Larry Niven - The Moon Maze Game

“All right. That’s something. All right. I think that time is on our side. Take it easy-we’ll have reinforcements, I hope. And meanwhile, our guests are safe.”

Safe, perhaps, but not secure. The eight gamers were clustered in a bubble on G level. The ugly thrum-thrum of dual detonations echoed through the bubble’s floor.

“What’s happening?” Maud asked, clutching Mickey’s hand. She seemed very frail.

“That’s the cavalry,” Mickey said.

“He might be right,” Scotty said. “Assuming that Kendra took action-”

“Who is Kendra?” Sharmela asked.

“Chief of Operations of Heinlein. And… my ex.”

Wayne cocked an eyebrow. “Family that plays together.”

There was another sharp explosive thrum. Angelique sidled up to him. “Scotty. Where did our rescuers enter the dome?”

He shrugged. “Darla?”

“One of the ground-level entrances, I reckon.”

“Could they have brought a vehicle with them? Is there any chance at all that we can exit the way they came in?”

“Maybe. If we had pressure suits we could just walk home. Unless the entrances are covered.”

“What do you mean?”

“These people. The Moresnot pirates. They ain’t even partial stupid. They’ll have entrances covered.”

“Can they cover all of them? They don’t have enough people.”

“Not all. But maybe enough.”

“What can we do? Isn’t there some way we can help?” Wayne asked.

“Stay out of their way,” Scotty said, his voice brimming with a confidence he did not feel. “And let the professionals work.”

We’re the professionals, Shotz snarled to himself, ducking back as a bolt from some kind of air gun splattered against the wall next to him. It was off target, and even if it had hit, the wall was barely chipped by the impact. While it was certainly true that the pressure suits acted as elementary armor, his opponents weren’t in a much better position.

There was a potential upside to the situation, which even now could hardly be considered a standoff. The positive possibility was that the gamers, in a misguided attempt to aid their rescuers or even escape, would reveal themselves. If the assaulting team were in contact with their prey (and he had a very real instinct that they were), then they might have entered the dome at their quarry’s level, or above. Below? Perhaps, but Shotz and his people had searched levels A through F thoroughly, and found nothing. He was going to make a bet: their quarry was somewhere on G, planning to make their way down to the pool for an exit. Well, there was no exit there, and so long as he kept these incompetent fools bottled up, or sent them packing, all was well.

“Shotz!” a voice barked in his ear. It was Carlyle, covering the dome’s northeast side. “We have action here. The ladder is down, but they managed to hit Bai Long with a laser, I think. Half-blinded him, dammit!”

“Pull him back. Don’t expose yourself if you don’t have to, and-”

And then, there was another explosion. Deeper this time, shaking the very flooring below him, followed by the frenzied shriek of an alarm. He had heard that alarm before, but this time, he didn’t think it was a bluff.

“Piering?” Klaus Gruber whispered. Gruber was in Food Handling, but in a former life had been a sergeant in the European Union. Piering knew him a little. Once, Gruber and Lee had gotten into a friendly karaoke duel about “49th,” the notorious ballad about the Second Canadian War. The thing about “49th” wasn’t that it was particularly obscene. No worse than “Eskimo Nell,” in all probability. But there were two entirely different sets of lyrics, one from each side of the border. And it was always dicey whether such duels would stay friendly or end with someone getting peeled off the ceiling.

That night there had been children at the club, and Gruber had held to the family-friendly lyrics, even in the part about Americans retreating in disgrace:

We kicked their butts in Montreal

It really was a sight

To see the G.I. Joes and Janes

Run naked through the night The referenced original incident had been a successful assault of what should have been a secured American base. The Canadians had been too busy laughing to bother rounding up the dozen soldiers who’d been showering when they attacked. Lee had been out-sung, but let Klaus buy her a beer after they were done.

“We’ve got the southeast door disarmed.”

“I told you,” Piering said. “If the door is mined, don’t mess with it.”

“Yes,” Gruber whispered. “I know, I know. But we’ve really got a chance to get behind them, I think. I figured it out. They expect us to avoid the traps, and go through the open door. If we let them-”

“Klaus, this isn’t a game!”

“We’re so close,” Klaus said. “I’ve almost got-”

And then there was a blast of static, so loud that Piering winced, staggered back against the wall in shock. The entire structure hummed with that blast. Then the alarm began to ring.

“Inner wall breach,” the automated voice screamed. “Alert. Inner wall breach. Immediately seek shelter. The outer door of lock Northeast-G has been damaged. The seals will erode in approximately thirty seconds. Alert. Seek shelter immediately — ”

“Good God,” Max Piering whispered, stunned. “We’re screwed.”

“What the hell?” Angelique said. Panic tightened her voice.

Scotty and Darla glanced at each other. “Alarm,” she said. “And I’m betting that’s the real thing.”

“All right,” Wayne said. “But what does it mean?”

“That there’s been a breach,” Scotty said. “And that the sensors are detecting an outer hull damage as well.” He paused. “And that,” he said, “is very bad news.” He slapped his hand against the bubble wall, not at all comforted by the solid thump. “They say these things will hold a full atmosphere against vacuum. We’re about to find out.”

1527 hours

The air pressure at Earth sea level is approximately 14.7 pounds of pressure per square inch. The air in the gaming dome was held at a pressure closer to 10 pounds per square inch, still dense enough for easy breathing, close to the cabin pressure of a jetliner. The dome, roughly the diameter of a football field, held a volume of about 175,000 cubic meters of oxygen, imported nitrogen and helium left over from He3 mining.

When members of Piering’s A team tried to avoid the ambush by exiting and reentering the dome through another lock, the air pressure had been stable. When Gruber’s unfortunate mistake with the explosive device shattered the inner door and damaged the outer, it was as if the air was a living thing, seeking a path of exit, testing and pushing against the outer door as emergency blasts of Liquid Wall sought to heal the breaches before they became fatal.

But (and there is no way to put this delicately) there had been human beings in that airlock. When the inner door exploded, what remained of Gruber and Enroy was spread around the lock like a layer of lumpy raspberry jam and shredded pressure suit fabric. Nozzles that should have spread Liquid Wall evenly and swiftly were twisted by the blast, and jammed with human debris. Damage to the outer door became the weak point attracting every pressurized molecule of the oxygen-nitrogen-helium mix.

The crack deepened, and split, and the outer wall breached. Instantly, the airflow pushed against the opening, deepening, widening, and then ripping the door from the inside out.

The gaming dome became a screaming hell.

The warning klaxon was drowned out by the howl of air, and for the first time in her memory, Celeste panicked. Their men scrambled toward the open bubble above them, and Celeste screamed, her hands slipping on the ladder as she tried to climb in. Already, in mere seconds, the air was so thin that her lungs felt as if they were going to explode. Within moments, even if they made it into the bubble, it too would contain an atmosphere so thin that their lungs would hemorrhage no matter what they did.