“Hear that, you men?” another voice called out. “There aren’t any Terrans. It was the computer.”

Hunt heard the door close, and then the light came on to reveal him alone in a space crammed with electronics cubicles and cabling.

“Great special effects,” he complimented.

“It was the best I could do,” ZORAC said. “I’ve got some of them shut up here and there around the place, but they’re starting to sort themselves out. Some of PAC security came out on the other side, too.”

“What’s the general situation?”

“A mess.”

“What about the others?”

“Garuth and Shilohin are still there in his office. I got Danchekker into an elevator across the hall while the lights were out. Nixie took off and lost herself somewhere.”

“And the rest?”

“Cullen and his guys are in the middle of a fight down in security. Duncan and Sandy have been grabbed by police in the UNSA labs. Gina got away from her quarters before they arrived. She wants to talk to you.”

“Put her through.”

“And so does Langerif. He’s demanding that you give yourself up, otherwise he’ll shoot Garuth.”

Hunt drew a long breath. There were some things that the Jevlenese might be able to explain away when this got back to JPC, he thought; but not murdering the planetary governor. Even Langerif had to be smart enough to know that.

“He’s bluffing,” Hunt said.

“You think so?”

“Yes. Tell him you’re not getting a response. My headset must have been knocked off in the dark, right?”

“I hope you’re right,” ZORAC replied, in a masterfully contrived you’re-supposed-to-understand-these-people tone of voice. “Here’s Gina.”

“Vic? ZORAC’s told me the score. It’s no use heading this way. They’re everywhere. Right now I’m in an empty suite that ZORAC found.”

Hunt thought quickly. There would be no point in trying to get to any of the Thurien couplers into VISAR, since those would have been the first places to be secured. And the next thing the Jevlenese would do after getting the complex’s backup systems running would be to cut ZORAC’s connection into PAC. He should get to Gina first, while ZORAC was still available to help.

“ZORAC, can you get us together somewhere?” he said.

“You can’t get back out through Garuth’s office. Head through the compartment at the rear. There should be a way down. It looks as if you were right about Langerif, by the way.”

Behind a partition at the back of the equipment room, some runs of cabling and ducting went down a well to the level below, where a maintenance hatch gave access to an engineers’ inspection gallery. From there, Hunt came out through a machinery compartment into a tool room, and thence into a stairway that seemed clear for the moment. One level down, he entered a passage that led to an elevator, which ZORAC already had waiting to take him down to a level where several large dining rooms were situated. A lot of Jevlenese office workers were milling around, while frantic police officers tried to tell the managers what was happening. In the general confusion, Hunt managed to slip through into the warren of kitchens and passages at the rear, where ZORAC had also directed Gina. Hunt found her in a space behind a water-heating system and a pumping compartment. She seemed shaken but in good shape.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“ZORAC, what are the options? Can we get out?”

“That’s probably the best bet. Look, there are Jevlenese engineers in the control section right now, switching in the backup communications and monitoring systems. I could be cut off at any moment. I’ll give you directions, now, to a way out through the basement that I’ll unlock. It leads into the city’s freight-moving system. First, you need to go down through the back stairs from the passage outside where you are, to a garbage-compacting plant…

They lost ZORAC shortly after, but found their way down through the route that it had described. The exit was unlocked, and they entered a system of tunnels and shafts, much of it collapsing from disrepair, which brought them into the automated sublevels of Shiban. When they had gone what they judged to be a safe distance from PAC, they began ascending via catwalks and stairways to reemerge into habitation. A short distance farther on, Hunt recognized the street outside the hotel that Nixie had taken him to. “Okay, I think I know where we are,” he told Gina.

“That’s great. But where do we want to be?”

The Shapieron was the obvious place-assuming ZORAC or whoever was in charge aboard the ship didn’t decide to take it up from the surface for some reason. But with the police possibly on the alert for them, Hunt put their chances of getting to Geerbaine as slim. And even if they did, access to the pad where the Shapieron stood would surely be impossible.

“Well, there’s only one American I know in town,” Hunt said.

“What we do when we get there, I’m not sure. But keep your voice down on the streets. There’s probably an order out to watch for Terrans.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

There were plenty of police about, but from the way they were positioned they seemed to be a reserve force drawn up around PAC rather than a cordon sealing it off. At any rate, they hadn’t cleared the surrounding precincts, and Hunt and Gina were able to blend in easily enough. Green crescents were everywhere, and the ayatollahs were out in force delivering perorations to excited crowds. Although none of what was being said was comprehensible to the two Terrans, the fever of excitement in the air was impossible to mistake. It was as if the city was alive with anticipation of some imminent event.

As they passed through the buzzing arcades and plazas, Hunt tried to make more sense out of what had happened. He didn’t believe that the real motivation could be simply a straight takeover of the administration for the reasons Langerif had claimed. JPC was already talking about winding the existing administration up, and the obvious thing would have been to wait and see what came of it.

The only other possible aim was to prevent details getting back to JPC and the powers behind it of what was happening at PAC. But all that anyone outside could know was that the Ganymeans were checking out the main JEVEX sites, and all that could tell anyone was that a lot of JEVEX was not where it was supposed to be. That meant that whoever was behind it did not want people making the connection with Uttan; which was another way of saying that they were very anxious not to give JPC any grounds for reconsidering its decision to let Eubeleus go there.

The street they were following crossed a small square in which a wildly gesticulating ayatollah clad in a yellow tunic and green smock was haranguing a crowd pressed from wall to wall. There was no quick way through. They could either work their way across to where the street continued on the far side, or back up and find another way around. Hunt looked resignedly at Gina. She shrugged back. He turned and began edging his way between the waving, applauding Jevlenese.

What he sensed wasn’t the uplifting, jubilant kind of excitement that went with carnivals and festivals. It was more intense, fervently passionate. The faces around them were inflamed, mouths writhing mindless slogans, eyes glazed, oblivious to all but some inner rapture. This was the beast that made lynch mobs and Nuremberg rallies out of the same people who brought their children to Sunday-afternoon parades.

No, Hunt told himself after they had gone a few yards. The beast wasn’t in the crowd. It was up there, on the makeshift platform of packing boxes fronted with banners. It didn’t belong to the rational universe. It was a product of another place, another reality.

He looked at the crowd again: unaware, unseeing, incapable of knowing. Nothing would ever change of its own accord there. And he looked at the shrewd, hawklike features of the speaker, scanning, alert to every feedback and cue, trying to grasp the alienness staring out from behind the glittering eyes.