lost consciousness. An indeterminate time later, I began to
hear a  sound,  too  loud and annoying to sleep through. Like all the church
bells the penguins ever rung at me, all the bells in the world in my head. I
still couldn't see anything, just a bright afterimage.
     It  was  about  fifteen  minutes  before the bells  were replaced by  a
buzzing sound, then the slosh-slosh of  blood in my ears. I would have  been
easy  pickin's, as Gunny Goforth would say.  Maybe I was saved by looking as
dead as the rest of them.
     When I  was able, I crawled along  the  corridor,  drag- ging  my feet.
There was  no time to examine  my  posses-  sions. One thing for certain: if
those  glass  syringes  were still  in one  piece  inside  their  supposedly
shock-proof container, I'd be giving more product endorsements.
     Shaking my head  clear and staggering to my feet, I  finally made it to
the  one  long,  spacious  corridor   in   the  otherwise   cramped,  tight,
ore-processing center. This one was well marked  on the map I'd studied--the
only route to what  the map indicated were the stairs down. Judging from the
red  and gold and brown streaks on the rough  walls,  this corridor had been
carved right out of the rock of Phobos. I liked it and hoped it  wouldn't be
reworked into something sickening.
     Halfway down the corridor, I suddenly felt light- headed and my stomach
broke loose from its  moorings.  At  first I thought I was experiencing more
symptoms from the rocket blast. Then I realized what was happen- ing. No one
goes to space without experiencing zero-g, and you never forget it. This was
damned close  enough! I should have studied the map more closely when  I had
the chance . .  . the middle section  of this corridor must pass outside the
ancient, alien gravity-zone.
     A handrail  was  installed for  the  obvious reason.  Grab- bing it,  I
pulled myself  along; a  single tug  was  enough  to  overcome  friction  in
Phobos's minuscule  natural gravity.  I'd spent enough time on the  ship  to
Mars that this was  simple enough, unless I had  the bad luck to be attacked
right now; I'd never taken zero-g combat training.
     Pulling myself around a corner, I floated practically into the arms  of
a triplet  of spinys.  Luck has never been my long suit.  But these leathery
bastards were  walking on  the walls and ceiling, as if they  enjoyed  their
own,  personal gravity  that  followed them  around, each  ori-  ented  in a
different direction.
     One more piece of evidence that they  were unbeatable. Then one of them
looked right at me and spoke: "Gosh --are we having a ball, or what?"
     It hocked a  loogie into  its hand, where the  mucus immediately  burst
into flame.
     My hog leg  was tucked in the webbing at my back, and there was no room
to draw it in this corridor, no time to work it  free. The demon raised  the
flaming ball of snot, grinning like a goblin.
     I  threw my head back,  rotating my body in the microgravity. I  didn't
bother drawing  the  shotgun;  when  I  rotated  my body so  the barrel  was
pointing at that cracked and grinning face, I fired.
     A  lucky shot. Blew its head clean off.  Guess my luck's not so abysmal
after all.
     The  blast acted like a rocket, propelling me backward. When I  stopped
spinning, I grabbed the rail, drew the shotgun  free, and pulled myself back
where I'd left off.
     The two  remaining  monsters  had forgotten  all  about  me; they  were
fighting  each other, claws dug into throats,  bloody drool  trickling  down
wrinkled chins and bursting into flame.
     Was  it possible, just one "brain"  to a set?  Kill the mastermind, and
the rest turn on each other?
     Evidently,  the Mind  behind the  invasion  had  the power  to manifest
itself through only one or two individ- uals in a group.
     I tucked that one away in the hindbrain; I would use it later.
     I  waited  politely until  one brain-dead spiny offed the other; then I
rewarded the victor with the spoils: a twelve-gauge  blast to the face, this
time with my back braced against the wall.
     I  hauled ass along  the corridor to the gravity zone. At the far north
end  of  the facility,  I found a  switch that opened a door  leading to the
stairway where I could process myself right out of Central Processing.
     Down one  flight on  the  spiral,  metal-grate stairway,  the  Computer
Station welcomed  me with a thin layer of green sludge. At this point I just
didn't care. I was willing to jump into the ooze and slog through it as long
as my boots  held out. I wanted out of here! I  ran without stopping until I
discovered that whatever crap-for-brains  idiot designed this playground set
it up so you go around in circles before noticing  you  were going around in
circles.
     The  Computer Station was a haze of forgetfulness. It started out badly
when I couldn't find an Arlene mark. I hunted along every passageway without
luck; either  she followed a totally  different route  and our paths did not
cross,  or more likely, she had a  reception  committee waiting for her when
she  climbed down  the ladder, and she was in a running firefight until  she
found a bolt-hole.
     The damnedest part was, this was the lowest level, so far as I knew. If
they finally ran her to ground, I should have found her  ... or her remains.
There was nowhere else for Arlene to go.
     There were few monsters on this floor; I shot a couple of spinys in the
back--hey, I'm not proud--but mostly avoided the patrols.
     En route,  I  picked  up two blue key cards and three yellows, plucking
one off the "dead" body of a zombie. Something or someone had gnawed off its
legs and one arm; it was still  animate as  I approached,  and tried to bite
me; but I was faster  (and more ruthless). I blew its brains out, putting it
out of misery, and took the key card tucked into its belt.
     I  found  two  maps,  both  burned  beyond recognition.  But  by  sheer
persistence, I finally found  it: one of those big, metallic doors that like
to stand  between me and where  I  want to  go. One of those key-card teases
that demand you stick it in.
     But this bitch had a special  feature--an irritating,  unisex, nasally,
parking-lot  ticket-machine  voice,  the kind  that  says  "Please take  the
ticket," as  if  you're a bumpkin from Mad Dog, Arkansas, who's never seen a
car park before. No  monster could ever create such a surreal torture device
of art. It took a human touch.
     "Hello,"  it said,  "to exit the Computer Station, please  insert  your
gold security card now."
     All right; I supposed yellow was as good  as gold. I inserted the card,
and the cheap trick chirped "Thank you. To exit the  Control Station, please
insert your blue security card now."
     I began to hear screams behind me, up the corridor; the damned door had
probably notified "security" while it deliberately delayed me. I fumbled the
blue key card into the slot--but I knew exactly what was coming.
     "Thank  you.  To  exit the Computer Station,  please  insert  your  red
security card now."
     If  there  were  a  red  key  card  anywhere on  this  level,  I was  a
purple-assed baboon.
     And I didn't become a Marine  to put up with this crap. Even the spinys
were less frustrating than this!
     But I  had  a solution. Last  time I'd fired  a  rocket,  I'd  made the
mistake of standing  too damned  close.  So I made sure I got far away  from
that smug bitch  of a door, placing myself squarely behind a column and part
of a staircase.
     I fired both rockets from the launcher simultaneously. Just to be sure.
The  result was outstanding, excellent, a credit to the Corps. As loud as it
was, it didn't deafen me this time.  At this distance,  the head gear worked
like it was supposed to.
     I walked through the smoking ruins of that bloody door with a sense  of
satisfaction greater than when I'd winged that toxin barrel and taken  out a
roomful of zombies with one bullet. I'd struck a blow against the True Evil,
the chowderheaded humans who designed these installations!
     From now on I  refused to  worry about plastic cards and security keys.
Nothing could stop me. Then I found the lift that  should have  taken me out
of there--the lift at the very end of the facility, my reward for having all
the stupid cards.
     The entire shaft  was  filled with human and  animal remains, a hellish
grain elevator.  I don't know how long I stood there, staring stupidly. Then
nausea overwhelmed me and I vomited for  several minutes.  Weak and shaky, I
thought for  several  more minutes that I  had climbed the  farthest  down I
could go in the Phobos installation. A dead end. Nowhere to go but back  the
way I came. I  knew I couldn't make it, but I was long  past crawling into a
corner and playing  fetus. I'd go down  fighting if I went,  hoping  somehow
Arlene had escaped what was a death trap for me.
     Even though it was a long  shot, I thought  again of the possibility of
blowing up Phobos. Better that than let these bastards win! Then I noticed a
foul,  bloodred, evil-glowing circle in  the  floor; it had not been there a
moment ago. A ghastly stench arose from the orifice, like human flesh frying
on the griddle. I once missed getting firebombed by a Kerifistani terrorist;
I was on guard duty at the Marine Corps compound when the main barracks went
up. Thirty-three buddies burned to death. You never forget that smell.
     They transferred me to Fox Company within forty- eight hours.
     This hole pulsed like a heartbeat. There was a  "ladder" made of  light
pink, fleshy cords that appeared to sweat.
     I didn't  have to be a rocket scientist to know that no human ever made
this baby. Besides, this wasn't a job for a rocket scientist; this was a job
for someone rock stupid enough to  be a Marine. Resigned, I slung my shotgun
and rifle, bolstered  the  machine pistol, and  started  climbing  down  the
sticky, wet, springy ladder.
     At the  bottom  there was plenty  of light, at  least; a sickly reddish
light.  The flesh-pit ladder dropped  me into the  largest corridor I'd seen
yet. I would have said it was carved out of the rock of  this moon, the same
as  Phobos  Lab,  but the  inside of the walls seemed to perspire,  like the
ladder. Holding my breath and  looking close, I saw hundreds,  thousands, of
small  orifices opening and clos- ing to the  same  steady  beat  as the red
circle  above. I  decided  that  I'd  done  enough close  examination for  a
lifetime.
     Then,  by God, I saw it--another  A.S., biggest one  yet! Even  in  the
heart of hell, I  was cheered  to  know I  wasn't  alone.  I  didn't exactly
whistle a tune, but I smiled grimly.
     Arlene's  mark  was  accompanied  by a crude  drawing of  a  skull  and
crossbones with an arrow pointing straight ahead. A second arrow pointed out
a  narrow slit in  the  wall, a slit that was a  friendly  hole-in-rock, not
pulsating or anything disgusting; a slit into what looked to be the outside.
We were hundreds of meters  below the surface  of tiny Phobos, but there was
goddamn daylight coming through that opening.
     But  that was one mother  of a narrow crack. Could I  get through that?
Could Arlene, even? I touched the edge of the slit--tacky blood, a couple of
hours old, tops. Mary, Mother of  God... I had  a  vision. She had gone out,
right  there. She  shoved  herself so hard, tearing at that  crack, that she
flayed off  huge strips of  skin--but she didn't  care.  She wanted out; she
wanted out bad; she wanted out right then, not five seconds later.
     Leading me to the obvious  conclusion: Arlene  had  seen  something  up
ahead that even she was too terrified to face.
     14




     I  stared at the  skull and crossbones.  Whatever was up  ahead was bad
enough  for Arlene to claw her way  through a tiny crack  in the wall rather
than face it.  Yet she wasted precious seconds leaving the warning for Yours
Truly.
     Thank  God  I didn't  have  to  solve  the  mystery  of  the  skull and
crossbones.  Getting  through  that crack  would  be an  achievement all  by
itself.
     Ahead I began to hear a low, slow pounding, almost like someone beating
on a  monster drum a  mile distant.  Well,  I could take that--so long as it
stayed  there. I  struggled  out of my armor  and pressed  my right arm  and
shoulder into the crack.
     But  there I  stuck. I  braced my foot  against  the floor  and shoved;
several minutes and several pounds of flesh later, I was utterly convinced I
could never fit through that crack unless I dismembered myself and threw the
pieces through one at a time. Wonder  if I'll seriously consider that option
when I see what's ahead? I thought.
     So now what?  I sat  on the floor,  pounding my head  with  my hand  in
frustration. If I went forward, I was on my own. Arlene was no coward ... if
the Thing ahead scared the  bejesus  out of her, enough that she forced  her
way through a crack several sizes too small--then what in God's name was it?
     Numbly,  I stood, pulling on the armor again. As Mehitabel the cat said
to Archie the  cockroach, wotthehell, wotthehell  I already roamed the halls
of the damned;  what did  I have  to  lose? I  suppose  I could sit here and
starve to death.
     Shaking,  I  moved forward at  snail  speed, loaded rocket launcher  in
hand;  but  what if  I  found myself  eyeball-to- eyeball  with . .  .  with
whatever It was? A rocket  up the nose might piss it off--but at point-blank
range, it would also fry Corporal Fly!
     Ahead,  I   found  an   old-fashioned   wooden  elevator  next  to   an
old-fashioned rusted button. Somehow they  seemed to fit right in here. In a
place with living ladders, a few museum places were hardly out of line.
     I  pushed the  button. With a slow  grinding  sound,  the Sift began to
descend. So far so good. It reached ground level, and I clumped aboard. What
the hell else could I do? There was one button, and I pushed it.
     The  lift  creaked  and  groaned,  like  it was  a  hundred years  old,
announcing my arrival to anyone inside. I braced, wondering whether to shift
to the  shotgun. Then it stopped up one floor . . . and my  God, I  saw what
was inside!
     On a pair  of iron thrones  sat  the largest,  reddest,  most  horrible
demons I  could  imagine, compared to  which the other  guys  were  fit  for
hosting kiddie  shows on Saturday  mornings. Giant minotaurs with goat limbs
for  legs, and curling, savage  horns on the top of their flat, broad heads.
The  chests  and arms were carved  from pure  muscle. Their  claws  were  so
vicious that there was  no  comparison  to the  puny stuff I'd seen up until
now.
     Princes of hell. . .
     And they were looking directly at me. So far, so bad.
     I froze,  whimpering like a Cub Scout.  All I could think was, Oh Lord,
the sisters were right all along!
     The hell-prince on the left rose, trumpeting a marrow- freezing roar of
discovery.
     Come  on, come on, come on, Fly! Snap out of  it; get  the hell out  of
Dodge! I  hated  every minute of every day  of basic at Parris Island--and I
bow at Staff Sergeant Stern's feet and kiss his shiny boots for every second
of  it: my training kick-started my  paralyzed  legs even while my brain was
struggling to  remember  the  Lord's  Prayer ... all I could  get was "Hail,
Jesus," and I knew that was wrong.
     Faster than I thought myself capable, I bolted--but  forward, right  at
the things--and  skirted  between  the  forest  of  red  legs  and into  the
black-dark beyond! If they'd been  any smaller, they would have  had my head
for lunch.
     I ran across a long stretch of floor and heard  the familiar pig snorts
left and right. I ran through utter blackness until I hit a wall, banging my
shins. I hardly noticed. There I spun, snarling, fishing for my riot gun.
     If the porcine sons  of bitches wanted Fly  Taggart,  they could bloody
well take him . . . but not cheaply!
     They  were converging  on me; I could hear  their snufflings and hungry
growls.  What the hell; I was dead anyway,  right? I  raised the shotgun and
pounded a shell straight in front of me.
     One of the pig-demons screamed  in pain.  Oh ... you mean  they  can be
hurt? I'd been wondering.
     I scuttled right; the wall came to a point, folding back  on  itself. I
slipped around and immediately barked my already-bruised shin on a barrel of
that green, toxic mess.
     Staring into  the sickly glow,  I had  a  shimmer of an  idea. Quickly,
before I could think twice and decide against it, I heaved over the  barrel.
The goo spilled out of the 120-liter drum . . . and now  my whole corner was
lit by a hellish, green glow. I could see!
     I  was  in  a pointy corner amid a forest  of  toxin  barrels; but  the
monsters coming after me were still invisible. I was under attack  by ghosts
. . . and the ghosts and the pig-things were evidently one and the same.
     But Yours Truly, Flynn Taggart, never forgets a scam.
     I backed away from the flickering shadows, into the actual point. Maybe
I couldn't see them, but they sure as hell could see me; they charged.
     I shot. Not a ghost; I shot a barrel.
     The explosion chain-reactioned, and I dived for the  deck. Too late,  I
remembered  the  ten  or  eleven rockets  in  my  bandoleers.  Luckily,  the
explosion stopped just short of me.
     When  the acrid rain  of  toxic  waste stopped falling, I  jumped to my
feet. My entire body  resonated, and  my  inner ear was confused; I balanced
precariously  on my hind legs, shotgun wavering up, down, and sideways . . .
but my ghosts appeared to have died--again. At least, they didn't attack.
     Staring  wildly  around the  room, now lit  by  the green glow  of  ten
thousand  droplets of toxin sprayed far and  near, I realized to my surprise
that the room was actually a huge, star-shaped chamber. That seemed right in
line  with  everything   else.  If  they  could   have  swastikas,  why  not
star-chamber  proceedings? Alas,  my  restful reverie  was  short-lived; the
hideous hell-princes had seen my explosion and come to investigate.
     But this time, I knew what to expect. Nuns or no nuns,  I  told  myself
over and over  that these were alien life- forms, not  demons. They couldn't
be real demons, could they? Hell was a myth--wasn't it?
     I raised  my rocket launcher  and let the first  hell-prince have it at
forty meters. The blast blew the  motherless bastard backward, but it got to
its feet. I couldn't believe it!
     I fired a second time, pack-loaded  with  one smooth move, and  shot  a
third rocket. The giant got up again  and now  it was joined by its comrade.
This was not going according to plan.
     They pointed their clawed hands at me; but instead of  the  usual balls
of   flaming  snot,  these   "demons"  fired  green  energy  pulses  out  of
wrist-launchers. I  hugged  the dirt as  the stuff crackled over my head and
made every hair on my head stand on end. Not very demonic, but pretty damned
deadly!
     My  turn again; in desperation, I  pumped rocket num- ber  four at  the
first hell-prince, and at last  it  seemed to do some damage. It got to  its
feet slowly and seemed confused about where I was.  There  was  no reason to
even  try  bothering the  new one  if  I  couldn't find  out  what  repeated
hammering did to the first minotaur.  Yeah,  minotaurs. They weren't demons;
that Greek, Theseus, killed one.
     Reload, rocket five, and  finally that did the  trick:  number one went
down and  didn't  get up again. But with  behavior I was starting  to expect
from all  godless crea- tures, it reached up a clawed  hand  and grabbed the
other hell-prince.
     Number two struggled  to  free itself,  and  I  seized my  opportunity.
Screaming like  a banshee,  I  charged  to  just out of range of  its reach.
Enraged, it slashed furiously;  but my prayers were answered, and it was too
mad to think  of shooting energy bolts. I  leaned in  to shove  the launcher
right down the creature's enormous, howling mouth. And Fly let fly ...
     I won't even try to describe its breath.
     The minotaur swallowed  the little rocket, about the relative size of a
multivitamin, and was literally blown away. I was knocked silly by the blast
at such close proximity.
     I came to, surprised to be coming to. Losing conscious- ness in a place
like this seemed like a one-way ticket to oblivion.
     I was lying on  the floor of the same  enormous, star- shaped  chamber;
but the walls had fallen, crumbling into constituent bricks outside, leaving
the  way clear to  the outside. That whole concept of "outside" bothered me.
Why wasn't I a corpse-side, floating in space?
     There was air to breathe. There was an overcast sky  to watch, complete
with low-hanging clouds; dark clouds before a storm. Wherever I was, it sure
as hell wasn't Phobos.
     I  found a platform behind the building. There was a  switch. I pressed
it  and watched a stairway slowly rise. Wotthehell. Archie,  wotthehell... I
walked up the stairs.
     At  the very  top was a Gate ... a working  Gate. It  was marked  by  a
flickering symbol  that  gave  me  a  splitting  headache  when I  tried  to
concentrate on the design. I approached it, eyes averted.
     And damn  me if  there wasn't Arlene Sanders's last mark, right next to
the Gate, pointing directly at the symbol. She'd written a single word: OUT?
     I didn't know.  But I  didn't hesitate a moment.  If  that were the way
Arlene went.. .
     Then that was where I was going.
     Without a glance back, I stepped aboard.





     15




     Time had no meaning  for Fly Taggart--the  memory of being Fly Taggart.
He had  no body but retained a consciousness somehow, somewhere. A sense  of
motion, but that might only be another memory.
     Remembering  a hand created a hand. Remembering  a foot resulted in the
sensation  of a foot,  a  painful  sensation  from where  his ankle had been
bruised. Memory of a backache condensed into a patch of flesh and blood that
was a back.
     Memory of breath turned emptiness  into a pair  of lungs. Recollections
of hot days on a summer  beach  left their imprint on a forehead slick  with
sweat.
     Then  he  had a whole  body, floating in  a  warm current of air slowly
cooling; an  upside-down vertigo turning his stomach,  which meant  he had a
stomach. The fall  wasn't long,  and he skinned  his knees on a  hard  metal
surface before falling forward on his face. The air was cold.
     He blinked  eyes in an aching head.  He couldn't see anything but white
and red spots chasing each other across afield of darkness. The man panicked
at the thought  that he'd been blinded; but gradually vision returned. There
wasn't much worth seeing.
     The light  was dim.  He  wanted to  breathe fresh air again,  as he had
before stepping  on  the  platform. He'd been  breathing  the  stale  air of
spaceships  and the Mars station and the  Phobos  installations for so  long
he'd almost forgotten what fresh air was like. Even if it had been fake,  he
wanted  it  again.  But when  he filled his  lungs,  it was that  disgusting
sour-lemon smell  he had first noticed when he killed  his first  zombie. He
was a man again, but he didn't want to be  back in hell. Yet he had traveled
somewhere, hadn't he? He felt he'd come a very long way just to reach . . .
     I didn't know where I was.  Instinctively, I reached with  my left hand
for the machine pistol, the  weapon I could most quickly bring into play. My
hand slapped bare  flesh. There was  nothing on my chest  but  air, I looked
down and saw that I was naked.
     Jesus and  Mother Mary. And after all that  work gather-  ing  shotgun,
Sig-Cow, and rocket launcher.
     Having lost my  clothes during the  strange journey didn't  bother  me,
except for the drop in temperature; but I didn't want to turn into dead meat
because I didn't have weapons. A naked man is an unarmed man.
     I  wasn't going  to waste another  second  before  recon- noitering. If
there  were monsters anywhere near here,  then  I had to get  my  hands on a
firearm right away. The sour-lemon smell was a dead giveaway--zombies lurked
somewhere in the  shadows. I'd come through a gateway  with nothing  but  my
body, but at least I was breathing. I wanted to keep it that way.
     The gravity was Earth normal. As my eyes adjusted to dim light, I saw I
was in an oblong, rectangular building. Having  had  the experience of being
"outside"  before  the transfer. I didn't look forward to  roaming corridors
again. I almost hated that idea more than the prospect of fighting monsters.
     Suddenly it didn't feel merely cool any longer. It had gotten downright
cold.  Being  stark  naked presented other problems; with all the disgusting
ways to die I had recently discovered, I'd be damned if I wanted to catch my
death of cold.
     Adrenaline  pumping  madly--my  drug  of  choice--I  ran  in  the  most
promising direction. A red light pulsed dimly in the shadows directly ahead;
and  the flat, slap- ping sound  of bare feet against the metal floor seemed
almost as loud as my boots had earlier.
     If this setup were anything like the one I'd left, I actually wanted to
find a  zombie! "Alive" or dead, they were  armed with what I  needed, and a
lot easier to deal with than the spinys or ghosts.
     I found the  source of  the  red light: an  entire wall emitted crimson
illumination; at the bottom was an inverted-cross cutout, just big enough to
serve  as a  doorway. It was directly  in line with a square platform on the
ground.  The  platform  was red, too.  The  symbolism was  blasphemy--anyone
walking through the "door- way" would have the privilege of being crucified.
The religious  imagery was starting to piss me  off; whoever or whatever was
behind this had learned  things about  human psychology that I preferred  it
not know. I slipped through, feeling dirty and corrupted.
     I felt  an unholy chill as I walked through  the inverted cross in  the
red  wall,  the  color  of communion wine, the color  of blood  from  fallen
comrades.
     How right  I  was to  think of buddies  lost in battle. Directly on the
other  side of the opening was the dead body of a UAC technician  locked  in
mortal embrace with a soldier I recognized from Fox Company. I wasn't likely
to forget Ordover.
     The youngest kid in the outfit, we'd bagged on him something fierce. He
was patriotic to the "Corps" and easy to rag.  As I looked at the remains of
this  friendly  private,  the boyish face  that hadn't been  altered even in
death, I regretted the times I'd helped get him drunk.
     Finding out  that  Johnny enjoyed singing  old ballads, badly  off-key,
when he was honed and capped was too  much temptation. I thought that was as
funny as every- one else did.
     "Sorry, kid,"  I muttered to his corpse, relieved that  at  least  he'd
received the gift of  a  clean  death.  He hadn't been reworked. Now  it was
Johnny's turn  to provide Fly Taggart with a piece of serious artillery.  He
was lying on top of a Sig-Cow with a fifty-round magazine. Thanks to him,  I
might  still be a naked savage, but I was back  in  the game. I was a Marine
once more.
     As I examined  my surroundings, I had the feeling I'd been dropped into
a giant warehouse. There were huge boxes, or crates, all over the place with
UAC stenciled on them. I began to explore and  noticed a red, glowing square
that emitted a curious heat. I avoided it for the moment, welcome though the
heat would be.
     Having gotten in  the habit of following Arlene's ar- rows,  I  started
hunting.  And  looking  for  more  weapons, as well as food,  water,  and an
unbroken radio. I was so intent on all this that I barely noticed  it when I
turned a corner and was back in zombie country.
     I shouldered the rifle and  fired while  they wasted time  roaring. The
shot was  good; the nearest head  exploded like a ripe melon. That  startled
me; it was a single bullet, not a  grenade! This zombie had to be especially
ripe.
     The  next one reacted more typically; the bullet made a normal hole and
the creature fell to the floor, twitching.  But  I  was  already  pounding a
round into the head of number three, scutting sideways, firing two or  three
shots at a  time.  I lost count of how many  zombies  went  down. A few  had
weapons, but none had taken a shot at me yet.
     It was  all  too easy;  then  something  on  the  other  side  returned
fire--actual fire.  The damned, brown spinys were  back, complete with their
bizarre ability  to toss  flaming snotballs  like  warm-up pitchers for  the
devil.
     The  easy zombie pickin's had  made me careless. The first fireball was
too  close, far too  close, to my  face and neck. The stuff stuck to my skin
like  napalm, burning like hell and  reminding  me that I had  no protection
over any part of my skin or vulnerable parts.
     But I was pumped.  With  a roar  to match a hell-prince, I charged  the
nearest spiny  and let my bayonet do the talking. The blade split thick neck
like a cantaloupe, and the demon dropped, bleeding a deep, ruby red.
     But even with a bayonet  stuck in its windpipe and blood pumping out in
buckets,  it stretched a clawed hand up toward me. With a thrust and a yank,
I tore the neck so badly that the head was hanging lopsided. It would take a
lot more work than that to  actually decapitate the mother, but at least  it
wouldn't bother me anymore. I needed the bayonet back. I had other fields to
plow.
     A number of zombies had  gathered around  as I  was busy taking care of
the demon  that I  hoped  had been the one who  burned  my face. More spinys
loitered by the weirdest piece of wall I'd seen yet, with human skulls stuck
all over it like raisins in a cake.
     A thin female zombie went  first, a fat male second, an ex-PFC third. I
used the bayonet on all of them because there wasn't room to shoot.
     Pivoting, slashing and stabbing,  shouting gleeful curses--this was the
way to kill!  The feel, the smell,  the blood  pouring out  of them  beating
through  my veins, all linked.  A  world of blood. Some had  to be mine; but
this was no time to worry over details.
     Then  there was  one zombie left. I  recognized  its face.  Recognition
slowed me down . . . this was a good face,  honest and stern, like  the  men
who'd settled the frontier.
     Corporal  Ryan. Dead eyes in a face I once respected were an invitation
to do more than kill. I had to erase him from the universe.
     I pinned him with the bayonet; but he was made  of stern stuff, even as
a zombie.  Squirming  forward, he clawed  my  face with long,  dirty  nails.
Damned rifle was stuck in him! He was far stronger than the others, stronger
than me.
     Thank  God I  knew  Ryan  better  than his reanimated  corpse did.  The
corporal  always  carried  a  10mm pistol in a back-draw holster.  I reached
behind him. The gun was  there!  I drew the piece, stuck the business end in
Ryan's mouth, and squeezed the trigger.
     His death  grip combined with the pool of blood underfoot pulled me  to
the floor. It  was  too slippery to get  up  easily. While I freed myself, I
tried real  hard to  assimilate  the latest data. If zombies were  holding a
weapon when  they died, they still used it. But the intelligence required to
remember a hidden weapon was beyond their reach.
     Slipping  and  sliding on the  blood was distracting . .  . and  then I
realized  that I was  sobbing. Having given  myself  strict  orders  to keep
emotions under control, I felt betrayed. At least I held onto the pistol.
     Standing up, I realized with disgust that the real reason I was weeping
was because  I  had temporarily  run out  of  enemy.  All  the zombies  were
dead-dead, and the  mon- sters  who  had been  watching over by the  wall of
skulls had  run off. This was worse than being interrupted in the  middle of
making love. I really felt that. I had good reason to be crying like a baby.
     "Pull yourself  together," I ordered  Yours Truly. "I mean it.  Cut the
crap, right now!" I wasn't going to put up with any insubordination.
     "Damn you  all!" I screamed at the universe. "How long am I supposed to
take  this, over  and  over?" It was a  good question,  but nobody  had  any
answers.  I kicked  a zombie's  head, angry that he  wasn't contributing his
part to the conversation.
     Zombies  weren't  the only inanimate  objects around; I  found  a metal
cabinet that I  tore off and flung at a console. Great sound effect. I would
have moved  on in  search  of  glass  to  break--an even better sound--but I
noticed  my  little  tantrum  had actually led  to  something useful. As the
forest fire raging in my brain toned down to  a mild fever-delirium, I vowed
never to say anything bad about dumb luck again.
     A hidden drawer in the console sprang open. I investi- gated, hoping to
find a weapon.  Instead,  I found  another of those computer  key cards, the
very same cards I had sworn not to use again while I had my trusty rockets .
. . the very same rockets I  no longer had. Buck Rogers, back to square one.
I picked up the translucent, blue computer disk. Waste not, want not.
     A rifle in one hand, pistol in the other, and a key card clenched in my
teeth. Not having pockets was becoming a major pain in the butt.
     Why didn't I simply  field-strip a corpse? I  don't know;  I  guess  my
brain wasn't rolling on all tank treads.
     One direction seemed  as good  or bad as  any other, so I went back the
way I had come. As the frenzy of the battle wore off, I was starting to feel
cold again. The red platform was appealing as the only source of heat I knew
about around here, the next best thing to a roaring fireplace. It felt great
as the heat warmed my cold, naked skin.
     Then, as idiots  have asked themselves throughout history,  I asked the
magic words "Why not?"--and rubbed my hands over the thing.
     A million flashbulbs exploded in my face.
     By the time I finished blinking the world back into focus, I realized I
was not in the room I just had been.
     My mouth dropped open. Fly, you  gorm,  I thought, I think  you've just
discovered your first teleporter!
     That  square,  red  platform  just had to be  the "teleport" pads I had
heard about when they posted Fox Company to Mars. They were just big  enough
for a man to stand on ... assuming he felt adventurous.
     I  was  dubious  about  the whole thing from  day one, and so was Gunny
Goforth.  If I  were surrounded  by trolls and  out of  ammo, I'd decided, I
might try one; nothing short of that would tempt me.
     The  teleport  pads  were  already  there  when  humans first  arrived,
presumably  built  the same  time  as  the  Gates  and  gravity  generators.
Practical folk that w