e are, we  incorporated them into  the  design  of  the
base;  UAC used them to transport heavy ingots  and equipment. I don't think
many  people used  them; most of  us  worried  about things like  souls  and
continuity of consciousness and all that crap.
     Trust  Corporal  Fly  Taggart  to  render  the  whole  philo-  sophical
discussion moot by tripping over his own feet into it!
     As I stared stupidly  at my new surroundings, a swarm of zombies poured
around  the  corner. As  the  first one  fired a round  that took me in  the
shoulder, several thoughts whizzed through my mind. First, as  I fell to the
floor,  I  thought  of  writing  up  the  careless  dolt  who'd  triggered a
teleporter by sticking  his  paws where they  weren't supposed  to  be.  The
second thought, as I rolled  onto  my back, was more ironic: moments before,
I'd been unhappy over running out of zombies. My third thought, as I sat up,
stunned, was: I'm shot!
     My Sig-Cow was out of reach. I'd let go of it, along with the key card.
I opened fire with the 10mm.
     A nearby stone platform provided me cover;  the zombies were too stupid
to do the same. They reminded me of Army privates.
     Taking  my time about it,  I aimed  and fired,  aimed  and  fired.  The
bullets  went  in, the blood came out. I took  them  one by one, killing the
very last at point-blank range.
     This  time I wasn't  sorry  I'd run  out of  zombies. The  bullet in my
shoulder made me groggy. There was nothing I'd rather do at that moment than
lie down in a nice, warm pool of blood and sleep forever.
     Nothing suicidal; sleep was good. Rest was a sacra- ment.
     Willing my reluctant body to move, I got up.
     16




     By now I must have  looked like a zombie myself, I felt like one. Being
honest about it, I had to admit that I didn't know how a human being crossed
over into the zombie state. I hadn't seen the process. The talkative monster
implied  that he could control zombies,  but he never said a word about  how
they were made--he simply lied about not reworking me if I surrendered.
     I  wondered .  . .  was  this how the others  became  what  they  were,
righting a never-ending war  that  finally drove them  mad? Wasn't a sign of
insanity the conviction that everyone and everything  is the enemy? That was
the  way  I'd been  living since I  left  the cafeteria and the two Rons and
began my assault on Phobos Base and . . . and wherever the hell I was now.
     Turning a corner, I was greeted by a sight not calcu- lated to reassure
a man doubting his sanity. A gigantic skull, half the length of a full-grown
man, glared at me through  empty  sockets. It seemed to be made of  brass. I
stared into its eyeless sockets before allowing my gaze to lower. The giant,
metal skull had a tongue; a curving, snaky, metal tongue.
     There was no way this was standard-issue in a UAC refinery!
     Of course, the skull's tongue had to be a lever.
     "I can't help it," I said, "I'm a born lever-puller."
     If I were  already  dead and  in hell, it hardly  mattered  what  would
happen if I pulled the lever. I still had my curiosity. And if I  were still
alive, trying to save  humani- ty  from an alien invasion,  then  I had even
more curiosity.
     I pulled the lever. It was ice cold against my already chilled flesh. A
metallic, grinding noise riveted my attention. It sounded  like all the old,
abandoned automo- bile  plants in Detroit had started up at  once.  And with
all  that  sound, one stupid box rose from the ground  contain-  ing another
pair  of skull-tongue switches!  I pulled  the next one in  line and heard a
click from the wall directly in front of me.
     Moving to investigate, I saw a crack of light in the wall, then another
and another until the yellow lines had formed a perfect square. Secret doors
were  losing  their appeal for me.  If  this one  were  going to  improve my
opinion, then it had better offer something better than the usual collection
of monsters. I shoved open the door with one mighty heave.
     A  bloody,  naked figure held  a  gun  pointed directly at my face.  By
reflex, I shoved my own piece right between its eyes.
     "DROP THE GUN!"
     "DROP THE FREAKIN' GUN!"
     "PUT IT DOWN, I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL BLOW YOUR FOOL HEAD--"
     "--WHERE I CAN SEE THEM, PUT YOUR HANDS UP--"
     "--AND DON'T MOVE OR--"
     "--GROUND! ON THE GROUND, MOVE!"
     Her eyes. Her  eyes  were alive. And she spoke .  . . words. By  now we
both stood,  each  pistol pressed against the other's face, eyes  wide  with
fear, wonder, and hope-- Was it? Could it be? Could she be?--shouting at the
top of our voices in pain, rage, and desperate need.
     My  hammer was cocked, but my finger outside the  trigger  guard; I had
just begun to suspect, just begun . . .
     Something clicked  in my brain.  The  penny  dropped. I  recognized the
bloody, disheveled, pallid creature.
     A  dream   come  true--if  true--in  a  world  that  special-  ized  in
nightmares. Panting before my face, watching warily, ready to  fire off half
the  magazine if necessary, stood the reason  I had come this far and hadn't
yet given up.
     I  wanted to say  her  name, but  I  couldn't. We were each locked in a
perimeter of silence, holding  a  gun against each other's face,  doubts and
paranoia having the only voice. One of us would have to say something.
     She went  first.  "Drop the  friggin'  gun!" The  command  came  from a
lifetime of giving  not an inch or trusting  without two forms of picture ID
... and that had been back on Earth! She'd worked hard, her every friendship
based on a sense  of honor. She'd kicked  her way onto the Mars mission. And
this is what she'd found.
     But  she'd survived. And I'd survived. She'd kept me  alive with  every
A.S.  and arrow;  and  maybe  her fantasy that  I'd come after her  kept her
alive--why else use our private code, a link between just the two of us?
     But now there was no room for sentiment, only for certainty.
     "You are a dead man if you do not drop the freaking gun now."
     Oops. My arm and hand had been through too much to even consider it. My
body  was  wired for instant re- sponses. The same  as her body if she  were
still  the  old  Arlene.  The only  reason  I  hadn't  blown  her away auto-
matically was the  time  spent praying  she was alive,  and a willingness to
take a risk right  now that  she wasn't really a zombie. No  zombie had ever
spoken before. And somehow, covered with mud and gore, she looked too damned
bad to be a zombie. Only the living could look that fried!
     "Arlene, your  ass is mine," I replied. "I've had the drop on you since
I opened the damned door."
     Zombies  didn't talk that  way, either. They didn't  tease  or smile  a
moment later when  awareness crept across a  human  face. She returned  that
smile, and I knew every- thing would be all right.
     "Your finger wasn't  even on  the trigger, big guy. I'd have  blown you
away before you fumbled  around and  found it." She was wounded, disheveled,
filthy, terrified, naked . . . and totally, totally alive.
     "You're alive!" I shouted.
     "No, really?" she shouted back.
     We slowly lowered our weapons simultaneously, mir- ror images  of  each
other. Grinning.
     Staring me up and  down, she commented, "Nice  fashion  statement." I'd
forgotten  I was buck naked. My damned reflexes insisted on embarrassing me,
and I reflexively covered myself.
     Well, I guess it  was one more proof I was still fully human.  I  doubt
that zombies are modest. "Turn your back, for Christ's sake," I implored.
     "I will not" she answered,  eyes  roving where they shouldn't.  "You're
the first decent thing I've seen since this creep show began."
     If we kept this up, maybe things  would  get so  bloody normal that the
monsters would simply pack their suit- cases and leave.
     Arlene could  dish  out  a hard time when she  wanted. I decided to get
dressed, and finally I noticed the corpses and stripped one. She reached out
a hand. "No, Fly; don't put those on yet. Please?"
     My  right  foot  was halfway into  a  boot  far  too  small  to fit. It
stretched, conforming to the  size of  my  foot: one size  truly  fits  all.
Arlene turned as red as the crimson wall. "Jesus, I'm  sorry, Fly. You're my
buddy; I shouldn't have made you uncomfortable. Forgive me?"
     I finished dressing. It didn't take  long. Now  it was my turn to  look
her over, which I  did with a lot more subtlety than she did with me. I kept
my  eyes moving where she'd let  hers stop in  embarrassing places. God, she
looked good. All  the  dirt and  blood  almost gave her the appear- ance  of
being dressed in  a weirdly hip-punk outfit. Her slender  waist, tight, firm
thighs, medium bust, and long arms made me think of more than the undeniable
fact that  she had the body  of the ideal  orbital  pilot--her ultimate goal
when she'd earned enough in service to take a hiatus, get a degree, and take
a commission. Space travel needed the occasional boost in morale.
     She  finally got  the  idea. There were plenty of corpses  around  with
uniforms waiting to be stripped. I watched her from the corner of my eye  as
she followed my example.  The best aspect of these form-fitting uniforms was
the way they conformed to every contour of the human  body. She  looked just
as good in clothes.
     I  tried  to  think  of  something  appropriate  to say, then  grunted,
punching  her  shoulder middling hard. "Now  I forgive  you," I said  with a
grin. The  grin  didn't last long. I'd completely forgotten about the bullet
wound in my shoulder. The pain finally caught up with  me as the  adrenaline
wore off.
     "Jeez, that looks bad," she  said. "Maybe there's  some Medikits around
here. You mind holding still  while I  do some alterations on your shoulder?
Meanwhile, tell me where the hell you came from."
     Seemed like a fair deal to me. "Long as  you tell  me what  happened to
you, A.S. You  and the company. And what the hell were you doing hiding in a
cupboard?"
     She made  me go first. I recapped everything that had happened  since I
left Ron  and Ron behind in the mess hall. She'd been through the same crap;
I didn't need to  be overly detailed  about the killing. It would be nothing
more than a sentence completion exercise.
     While I told her my adventures, hoping I wasn't boring  her, we weren't
standing still. With the soft suction sounds of our boots on the cold, stone
floor, we went  hunting for  medical  supplies. "I'd  rather go up against a
dozen zombies than one of these monster aliens," I was telling Arlene as she
yanked open a closet door.
     Dozens of  shotguns cascaded  down on us like bales of hay . . . heavy,
painful bales of hale. Fortunately, they weren't loaded.
     Staring at the pile  of  weapons for  a long moment,  I put on my  best
annoyed face and asked Arlene: "Can't you keep your space neat and tidy?"
     Rolling  her eyes, she  scooped up one of the weapons  and tossed it to
me. She took one,  too.  I regretted leaving behind such a beautiful pile of
weaponry. But Arlene and I only had four hands between us. We still needed a
Medikit, and Arlene  was  starving. With the burning sensation growing in my
arm, the Medikit was first on the list.
     Then I was going to get my Recon Babe out of this hellhole.  I'd e-mail
her, if that's what it took to pack her back to Mars. No, Earth.
     "Get your crap together," I said, "and take mental notes."
     "Notes?"
     "We've got to give a full report when we  get back.  We're blowing this
popcorn stand."
     Arlene smiled wanly. "You have any good ideas on that one, Ace?"
     "I left a land-cart back at the entrance; we can hot-rod it back to the
air base and take the troopship back to Mars. Or even Earth ... it should be
able to make it."
     Arlene looked around, studying the architecture.
     The architect must have been hired by the Addams Family. Nothing seemed
normal. The surface of the walls was rough,  twisted, the sickening color of
internal or- gans. Skulls, monster faces, and decay dominated every- where I
chanced to glance.
     Arlene  coughed politely. "Just  two problems  with  that plan.  First,
we're not on Phobos anymore, Toto."
     "Huh?"
     "We're on Deimos, and there ain't no land-carts, or rockets, either. We
used all the ships to  bug our people out four years ago.  Fly,  we're stuck
here, and we don't even know where 'here' is!"
     I must have looked blank; she continued. "Look, Fly, don't you remember
when Deimos vanished from the screens?"
     "No, actually. What the hell are you talking about?"
     "Whoops. I guess you were already in custody when we got word from Boyd
that Deimos had disappeared from the Martian sky."
     The  idea that  a  moon  could vanish  bothered  me  for  some  reason.
"Wouldn't there have been gravitational effects?" I asked.
     She  laughed before  asking, "Are  you kidding? Do you  know how  small
Deimos is? It's even smaller than Phobos."
     "I knew that." These chunks of space rock were so small that their real
gravity was theoretical, notwith- standing the alien gravity zones. Although
I'd become used to fantastic events lately, a little nugget  of skepti- cism
scratched at my capacity to believe just anything. "How do you know we're on
Deimos?"
     " 'Cause I've been here,  Fly. I did a TDS as a yeoman right here while
I was waiting for an opening in the Light Drop."
     "A  yeoman! But the Marines don't  have any staff positions, only  line
positions."
     "On loan to the Navy. Technically, I was still a rifleman, but the only
weapon they issued me was a word processor."
     I had  to think about this. The implications were definitely  bad.  And
the image of Arlene Sanders as a secretary was astonishing.
     I looked up. There was a skylight in the ceiling, and where Mars should
have been, there was nothing.  Where  stars should have  been, there were no
stars. The black  of space was missing, too. All I  saw was a gray mist, not
to be confused with clouds; the texture was all wrong.
     Having a gift for the obvious, I said, "We're not in orbit around Mars,
are we?"
     She smiled and patted me on the head. "Congrats, Fly. You win the Nobel
Prize. You don't see  a pressure  dome  up  there,  do you?  But we're still
sucking air. I know  we're on  Deimos; I  recognize all the stuff that H. P.
Lovecraft didn't redecorate."
     Who, I wanted to know, was H. P. Lovecraft? If  he'd had anything to do
with this, I wanted to punch his lights out.
     "No, Fly," Arlene  said.  "He was a  fantasy  writer,  early  twentieth
century   American.  Obsessed  with  hybrid  mon-  sters   and   underground
labyrinths. Always describing ancient menaces as eldritch."
     I'd  never  heard  the word  before, but it sounded  just  right. "This
situation has got eldritch coming out the ass."
     "You  can  say that again," she agreed.  "And this is Deimos, muchacho;
only thing is, these bastards have taken it somewhere."
     "Great. So what's number two?"
     She looked puzzled for  a  moment, then she frowned.  "I don't  want to
hurt you, Fly."
     I licked  my lips,  feeling my stomach contract. I never liked anything
from a girl that began like that. "What?"
     "You've always been more loyal to the Corps than I was, my friend."
     I stiffened. "What's wrong with the Corps? The  Ma- rines have given me
a lot, babe, in case you've forgotten."
     She smiled and shook her  head. Arlene hadn't  forgot- ten my father, a
pathological liar and petty thief who ended up doing twenty-five to life for
his fourth felony  conviction . . . trying to run down a state trooper  with
his  pickup  truck.  He died in Vacaville two years  later,  from a cerebral
hemorrhage, they said.
     My  father  was  the pettiest,  lowest,  meanest  man  I  ever knew. He
couldn't  even understand the word "honor." He  never knew  why I joined the
Corps, never would have understood if I told him I did it for him  ... so  I
would never be him.
     All right, I confess. Father, forgive me, for I have sinned.  The Corps
was the world to me.
     "There's  nothing  wrong with the United  States Marine Corps, Fly. But
damn you, there's something a bit more important."
     "Like what?"
     "Like the human freakin' race!"
     She  had  me  cold.  So  I  got  pissed. "Hang  the human  race!  'It's
Tommy-this, an' Tommy-that--'"
     "Oh, don't quote Kipling at me; I'm the one who gave you the book. Fly,
what do you think the whole purpose of the Corps is?"
     I didn't say anything. I  didn't like  where  this was  leading; I knew
what she was going to say. But I couldn't figure where she was wrong.
     "You're  so much  into honor and  duty, Fly. Don't you  know what  duty
means? We're the ones on  the wall, kiddo. They might not know  we're there;
might not  even know there is a wall, might not give a hang. But that's what
we're here for.
     "Fly, this thing  is bigger than just getting us both  out alive. We're
the only  ones here,  only  ones who know about the invasion  . . . the only
ones who might be able to throw something  big and heavy into the gears. And
damn it to hell, I'm not going to bug out until I do it!"
     I glared  at Arlene. I  wanted to protect her, get  her out of there. I
was a man, she was my--
     Bull. I was a  Marine. And so was  Arlene. I understood what  she meant
about the wall; somebody had to man it. Who else?
     I  lowered my gaze. We couldn't just bug out, even  if we could  find a
transport on abandoned Deimos. We had to get to the  bottom of all this--and
if  Deimos was like Phobos, I had a bad  feeling  that meant getting to  the
bottom  of the Deimos facility.  For  some weird  reason,  the alien monster
demons preferred "down."
     Besides, her point number one still made sense, too. We don't even know
where "here" is. Deimos had been yanked away somewhere ... we were stuck, no
rocket, no clue  where we might be ... only that we weren't in orbit  around
Mars  anymore.  "Up"  meant--what?  Emp- ty space? Nothingness? The only way
out--if  there was  one--was  "down," following the levels of Deimos  to the
bottom.
     I glared up  at her  again; her eyes were as cold  as steel, as warm as
the sacred heart. "Well don't expect me to say I'm sorry," I muttered.





     17




     While we'd been talking, we  came across an undamaged crate that looked
promising. All that stood between us and it was  one of my fireball-throwing
buddies.
     This one never got a chance to warm up. Arlene whirled and blasted him;
the demon went down without a chance to hock and spit.
     The  label  on the crate promised Medikits and  com- rats. We opened it
and found a full pantry.
     Arlene insisted on playing nurse before I played chef.  She examined my
shoulder; the bullet had gone straight  through. Score  one for my side. She
injected  universal antiviral/antibiotic  and wrapped  a  bandage  around my
shoulder, while I gritted my teeth and groaned like a big baby.
     When she finished with my arm, I heaved a sigh  of relief.  God, I hate
medical crap! But I was premature; I'd forgotten about my burns.
     Arlene didn't forget. The cream she applied on my forehead, cheeks, and
chin hurt worse  than the  arm  injections!  It  hurt so bad that I  started
hunting for any serious cuts or burns Arlene might have . . . something that
would  require  my  delicate  attention--and  lots  of  cream.  Despite  her
appearance, she was disgustingly healthy.
     Now it was her turn to  tell a story. "Fly," she began, pausing to gulp
water  from a  bottle we'd extracted from the  crate, "I don't  want  to see
anything like that first assault ever again."
     She sat with her back to a wall, and I stood where I had a good view of
anything  coming or  going. I had to find out  what happened to Fox Company.
Munching on a bland,  fast-energy bar that tasted as fine as a steak at that
moment, I gave her my undivided attention (and a chocolate bar of her own).
     The situation had been as bad as  I imagined.  The assault simply  fell
apart.   Seeing   the  zombies  was  enough  --the  guys  didn't  even  need
flaming-snot  demons  to  drive them  off the  deep end.  Walking,  staring,
drooling, rotting human corpses proved  sufficient to make them forget every
combat lesson they'd ever learned.
     They went crazy; they broke ranks and charged the zombies. Fox was full
of fighting spirit, all right; it just Sacked a  plan, strategy and tactics,
a  command structure,  and  a snowball's  chance  in they-should-have-known-
where as soon as they let themselves get isolated,  cut off from each other.
The fire-hocking spinys picked them off one at a time.
     I couldn't really blame my buds. I'd  had the  same reaction, the  same
rage to rip the zombies apart with my bare hands.
     Arlene  was saved because she wasn't  as affected by the male berserker
fury. It  must  be a male  thing;  testoster- one, maybe?  Jesus,  did  that
sour-lemon odor actually stimulate a testosterone and adrenal rush overdose?
     Then again, she might simply have had better self- control than  a guy.
I interrupted to say, "You're a better man than I am, Arlene."
     "Shush, Fly, if you want to hear the rest of this." I shushed.
     "I found  a cupboard  and hid out,"  she continued. "I could hear  them
moving just beyond the door. Some- times hearing is worse than seeing."
     I nodded at the truth of that observation. "Like  this  ugly  demon," I
said, kicking the  brown hide of  the creature she'd dispatched.  "They hiss
like giant serpents. Scares the piss out of you in the dark."
     She laughed. "I wouldn't  call that a demon! I've seen some others that
more deserve the name."
     "Yeah,"   I   agreed,  remembering  the  minotaurs.   "I   guess  those
hell-princes  you warned me about with your  skull and crossbones are a more
traditional demon design."
     "I wouldn't know,"  she  said. "I  never saw them. You're talking about
the pentagram room?"
     "You didn't see them?"
     "I  put one foot into that room and heard one of 'em scream. I guess it
saw me, but I didn't stick around to see it! What do they look like?"
     "Eight feet tall, bright, flaming red, with goat  legs  and huge horns.
They fire some sort of electrical-ball light- ning from wrist-launchers."
     She shook  her head. "Nasty. But  the  thing I call a demon is  a huge,
bloated, pink thing with tusks. Maybe we should call it a pinkie?"
     "Does your pink demon make a pig sound?"
     The way  she  shuddered  answered the question before  she  nodded. She
wasn't  kidding  about what you hear being worse than what you see. I didn't
press  her for further  details. I had a sinking feeling that no description
was  necessary. Before this was over,  I imagined we'd be seeing lots  worse
nightmares, a full menagerie from the lowest pits of hell.
     "So what happened after you left me the warning?"
     She smiled,  happy  to oblige. "I ran  like the devil." She interrupted
herself, uncomfortable with the expression. The way things were going, there
was no telling  who we might meet next. "I  ran," she  said,  "and found the
crack.  I had enough paint  stick left for a final  warning. I want  you  to
know, Fly Taggart, that taking the time for  that Do  Not Enter sign was the
stupidest thing I did all day; while I  was making like a public information
booth, one of those hell-princes,  as you call them, came tromping  down the
hall."
     "You've  got guts," I piped in, and  didn't care if she shushed me this
time. Instead, she insisted on my going back  into the  narrative and giving
all the gory details  of how close I'd come to  cashing in when facing these
monsters.
     Then  she resumed: "While  I was writing as fast as  I could, I studied
that crack in the wall, wishing I could make it larger."
     "I couldn't squeeze through."
     "I know.  I felt like dog dirt.  But what could I  do? I didn't have  a
jaws with  me,  and no  time to crank the crack wider  even if I did have. I
wormed my way through, leaving a  few  layers  of skin behind, and hoofed it
for the Gate."
     She stopped to catch her breath.
     "You must have  been surprised  when you came through stripped bare," I
said.
     She sighed. "I  was surprised to still be alive, which is how I've felt
every leg of this mission. There was a corpse-reception committee waiting at
the  other  end; but  at least they  weren't zombies. While  I picked my way
through all those  bodies, a metric ton of  zombies started teleporting  in.
There were too many of them to handle-- so I dived into that secret cupboard
you found . . . and somebody pressed a switch, and the freaking door slammed
shut! And then you showed up, looking. . . " --she struggled for words--"not
a helluva lot better than the zombies, Fly."
     "Thanks," I said. She always had a knack for compli- ments.
     Sometimes I  suspected she liked toying with me. I pointed at the brown
carcass of a spiny. "So if  you  don't want me calling it a demon,"  I said,
"how about a spiny?"
     "How about an imp?"
     "An imp?"
     "Why not? I had a book of fairy tales when I was a kid with goblins and
things. The  picture closest to this  critter had the  caption 'imp.' It was
playing with magical fire."
     Our game was becoming fun. We didn't have a lot of entertainment at the
moment. "I dunno," I said. "Some- thing about the head reminds me of an  old
monster movie about a fish-guy who lived in a lagoon."
     "He's an imp," she insisted, reminding me that tough Marine or not, she
was still a woman.
     My mother didn't raise any fools. "He's an imp," I agreed.
     "We should name  the others, too," she  said, encour-  aged. "We've got
zombies,  imps, demons  or  pinkies, and hell-princes.  What do we call  the
rest?"
     I laughed. "That's pretty biblical, isn't it?"
     She  stared blankly. Not everyone had enjoyed the benefits of religious
schooling. "Anyway, it's a great idea, Arlene. If we ever find  a functional
radio, we'll need to report  to someone. We might as  well play Adam and Eve
and name all the beasts."
     She  relaxed, convinced  now  that I  wasn't making  fun of  her,  so I
continued.  "One of  these imps talked to me--" I started, but Arlene cut me
off.
     "Talked?"  This was the  most  surprised  I'd seen  her  yet. We hadn't
exactly duplicated each other's adventures.
     "He tried to get  me to surrender, promising if I  did,  I wouldn't  be
reworked--uh, zombiefied. But the son of a bitch was such a liar, I wouldn't
trust him for the time with a clock stuck to his face."
     The way she laughed made me laugh. Finding  her had changed everything.
I wanted to live  now as well as fight, report back to  Mars or to Earth, do
my duty for the survival of homo sap, the home team.
     "Are those all the monsters we've discovered so far?" she asked.
     "No,"  I  admitted.   "There's  something  around  here  that's  partly
invisible. I was thinking of them as killer ghosts."
     "Specters," she corrected offhand. If we got out of this alive, I would
recommend Arlene for the job of an editor. On a  religious magazine. I had a
sense of justice. "I haven't run into them yet," she added.
     "And some flying skulls. What should we call those?"
     "Flying skulls."
     "Right. What do you want to call them?"
     "Flying skulls, you lamebrain! Call 'em as you see 'em."
     I found out  she  hadn't run into any of  the  mysterious blue spheres,
either, so far  the  only good  thing  to come  out  of the Gate.  I had the
feeling that before this was over, there would be much more of the naming of
names.
     Now it was back to business. Lunchtime was over.
     It was a brief rest; we  needed real sleep. We needed to find somewhere
secure  so that  we  could  take turns sleeping  and watch-standing.  And we
needed real food.
     "Something  feels  weird about  this  place," she said. Something about
Deimos was creepier than Phobos.  The place was  colder, but that wasn't it.
The  odors were about  the same, but a bad taste seemed to go with it. Maybe
we  were closer to the  source of the sour-lemon stench that hung around the
zombies. Whatever it  was,  a  cloying odor  underrode everything, something
very slowly rot- ting.
     "I hate looking at it," I answered her. If lesser demons were in charge
of the other Martian moon, then  Old Nick  himself had  drawn  the blueprint
here.  The  skulls were  starting to get on my nerves. They were everywhere,
all different sizes and shapes, always more evil than a normal human skull.
     As we explored. the color we noticed  most Was red.  darkening into the
shade of rare steak. The little voice  wanted  to know why it wasn't getting
hotter. Red was hot. Hell was supposed to be hot.
     The  floor  became moist with the hated  ooze, not yet  deep  enough to
require  slogging through a river of  the stuff. I wondered if Arlene  and I
were exploring the great intestine of something so gigantic that I was going
to have a hard time ripping out its guts.
     It seemed like the deeper we went into  hell,  the closer we got to the
life  force. Screw that. The  Martian moons were  more appealing as desolate
rocks exposed to the cold of space.
     "Bad news," said Arlene, pointing at a  teleport  plat- form at the end
of  a  corridor. We had  no choice: use it  or go back.  Along with all  the
normal maps I wanted, I now wished for a map  showing where all  these grids
con- nected up. How many shopping days before Christmas?
     "Somebody's got to do it, Arlene."
     "Do what?"
     "Recon these teleport things."
     She  placed a firm hand  on my  shoulder.  "Nice of  you  to volunteer,
Corporal. Rank before beauty."
     "Pearls before swine. I was about  to delegate, PFC!"  I looked around.
"The layout's different here than on Phobos."
     Looking  back, I observed the vista of emptiness we  had walked through
to get to this point. I had the feeling that the walls were squirming when I
didn't look at them.
     "More dead ends. I don't  like jumping into a fire when I'm getting fat
and  happy in  the frying pan. But  we're  humanity's vanguard,  right?"  It
sounded sarcastic, but I didn't mean it to be. "We've got to find out what's
happened and communicate with someone up the chain."
     Whenever Arlene smiled, it felt warmer, nicer, than when we'd just been
palling around. War brings out something good in a certain kind of person. I
didn't know about me, but I was sure about Arlene.
     "Besides," she  elaborated, "best way  to  stay  alive is to be  on the
offense.  I'm coming  right  behind you." There was no  one I'd  rather have
backing me up.
     "Give  me  thirty  seconds." They wouldn't be  my famous last words,  I
hoped.
     The teleporter sensation, now that I was ready for it, was  similar  to
the Gate,  but quicker,  less  disorienting.  My clothes stayed  on  and the
weapons didn't disappear. I was ready to secure the beachhead.
     I'd arrived on a  platform virtually identical to the one at  point  of
departure.  I should have jumped off right away, but I was distracted by the
sound of heavy  pile drivers,  coming closer and closer. Jesus  and Mary,  I
realized, they're footsteps!





     18




     Abruptly,  I remembered where I stood. I leapt off the platform just in
time; Arlene had counted the full thirty seconds before following.
     "Clear?" she asked as she sparkled into view.
     "No," I answered.  "Listen to that."  Light as a cat,  she pounced down
beside me. The thudding sound wasn't getting any softer.
     "Poke your head  around the corner," she suggested.  "I  have  a pretty
good idea what's making all that racket."
     We took our time approaching the corner. Arlene gestured that she would
go first. I don't argue with a lady. When she glanced back  at  me, her face
was stern. "You've been wondering what I call a demon," she said. "So take a
good look."
     I  did.  And  as  Gunny  Goforth  might  have  said,  she  wasn't  just
a-whistlin' Dixie.
     A  whole  box of  demons marched around atop a two-story  platform that
looked  as though it  might lower any moment. One  of  the "pinkies" started
making those pig sounds I found so disgusting. But as I paid close attention
to  the  anatomical  details   of   this  thing,  I  de-  cided  the  Porker
Anti-Defamation League might dis- agree with my description.
     These  monsters were the most  massively  concentrated  collections  of
muscle power in the whole zoo. They were  about six feet tall,  with  mouths
that looked like they could swallow Cleveland  .. . and  probably  had. They
were demons,  all  right. She  had  me there.  So long  as  these guys  were
wandering the  corridors, nothing else deserved the name.  Their flesh was a
dark pink; Arlene's nickname for them was accurate.
     They didn't see us yet; but it didn't look as if we'd be going anywhere
if we didn't deal  with  them. There were no  other  doors; eventually, that
platform would have to lower so we could ride it up.
     They stamped  around on  short, stubby legs,  like shaved gorillas with
horns and saw teeth. "Do they have any projectiles?" I asked Arlene.
     "What do you mean?"
     "Fireballs, lightning, anything like that?"
     "They don't throw anything at you." She noticed my body relax a little.
"Don't let it  fool you," she warned.  "They're  deadly  if you get anywhere
near them."
     "Can we pop them from down here?" I asked.
     "Not likely. You need concentrated force, like  a .458 Weatherby  or  a
twelve-gauge at ten feet. I saw an imp go after a demon, and the pinkie took
three fireballs in the  face and swallowed the imp whole!  It burped out the
bloody spines."
     Data point: imps and demons, like imps and zombies, don't get along.
     "Fly.  if we're going to progress, we've got  to lower  that  platform.
There's no other way to kill them with what we've got."
     I noticed I'd been leaning against  something hard and metallic. It was
another skull switch, just begging to be  flicked. I started reaching for it
but Arlene butted my hand away with her shotgun. That hurt.
     "You don't know what that's going to do," she pro- tested.
     "I can't help it... I'm a  born  lever-puller."  I  flicked the tongue.
With  a  loud  groan,  the  platform  lowered  like an elevator. The  demons
wandered off. They  snuffled their  pig snouts and evidently scented us, for
they made a beeline.
     As they  came  for us,  we scutted  back around the corner.  The demons
didn't seem able to run, but they  could power-walk with that thud-thud-thud
pounding through our skulls.
     Arlene and I  both had  shotguns  and a serious attitude problem toward
demons. I  found their open mouths an irresistible target. The first one ate
my powder,  and the back of its head opened up  like a watermelon. There  is
always  something  to say  for close range.  Arlene  took  hers  out with  a
well-placed blast to the chest.
     If we were acting like a team with  our  backs to the wall, the pinkies
were  dying as  individuals,  marching forward two abreast  to receive their
quota of  shotgun death. The corpses piled up, providing sufficient time for
us to reload and do it again.
     As an added bonus, none of the monsters made that snuffling pig  sound.
They were too  busy  roaring as they died.  The roaring was loud, but it was
the mark of their defeat. I started feeling good about my bloody work.
     "Like shooting drunks in a barrel," I said to Arlene.
     "Don't get cocky!"
     She was right. Hubris.
     The ranks of the enemy finally diminished. We'd  stumbled into a finite
number and we were using up our demons fast. .. about as fast as our shotgun
shells.
     "Don't discount them," Arlene warned me. I wasn't about to discount her
experiences. "So long as you can keep them at a safe distance,  this  is all
right. But I saw what happened when a buddy got his arm bitten off; and then
it ate his head. He avoided being a zombie, only to wind up as demon food."
     Good things come  to an  end,  even in a paradise like Deimos. A bullet
came very close to ending the career of Yours Truly. This tipped me off that
someone was shooting at me.
     "Look  out!"  I shouted  at Arlene; but she was already down, crouching
behind the wall of demon bodies.
     During  the precious  seconds  I spent saving myself  from whoever  was
playing sniper, the last demon charged like a runaway bulldozer. I turned to
find myself staring into a meter-wide maw.
     I thought I knew what a bad smell was before that moment. A square mile
of  human  cesspool might come  close.  The  odor was  so  bad it was like a
weapon. My eyes watered so I could hardly see.
     Arlene shouted something, but I couldn't make out her  words.  She  was
busy with problems of her own; the sniper was still at it.
     One of  those  bullets, clearly meant for Arlene or me, connected  with
the back of the demon. It had the same reaction as  a human being would have
...  if stung by a mosquito. While  it tried to scratch at  its back  (and I
wondered  how  it  could  accomplish such  a task without  ripping itself to
ribbons), I swung the shotgun back into action. The target came forward, and
the bore  of my  weapon  literally  went down its  gaping  maw. I pulled the
trigger.
     My  eyes filled with  stinking monster blood; not a desirable  state of
affairs when trying to avoid the persis- tent rifleman. I could hear Arlene,
though, shouting, "That's the last of them," as  her shotgun finished speak-
ing for her. She had to be speaking about the demons. I could still hear the
ping-ping of rifle fire over  mv head.  But it  was a relief to know that no
pinkish mouths would chew my tender epidermis.
     Arlene crawled over to me and started rubbing the blood out of my eyes.
I could manage that  on my own. I  just hadn't gotten  around to it. "Spread
out," I ordered, "don't make one target!"
     She didn't argue with  my superior combat experience.  She  rolled away
without a word  while I finished clearing my vision. Whoever was  trying  to
shoot  us had  taken  a  break, probably  just to reload. I  was  certain it
wouldn't last;  he had the  high ground, beyond where the platform had been.
We needed to alter the situation in our favor immediately.
     "Platform!" I shouted,  then charged  the lowered  lift. It had its own
switch, which  I flipped. The lift  started up, and  Arlene finally realized
what was happening. She  ran and  leapt, barely catching  the edge. I pulled
her up; we crouched back-to-back and took a little trip.
     On the next level, we rounded  a corner  and  came  face-to-, well, you
couldn't call it  a  face really--we  ran right into another demon. I didn't
know about Arlene, but I  found the situation very annoying. We'd  just been
through all that.  We were  so close that, as it charged, I fell back  on my
butt and  fired a round  between his  legs. This staggered  the  demon,  and
Arlene  finished the  job, plug- ging  it  head-on  and killing it  good and
proper.
     Now we could return  to the more traditional task of trying to find out
who was shooting at us.
     Past  the platform we saw two doors. Exchanging glances, we approached.
One had a  blue border and the  other had a red border. Of course, they were
both locked. I missed my rockets.
     I  extracted my blue  key  card and  inserted it into  the proper slot,
swiping it across the mag reader.
     The door opened with a clean, whistling, hydraulic sound.  At the other
end was a teleport. Deimos had a "thing" for teleports, all right.
     "The lady or the tiger?" asked Arlene.
     "What?"
     "A  story  I read once. We've got  a  red door and a  tele- port. Which
one?"
     "Yeah, too bad we don't have a red key."
     "Hell, Fly, all you had to do was  ask!"  She produced  a key card  and
presented it to me. Arlene liked  to play when working. "I found  it in  the
secret room while waiting for you to rescue me," she said with a wink.
     "I'll pick the lady," I said, and started to insert the red key.
     Marine training conies in handy. I heard something on the other side of
the door; and there was nothing wrong with Arlene's  ears,  either. I swiped
the key through the slot, then skipped to the side, scattergun ready. Arlene
took the opposite side.
     The moment the door opened, she discharged a shell, killing a zombie on
the  other side.  He  was  holding a shotgun  just like ours.  He wasn't the
sniper. The zombie standing next to him  had a Sig-Cow, and I wasted him. We
cleared the room, each covering 270 degrees.
     The room was  really more  of a walk-in closet.  It was  empty of  more
zombies. But I was already worried about something else: if the one with the
rifle had been shooting at us, then had ducked in here, it had all the signs
of  an ambush.  But  zombies  didn't  think!  An  ambush  suggested tactical
thinking . . . thinking!
     I hadn't yet had an opportunity  to confide in Arlene my suspicions  of
an overall  Mind guiding the  invasion,  using a  great  number  of mindless
opponents against a few human survivors to learn our limits.
     She  probably wasn't in  the  mood for a quiet,  analytical  discussion
right then. There was too much blood on her, on me.
     Now  it was the lady's turn to find a switch. The room was flooded with
clean, white light. We had  found a treasure chamber .. . medical  supplies,
more corn-rats, and ammunition, lots of it. Best of all was another of those
handheld video things.
     "Fly, you know what this is?" exclaimed Arlene in excitement. I let her
tell me. "It's a computer map of the entire floor plan!"
     The medical supplies allowed me  to return the  "favor" Arlene had done
me. She'd been winged by  the sniper. She wasn't carrying any bullets around
with  her, but  one  had grazed her  shoulder. And  she  had other  cuts and
bruises from our last battle.
     "I'm your doctor now," I said.
     Eyeing  the self-heating tins  of  food  and coffee, she  sized  me  up
through slitted eyes and said, "I'd rather you were the cook."
     "Chef," I corrected her. "And what's the difference, anyway?"
     "Between a cook and a chef?"
     "No, between a doctor and a cook!"
     "You win. Feed me, Fly."
     I bit  my  tongue. "Doctoring first."  She didn't argue,  but continued
working on  the computer map  as  I tended her wounds. I found a tube of the
same  cream she'd used on me; but she didn't  grimace.  I  used the hypo  to
inject the antiviral; but  she never  flinched. She  really was a better man
than I.
     We didn't have any  disagreement until  I insisted  we get  some sleep.
"You've got to be kidding, Fly. I'm not about  to close my eyes and lie down
in a rotting pile of zombie corpses!"
     "We can carry them out and pile them in front of the door."
     "Oh, great--an announcement that we're in here."
     "All right. I'll throw them onto the last teleport platform."
     "We'll throw them." As simple as that, sweet reason had prevailed.
     The  job took twenty minutes. We didn't bother with  the teleporter; we
spread them  like  speed bumps  among the demons. Maybe visitors would think
they had killed each other.
     Then  we enjoyed  our first real meal together. The snack had only kept
us going; this was a veritable feast by comparison.
     I  insisted  that she sleep  first. She'd been on the go longer than I.
While I was still being nursemaided by the Rons, she was at risk, in battle,
up to her eyeballs in demon guts. She would sleep first, whatever it took.
     Turned out all it took was getting her to put her head down "just for a
moment." I let her sleep for four.
     When it was my turn,  I  went out like  a drained  tallboy. She woke me
with a gentle hand on  my shoulder and a beautiful face to appreciate.  We'd
both been too ex- hausted for nightmares. We were living them.
     I hated to leave that room.  The same way I'd felt about the Phobos lab
infirmary. No, that was  wrong. This room  was better than  that. I'd shared
the time with a woman whose survival turned my universe from empty muck back
into gold.
     Blinking away pieces of sleep, I  slung the  Sig-Cow across my back and
we returned to the blue door and again faced the  teleporter. "Same  routine
as last time?" I asked.
     "Nah. Let's go together."
     "Why not?"
     "What the hell."
     We  found  ourselves in  a room with no doors, no  windows,  and one of
Arlene's big, pink demons.
     "Mine," I called, and pounded a shell before Arlene could argue.
     "I have a feeling there's plenty to go around," she said.
     I  was  almost starting to  like  the  pink  bastards.  Their  lack  of
projectile weaponry made them favorites in my book. Of course, I hadn't seen
them chow-down on a comrade the way Arlene had.
     I  took point, positively greedy for my  next  demon kill. I moved well
ahead of Arlene.
     Oh, Fly.  Hubris, hubris, hubris! Pride goeth before destruction, and a
haughty spirit before a fall.
     Turning one of those  treacherous  corners so common in both Phobos and
Deimos, I stepped right into The Wizard  of Oz. What else could  you  call a
giant, floating head?





     19




     This head wasn't handsome enough to be a movie star. Its grotesque skin
was made of  millions of squirming, knotted, bloodred worms stretched over a
huge,  inflated  balloon.  For  an instant  I thought of  the floating  blue
sphere.
     Staring into the single  red eye  of this floating pumpkin with  a tube
for a mouth, I doubted it would make me feel like a million . . . years old,
maybe.
     I dived  sideways as the pumpkin spit a ball of lightning  out the tube
mouth, burning my scalp and hair as it sailed  past. It exploded against the
wall, producing a  million slivers of  blue-flickering  electricity that had
every hair on any part of my body standing at attention.
     "Mary, Mother of God!" I cried. "Another one that shoots stuff!"
     I  ran back  toward Arlene, shouting,  "Run,  run, run!" With  pain and
surprise still fresh, I couldn't think of anything else to do.
     But the floating  head  hadn't been in  Arlene's face; she was still in
control. The red ball floated around the corner, and she let it have a blast
from behind.
     It rebounded from the  blast,  roaring in  pain,  then slowly turned to
face her. While it did, I caught hold of myself.
     I blasted the floating  pumpkin from my angle. As it turned back to me,
Arlene skated to the side and blasted it again.
     Now we both knew what to do. We dropped naturally into a standard Light
Drop  tactic--move,  fire, move again, fire  again. The  ball did  a lot  of
bouncing. Whatev-  er life force  kept it going hadn't  left it yet.  But we
kept firing.
     Then it died the  messiest monster death I  had seen so far. One moment
the  ball was bouncing  against the walls; the next, there  came  a spray of
sticky,  blue goo that smelled like caramelized pumpkin pie and sounded like
an overripe squash dropped ten  stories. I seriously considered  losing  the
lunch I had struggled so hard to ingest.
     "Oo-rah!"  exulted  Arlene.  "Smashing pumpkins  into  small pieces  of
putrid debris! What the hell was that?"
     "Um. I was going to ask you the same question."
     I couldn't take my eyes off the disgusting, deflated remains. We should
have been expecting  brand new  monsters, but this floating beach-ball thing
was so weird, it meant anything was possible.
     That scared the  hell  out of me. It meant we might  run into something
indestructible, or at least unkillable.
     "What, ah, do you want to call this one?" Arlene asked.
     I'd forgotten our little game. It was a good question, but  my mind was
blank. "Call it a pumpkin," I suggested at last.
     Arlene wasn't impressed. She wrinkled her nose as if smelling limburger
cheese. "I didn't mean that as a serious name, Fly. We need  something more.
. . frightening."
     "All right, then, you name it."
     "No dice, Fly. First person  who sees a monster  has to name it. That's
the rule."
     I was about to demand to know why she got to  make the rules; I stifled
myself in time. Of course she made the rules--she was the female.
     "Then it's a pumpkin, Arlene." I put my foot down. Maybe I'll get lucky
and she'll dislike my name enough that the rule will change.
     We secured the corridor. It was monster-free.  It wasn't ooze-free, but
the stuff didn't look deep until pretty far along. Ahead  lay a  small ocean
of the stuff with an exit at the other end.
     "Best way to get through shallow goo is jogging," she said. "Eats  away
your boots, but you last longer."
     "Sure beats swimming in it," I agreed.
     "Don't be silly. That would kill you."
     I made a mental note to brag to Arlene about my swim.
     I searched the immediate vicinity for any life-giving blue spheres, but
we were alone in the sea of green. "So what does your computer map say?"
     Arlene zoomed the room we were in, and we noticed a  couple of switches
and a teleporter.
     We threw the first switch, and  stairs  slid into view  like shark fins
rising  from a tranquil sea. We  hoofed  it  to the next switch,  then  went
straight to  the  teleporter.  We did  not pass  GO, we did  not collect 200
monsters.
     "My turn to go first," she declared; I knew better than to argue.
     "I'll count to thirty."
     Her trim  form faded  from  view,  and I  started  the count.  ".  .  .
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty."
     Weapon  up,  I followed,  ready for  almost anything--  except  what  I
actually saw: a whole bank of shiny, new, undamaged  radios! "Bank is open,"
said Arlene.
     "I  guess they missed this  room," I  said,  checking  the corners  for
possible ambush. There was nowhere to hide, and we seemed to be alone; but I
didn't let  down my guard. The invisible ghosts were  reason  enough not  to
completely trust the old eyeballs.
     Arlene fired  up one of the radios  then whooped for joy when it hummed
and came on-line. But no matter what frequency she  typed, we heard  nothing
but crashing- ocean static.
     Arlene took  her time, running carefully by five  mega-  hertz jumps up
the entire  spectrum;  then  she  tried the  same procedure  with  different
radios. The results were the same.
     "Fly, this doesn't make sense," she said finally.
     "They couldn't be blocking the signal somehow?" I asked.
     "These  antennas  stick  half a  kilometer  off the  surface of Deimos!
Whatever's blanking the signal must be enveloping the entire moon."
     Time to put on  the  thinking cap. I  even paced. "Arlene,"  I said  at
last, "every radio I came across on Phobos was smashed."
     "Same with me."
     "Now here is a vitally important communications room that they couldn't
possibly miss . . ."
     "You're assuming an intelligent enemy here," she said.
     "There has  to  be,  Arlene! Phobos  and Deimos are  part  of the  same
invasion. Why leave this room intact, but not the ones on Phobos?"
     "Fly, Deimos  was abandoned  four  years  ago.  I was  present when the
Marines picked up everything and left. Budget cuts,  reduction in force, and
a lack of tactical imagination sent us packing."
     I nodded, sitting on the floor with my  back to the  wall, at  an angle
where I had an unobstructed view of the door. "A big mistake," I said.
     She was on a roll: "What if  the aliens invaded back then? Or some time
ago--weeks, months, or  longer. They could take their time spreading through
the facility  . .  . and  there'd be no reason to smash  the radios here  on
alien-controlled Deimos."
     We listened to  the  symphony of  white noise. "So  why can't  we reach
anyone now, Arlene?"
     When enough crazy stuff happens all at once, the imagination is free to
float off like that damned pump- kin. I didn't know if it was inspiration or
not, but I asked the trillion-dollar question: "Maybe Deimos is no longer in
orbit around Mars?"
     I was so used to the  way  she liked to  watch  me through slitted eyes
that when she stared at me wide-eyed, she looked like a different person. "I
never thought  of that,"  she said. "It would explain Deimos  vanishing from
the screens. I just assumed it was destroyed somehow."
     Having started  down  the twisting path,  I ran  to  keep up. "You said
Deimos is so small that gravitational effects are negligible. It's more like
a giant spaceship than a planet."
     We stared at each other. Inspiration can be  catching. "But how  do you
remove  an entire moon instantaneous- ly," she mused, "even one as  small as
Deimos?"
     I don't spend all my time on target practice and working out; sometimes
I read. "By shifting it into a different dimension?"
     She smiled. "Fly, you've been watching too many sci-fi trideos."
     "I  don't  know about  that,  A.S.;  but  special  F/X  will  never  be
convincing again after facing the real thing."
     "What  makes you  think  we'll ever see  another movie?"  Neither of us
spoke for a bit; then Arlene continued.
     "So suppose they've turned Deimos  into a giant space- ship," she said.
"Where would they be taking us? Back to their home world?"
     "With  us as  prime specimens?"  I  said,  not  feeling  the  least bit
comfortable  about the  idea. "Whatever  the destination,  I've  got  a  bad
feeling about this."
     "Any destination is probably bad for us," she agreed.
     "We could be in some kind of artificial wormhole on the way to hell."
     "As if  this weren't  hell already! Besides, I'm  not religious, Fly; I
didn't go to any parochial school."
     My  mind's  eye conjured up old  images  from  the  Chapel of Mary  and
Martha. Sister Lucrezia, who taught
     us Dante's Inferno, acted as if she'd just returned from a
     special tourist-class trip through the infernal regions and
     couldn't wait to share her Bad News for Modern Man.
     One July weekend at Saint Malachi Summer Camp, I saw
     her in full regalia, standing up in a rowboat and pushing
     off from the dock with a long oar. I thought I'd seen a
     vision of Charon the Boatman, ferrying lost souls across
     the River Styx. I doubt any monster here could beat her
     out for the job.
     I was half convinced I was already on a one-way trip to
     the real place. But the idea that Arlene was coming along
     drove me mad with anger. I wasn't about to let one
     stinking demon-claw touch that noble soul of hers.
     Arlene stood up from the useless radios. "I've been
     trying to get a fix on the enemy, some handle; but all I'm
     doing is drawing blanks. I've had the experience of
     running down corridors before," she confided, "with
     dozens of armed men out for my blood. Sometimes your
     best chance for survival is to go right into the rooms and
     corridors they hold and destroy whatever they came for.
     We made our way into the embassy vault and burned all
     our important documents ... and the KPLA left. You
     know what I'm talking about?"
     "I'm glad you got out of there, A.S. It was a real
     hellhole."
     "Yeah, I wouldn't miss this hell pit for the world."
     I stared at the radios myself. Yep . . . that's a radio, all
     right, I thought, which is about as far as my education in
     electronic communications gear went.
     Why on Earth--on Deimos--would the Corps give up
     such a strategic position as this station? By Executive
     Order number whatever, the Marines had military juris-
     diction on all extraterrestrial planetary surfaces; the
     Navy had deep space; the Air Force had atmospheric;
     and the Army had Earth itself.
     Mars, Phobos, and Deimos were surely ours to the
     bone. The only reason I could imagine us giving it up was
     if the  other services  conspired to cut our space-ops budget. . . with
pretty disastrous consequences. Wonder if anybody felt shame about that,  or
would if we lived to tell anyone?
     "Round of ammo for your thoughts," she said.
     "Nothing important. Politics back on the old home planet."
     "At least there's no politics here. Unless you count that swastika."
     "You saw it, too?" I was beginning to wonder if I'd dreamed that damned
crooked cross. "That's not poli- tics; it's a bad joke."
     "You think they put it there to scare us,  huh?  The way they--what  do
you call it? rework--the physical build- ings gives me the creeps."
     "Nothing from Earth scares  me  after  what  I've  seen, Arlene. What's
next, a hammer and sickle?"
     "A what?"
     "Never mind. You're too young to  remember. I'll make you a bet that we
don't find any other symbols from the home planet."
     We  shook  hands. "You'll lose," she said.  "You  are thinking too much
about  politics. I win if we find any symbols, including religious symbols .
. . and there've been plenty enough of those."
     "Damn, you're right. I lose. All the Satan stuff."
     She could sound  like  a  professor  when  she wanted  to:  "Maybe  the
demons--the aliens--were confused by Hollywood into thinking the swastika is
a satanic sym- bol. It sure seems suspiciously like somebody had an official
list of Things that Scare  Westerners . .  . like they knew it would be seen
by  UAC workers and  Marines, not by Native  American  Indians  or Japanese.
Wonder if they'd  change the symbols  for different  humans,  say  using the
letters kyo or oni if they were invading the Nippon Electric space station?
     "In  any  case,  the  religious  symbols are terrestrial, so you  lose,
Corporal."
     Now it was  my turn to grin. "Well, Arlene, if you  are going to lose a
bet, it's good to find out before you set the amount." She gave me a playful
punch in the shoulder.  We started out while  I massaged the numbness out of
my arm. At  the next inverted cross we passed, I'd  pay anything she wanted.
Within reason.





     20




     The video  map  showed us how to get to the central elevator for all of
the Deimos installation. We were  very  near. All that separated us from our
goal was a wall.
     The wall had a switch, a full-body bas relief of a cloven-hoofed alien.
And it wasn't his tongue that re- quired flicking.
     My face flushed. "Um, you'd better take this one, PFC Sanders.
     "And  here I thought you were  a born lever-puller." Arlene flicked the
switch; the blue-gray wall cranked  down into a slit in the floor, revealing
a spacious lift. "Deluxe service," Arlene said, pointing at the labeled bank
of elevator buttons. We'd made it through the Containment Area. Below us was
the Refinery, then Deimos Lab, the  Command Center,  the  Central  Hall, and
three levels below that which were unlabeled.
     "Basement? Skip the crap?" I said.
     "Hm. Yeah, well, maybe."
     "Maybe? Makes sense to me. Every time that door slides open, we run the
risk  of  being stormed by giant vampire  slugs from  the planet  Pornos, or
being machine- gunned to death by Nazi schutzstaffel."
     "Fly,  these lifts  didn't work too  well even back  when we had people
maintaining  them!  They  got stuck all  the time.  If  the sensors detected
anything in  the shaft, you stopped at the floor above.  If  a door was open
some- where, the whole elevator could freeze. Go ahead and push the basement
button . . . I'll bet you a month's pay we won't make it  more than a couple
of levels; then we'll have to find another lift somewhere."
     I looked at her and snorted. "You're so full of good cheer. Well, ready
or not, here goes nothing."
     Here went nothing, all right.
     I  pushed  the  button;  we started with  a  jerk and ground  downward,
skewing back and  forth  dangerously. As we descended toward the refinery, I
saw that the lift didn't take us  there directly, but to a warehouse section
we'd have  to pass through first. In the  distance  we had an actual view of
the refinery through  large, gaping  holes in the floors and  ceilings. Some
kind of fighting had gone on here.
     We had descended some fifty meters. What we could see  of  the refinery
was laid out like an open maze; it  was  possible to see  in the distance an
expanse of  pink, moving objects that looked like  fleshy cubes or blocks. I
hoped they weren't alive, weren't the next creatures on the hit parade. They
were gigantic,  reminding me of the  "organic ladder" and the  pulsing walls
back on  Phobos. Then we'd  moved  past the point  where  we could  see  the
refinery. Our descent brought us to a more normal scene.
     "Normal" in this case meant a  warehouse area stuffed with UAC boxes to
the height of twelve feet or more  and so  densely packed as to create their
own pseudo- corridors. We'd noticed  a number of humanoid figures  with  the
familiar  brown hide and white  spikes scurrying for cover . . . back in imp
country again.
     The lift  stopped, not quite all the  way to the floor; we  had to jump
down about three meters.
     Arlene peeked  over the  edge.  "You  owe me a  month's  pay,  Corporal
Flaggart."
     "Did I take the bet? I don't recall saying any such thing."
     "Native American giver."
     We hopped out onto the ugliest, puke-green marble I'd ever seen; but it
was still good to have something solid underfoot.
     "All right, PFC Sanders, let's do this by the numbers."
     "Sure, Fly. So which box is number  one? And how come we never do stuff
by the letters?" I threw her a withering glance, like an older brother to  a
pesky sister. We were ready to rock and roll.
     Fighting  demons  had spoiled me.  I liked an  enemy that  didn't shoot
back.  We  popped  through  the  warehouse  like  nobody's  business,  pulse
galloping, keyed to  instant reaction. The refinery had  its share of  toxic
ooze.  We didn't  pay it any mind,  but so far, there were only a few sticky
regions  instead of  slime beach. I  looked  for  barrels of  the  stuff, my
favorite way of dealing with imps; but there were none.
     The first  fireball missed us by  a  country klick. The second came too
close to Arlene  to suit me, so after I killed the imp, I wasted ammo  . . .
and killed him again  to teach him a lesson. They were smart enough to  duck
in and  out of the  natural defenses  provided by the stacked boxes, but not
enough to gang up  on us or show any other sign of working together. None of
these guys were talking.
     Still, there were a lot more of them than there were of us. One  almost
got me from behind. If he'd had a partner, I'd have been dead meat. Instead,
Arlene slid in behind the both of us and used her bayonet like a can opener.
Busy as I was staying alive,  I could appreciate the sheer  grace of Arlene,
back to the wall of boxes, cradling her shotgun like a baby; never mind dogs
as "man's best friend."
     With  hand gestures  I  indicated who would take which section. Another
fifteen minutes and we were back in the same place. She'd killed more than I
had. The warehouse area had been cleared.
     I was tired enough to wish one of those magical blue spheres would make
an  appearance.  I  hadn't  told  her  about  that  because  it  seemed  too
unbelievable, even  in a place  like  this.  But Arlene  the mind reader had
brought a small black case back  with her.  It  looked medical. I'd have  to
start calling her "Doc."
     Opening it,  she produced a syringe  filled with clear liquid,  labeled
"cardiac  augmentation stimulation  unit."  I  held  it for  a second,  then
carefully passed it back to her as if it were a loaded weapon.
     "Can't believe I  found this," she said. "It's synthetic adrenaline  to
be used on patients who are in the throes of cardiac arrest."
     "What would it do to you or me?"
     She  paused, biting her lip  again. "In a normal person, the adrenaline
rush would make you super strong. There's a drawback,  though; it could also
give you tachycardia and kill you."
     "Just say no to having an edge," I commented, taking the black  package
and its contents and adding it to my collection.
     "Fly, maybe  we should  toss  it.  That  stuff could be too  much of  a
temptation."
     "Hey, if push comes to  shove, we can inject one of them with it, right
up their monster fundaments. All in the interests of science."
     The only unlocked  door  led to  a huge,  green marble  chamber with  a
collection  of  weird,  red  pillars.  Pulsing veins stretched  around these
pillars like  living ropes. The sharp, cloying odor of perspiration combined
with  the sick-sweet stench of rotting  meat. Mechanical stuff was fine with
me, even  organic stuff like the  arboretum. But I didn't like it  when they
combined, and I couldn't tell where one  part left off and the  other began.
The throb- bing of the veins matched the throbbing in my head.
     I was almost grateful for the  appearance of a number of imps. At least
they  took my mind off the architecture.  Then some more imps . . . and some
more after that. Too much of a good thing.
     "Check your six, Fly," said Arlene.
     I   looked  behind  me,   across  the  room;  sure  enough,  even  more
snot-spitting spinys.
     My gratitude faded fast. I made out a dozen imps.
     I  started the  donnybrook  with  a  well-aimed  shell;  between  their
fireballs and our shotguns, we  had  one  serious  firefight.  I thought the
pillars would catch fire, so thick were the red flames and black smoke.
     I killed two. Arlene killed three. The  survivors were better than  the
previous imps at dodging behind  the pillars,  and even our shotgun extender
mags were run- ning dry. They forced us back into a corner, pinning us down.
Mexican standoff time. I wanted to bail.
     Then I pumped, and the slide locked! Nothing up my sleeve;  nothing  in
my gun.
     Now what?
     Time to even  the odds. Arlene was watching the imps, firing off a shot
now and then, looking down at her mag window and frowning.
     I  reached  inside  my  vest,  pulled  a  hypodermic  and  studied  it.
Intravenous? No, intramuscular. Well, that was easier, at least. But could I
actually do it? To myself? Jesus, what a dilemma.
     For a moment it was like  being back on Phobos. That needle bothered me
more than flaming  mucus in my  face. Without question,  the next scientific
revolution should  move beyond  the  need  for needles.  But more important,
could I risk a heart attack if I had a bad reaction?
     Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I'm a Marine! Semper  fi,  Mac. I gave  myself
the shot.
     At first, nothing; then the stuff stimulated my adrenal  glands; and in
a minute I was filled with red rage! The  world turned crimson and my breath
was fire. My heart beat so fast that it spun in my chest like a gyroscope. I
drew my bayonet from my webbing and bolted from the corner; if Arlene yelled
after me, I didn't hear it.
     All that mattered was to kill, getting in tight  and cutting the steak.
Blood-rare--God, how I  loved imp blood, thick as red ink  from  a shattered
paint stick, communion wine splashing on the floors of eternity.
     Every motion was  a target to strike. Flesh  was too easy. Bone was the
real work, the blade sticking in the carti- lage, the cracking and crunching
inspiring me to greater efforts. I hardly noticed the blood  splashing in my
eyes. The world was  already a red  haze; liquid salt was trivial pain as  I
swung my blade in the center of adrenal agony.
     The more I killed,  the  heavier the  weight in my arms. But exhaustion
spurred me to greater fury. I  no  longer saw the Chinese-mask faces of  the
imps, only a blur. Their claws rent my flesh, but we were too tight for them
to use their best weapon.
     Dimly I realized that I was bleeding from  many  wounds.  That was fine
with me. Blood  kept  me  warm, theirs, mine, anyone's . ..  just  so that I
could continue  to swing  a blade  and slay the bastards. Motion must be met
with motion.
     An imp exploded in front of me  before I could even reach it. Only  one
imp left now.
     "Fly!" A voice called my name, near at  hand. I hadn't  expected any of
these  imps to  speak,  especially  not in a  high,  almost  feminine voice,
calling my name. I  was so surprised that I hesitated  for a  moment,  blade
poised over the last imp.
     "Fly!"
     My vision  began to clear.  My arm was a bar of lead, my  chest a sharp
pain, as the old heart slowed to merely fast. The fury slowly lifted from me
like  a thick,  red, trideo theater  curtain  drawing back.  The  hazy shape
before me grew solid and took on familiar features, Arlene's fea- tures.
     I was very glad that I hadn't killed that last imp.
     21




     They're all dead," she reported. "Are you all right, Fly?"
     "Thirsty,"  I croaked.  My own canteen had split open during the fight,
spilling its contents. She shared water from her supplies.
     "Better?" she asked.
     I nodded, utterly spent.
     I almost fell as she helped  me out of the room. She set me down,  held
my arm. My mind still raced, but my body was exhausted.
     Arlene made me rest twenty minutes, then reluctantly helped me up so we
could move on.
     We walked  past the  secure area,  beyond  the  pillar room, and  faced
another  closed  door. It was hardly worth kicking. On the other  side was a
shimmering floor  of the noxious slime,  across  which was a  console with a
blue key card. "Doesn't look too promising," Arlene said.
     I was never optimistic where  toxic goo was concerned; but my  head was
still flying from the adrenaline, a perfect recipe to make a volunteer.
     "I'll go," I said. "I could use  the exercise. Jogging is just  what my
heart needs right now."
     "You need to rest, Fly!"
     That was thoughtful  of her. I appreciated her senti- ments as I evaded
her grasp  and stepped into the gunk, my  boots  making shunk-shoosh sounds,
slowing  me  down  and  eating bit by  bit through  the  thick soles. Then I
stepped on something  hard and felt it shift under me. Heavy  machine sounds
came up through the slime, followed by something more substantial. A section
of floor rose through the toxin.
     Staggering was not a good idea. I  didn't want to fall  down in this. I
regained  my footing as I saw a wire-mesh platform rising  to match a set of
blue-paneled  lights directly overhead. I was just about  to take steps when
Arlene brushed past, turned, and stepped to  the right  to follow  the  path
that was under those lights.
     As she ran  out of the pathway an  odd thing happened.  More  wire mesh
rose to  meet her  footsteps, correspond- ing to the  lights  above, winking
like the stars  I hoped  I  would  live long enough to see again. I followed
her. A major improvement over the normal way of crossing the slimelands--did
any other spills have such shortcuts installed, I wondered?
     When  we  reached the  "island" on the  other side  of the green ocean,
Arlene said, "You may have something with that rats-in-the-maze idea."
     "No human would design this, except maybe a game show host."
     "Game is right. I  wonder if the  entire moon has  been reworked?"  She
reached over and grabbed the blue key card.
     We found a  door with  pretty, blue  trim; the key card popped it open.
Inside,  I whooped  with pleasure to  see my old buddy, the rocket launcher,
with lots of little battery rockets as well as another AB-10 machine pistol.
     The body of  an imp lay  in  a  corner. "Think that one died of natural
causes?" Arlene asked.
     "Unnatural more likely."
     "Say,"  she said, "if imps are smart enough to talk, why don't they use
weapons?"
     It was a good question  . . .  one of many that had  started to gnaw at
me. "Maybe because it wouldn't be fair," I said.
     "Excuse me?" Arlene's eyebrows shot skyward. "I  must have misheard; it
sounded like you said they don't use weapons because it wouldn't be fair."
     "Let me rephrase ... it would be  a fair test of our defensive ability.
The  mastermind--whoever, whatever --wouldn't learn much except what we look
like when we die ... and God knows, it already knows that well enough."
     After a moment of silent thought,  Arlene  whispered, "I don't like it,
Fly; it makes me feel like we're being watched."
     "You think I'm paranoid?"
     "I didn't say I didn't agree; I don't like the implica- tions, that the
whole  invasion of the Martian  moons is just practice, a war game, just the
prelude to . .."
     "To what?"
     "We'd damn well better find out, Flynn Taggart."
     Arlene took  the  AB-10.  I  took  the  sweet darling  that  could kill
minotaurs and open doors.
     We didn't run into  any trouble on our  way to  the other lift on  this
level; it was clearly marked on  the video map. Maybe that was because there
was so much trouble in the refinery. There must  be a Law of Conservation of
Tsouris. But the buttons for all  levels below the next were inoperative. It
was a local shuttle only. Arlene made triumphant noises, but  I reminded her
that we never did have a bet on.
     Only  way  out is  down, I repeated, and pressed  the button.  Whatever
Arlene  said, I still thought my primary duty was to get her the hell out of
hell; but at the moment,  her path and my path were the same: we both needed
to burn deeper into the nightmare.
     "I don't like the look of this place," said Arlene  as we  stepped from
the lift into a vine-covered hallway.
     "What's not to like?  Rows of skulls,  walls  covered  with  squirming,
writhing, fleshy ivy ... should be like high school by now."
     We gave the tendrils  a  wide berth; they  looked like they  might loop
around our throats and strangle the life from us.
     "Fly," Arlene whispered, "I see another lift right  through there." She
pointed to  the left, at  a gap in the  ivy  on that  side where I  suddenly
realized there was no wall--only the squirming expanse of "plant" life.
     "Uh-oh," I  said. There  was more on the other  side than a room with a
lift in it. There were our old friends, the demons . . . imps, too.
     We dropped back from the window while the imps began to hiss  and heave
flaming spitwads.  Then my pal Arlene froze my  marrow with a professionally
calm voice in my ear: "Fly, I think we're going to need the rocket launcher,
too."
     I  was already getting  ready to rock 'n' roll when I  turned to see  a
pair of giant, floating pumpkins trapped in a cage ahead of us. I could have
sworn that  spot was empty when we first came in  here! Maybe the  cage  had
been lowered just now.
     If  it had been demons, we could have ignored them; but  the  bars were
spaced far  enough  apart that the pumpkins had all the space they needed to
fire their deadly ball-lightning.
     There was no telling  why these  heads were locked up; but it  meant no
more security for us than caged machine gunners.
     The  air  crackled  above  us;  electrical discharge  ran  thousands of
prickling  little  fingers down  my head  and back,  and  our hair  stood at
attention. Arlene looked like a Goosh Ball. Focusing my concentration on the
single  task of standing up and firing, I  heard her  shout,  "I'll take our
nine!" referring to  the maddened imps and demons to our left, at  the "nine
o'clock" position, ripping through the ivy.
     We ducked  as  the fireballs  seared the  same area  where the balls of
lightning  had  played electric  hairdresser. I wished the imps and pumpkins
were only closer together,  so that the  fireballs and lightning balls might
cross paths and wipe out both monster lines.
     I  nearly got my wish. Arlene opened  up with the  AB-10; when the imps
returned fire, they hit their demon buddies. . . the rest was history. While
demons  swal-  lowed imps,  who did  their  best to give  a horrible case of
heartburn, I squeezed the firing ring,  turning  the  pump- kin cage into an
oven to bake pumpkin pie.
     "Are you all right?" I asked. I could tell from the way she was shaking
her head that she hadn't been this close to the rocket explosions before.
     "As soon as the phone stops ringing between my ears," she answered.
     "Pack a wallop, don't they?"
     I was still worrying about the giant blocks of flesh as  we skirted the
cage and  entered an empty,  gray room.  "They used to use a lot of chambers
around here  to  crush ore and refine  the  liquid," Arlene  explained.  "Be
careful  . . . lots of dangerous equipment." Indeed, I could hear some heavy
machinery really earning its keep right nearby. But what?
     No platforms or lifts, no rising  staircases; then Arlene won the prize
by looking straight overhead.
     "Holy ore-crusher, Batman!" she yelped.
     The damned ceiling was descending on us. Not too fast, but fast enough.
"Didn't I see this in a trideo?" I asked, edging back the way we'd come.
     "It's just too Edgar Allan poetic," said Arlene.
     We backed out before turning into grease spots. "Now what?"
     "Hate to say it, Fly . . . but there ain't no other way  to book. There
must be  a  door or something in there--if we can find it and  pop it before
they have to scrape us up with a spatula."
     The  ceiling hit bottom, then rose again  at the same stately pace. "We
could  hunt for another route past this garlic press,"  she said hesitantly.
"But I'm pretty sure this  is the  only direct route around to Sector  Nine,
where  we were  looking through the ivy window at the other lift. At  least,
that's how I remember it from when I was posted here.
     "Look, Fly, let me  go in  and hunt;  I  know what  this place  is like
better than you."
     I hated the thought--Arlene under the crushing ceil- ing while I waited
outside, "guarding"! But. . . she had a point.
     Flashlight  in one hand, Arlene ran to  the opposite  end of  the  room
while  the ceiling  was still rising. She rubbed her  palm gently across the
smooth surface.
     "How are you doing?" my voice was strong enough to call out.
     "I can't find  any switches!" she called. Worried,  I started pacing in
front of the Poe chamber,  a restless sentry. Arlene found nothing . . . but
would you believe it? I triggered a motion  sensor,  causing a door to slide
open near her. It was pure, dumb luck.
     "Come on,"  she  shouted.  The  ceiling had  reached  the  top  and was
descending again.  I ducked my head like a  halfback center-punching through
the  line and bolted  across  the room through  the  door--which had already
begun to close as the ceiling fell.
     The door led to the  room  I'd seen from above, with huge, fleshy cubes
rising and falling, an alien mockery of the ore-crushers.
     But the blocks  weren't just flesh; they  were alive. Twenty-five pink,
fleshy pumping platforms  completely covering a  room seemed  more pointless
than disgusting. They made high, whining sounds like newborn infants.
     "What the hell are they?" I asked.
     "Wonder if they can move out of those holes in the floor?"
     "Christ," I added, "what do they do?"
     Arlene  edged  closer  to  one block. She squatted and  rose  with  it,
following it down and up. "This isn't just random flesh, Fly; this is muscle
tissue. Human muscle tissue."
     I approached another block. "This is a heart or  liver or something." I
tracked  along the  edge of  blocks.  The last of  the five blocks comprised
convoluted ridges and furrows, folds in a grayish, spongy medium. "Unless my
grandma's been lying all these years," I said, "them there's brains, A.S."
     "Yecch." We backed away. "All right. . .  muscles, brains, some kind of
organ meat--this suggest a pattern to you, Fly?"
     "Several." None of them pleasant.
     "Are they farming meat, human flesh?"
     "That's the best-case scenario, Arlene."
     She looked at me with eyes widening. "And the worst-case?"
     I smiled grimly. "They're farming humans. They're  getting the hang  of
growing   human  cells  because  they're  trying  to   genetically  engineer
zombie-soldiers, better than the pathetic ones they have now."
     We watched the  blocks rise and fall a couple more minutes. Then Arlene
upspake. "Corporal?"
     "Yes, PFC?"
     "Permission to hose their research?"
     "Permission enthusiastically granted. You have  some-  thing  in  mind,
Arlene?"
     She did.  There was a row of torches along the wall we'd entered by. We
blew them out, then  upended them, spilling the oil as  we hopped from block
to squishy  block.  At  the far end,  I  let  Arlene  light  the  ceremonial
cigarette lighter. It was her idea, after all.
     We left the  flesh blocks joyously in  flame. I supposed the bone block
would survive. Well, let the bastards animate skeletons, then!
     We  bolted down  a  corridor and  turned the corner;  there I halted in
astonishment. Arlene plowed into me, then she too stared.
     Fifteen demons had arranged themselves in a semicir-  cle, backs to us,
and they were grunting in unison, giving the impression  of  speech. Over to
the right I noticed a barrel of the ooze.
     "Have I ever told you about my barrel trick?" I whispered.
     "Back up around the corner." I followed her, then peered around,  lined
up my shot very carefully, and gently squeezed the trigger.
     The  world exploded.  The heat blast pressed on  my right eye and right
hand as  I pulled back. The explosion even  drowned  out  the screams of the
demons.
     When the debris settled and the last  piece of pink and red demon flesh
flopped to the smooth floor, Arlene nodded. "Impressive," she pronounced.
     Then we  found out  what the  demons  had been doing  crowded into that
semicircle. They had been worshiping.
     Out  of the smoke and flame  strode a hell-prince ... and it was as mad
as its  name. It  burst  through the wreckage, throwing pieces of demon  and
chunks of  masonry in all directions,  a  state-of-the-art minotaur with one
hell of a 'tude.
     The hell-prince roared  defiance  and began firing dead- ly bolts at us
from its wrist launchers.





     22

     .


     Run!"  I shouted  as I  started loading the rocket launcher. She wasn't
listening. Her AB-10  was  rattling  off hundreds  of shots  that harmlessly
bounced off the hel- lion. Our only chance was the rocket launcher.
     I fired off the  first two rockets as I was dancing backward; the force
knocked me into Arlene and  sent us both sprawling. The AB-10 skidded across
the  floor, and  Arlene  went  after it on hands  and knees.  An energy bolt
flashed between us,  searing my eyeballs for a moment.  I  didn't care if  I
could  see, so long as I could feel the smooth, metal surfaces of the little
D-cell rockets and finish reloading. Just as I finished  loading,  my vision
cleared;  the eight-foot hell-prince bore down upon us,  surrounded by smoke
and stinking of brimstone.
     I'd promised myself never, ever to fire off rockets this  close to  the
target!  But a good look at that green  gorgon face with the ram's horns was
all I needed to reassess my position. I squeezed.
     The  third and fourth direct  hits  slowed the behemoth  to  a confused
crawl; but still it stood. I could see again--but now I couldn't hear.
     Loading, fingers numb, I didn't bother getting back to my feet; I fired
from where I  lay. I slid past Arlene, who had picked up her machine  pistol
and was aiming it.
     She  shielded  her eyes and hugged the ground as  rockets five  and six
pounded the same tough chest that had withstood the previous four.
     I closed my  eyes while sliding; the force  of the sound took me like a
physical wave, carrying me down the  hall. The weight of Mars pressed on  my
eardrums as I rose groggily to my feet to reload the launcher. The Prince of
Hell stood stock-still, eyeing me with a doleful expres- sion.
     I aimed and prepared to  fire; but  the  monster  made a loud, wheezing
sound--a sigh?--and tumbled over, stiff  as a  statue, to impact directly on
its face.
     "What in God's name was that?" Arlene gasped, still shaking.
     "No  naming  game  for this baby," I said. "Already has a name.  You're
looking at the same model of Hell Prince you dodged when you slipped through
the crack on Phobos,  before  the  Gate. This  is what was tramping down the
corridor while you scrawled a skull and C- bones on the wall."
     She shook her head, clearing alien cobwebs and ap-  pearing truly weary
for the  first time. "Boy, if the light  had been better, you'd have been on
your own, Fly, 'cause I sure as hell wouldn't have wasted two seconds making
a mark with that mother staring me in the face."
     "Oh yes you would have."
     "Egomaniac."
     We  needed all the  cheering  we could give each other. Picking through
the  carcasses,  it seemed  unfair that  our only reward  would be more ooze
exactly where we needed to go.
     "Damn," said Arlene, "the whole place looks flooded."
     "You came up with the jogging theory," I reminded her.  "Let's find out
how good it is."
     I shouldn't have said anything, for then  she  insisted on going first,
running  through  the middle  of the toxin. I followed close behind, feeling
the pain  right through my  soles. We didn't quite manage to jog, but we did
keep up a brisk walk.
     The toxin slowed us down with a sucking, gripping quality; each  second
made me feel like it had been too long since my last checkup. I kept wishing
for another  of  those crazy  blue  spheres to show  up: I was beginning  to
wonder if I'd imagined the first.
     All bad things come to an  end. We finally made it  around the facility
to the other  elevator in Sector 9, not ten feet from where we'd started, if
only we'd been able  to shove through the flesh-ivy. I was beginning to hate
the ooze more than I did the monsters . . . except when it was in barrels.
     The lift was the antique  kind with  a  lever to start and stop, rather
than buttons. We had a hell of a  time trying to get it to stop at  the next
level down.
     The  level started with a  teleporter;  not a good sign,  far as I  was
concerned. "My turn to go first," I said; Arlene didn't argue.
     By the time she arrived, thirty seconds later, I was back  at work. I'd
killed three imps  and five former soldiers/ workers, a more dim-witted than
usual zombie collec- tion.
     "My turn to rescue you,"  she said;  but this was  duck soup after  the
hell-prince. Heck, most of the zombies weren't even armed!
     "We're getting good at this," I said.
     "Don't get cocky," she warned. I let it pass without remark.
     A platform lowered as we approached, as if inviting us into the parlor;
still  feeling cocky  despite Arlene's  warn- ing,  I stepped aboard. Arlene
followed, of course.
     At  the  top,  I took  a  turn and  came  face  to  face  with  another
hell-prince, holding a blue key card in its claws!
     "Get it--get it!" Arlene shouted; I didn't know wheth- er she meant the
card  or the monster ... but in either case,  I had only four  rockets left,
not enough!
     I jerked up the  launcher, then paused, staring. Some- thing was weird.
Then I realized: we were nose-to-snout, and the thing hadn't screamed yet.
     Or moved. I edged closer  ...  It was frozen solid, like  it had seen a
gorgon from Greek mythology. Turned to stone.
     Heart pounding like a  pile driver,  I stepped close and gently plucked
the blue key card from its claw.  Then I rejoined Arlene on the floor, still
shaking.
     Toxic waste  literally surrounded us, the dry space where we stood like
an island. The light was good enough to see other raised machinery platforms
making islands in this sea.
     Arlene found a pole of thin metal. She tapped around  for shallow parts
and  traced a crossable path to the  first "island"; then she  repeated  the
process  until we  made it through the  toxic  goop  and  into  blue-glowing
corridor.
     At least the color of the corridor made me glad  to  have the blue  key
card. On cue, we ran into a blue-trimmed door at the end of the corridor. We
crossed  into a narrow corridor with  red-glowing walls, floor, and ceiling,
so bright  that it hurt our eyes. We heard a familiar thud- thud  at the end
of the hall; it sounded like more flesh blocks.
     Variety  is the spice  of life, even on Deimos. The sounds came  from a
piece of stamping machinery that didn't seem to be  the least bit organic. I
was grateful for that.
     "Oh, great," said Arlene, "some jerk has tossed anoth- er key card onto
the  base." The implication was that we couldn't walk away from something so
valuable as anoth- er computer key card.
     A  giant,  metal  piston  repeatedly  smashed  down  to  within  a  few
centimeters of the base, stamping anything on the base into powder. "Arlene,
why would anyone put the card out for us, except as bait? We don't need it."
     "We used  the blue card to get  this far," she insisted. "What's behind
the mystery yellow door?"
     "But Arlene .. ." She was  through listening.  The  only way to get the
yellow  key  card  was to slide across the base, grab it,  and  roll off the
other side before the stamping  part came  down to turn the  contestant into
pate.
     She backed away, measuring the piston's rise  and fall with her eyes. I
was about  to  stop  her and tell her about the patented  Fly  technique for
opening doors; then I remembered my meager supply of rockets.
     "At least let me do that," I said.
     "You? Corporal Two-left-feet on the drill field?"
     I  opened  my  mouth to  angrily  protest;  then  I  realized  she  was
right--understating it,  if anything.  I never could get the timing right on
anything more complicated than dress-right-dress or point-and-shoot.
     My  heart in my mouth, I watched Arlene count, timing  the piston. Then
quickly, before she  could think  better of it or I could object  again, she
jumped just as it hit the low point and started to rise again.
     Arlene sprinted  across  the  room and threw  herself into a face-first
baseball slide, scooping the key card in her arms. She slid to a halt... but
she was still on the base!
     For an instant she froze. I couldn't possibly reach her  in time--and a
horrible image flashed through my mind.
     If Arlene died, in the next  cycle,  I knew I would jump on the machine
and die alongside her.
     Thank  God I didn't have to make that decision; at  the last second she
made a panic roll off the platform.
     Arlene left the  key card on  the stamper, near the edge; but it was  a
simple matter, when the piston rose, to scoop it off from where she stood.
     She pocketed  it...  and good thing;  past  the stamping machine  was a
thick airlock door, tough as  a  bank vault,  surrounded by yellow lights. I
doubt a rocket would even have scratched the chrome. Maybe a SAM.
     The  yellow  key  card  let  us  into  a  central,  circular   corridor
surrounding a giant, cylindrical  room. We  took  a lift down into the room;
once inside, the lift moved up again.
     "Uh, Fly, I don't see any switch to bring it back down." Damned  if she
wasn't right.
     From inside, the lift door looked like a spine  with ribs coming out of
it. Once again, no human would ever have made anything like this. The aliens
were definitely re- working Deimos, and had been for some time.
     "I don't like  their interior  decorator," she  said, as if reading  my
mind. She  tilted her  head in the direction of the latest attraction. A row
of  what  looked like red spittoons stretched out of sight, and  on each one
there was a skull bathed in red light.
     "If  these  were  human  minds,  I'd  say  they  were  psy- chotic,"  I
commented.
     "You know something, Fly? Every monster we've seen has a head too large
or strangely shaped to be mistaken for a human head."
     "Yes."
     "Then how  do you  account for  the skulls?  Whether they're designs on
walls or ceilings or whole skulls like these, they're all human."
     "And they couldn't have been taken from us, not all of  them;  with all
the zombies and unbeheaded corpses, who'd be left?"
     She  touched one.  "This isn't real,"  she  said. "More like metal than
bone."
     I turned it over, looking at it from  different angles.  "I'll bet it's
meant to scare  us, same as  the  freakin' swastika. Well, we're past  being
bothered by Halloween."
     I instantly  regretted my choice of words.  No sooner  would I  toss  a
challenge into the air than  it  would be answered. Was someone watching our
every move?
     This  time it  was a horde of  imps, zombies, and a couple of  pumpkins
coming  around  the  curve  of  the  room,  screaming  doom  in  our   ears.
Fortunately, they were only coming  at us from the one direction.  We  would
have had no chance if attacked from both directions.
     Arlene dropped flat, and I let  fly with my last rockets. I ignored the
imps, concentrating on the two pumpkins, the greater threat.
     Somebody got careless on the other side, and soon all the monsters were
mixing it up among themselves.
     We drew back around the curve and waited for silence; then we slid back
and  smoked the  survivors with  shotgun  and AB-10.  I  still had one  last
rocket.
     In the  course  of  the  fight,  somebody--us  or  them--  accidentally
activated  a switch in the floor  that  caused part  of a staircase to rise.
When the last pumpkin smashed into orange and blue slime  against the ruined
head of the last assassinated imp, we started up the steps. Arlene activated
the next switch.
     Another set of steps rose, and we took them to the third switch and set
of stairs. At the top we found a teleporter.
     We  stepped  aboard  one at a  time, me  first, teleporting  to a  long
corridor with barred windows looking outside. Arlene  bent over for a closer
view and pulled back with a gasp.
     "Let me guess," I said. "You didn't see the stars or Mars."
     Swallowing hard, she motioned  for me to look for myself. She wasn't in
the mood  for humor. Blood had drained from her face, a  reaction  I'd never
before seen in Arlene. I put my face against the window.
     As a child,  I'd  seen a painting in  a museum that  gave  me my  first
nightmare. I hadn't thought of it in years; but now it came back to me.
     Beyond the window was a river of human faces, hundreds of them, each an
island in an ocean of flesh. Each face had a horrified expression stamped on
it, each a damned soul.
     The spectacle achieved its purpose. We were  both distracted. Otherwise
we  wouldn't have  been so careless  as to allow a  stomping,  single-minded
demon to get close enough to clamp its jaws on Arlene's back and shoulder.
     Her  cries were echoed by each face in the river of damned souls,  each
screaming Arlene's pain and tor- ment.
     23




     Arlene!" I  shouted. I grabbed  the monster with my hands and literally
pulled it  off  her  before it  could position itself  to  take a second and
certainly lethal bite.
     It stumbled clumsily. I  grabbed the AB-10 and pumped two  dozen rounds
into its open, blood-caked maw. It didn't get up.
     I was  almost afraid  to  touch her. Blood pumped out  of the horrible,
fatal wound.
     Arlene was dying.
     Her  face was sallow,  eyes vacant and staring. One  pupil was dilated,
the  other  contracted to a pinpoint. There was nothing I could do, not even
with a full medical lab.
     But damn  her,  she was not  going to die here  and  join that river of
faces.
     As gently as I could,  I lifted  Arlene's bleeding body in  my arms and
carried her out  of  that circle of hell. Her rasping breath  was  a call to
arms, a signal that life and hope still remained in the young gal.
     I set her down at the end of the corridor; the lift door was blocked by
a river of what  appeared to  be lava. Hoping the red  stuff was at least no
worse than the green stuff,  I dashed across  into an  alcove where a single
switch mocked me.
     I flipped it, causing a path to rise up through the "lava."  So far, so
good. I  ran back, grabbed  Arlene, and walked across the path as quickly as
possible.
     At  the last  step  before reaching the lift, I heard a  grinding noise
from behind. I paused and looked back: a new path rose slowly, leading to an
alcove hidden from view except from where I now stood.
     The cubbyhole  contained another  one of  the  blue-face spheres that I
thought  I'd never  see again, the one  item  that  I  had hesitated to tell
Arlene about because it seemed so incredible.
     The sight was  like another of  the adrenaline bursts. Quickly,  before
the  path could lower again, I powered her across, not bothering to stop and
pick up pieces of  equipment that fell from us,  some landing on  the  path,
some lost  in the lava. I had a great terror that the sphere  would fly away
just before I got there, like a carnival balloon just out of reach.
     I reached  it, hesitated for a moment--then literally threw Arlene onto
the sphere to make sure I wouldn't be the one to touch it first.
     With a nearly audible silent pop, the blue liquid was all over her; and
the red liquid  on her body, the blood, evaporated into the blue. Arlene sat
up and coughed, looking like someone coming out of a deep sleep.
     "How do you feel?"
     "My shoulder hurts like a son of a bitch. What the hell happened?"
     "Pinkie  decided to have you for a midnight snack. I put him on a diet.
You sure you're all right?"
     Standing  up,  she  shook  her  arm, staring in wonder at  the shredded
sleeve and tooth marks. "What in God's name did you do to me?"
     I  figured the  time had finally come to  tell  her about the  magical
blue spheres. She had no trouble believing me.
     Only  my pistol  and some  shotgun shells  had  been lost  to the lava.
Weapons  in hand, we  slid  into  the elevator  and  pressed  the only floor
button, labeled Command Center.
     The lift had barely begun to grind slowly downward when suddenly Arlene
reached past me  and pushed  the  red "kill" button.  The  elevator stopped,
falling silent.
     "Why did you kill the power?"
     She  stared  at me before answering. For a moment I had a terrible fear
that something had gone wrong with the blue sphere and she was going to turn
into a zombie in front of me. Instead she  asked, "Fly, are you starving, or
is it just me?" I shook my head. She continued: "Maybe it's that blue thing,
but I'm so famished I could swallow one of those pink demons."
     "How about floating pumpkin pie for dessert?"
     "And I'm  suddenly exhausted. Fly, I need some sleep." I had completely
lost  track of  the  supplies.  Arlene  hadn't.  "Don't you ever  listen  to
training  videos?  Never wander into battle without MREs."  She demonstrated
the truth of her maxim. Suddenly, I realized I was hungrier than  I thought.
A  Meal Ready to Eat  sounded like  the finest, gourmet cuisine in the solar
system.
     "A stopped elevator as a secure base. I never would've thought of it."
     "Next  best thing  to a  Holiday  Inn," she  added, raising an eyebrow.
Arlene showed a domestic side that sur- prised me. While we talked, she took
the packages of  freeze-dried  food  and  mixed  them in  the water  of  her
canteen. "Sorry it'll be cold," she said as I watched her shake the contents
with the skill of a bartender preparing the perfect martini.
     "That's  all right, beautiful. I like  cold--" I picked up the package,
glanced at the title. "--cold beef stew."
     I also liked the fact that Arlene was  alive. As we chowed down, I felt
the strongest emotions since finding her on Deimos.
     Maybe she sensed the inappropriate feelings coming off me in waves. She
lowered her head and blinked rapidly, as if stopping herself  from crying by
main force.
     "What's wrong?" I asked.
     "Don't want to tell you."
     "Why not?"
     She hesitated. "Willy," she said. "PFC Dodd."
     "Oh." I squirmed uncomfortably.
     "I've been forcing myself not to think  about him. He's dead, isn't he?
Or ... worse."
     "You don't know that! I thought you were dead or  reworked, but I found
you alive."
     "Find anybody else?"
     I didn't say anything.
     "Fly,  I've accepted the fact. That he's dead, I mean. I don't think  I
could  face--the  other possibility." She looked  up, her eyes moist but not
tearing. "Promise me something."
     "Anything possible."
     "If we find him and he is, you know  . . . and if I can't do it... will
you? Promise? And don't mention him again."
     I nodded,  not trusting myself to speak. Funny lump in my throat. Yeah,
babe; I'll be happy to blow away my rival for your hand if  he should happen
to turn up a zombie. No problemo!
     She changed the  subject, wrenching my mind back on  the primary issue.
"Fly, I think  it's pretty  likely that the aliens we're fighting aren't the
same ones who built the Gates."
     "I was wondering about  that  myself," I said.  "All this weird  stuff,
skulls and  satanic  symbols--there was noth- ing about the Gates themselves
that hinted at this. The Gates don't look like a Vincent Price movie."
     "There's nothing eldritch about the Gates," she said. I was starting to
like that word. "So let's assume these aliens found the Gates and discovered
a way to turn them on from the other  end. But why do they look so much like
human-style demons?"
     "Genetic  engineering?"  I  suggested.   "They  could  be  deliberately
designed to look like our conception of hell, particularly the hell-princes.
They're the dead give- aways."
     "Can't you find some other  word than dead?" she begged, a fleck of red
tomato paste on her lips.
     "The hell-princes are just too much like medieval drawings of the devil
to be natural."
     "Unless they really are hell-princes," Arlene said.
     ! shook my head,  unwilling to consider that possibility. So we sat  in
silence for a moment, finishing our food and drink. Much more thinking along
these lines and I'd be ready to take communion again.
     "I was  never  really  afraid of monsters as a child,"  Arlene  finally
said. "Grown-ups were scary