John Varley - Wizard

"We were here," she finally managed to say. "Here under the... cable. Then Gaby saw the buzz bomb, and ... and it was coming in low. The first one. And she shot it down! And something came out of it in a parachute ... and she ran off after it. The water didn't kill them! They came up right in front of us, and ... and-"

"I know," Chris soothed. "We saw it, too."

"... and then Hautbois ran off looking for Gaby and ... didn't take me. I couldn't move! But I did move, and I got up and went ... after her. She was out there, and then you called me... and Gaby's out there somewhere. We've got to find her, we-"

"Cirocco and Hornpipe are missing, too," Chris said. "But they might be under the cable. You must have come in farther to the west than we did. Cirocco might be in the other direction. We ... Valiha, how long was I out?"

The Titanide frowned. "We were under the cable, too," she said. "We made it to safety, then saw Gaby running alone, and we went to help her, and that is when we were nearly hit. I was out myself for a short time, I think."

"I don't remember any of that."

"It has been possibly four or five decirevs ... possibly thirty minutes, since the bombing began."

"So Cirocco has had plenty of time to make it to the cable. We should search the outer cable strands first." He did not add that he felt sure anyone still out there on the sands was dead.

They all felt a sense of urgency, yet found it difficult to move from their hard-won refuge. They managed to use up some time in the examination and treatment of wounds. Robin was the least injured, and Chris had nothing wrong that a few bandages would not cure. Valiha's treatment took more time. When the torn leg was bound up, she did not seem eager to put much weight on it.

"What do you think?" Chris asked them. "Any of them could be just on the other side of this strand, looking out over the sand, trying to locate us."

"We could split up," Robin suggested. "They'd be around the edge. We could search in both directions."

Chris chewed his lip. "I don't know. Every movie I ever saw, splitting up happened just before the big disaster."

"You're basing your tactics on movies?"

"What else do I have? Do you know more about it?"

"I guess not," Robin admitted. "We have drills for different sorts of invasions, but I don't know how much of that would apply here."

"Don't split up," Valiha said firmly. "Division is vulnerability."

But they did not have time to make the decision. Robin, looking out at the desert, saw Gaby appear over the top of a dune. She was bounding in the long, easy low-gravity lope which no longer looked odd to Chris. He knew it well enough by now to be able to tell she was tired. She was bent slightly, as if favoring a stitch in her side.

She gradually closed the distance. When still half a kilometer from them, she waved one hand and shouted, but no one could hear what she said.

And she could not hear them when all three began to shout frantically, trying to warn her of what she could not see because it was approaching her from behind.

Valiha was the first to start running. Chris followed quickly, but the Titanide quickly outdistanced him. She was still 300 meters from Gaby when the buzz bomb tilted its nose up and released its deadly cargo. Chris watched it tumble slowly through the air, his feet pounding the sand, oblivious to what might be under it. It came down just in front of her, and she threw up her hands as a wall of flame appeared in her path.

She came out of it running fast. She almost seemed to fly.

She was on fire.

He saw her hands slapping at the flames, heard her scream. She no longer knew where she was going. Valiha tried to grab her but missed. Chris did not pause. He smelled burning hair and flesh as he hit her with his shoulder and knocked her sprawling; then Valiha was holding her down as she thrashed and cried out, and Chris used both hands to throw sand on her. They rolled her, held her down, ignoring the pain as their own hands were burned.

"We'll suffocate her!" Chris protested when Valiha pressed Gaby down with her entire body.

"We must smother the fire," the Titanide said.

When she stopped struggling, Valiha scooped her up and grabbed Chris, almost pulling his arm from its socket. He swung onto her back, and she flew toward the cable, holding Gaby, unconscious or dead, in her arms. They caught up with Robin, who had already turned back, just short of the cable strand where they had watched most of the drama. Chris caught her hand and pulled her up behind him. Valiha did not slacken her pace until they were on hard rock again.

She was about to set Gaby down when she looked back and saw yet another buzz bomb on its approach. Incredibly, it was aiming at the cable at high speed, on a course that would deposit its bombs just where Valiha stood. As it nosed up to release them, its engine bellowing at full thrust as it reached for the power to climb fast enough to survive, Valiha headed deeper into the darkening maze of monolithic cable strands.

There were explosions behind them. It was impossible to know if one signaled the death of the buzz bomb. Valiha did not slow down. She raced deeper into the strand forest and paused only when the darkness had deepened to gloom.

"They're still coming," Chris said. He had never felt so hopeless.

Behind them, silhouetted against a thin wedge of sky visible between strands, were the convex slivers of shadow that marked buzz bombs seen head-on. He counted five, knew there were more. One banked right, then left, threading its way through the strands with suicidal speed. There was an explosion far behind them, then one nearer, and the creature roared overhead. In the darkness its blue exhaust flame was once more visible.

There was a monstrous explosion ahead of them, and the cable interior suddenly flared orange. The shadows of the strands danced in time to the unseen flames; then, for a brief instant, Chris saw the broken body of the buzz bomb dropping. Valiha ran on.

A second creature came up behind them, and they heard the crash as a third hit a cable strand to their left. Burning napalm dripped down the strand to splash a hundred meters away from them, like wax from a candle. More bombs exploded ahead of them.

The concussion began to shake large stones and other massive debris from the narrowing spaces between the unwinding strands far above. A boulder as big as Valiha crashed in a shower of sparks twenty meters ahead of them. Valiha went around it as they heard another buzz bomb impact, followed rapidly by two more, punctuated with the lesser sounds of released bombs.

Valiha did not stop until she saw the stone building that marked the entrance to the regional brain of Tethys. She halted, unwilling to enter. Only the driving force of the buzz bombs had brought her this far, into a place traditionally avoided by her kind.

"We've got to go in," Chris urged her. "This place is falling apart. One of those things is going to get us if a falling rock doesn't kill us first."

"Yes, but-"

"Valiha, do as I say. This is Long-Odds Major talking to you. Do you think I'd make you do something that wasn't a sure bet?"

Valiha hesitated one second more, then trotted under the arched doorway and across a stone floor until she reached the beginning of the five-kilometer stairs.

She started down.

The chemical fires had long guttered to their death when Cirocco, on foot, rounded the curve of the great cable with Hornpipe following behind. The Titanide used a three-legged gait, his right hind leg held up by a sling tied around his middle. The lower joint of the leg was splinted.

Cirocco, too, bore signs of the battle. There was a bandage wrapped around her head, covering one eye. Her face was streaked with dried blood. Her right arm was in a sling, and two fingers of her right hand were swollen and askew.