Charles Sheffield - Starfire

Before I could do more than cry, “Look out!,” she had her own weapon out and was pointing it at Seth. I saw a blue-green flare, and at the same moment heard a loud double crack. The weapon flew out of Lauren’s hand. She spun around and fell backward onto the web of ropes.

Seth waited a few moments, then began to approach her slowly and carefully. He held his old projectile weapon in his left hand, and when he was a few feet away from Lauren he blew into the barrel and returned it to its rear holster. As he lifted her I could see why the weapon was now unnecessary. Her delicate nose had been ruined by a bullet that entered just above the nostrils and continued until it hit and destroyed the base of her brain. She had another wound in her chest.

“I guess that does it,” Seth said. “Over-the-shoulder shots. Pretty nice, eh?”

“You shouldn’t have put your gun away when you did,” I said. “She almost killed you.”

“Not a chance.” He leaned easily against the web of ropes-but I noticed that a patch of hair on top of his head was charred. “I wanted her to fire at me.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise she’d have got away with everythin’.”

“We had evidence. Not strong evidence, admittedly, but if we had-”

“Doc, pardon me for interruptin’. You’re a genius, an’ I’d never have made it to first base on this case without you. But now you’re on my territory. I want to ask a sorta personal question. When they tried you, did you have a defense lawyer?”

“Of course I did. The state insisted on it. Not a very good lawyer, I thought.”

“Well, I’m tellin’ you, Lauren Stansfield would have had a very good lawyer. The best that money can buy. She’s third in line to a superfortune, and she’d be royalty as well. The top scumbags in the business would have lined up to take her case on a contingency basis. An’ with the miserable evidence we had, she’d have walked.”

“But to put your weapon away like that, knowing that she was a multiple murderer . . .”

“I had to. She didn’t know we had lousy evidence, but I did. That’s why I told her I was a bounty hunter, goin’ after the reward for the Sky City murderer.”

“Which you’re not.”

” ’Course I’m not. But if she believed that, then I was halfway there. Bounty hunters operate lotsa different ways, but you can bet on a couple of things: They don’t want nobody beatin’ ’em to it, and they don’t want to share a reward. So she thought, ’Hey, he won’t have told anybody what evidence he has. If I take him out and get rid of the body, I’m home free.’ ”

“But you put your gun away-you turned your back on her.”

“I put one gun away. I took the other one out as I turned. See, she had to take a shot at me. That way, I got a reason for firin’ at her. If she hadn’t tried to get me, I’d be the one facin’ charges. As it is, with her tryin’ to put me out of action, plus your evidence pointin’ to her as the murderer, we’re in good shape. ’Specially with her not here to argue.”

“You wanted to kill her,” I said.

“Let’s say I didn’t much like her. I don’t care for people who look down on me. But I only kill people who try to kill me.” He came across to where the RV jacket still hung on the wall, and put it over his arm. My view of Sky City became even worse, random and distorted as well as horribly noisy. “Anyway, Doc, you know what she did, an’ you know why. Are you tellin’ me you think she should have got away alive an’ free an’ rich? Should she have been a queen?”

“I think that Earth-and the rest of the universe-is much better off without Lauren Stansfield.”

“So what’s to talk about? We’re agreed.” Seth, carrying the RV jacket over his arm and making me feel rather like a ventriloquist’s dummy, started to stroll out of Cargo Bay Fourteen. “I’m headin 1forward. It’s time to find out if there’s goin’ to be anyplace to be better off without Lauren Stansfield.”

“I will leave that to you,” I said. “I’m losing the picture, and I must attend to matters here. Call me later.”

“Have to be after storm peak. Even with redundancy we lose signal, up and down, a few minutes from now.”

“That’s all right. Make it a video link-if you can get one.”

“Hard to come by today. Might have to call you tomorrow — if there is one.”

There was a final grainy swirl of color, and Seth was gone. I yanked the RV helmet off my head. For the past few minutes the contribution of the local scene to what I saw had steadily faded. Now I knew why. Before I donned the helmet, flaming streamers of light had filled the heavens outside the castle. Where had they gone? Peering through the shutters, I saw nothing. Earth was descending to hell, Milton’s hell, I thought. “Not light, but darkness visible” and “Hide me from the heavy wrath of God.”

I had switched poets in midstream — in midsentence — but that is one of the problems facing those of us of a morbid or fanciful disposition. We overdramatize. Fortunately, there is a cure. I left my study and headed for the elevator that led to the deep cellars.

The elevator does not go all the way, and the final descent is made down a long flight of stairs. Even before I reached the first step I could hear the screams and shouts of laughter. The storm party was going well.

I continued down, to fulfill the role of stern parent and to read the riot act. The putative end of the world deserved to be taken more seriously.

The Sky City communication systems provided minute-by-minute news to outlets on every level. So why was the engineering information center again full of people, after John Hyslop had told everyone to go away? He hadn’t objected when Maddy had stayed at his side, but she hoped that she was a special case. He had even smiled at her, the John Hyslop equivalent of a passionate embrace. His only condition for her presence, implied by attitude rather than words, was that she not interfere with his work. He was struggling to maintain an open communication channel with Earth.

But what were all the others doing here?

Maddy had her own answer: People would risk anything, even death, to see the action firsthand. She glanced around the room.

Star Vjansander had stayed, too — rather to Maddy’s annoyance. Maddy liked being alone with John, even when he was too preoccupied to notice her. Star’s hair was wet and she was unusually quiet, sprawled prone on the floor with her short skirt riding almost to her waist and her chin cupped in her hands. Maddy looked for Wilmer Oldfield and did not see him. That was odd. The two went everywhere together.

Will Davis had returned and stood close to John. Most of the other senior engineers had come back, too, filling the vacant desk seats. Amanda Corrigan was obviously scared, biting her nails and staring at nothing. Torrance Harbish played a different role, totally calm and pretending to be more interested in his fellow engineers than in the displays. But Maddy saw the white, strained look around his mouth.

Seth drifted in last, nondescript and inconspicuous, with the usual rolled-up bundle of clothing under his arm. He caught Maddy’s eye and nodded.

Meaning what? Maddy knew of the trap. But where was Lauren Stansfield? Had she been taken into custody? She raised her eyebrows at Seth. He just grinned.

A gasp and a murmur from the other people in the room brought her attention to the displays. The biggest one had suddenly changed, switching from the outward views of space and the defense system to an image of Earth. The big scope on the rear face of Sky City was in use, and it showed the whole of the Southern Hemisphere. With winter there, the pole ought to be dark. Instead, the great ice shield of Antarctica glowed an electric blue. The surrounding oceans were obscured by clouds of white steam and vapor as far north as the tip of South America. Every sunlit land area, from Tierra del Fuego to as far north as Panama, was hazy and indistinct, ground details lost behind a continent-wide pall of black smoke.