Zach Hughes - Pressure Man

But the one prime subject was Folly , frightful Folly , so huge, so complicated, so utterly stupid; and she began to take shape, so very, very beautiful, the network of interior bracings lacy and geometric, her size becoming apparent as she grew.

Not one of Dom’s crew, with the possible exception of Larry, could have said, without checking dates, how long they had been underground, virtual prisoners of that huge ship which grew, bolt by bolt, weld by weld, in null gravity out behind the moon. Larry could probably have given the time to the hour, because he had performed his main function in the period of one day. He was being used as a contact man. He was the only one who left DOSEWEX at intervals, and he would have said that only those ventures into the outside preserved his sanity. He was bored and he was lonely, because Doris was deeply involved in doing her thing at the console of her computer.

The weeks became months which ran together in Dom’s mind. It was almost time to start moving the crew out to DOSELUN when the Earthfirsters made their move, announcing their presence with a single mortar round which fell short of the main gate control tower. That signal round was followed by an all-out assault from two sides of the surface compound.

The sound of the first underground explosion did not register on Dom. The sound did not come from his own complex, and tests of all sorts were always being conducted. He went on with his work until the alert lights in his office blinked flashing red. It still didn’t register, as he looked up in puzzlement, until Larry Gomulka stuck his moon face in the door, not smiling for once.

“We’re under attack,” Larry announced.

“Not now,” Dom said absently. “I don’t have time for it.”

“No choice, old chum,” Larry said, smiling now. “Come along to the shelter.”

Dom saw to it that his own team, which was vastly expanded by techs, were properly sheltered. He made his way to J.J.’s office, operating the underground rail car by himself. There were space marines in J.J.’s sector. He had to show his identity, and when he was admitted J.J. was not in the office. He was advised by a young cadet to return to his own sector and seek shelter.

“Well make short work of this, sir,” the cadet said. “Then you can get back to work.”

Dom walked empty corridors, took an elevator, and bluffed his way into an observation tower. There he found J.J. with a set of binoculars to his eyes.

A small-scale war was being fought at the fences. The automated defense system had caught the first infiltrators in charged areas. Bodies lay side by side along the fences on two sides. Marines had been moved in, and the sound of their weapons was a continuous roar.

“How many?” Dom asked.

“The early estimate was about five thousand,” J.J. said.

Dom, with a feeling of sickness, thought he could see almost that many bodies.

“They don’t have any really big stuff,” J.J. said, as an old-fashioned HE shell exploded a hundred yards south of the tower. “I can’t understand it.”

“I can never understand stupidity,” Dom said.

“The first thing I asked was, where was the main force?” J.J. said. “This is nothing more than a diversion.”

“Pretty bloody for a diversion,” Dom said, his eyes trying to move away from the strewn bodies along the fence.

“We have aircraft out. They have not spotted any major force, just the two groups attacking from opposite sides.”

It was sheer suicide. What did they hope to gain by attacking a well-defended major facility with hand rifles and a couple of old mortars? A diversion? A diversion from what?

“The computer,” Dom exploded, already moving.

“Cool it,” J.J. said. “I thought of that first thing. I sent a guard of marines down there on first alert.”

“I’ll go take a look,” Dom said.

The tendency was, after seeing the first interior bracings taking shape, to think of Folly as reality, but a few structural members do not make a ship. At the moment Folly existed only in the abstract, in Dom’s brain and in the brains of Doris and Art, but most of all, she existed in one area, in the circuits of Doris’ primary computer. In that machine were months of work and billions of dollars, and no human brain could recreate the information without starting all over, requiring more months. Destroy the computer’s memory and Folly was a few drawings, a few basic facts in human brains, and nothing more.

The complex where Dom’s crew worked and lived was in the most secure portion of DOSEWEX, buried very deep, encircled by other facilities. It was served only by the underground transportation system. Between the hidden labs and the surface world were hundreds of feet of rock and soil. This central core was penetrated by the well-guarded underground in one place and in one place only.

As the car leaped forward, Dom having properly identified himself as a VIP to the marine guards, he told himself that he was worrying for no reason. The stop came quickly. He entered a maze of corridors and trotted toward the shelter, realizing that his months of work had done nothing for his physical condition. He entered the maze to the shelter, designed to prevent radiation entry, and found the inner door standing open. That door was keyed to pass only those whose palm prints were recorded, his among them. He held his breath and peered cautiously around the door.

Death was more immediate here, closer, having come to men and women he knew. Bodies sprawled in grotesque positions, some atop the others. His senses reeling, he counted. This shelter room, assigned to top personnel, was designed for fourteen people. He counted eleven bodies, recounted to be sure, his brain unwilling to admit to even eleven.

Explosive bullets had been used. The floor had a new red carpet, sticky, odorous. He had to move three bodies to be able to see the faces. The eleven dead were technicians and scientists who had been added to the team. Art Donald, Doris, and Larry were not among them.

He left the bloody room and crept slowly down the corridor toward the labs and the computer room. At the first turn he found the bodies of two young space marines. A squad consisted of eight men. With two dead, their weapons beside them, that left six marines of the squad sent by J.J.

Dom picked up an automatic rifle, a short, deadly, spray-shooting weapon, from beside one of the dead marines. He listened for a moment, and in that moment the corridor reverberated to the blast of an automatic weapon. He sprinted ahead and almost ran into death as he rushed blindly into the corridor leading to the computer room. The door to the room flew open and a man in a dark body suit, his face hidden by a black hood, sent a hail of fire toward Dom. Dom flung his body into a side corridor, hearing the splat-splat of explosive rounds as they whizzed past his head, then the thunder of their strike at the end of the corridor. He could not get enough air into his lungs. He had to force himself to move.

His impulse was to hole up, watch and wait, but he knew that he had to move. He went down the corridor to the living area, found Doris’ quarters, kicked her door open. The room was empty. He punched the communicator, It was dead. There was an alert button in each room in the complex. Any member of the team could alert security forces with a jab of a button. Dom pushed Doris’ private panic button and waited for the flashing lights and ear-piercing sounds, but there was nothing.

The complex was, quite obviously, compromised. It was an inside job. There were eleven bodies back there in the shelter, two dead marines in the corridor. How many of them? How many to kill eleven men and women and two marines and maybe more?