Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

It was just in time. Gregnar burst from the cornfield about twenty meters from where she lay flat, but she saw immediately that she needn’t have worried. The big man was in a real hurry and didn’t even look around, instead jumping right into the irrigation ditch and running along it, his head comically bobbing up and down as he trotted grimly forward until, at probably the same point that Alon had vanished, there was a crackling sound and then no more bouncing head.

John emerged from almost the same spot Gregnar had in the cornfield and stared. From his angle he’d been able to see the big man run straight along the ditch, and apparently vanish.

Eve got up, quickly brushed the dust off, and made straight for her companion. “You thought I was kidding,” she commented.

Actually, he’d thought that the rookie out for her first real assignment had simply overreacted, but this—this was something very different.

“Security,” he called, mentally opening the comm link.

“OD here. Yes?” It was that damned fool Cordish again.

“Robey here. We have two local men now who have been followed as they went well away from others. I just witnessed one of them go along a canal and suddenly vanish from sight.”

“You probably just couldn’t see him any more because of the angle,” Cordish snapped. “Don’t bother me with this! The Boss is out and roaming around right now and he’s brought his bicycle. Worse, he’s mumbling about borrowing and riding a crindin. Just what we need. Now, if there’s nothing else—”

“I don’t mean I lost sight of him,” Robey responded. “I mean to report that he went through some sort of force field barrier or gate and dematerialized as far as we could see. Toloway had reported another man doing the same earlier.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! These people have nowhere near that sort of technology, and, besides, if they did it would have registered here.”

Robey had just had about enough of the arrogant bastard. “I am recording this for later inquiry,” he told Cordish icily. “I have now reported an anomaly and potential threat to us, the ship, and most particularly to the Doc and our mission. If you choose not to act on it, it is entirely on your head and on your responsibility alone. Is that understood, Brother Cordish?”

It was a risky thing to do, but Robey felt that his first responsibility was to the whole, not to his superiors. He knew that Cordish’s standing orders were to notify the Doc immediately of any problems, particularly of a security nature, and to also act to contain the problem until a decision could come down from on high. Cordish now understood that his neck was the one in the noose; if this developed into anything nasty then the Gates of Hell would be preferable to the Doc’s wrath. On the other hand, if it was trivial, Robey had just made an enemy who would never forget.

Robey was understandably nervous at the latter possibility, but he resented even more that he’d had to go to this length just to get the incompetent son of a bitch to do his job. If Cordish didn’t like taking risks and making decisions, he should never have accepted the job.

“Very well,” Cordish sighed at last, sounding none too pleased. “I’m sending a small tech crew with scanners over to your location. Keep out of sight of the locals until they arrive, and if any of the ones you’ve been following show up, let them leave, hopefully without being aware of you, and remain where you are. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Yeah, right. Will do,” Robey responded. He prayed to himself that this really would be nothing, but there was no way in the world that any kind of high tech system like he’d witnessed should be here, particularly in the hands of these people, and most particularly without being detected.

Neither of the native men reappeared by the time the tech crew showed up, each riding a well-worn but serviceable mag scooter. As with Cordish, they couldn’t believe that this could be anything important and they already had their hands full with routine stuff, but, like Robey, they knew they had to be sure.

The team was a senior technician named Corby and two assistants, Erin and Ruth. Corby was a tall, gangly skeleton of a man, with one of those long faces with a permanently dour, hang-dog expression. He had the biggest hands and longest fingers Eve ever remembered seeing on a human being, but those fingers were so dextrous that they could do things only micromachines were thought to accomplish.

“Girls, I want both monitor cover and security cover on both sides. Ruth, you over there; Erin, you on this side a few meters back of Ruth’s position. Got it?”

They both nodded and picked up small hand-held devices from the scooter’s saddlebags. Corby had a longer device with a complex readout screen in the base and a whole set of lights above. From the base, extending a good half a meter, was a long, smooth gun-metal-gray rod with a pale yellow tip.

Eve looked at the team and was impressed with how professionally they went into action. These people knew their business.

“Is there anything you know of this kind that wouldn’t show up on our sensors?” she asked Corby.

“Oh, hundreds of things. Most likely, though, would be a security barrier. Wouldn’t be much of a security system if it showed up on scans and pointed burglars right to it, would it? Might be a pain if the thing’s on full with total body DNA recognition, so I’m prayin’ it’s off when somebody’s inside. That’s the norm.”

“If it’s on, could you still get in?” John asked him.

“Oh, sure,” Corby responded casually, still tweaking his probe, “but might take a while if it’s in good order and we ain’t got a while.” He twisted the probe and had some problems getting it to rotate to just where he wanted it. “ Ungh! Either I’m gettin’ old or this thing is. Okay now, though. You two stay back here on either side and provide backup.”

“Backup?” Robey repeated. “You mean…?”

“I mean backup. If they got a security vault this sophisticated then there’s no tellin’ what they keep in it, is there? God’s welcome to call me home any time, but the devil, now, he gets a fight.”

And, with that, he stepped down into the irrigation canal and began walking steadily along it, his frame tall enough that even somebody viewing him walking in at a right angle could see his shoulders. He held the probe in both hands to steady it and walked slowly but deliberately forward, looking mostly straight ahead but glancing down from time to time to check that the footprints of his predecessors were still clearly visible in the soft mud.

The display lights kept dancing around, apparently guiding him or telling him something in a specialist’s code, and the readout screen fed him more data, but he never stopped or wavered.

He walked straight into the barrier and it almost knocked him down. The probe, of course, touched it first, but it also acted as a conductor of some sort allowing energy to flow back to the handle base and then to the holder of same. The shock wasn’t serious, but it was unexpected because he’d gotten no readout at all that anything was coming up.

“Brother, are you hurt?” Ruth called.

“Only my dignity, and maybe the seat of my pants,” Corby grumbled, getting back to his feet. “Well, so much for the unlocked door theory. Here—somebody give me a hand up! We’re going to see how far this thing goes.”

Robey was the largest of the waiting agents and ran along the bank, past Erin, and gave the big, gaunt man the lift he needed to be pulled from the fairly deep ditch.

He was now filthy, covered with mud, but he looked more angry than embarrassed. “You women! Come on up here! Young man, you go on further on this side with Erin, and, young woman, you go along the other side with Ruth. Keep even on either side of the ditch. I’m going to make some adjustments. If anybody comes out of there, just freeze. They may not even know we’re here or look back. If they do, then do whatever you must.”