The control wall buckled. Smoke filled the room. Vinn was able to move his head. He saw Sarah's face through her visor. Her white teeth showed in a snarl.

Vinn fell to his knees beside Pete de Conde. The liquid in Pete's eyeballs had expanded while freezing. There were skin lesions where rapid expansion had ruptured cells.

"You don't understand," the Watcher said in a flat voice that reverberated in the room. "You must not resist. You will feel pain only for a moment."

Sarah moved to stand over Pete's body. She looked down into his ruined face and cried out in loss and anger.

"You should not have caused such terrible damage," the Watcher said.

"Some of what you have done is irreparable."

"Sarah, we have to go," Vinn said.

"What about my husband?" There were no tears. Not yet. Her face showed nothing but fury as she stood over the bodies of Pete and Iain.

"We can't carry them," Vinn said. "We have to get out of here and do what we should have done in the first place, call in X&A."

"I can't leave him. I can't leave him."

"Sarah, X&A will recover the bodies," Vinn said, taking her arm. For a moment she resisted, then, weapon at the ready, she followed him.

The corridor outside the Center was blocked by four of the mechanical extensions. Vinn fired without hesitation, swinging his weapon back and forth on full beam until the way was cleared. The vehicle that had brought them to the Center was gone. Vinn led the way down the corridor and into the first of the long domed container rooms. The glowing containers could contain nothing other than the Sleepers.

"Entry is forbidden," the Watcher said.

Vinn stepped to the side of one of the domes. "My God," he said. Beside him Sarah shivered.

Tubes of some imperishable material were attached to the thin, sere arms of a wasted, mummified humanoid form.

"I have decided," the voice of the Watcher said, echoing away into the distance. "They must awaken."

Vinn moved on to the next dome. There, too, death had visited in remote times. From one of the tubes that terminated under the parchmentlike skin of the mummy a drop of clear liquid oozed. There was a puff of steam as it was quickly evaporated.

Sarah jumped convulsively as a sound of whirring machinery came from within the container. A robot arm moved toward the mummy's neck.

A long, gleaming needle was protruded. The whirring sound came from all of the domes, from the hundreds that were visible, dwindling in apparent size with distance.

"They awaken," the Watcher said. "I have miscalculated. You are a danger. Now your death will come, for these are the Sleepers, the terrible ones, the irresistible ones who once before restored the balance. They will destroy you as they destroyed those of you who came before you, and they will destroy you and the worlds you have fouled and all that you have created."

Vinn ran from dome to dome, saw only desiccated death. Attempts by the robot arms inside the domes to find a vein in the shrunken necks were resulting in robotic confusion. Long, gleaming needles searched, touched the withered skin, withdrew.

"Let's go," Vinn said, taking Sarah's arm. They ran back to the corridor, then in the direction from which they had come originally. In an alcove sat a vehicle much like the one that had brought them to the Center. Vinn helped Sarah into it, jumped in himself. He had watched the extension's operation of the vehicle on the way out. He pushed buttons. The vehicle sped down the corridor. He tried to remember which gallery led to the chamber where the aircars waited, but all of the arches looked the same.

He picked one and sent the vehicle speeding between the rows of domedcontainers. The whirling sound of the robotic machinery filled the long room.

"Whoa," he said, his heart leaping as he saw that the containers ahead were open. He pushed the button that stopped the vehicle. As far as his eye could see, the domes had been opened. Sarah's hand was shaking as she swept the empty aisle ahead with her saffer. Vinn leapt out of the vehicle and ran to look into one of the open containers. There was only the dry-rotted material of the pad on which a body had once lain. It was the same with the next few that he examined. In one there lay bones thinly covered with black, desiccated skin, but all of the others that he examined were empty.

He ran back to the vehicle. "If they were awakened, it was a long time ago," he said.

"No," said the Watcher's voice. "You're wrong."

But where were they, the Creators? The Watcher had taken the irrevocable step. The signal to activate the awakening procedure had gone out from back-up reason chambers. Monitors showed that the system was working, although the Watcher had most of its chambers engaged in assessing the damage done to the Center.

Where were the Creators? It had become obvious that the trespassers represented danger, that the balance was being tilted once again. Now the Creators would act. First the two remaining vermin would be exterminated, and then—

"It will do you no good to make ridiculous statements," the Watcher said.

"Your Sleepers are dead, Watcher," Vinn Stern said. "And these, several hundred of them, it appears, were awakened long ago."

"That is impossible. They are here," the Watcher said.

"Damn it, use your sensors," Vinn said. "Look, this dome has been open so long that the pad has atrophied. Look." He pressed the bottom of the container. Where his gloved hand touched, the material turned to dust.

The Watcher saw through Vinn's eyes. "Hundreds of them?"

"At least. The opened lids extend ahead of us as far as I can see."

The vehicle was moving at speed again. A blank wall ended the gallery.

Vinn turned the vehicle around and sent it flashing back toward the corridor. He regretted the wasted time.

"What's that sonofabitch up to?" he whispered to Sarah. In a loud voice he called out, "Watcher, they're all dead or gone."

The Watcher did not answer. The intruders were still alive. Something was wrong, for it was not logical that the Creators were awake and that those who had done such terrible damage to the Center were alive.

Vinn turned into another gallery. At the end of it, a distance of miles, a circular port opened. The two aircars sat in the center of the large, empty chamber. He helped Sarah out of the vehicle and led her at a clumsy run toward the aircars. He hit the switch that started the flux engine as he fell into the pilot's seat. Sarah was half-in, half-out when he tilted the aircar and triggered the laser cannon to boil away the metal hatch overhead. The air rushed out of the chamber as the aircar leapt for the sky.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Although deeply wounded and blinded throughout large areas of the core installations, the Watcher was functional. Animated extensions were ripping away the damaged modules and replacing them. Top priority was assigned to repair of the sensors in the halls of the Sleepers. The Watcher could not know the emotion of dismay. There was only an acknowledgment of receipt of data when newly installed circuit boards reported the fact that certain sensors in the halls had been inoperative for an indeterminate but significant length of time.

Monitoring ability fully restored, the Watcher recorded the same reading from ninety-nine percent of all Sleeper units. They were dead.

They had been dead for a period of time that could not be measured. Only a few hundred of the units did not contain the mummified, desiccatedremains of the Creators, those who had been preserved to guard the balance. The hoods of those few hundred units stood open. Power to the nurturing containers had been turned off.

It was the Watcher's function to learn. As the ability to see was restored, there was another discovery. In the fleet storage area half a dozen starships were gone. Someone had tampered with the sensors that kept the Watcher apprised of their state of readiness. For eons the sensors had been reporting false data. It could only be concluded that the few hundred Creators who had been awakened long ago had departed the planet aboard the missing starships, after having rigged the sensors to send erroneous signals.