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tunnel seemed to be twisting around him, fissures appearing in the metal
surface now, Culhane having to jump one that opened up suddenly before him.
He was at the end of the tunnel.
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"Steiglitz and Sonia I saw them get into one of the UFOs! I don't know "
If she was still talking, Culhane couldn't hear her. The wailing from the
pyramid walls at the other end of the tunnel, the ripping and tearing sounds
of the metal, all of this was obliterated by a roar like the one Culhane had
heard earlier when Steiglitz had tested the ship and activated the second part
of the intruderdefense system. Except this roar was almost unbearably loud
because it was so near.
The ship seemed to move slightly, then suddenly it was up, hovering, airborne,
turning away from the tunnel entrance in which Culhane and Mulrooney stood,
starting slowly, almost hesitantly across the hangar bay as chunks of rocks
and debris pelted against it and around it.
The entrance to the tunnel through which they had come from the surface, the
center one of the seven tunnels, suddenly collapsed, rocks and metal crashing
down.
The airfoil hovered there near it, then shifted to Culhane's and its right
toward the next tunnel. There was a roar louder than the first, and the ship
shot through the tunnel.
"I picked up your knife," Mulrooney said, handing it into his right palm.
"Very thoughtful!" He looked into her face.
The entire underground complex was being destroyed, the hangar bay falling
down around them. The tunnels were closing; another was collapsing. The tunnel
behind them leading into the main pyramid seemed to explode as Culhane pulled
Mulrooney away and into his arms.
There was only one way out.
Culhane said nothing, but holding Mulrooney's hand, he ran toward the nearest
of the aircraft. They reached the hatch, rocks from the cave-like vault of the
hangar bay tumbling around them, the metal floor of the hangar bay fissuring,
giant cracks running the length of the floor surface opening all around them.
One of the ships plunged down as a crack opened, and it vanished from sight.
Culhane started inside, ducking his head as he took the three low steps to the
bridge in one stride. "You're the UFO expert, kid help me fly this sucker!"
He slumped into the right of the two seats at the center of the bridge. It
faced the more complex diode console.
He could barely understand one out of every two dozen symbols of the bizarre
hieroglyphics before him.
The noise from outside the ship was even greater now, and through the open
hatchway and the dome above him, he could see the hangar bay ceiling
collapsing, chunks of gray rock raining down.
Culhane sat rigidly in the pilot's seat. He hoped it was that, anyway.
He closed his eyes and willed the hull door to close.
Mulrooney screamed, "The door closed-you closed the hatch!"
Culhane opened his eyes.
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He tried conceptualizing it to be like the submarine. He decided to speak
aloud to the machine. Above them, through the glasslike material of the dome,
he could see the fissuring of the cavern ceiling. The hangar bay was about to
be completely destroyed.
"Maneuvering engines activate!" he called out. Nothing happened.
"Maybe you can't do it by talking out loud," Mulrooney suggested.
"Maybe," he said to her. He felt stupid talking to a flying saucer. And
thinking to a flying saucer under millions of tons of rock and ice in the
middle of Antarctica seemed even sillier.
He closed his eyes, then opened them. Maneuvering engines on, he thought.
There was a low rumble.
You have to see it, to feel it in your mind, Culhane thought. Full maneuvering
power, he thought, visualizing the ship as ready, almost eager to move out.
The hum increased. He visualized the ship floating on air, thinking, Hover!
Looking through the dome, he could see that the craft was rising. He could
feel it in his stomach. Approach the tunnel to the far right to far
starboard, he envisioned, he thought, he commanded. The ship responded. He
could feel the movement, could see it through the dome.
He looked straight up. The central section of the cavern ceiling was
collapsing toward them. Engines to full power, into the tunnel at full takeoff
acceleration speed! All monitoring systems ready to respond!
The diode panel before him illuminated, and Mulrooney was hurtled into the
seat beside him as the ship trembled once. Through the transparent dome they
saw a blur of gray as the ceiling collapsed, then the sheen of the luminescent
metal of the tunnel.
But it, too, was blurred. Culhane could feel the speed.
He twisted in his pilot's seat. Behind them, the tunnel seemed to be
collapsing, the ragged lines of fissures blurs around them. "Hold on tight,
Fanny!"
Maximum cruise flank speed get us out of the tunnel!
He visualized it and it happened.
The hum of the engines or whatever they were was loud now, and Culhane could
feel something like an invisible hand hammering him back into the seat. The
arm to the left of his seat rose and dropped in place across his abdomen like
a seat belt. He glanced over at Mulrooney; she too was held in her seat now.
"What's happening?"
"The hell if I know," Culhane shouted. As he looked at her, he could see she
was fumbling with her purse. "What the "
It was a camera, ridiculously small, and she was working it inside the ship
and through the dome. "You'll never get those exteriors your film couldn't be
fast enough!"
"I'm gonna try. What's "
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Culhane looked ahead of them at a solid wall of ice.
"We're going to crash!"
Culhane put her voice out of his mind, thinking, Weapons system activate
destroy the ice!
The tunnel walls instantly glowed, but it looked to Culhane like rays of
reflected light. Through the dome, he watched the light pulse rhythmically,
and chunks of ice before them exploded a split second before there would have
been impact. There was more ice ahead. Again came the golden rays of light.
More of the ice exploded around them, the ice covering the tunnel walls now.
There was more ice and more light. Steam filled the tunnel from the melting
ice. Behind them the tunnel was crumbling, huge chunks of it flying and
crashing down in their wake. And the collapse of the tunnel was getting too
close.
Culhane thought to the ship, Maximum obtainable speed under these conditions.
He could feel his head being pressed against the seat back, could hear the
whining hum of the power source increase. They were going faster and faster.
The weapons system still functioned, but the ship seemed to be outrunning the
ice, burning through it, blasting it apart into boulder-sized chunks split
seconds before the ship would have smashed against it.
"How fast are we going?" Mulrooney screamed.
"Maybe not fast enough," he told her, looking behind them again. The tunnel's
collapse followed them like a wave, advancing on them, massive chunks of the
tunnel ceiling heaving downward, the floor of the tunnel bursting upward, the
walls falling inward against their own weight, closing forever.
"I know why Steiglitz wanted these. With one of these ships just one of them
you could rule the world!" As he said it, his eyes met Mulrooney's for an
instant.
But the instant was broken, chunks of debris pelting the ship from behind,
crashing against the dome itself. Maximum obtainable speed. Weapons system
maximum obtainable firing rate, he commanded the craft.
The pulse of the light weapon flickered before them against the mass of ice,
flickering like the jerky action of a silent movie, and suddenly, as Culhane
looked up, there was nothing visible but a tunnel not of metal and ice, but
of light.
Culhane stared straight ahead. Blocks of ice split and crumbled, but he could [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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