"You're looking better," said Sutherland.
"How was I looking?" John did a final chinup, then dropped to the mat. It was main watch-the two had the officer's Rec Area almost to themselves.
"Very dead," said Sutherland. Grabbing a horizontal bar, he did two chinups. "Medtechs were wheeling you from GWU Emergency to a shuttle, life support gear stuck into every vein. You were the color of the deck." He scuffed the gray battlesteel with his shoe. "I was rehearsing a speech for your wife."
Taking a running start, John cartwheeled to the end of the mat, then backflipped to his feet. "Nothing like a new heart."
"Very nice."
They walked to the beverager. John punched up a cup of water, holding it out to Sutherland. The CIA Director shook his head.
"Any rejection problems?"
"None." He gulped down the water. "It's my own tissue, vat grown and installed by Q'Nil and the med staff."
"Prime stuff. Remind me to check in here for my coronary.
"Heard from Zahava?"
"Just a postcard, shuttled up from the Embassy. I'll call her Saturday."
Sutherland frowned. "She doesn't know?"
"Her sister in the hospital, me with a nicked heart? She'd have freaked. I'll tell her when she gets home." He tossed the cup down a disposer.
"You must be getting restless, sitting up here, convalescing."
John's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What do you want, Bill?"
"You," he smiled. "You're needed back on Terra Two. The K'Ronarins found the S'Cotar portal and we've confirmed it. Time to raise some hell."
"No way." He stepped back a pace. "I almost got killed! If the K'Ronarins weren't here, I'd be dead meat!"
Sutherland held up his hands. "Easy, boy. All I ask is that you come with me to our leader's briefing."
"Is this leader short and round?"
"He is."
"When and where?" he sighed.
"Fifteen minutes. Deck four."
"OK. Let me shower and change.
"Who's going to raise this hell?" he asked a few minutes later, as they rode the lift.
"L'Wrona and the commandos.
"Did they tell you about the decal you salvaged from that machine?"
John nodded. "The Empire again-where it shouldn't exist."
The lift stopped with a faint whine. Two brown-uniformed crewmen got on. "I have a theory about the Empire," said Bill as the decks flashed by. "More whimsy than theory. It never died. It's out there somewhere, manipulating us, the K'Ronarins, the S'Cotar, those killer machines-God only knows what else. All for some esoteric and probably rotten end. It's cold, malevolent, immortal and hopelessly mad. Evil, if you will."
The crewmen glanced at him as they exited. The lift started again.
"McShane would call that the delusion of an aging paranoid, I think."
"And you?"
John smiled, shrugging. "Where the Empire is concerned, I reserve judgment."
"Our situation is precarious," said D'Trelna, looking around the briefing room table. John, Sutherland, L'Wrona and K'Raoda, all appropriately grim. "Despite John's and his allies' valiant efforts, the S'Cotar and their portal are alive and well-witness the dramatic hijacking of our sister ship. Further, the bugs can evade our detectors. One dropped in for a chat, the other-one of Shalan's, we assume-was on board modifying our weapon programming. Should you all turn into transmutes now, I wouldn't be completely surprised."
No one laughed.
"They can only have a few detection-avoidance devices," said L'Wrona, "or we'd all be dead."
"If those machines come through, we're dead," said John. "Where the hell are your reinforcements?"
"On the way," said L'Wrona. "It takes time. Fleet's scattered, mopping up S'Cotar remnants, running recovery operations. And this system's far from anywhere."
"We've found what seems to be our end of the Terra Two portal," said Bill. "It's the biofabs' access to this world. The energy traces are unique. J'Quel's had everyone doing a universal terrestrial grid search for similar readings. Nada." With practiced ease, he punched up a hot cup of t'ata from the table. "Your turn, H'Nar."
"A select force will go through that portal to Terra Two," said L'Wrona, "and harry the S'Cotar-a small force to divert attention long enough for reinforcements to reach us."
"So a few of you go and hold the bugs off for a while," said John, "and your reinforcements arrive. Then what? How are you going to get a ship to Terra Two?"
"We're working on that," said D'Trelna.
"How?" asked John.
The commodore shook his head. "No. If you're captured, they'll steal your mind. The less you know, the better."
"And the S'Cotar infiltration of this ship?" asked John.
"Our visitor's gone," said L'Wrona, "and a gunner's missing. Shield's up and will remain up. No one on or off the ship, except the assault force."
"Research's working on new detectors," said D'Trelna. He rose. "Mission briefing, here, in"-he tapped something into the complink, read the result-"one hour and seventeen minutes, then back you go to Terra Two with the team."
"Did I agree to go?" John asked Bill as the others left the room.
"J'Quel always takes silence for the affirmative."
"I see." He seemed to reach a decision. "Fine. I'll go. I have to deliver someone a present, anyway."
"Commanding officer!"
Twenty commandos sprang from their chairs as L'Wrona walked down the aisle, striding briskly to the rostrum. The Terrans-John and Sutherland-kept their seats.
"Sit," said L'Wrona. Like the rest, he wore a black turtleneck sweater, matching pants and a pair of low-cut black boots. The polished t'raq-wood butt of anMilA blaster protruded from the black leather holster on his right hip. All wore the long-barreled Fleet sidearm, but only L'Wrona's bore the starship-and-sun of U'Tria, gleaming in silver below the grips.
"You've all read Mr. Harrison's debriefing," said the captain. "It's been three Terran weeks since he returned and since we lostV'Tran's Glory. The situation on Terra Two should be unchanged.
"Our principal mission is to find and destroy the breeding chambers. Harrison saw no sign of them, but they would logically be in the vicinity of the S'Cotar nest, the Maximus Project. According to Guan-Sharick, this Shalan-Actal's using an untested growth accelerant to breed tens of thousands of new S'Cotar. Of course, any incidental havoc we can wreak, we will.
"Questions?" His eyes swept the row of determined young faces.
"Warsuits, sir?" asked S'Til. Blonde, attractive-no one would have called her cute-M'Taen S'Til wasImpla-cable's commando officer. The best of a good lot, she'd led the point squad into the S'Cotar citadel at the Lake of Dreams. Had she been Fleet and Academy, she'd have commanded a starship.
"No warsuits, S'Til," said L'Wrona. "We're expendable, the warsuits aren't."
The warsuits were another legacy of Empire, silvery bits of formfitting memory foil, impervious to all but multiple blaster hits. The secret of their making long lost, a few hundred had been found toward the end of the biofab war, forgotten in an ancient warehouse in the oldest part of K'Ronar. Without the warsuits, the Fleet Commando wouldn't have returned from the Lake of Dreams.
"All of you know Harrison," said L'Wrona. "He's our tactical advisor. I'll be in command, Lieutenant S'Til second in command."
"Where's the portal, sir?" asked Corporal N'Trun.
"Bill," said L'Wrona, looking at Sutherland. "Your area."
Taking the rostrum, Sutherland called up the overhead screen.
Nighttime. Colored lights, calliope music, whirling carousel, the rumble of a roller coaster, ponies, shrieking kids, laughing adults. Barkers, games, cotton candy, caramel popcorn, ice cream, funhouse.. .
Sutherland held the last shot. "You've all had lots of groundside time here," he said. "Know what this is?"
"It's an amusement park," said N'Trun.
"Right," said Sutherland. "It's the old Glen Echo Amusement Park, on the Maryland-District of Columbia line. The funhouse you see is the Maximus terminus in our universe."
"How do you know?" asked John.
"The signal traces D'Trelna picked up on the grid search. Plus something else. You remember when the bugs had the Leurre Institute?"
"Sure."
"Recall the name of that little bistro, tucked on the end of the main Leurre building?"
Harrison frowned. "Chez… Chez something."
"Chez Nichee," said Bill. " 'Place of the Nest.' Of course, we only learned later what nests and S'Cotar were. Well, they got cheeky again."
He tapped a control. Now they were looking at the front of a red-and-blue barn of a building, perhaps fifty feet high, windowiess. A dozen broad wooden stairs led up to the smoked-glass double doors of the entrance. A bright red torii gate flared above the doors. The doors were padlocked. A permanent-looking sign read "Closed for Renovation-Watch for Grand Opening Next Summer." Two kids, about twelve or so, sat on the top step, eating orange Popsicles. At the bottom and to their left was a white ice-cream pushcart, the paunchy, balding vendor doling out ice cream to a short line of kids.
"Watch." Sutherland shifted to the tall gilt lettering over the torii gate: XANADU.
"So?" said John. "Colorful, romantic, Gay Ninety-ish. Probably some Madame Tussaud rendition of Coleridge inside, complete with demon lover. What makes you think it leads to Terra Two?"
"Because it says it does," said the CIA Director. He zoomed in on the smaller lettering below the name:
Not only the way to Xanadu, But also the way to terror too.
"Weird, but not compelling," said John. "So they left off a comma. You found this afterImplacable picked up the energy trace?''
"Yes."
"H'Nar, your show."
"It's a small S'Cotar nest," said L'Wrona, taking the rostrum as Sutherland sat back down, "but with the same strange energy output we recorded at the time of John's dramatic return from Terra Two. Detector readings show the staff to all be biofabs. The two children on the stairs are sentries. The pushcart, vendor and line are probably a heavy weapon's position, flanking the doorway. We've made five recons in there. Pushcart and children are always there. The faces change, but never the positions. That red structure is the center of the signal.
"We're going in and through to Terra Two. Indigenous Terran forces will take out the S'Cotar as we're quietly taking that building. We'll make certain that no S'Cotar slip through to warn Shalan-Actal. It will be daytime, just before public hours, so they'll be only combatants there.
"Terra Two. You've all memorized the Maximus complex map. We'll come into the portal building, seize it, then break out and regroup.
"If separated, you must make first rendezvous within one Terran hour. Otherwise, we'll be gone.
"Any more questions
"Very well. Luck to you. To the boats."
John watched through the shuttle's window asImplacable shrank to just another unwinking light among billions. He lost it as the craft breached the atmosphere.
"What did L'Wrona mean by indigenous Terran forces?" he asked, turning to Sutherland.
The two sat together aft. At John's question, he began adjusting his chair monitor's flawless picture, transforming a perfect forward scan of North America to a brown-blue blur.
"Marines, mostly," he said. "Some armed by the K'Ronarins and disguised by us, some coming in high and slow to keep the S'Cotar busy."
"Mostly?"
Sutherland looked up from scan. "All but one very sick, brave man to distract gate security. A man with 'Big C who insisted on one last performance, battling alien hordes."
"Bob," said John softly.
Sutherland nodded.
"He hasn't been feeling well…"
"Two, three months left at the most," said Sutherland. "Metastasized throughout his body. He had a brief remission, but it's fading."
"I've got to see him," said John desperately. "You know how many times I wanted to drop out of grad school? How many times he bullied and cajoled me into staying, into working harder?"
Sutherland shook his head. "His contingent's leaving from a different point than yours or mine. There's no time."
"But he's my oldest friend!"
"He asked me to give you this," said Sutherland, handing over a white envelope.
Opening it, John slipped out the piece of white note-paper and read aloud the message, firmly penned by a strong hand:
Dear John,
You know me-no romantic palliatives: no harps, no heaven, no gentle Jesus. Ask my daughter to have them carve the stone with this, from John Donne:
Churches are best for prayer that have least light: To see God only, I go out of sight; And to 'scape stormy days, I choose An everlasting night.
Your friend always, Robert J. McShane