He swung the weighted end of the scarf so that it lashed out and whipped around the guard's throat, the end coming back into Ryan's ready fingers.

The sec man tried to get his gauntleted hands up, but he was too slow. The scarf tightened and began to bite into the tender flesh of his neck. Ryan jerked hard at it, pulling the guard forward, so close he could smell the rank sweat on the mutie's body. The helmet bobbled off, and he looked into the dull eyes of the creature who had butchered Finn.

"Die, you fucker." Ryan kneed the guard in the groin, feeling the satisfying jarring as he caught the mutie's genitals against the bone. As the man slumped, Ryan crossed his wrists, making the silk tighten like fluid steel, immovable, inflexible.

"Die."

The mutie's tongue swelled, his hands fell limp, and his eyes burst from bloodied sockets. A thread of bright crimson blood wormed from his lips and nostrils, and as the creature's body relaxed, Ryan could smell the noisome voiding of bowels and bladder.

Ryan unwound his scarf from the guard's neck, prizing it from the deep furrowed folds in the corpse's flesh. He wrapped it back around his own neck, feeling better for the killing, not stopping to mourn for Finnegan. There'd be time for that.

Later.

A piece of plas the size of a button, a five-second fuse and a tiny copper detonator, that was all it took for the six to blast their way inside the holy of holies at the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement. The small explosion shook their ears, and then the outer door swung back.

The scientists, finally realizing they were under serious attack from the primitive outsiders, had taken precautions.

A handful of sec guards, blasters ready, were lined up to meet the intruders. There were six of them, but not one managed to fire his laser rifle. Each was gunned down on the spot in a hectic burst of shooting from the corridor.

Leaping over jerking corpses, nearly slipping in the spreading pools of turgid blood, Ryan led his friends in.

"Fireblast!" he exclaimed, stopping dead inside the doorway, the others nearly knocking him over.

They'd realized the research part of the complex must be enormous, but even in their wildest imaginings they hadn't figured on anything quite as massive as this.

Spidery scaffolding rose thirty stories high, interlocking in a delicate tracery of dulled metal. A viper's nest of colored conduits and pipes wound in and out, so far above them that they seemed like thin wires. Red and green and orange and vivid blue. There were three basic sections within the research area, marked simply Land, Sea and Air & Space. Each one seemed to vanish into the diminishing distance. Each was bigger than fifty aircraft hangars.

A long list on the wall showed the innumerable subsections of research.

A catalogue of inhumanity and megadeath:

Chemical.

Medical.

Nerve toxins.

Sight.

Audio-destroyers.

Neural synapse breakers.

RPV.

"What's that?" Ryan asked.

"It stands for Remotely Piloted Vehicles," Doc Tanner answered. "It was big around the end of the century."

Sensors.

Avoidance.

LAMPS.

"Tell me, Doc."

"It means Light Airborne Multipurpose Systems. Mainly antisubmarine stuff."

Battle-Support Missiles.

Air-Defense Missiles.

Surface-To-Air Missiles (Fixed Emplacement).

Forward-Area-Guided Projectiles.

The list was seemingly endless, and it was color-coded and had a variety of letters and numerals after each item. By far the largest number of entries was under the subhead Antipersonnel Weapons.

"Don't tell us, Doc," Krysty said in a subdued voice. "It just means lots of ways of killing ordinary people. By Gaia, but this has to be wiped clean!"

But with Finnegan dead, only J.B. and Ryan had the basic explosives knowledge to start a chain reaction that would destroy the whole complex. Jak was fine on small, localized sabotage, but nothing bigger.

"Split up," Ryan told them. "Krysty and Jak with me. J.B. to take Doc and Lori. Check chrons. I have 11:13... now. Meet back at the bottom of the main elevators in... How long, you figure, Doc? J.B.? How long?"

The old man shook his head, as if overwhelmed by the pressure and the killings. "This gilded palace of sin, my old friend... It's walls of sardonyx and chrysoprase. Its mighty towers of sapphire and chalcedony, inlaid with wondrous lapis lazuli." His voice was dreamy. "Is that not the most wonderful name for a gem?" He drew it out slowly, savoring it. "Lapis lazuli."

Ryan shook him by the arm. "Don't fuck us up now, Doc. Not fucking now!"

His eyes cleared and his jaw set. The old man squared his shoulders and stared Ryan straight in the eye. "My most humble apologies, my dear friend. What can I have been thinking of? You were asking?"

"How long? How long to try and find the right places to blow this dump out of the world?"

"Their security is lax and almost useless against fighters with intent. It's odd, is it not? They have been locked in here for a hundred years, doing nothing but researching ways of killing the planet. Yet in all that time the poor devils have quite forgotten how to fight."

"So it'll be a slide, huh?" J.B. asked.

"I think not. They will eventually gain access to their own defense systems. Dr. Avian spoke of hordes of sec muties locked safely away, waiting only the press of a button to release them all. No. I think we can spare no more than an hour."

"Where's best to go?" Krysty asked, pointing at the massive board.

Doc sighed. "Missiles, I suppose would be best. Find some good old-fashioned dynamite or nitro and place it right. Should be enough. An explosion down here has nowhere to go. Could bring the roof in. Then the lake. Blow down and set off the volcano." His eyes turned dreamy again. "That would be a wondrous consummation — to be born in fire and to end in fire."

Ryan turned away. "Fine, then. We'll split up like we said. Both groups will head toward the missiles, one left and one right. Kill anything moving. I now have...11:15. Meet back at the base of the elevator at 12:20. First there waits, if they can, until 12:25. Then they go. Up and run. Head back through the ville for the gateway. Wait there twenty-four hours. Then..."

"Then, goodbye," Jak finished.

Most of the next hour passed like a dream of action and death for Ryan and his two companions.

By his calculations they'd taken out three of the sixty-one scientists and a sizable part of their sec men. Unless some of the hordes of mutie sleepers had been released, there couldn't be more than about seventy living humans within the entire Wizard Island complex — a tiny number in that rambling techno vastness.

"Someone," Jak Lauren hissed, running a little ahead of Ryan and Krysty.

It was the frail dwarf scientist in a spidery frame of plastic tubing. Its silent motor allowed him to be suspended a few inches above the floor. Seeing them, he stopped his machine.

"Take him," Krysty said.

Ryan put the G-12 caseless on single-shot and aimed at the center of the scientist's great spongy nodding head between his moonish eyes. Just as he had when they'd last seen him, the scientist managed to control his trembling features long enough to smile at them — a wonderful, warm smile that filled Ryan with a wave of almost magical happiness. He smiled back and lowered his gun.

"Ryan," Krysty said.

"Can't. Not to... to that."

The wheelchair floated nearer, the tiny flipperlike left hand working intricate controls. The head nodded, the smile unchanging. Ryan glanced at Jak and saw him grinning helplessly at the scientist.

The delicate, harmless little...

Then there was the sharp crack from the mirrored H&K P7A-13 pistol in Krysty's right hand. A small ruby hole, black-edged, appeared miraculously in the dwarf's massive forehead above his glittering left eye. His chair weaved and stopped, and the scientist slumped dead in it, the smile still stuck in place.