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Brigid declared, "There's an artificial gravity gen-erator in use. More than
likely it's the same kind of grav-
stator we found in the Cydonia One compound. For some reason it's notched
higher than one g."
She wrinkled her nose. "Mars smelled better than this place."
Grant sniffed the air experimentally but said noth-ing. His nose had been
broken three times in the past, and always poorly reset. Unless an odor was
extraor-dinarily pleasant or virulently repulsive, he was in-capable of
detecting subtle smells unless they were right under his nostrils. A running
joke during his
Mag days had been that Grant could eat a hearty din-ner with a dead skunk
lying on the table next to his plate.
Brigid stepped over to Megaera. "Remember, you gave us your word to afford us
safe passage to your council chambers."
The old woman nodded. "I did. We are here."
Brigid's eyebrows lifted. "This?
This place is your ?"
The rest of Brigid's words clogged in her throat as Megaera suddenly threw
herself backward against
Kane, sidekicking her in the belly in the same motion. Brigid jackknifed at
the waist, blurting out a cry of surprise. She staggered back against Grant,
who was forced to let his Copperhead dangle by the strap so he could use both
hands to keep her from falling.
With wire-taut reflexes astonishing in someone so old, Megaera twisted and
wrenched herself free of
Kane's grasp. She slammed both hands flat against his chest, shoving him into
one of the black statues.
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%2...er%2000%20-%20Devil%20in%20the%20
Moon.html (86 of 127) [12/28/2004 3:52:10 PM]
James Axler - Outlanders - Devil in the Moon
Hairline cracks appeared in the black body, and from them spewed tendrils of
equally black smoke. At the same time, an astringent stench filled Kane's
nostrils, an odor of hot sulfur mixed with ammonia.
The cracks in the statue's body expanded into deep splits and more of the oily
vapor plumed out. The smoke spread quickly, and the figure seemed to un-ravel
at the edges, twists of mist rising like a multi-tude of loose black threads.
Clothing, flesh, bones and hair dissolved into a foul-smelling fog.
Thick, blinding smoke boiled out. As Kane tried to recover his balance, tears
streaming from his eyes, he heard Megaera's raucous voice screeching
incompre-hensible words. Kane stumbled backward as he was showered with
foul-smelling ash and blinded by the black mushroom of smoke. He inhaled a
mouthful of vapor and succumbed to a coughing fit.
Grant, coughing and sputtering, glimpsed Megaera at the top of the staircase
an instant before she lunged through the door. Although he couldn't fully
smell the cesspit stink from the destroyed statue, the foul tang of sulfur was
sharp on his tongue. He turned his head and spit.
Fanning the air in front of his face, Kane said, "Now what do we ?" He sneezed
violently.
Brigid guessed what he was going to ask. "We can't stay here. It'll take the
interphaser another few minutes to finish its cycle. Megaera will probably be
back here with a squad of Furies in about thirty sec-onds."
Grant plunged through the settling smoke and ash, eyes narrowed to slits.
"Then let's not hang around. We can meet them halfway. Bring the interphaser."
Brigid bent and picked up the machine. "I don't think that's a good idea. What
if we're captured and it's taken away from us? Damaged beyond repair? I'll
hide it instead."
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Kane glanced around the room. Except for the fig-ures of calcined people, the
big chamber was essen-tially featureless. "Hide it where?"
Brigid nibbled her lower lip for a couple of sec-onds, eyes darting this way
and that. Then she smiled and strode among the black statues. She stopped
be-fore one roughly in the center of the cluster. Its arms were raised as if
in fear, crossed over the upper body. Carefully, Brigid fitted the interphaser
into the cradle formed by the biceps and upper chest.
Kane smiled in approval. The weak, watery illu-mination in the chamber was so
dim and the figure placed in such a way that someone would have to be standing
literally beside it in order to see the device. Grant was already scaling the
staircase, taking two steps at a time. "Let's go!" he called over his
shoul-der.
The stairs led to a dimly lit passageway, looking as if it had been hacked out
of stone and reinforced with braces of thick, bevel-edged beams of iron. They
paused long enough to put on dark-lensed glasses. The electrochemical polymer
of the lenses gathered all available light and made the most of it to give
them a limited form of night vision. All three of them carried Nighthawk
microlights, but they were loath to use them, fearing the glows they produced
would pin-point their position to anyone coming down the dark passageway ahead
of them.
The three people moved swiftly and fairly silently, the boots of their shadow
suits making only faint rasping sounds. They stepped over irregularities in
the floor and came across branching mouths of other tun-nels. They passed a
number of the light panels inset into the walls. They moved steadily ahead,
none of them caring for the cold, damp breeze that wafted over them from
somewhere in the darkness ahead.
From that darkness came odd, faint sounds, very brief but very eerie.
As they strode forward, Kane's imagination could not help but weave visions
from the sounds whisper-ing and echoing. Now and then he heard an eerie
sobbing cry, then a mechanical clanking and then a distant wail, like the wind
through distant pines.
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