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As the 'majiggers glided out of the night above them, Alexei grabbed his mother's arm, snapped: "Don't move!"
Then he saw the lead craft in the moonlight, the way its wings cupped to brake for landing, the reckless dash of the hands at the controls.
"It's Ukrainia," he breathed.
The craft and its companions settled into the basin like a flock of geese coming to nest. Ukrainia was out of his 'majigger and running towards them before the dust settled. Two figures in Szgany robes followed him. Alexei recognized one: the tall, sandy-bearded Holstein.
"This way!" Holstein called and he veered to the left.
Behind Holstein, other Szganys were throwing fabric covers over their ornimajiggers. The craft became a row of shallow dunes.
Ukrainia skidded to a stop in front of Alexei, saluted, "Milord, the Szganys have a temporary hiding place nearby where we...."
"What about that back there?"
Alexei pointed to the violence above the distant cliffs---the jetflares, the purple beams of phasguns lacing the desert.
A rare smile touched Ukrainia's round, placid face. "Milord....Sire. I've left them a little sur...."
Glaring white light filled the desert----bright as a sun, etching their shadows onto the rock floor of the ledge. In one sweeping motion, Ukrainia had Alexei's hand in one hand, Alexandra's in the other, hurling them down off the ledge and into the basin. They sprawled together in the sand as the roar of an explosion thundered over them. Its shockwave tumbled chips off the rock ledge they had vacated.
Ukrainia sat up, brushed sand from himself.
"Not the family nuclears!" Alexandra said. "I thought..."
"You planted a barrier back there," Alexei said.
"A big one amplified to full force," Ukrainia said. "A phasgun beam touched it and..." He shrugged.
"Subatomic fusion," Alexandra said. "That's a dangerous weapon."
"Not weapon, milady, defense. That rabble will think twice before using phasguns another time."
The Szganys from the ornithopters stopped above them. One called in a low voice: "We should get under cover, friends."
Alexei got to his feet as Ukrainia helped Alexandra up.
"That blast will attract considerable attention, Sire," Ukrainia said.
Sire, Alexei thought.
The word had such a strange sound when directed at him. Sire had always been his father.
He felt himself touched briefly by his powers of prescience, seeing himself infected by the wild race consciousness that was moving the human universe towards chaos. The vision left him shaken, and he allowed Ukrainia to guide him along the edge of the basin to a rock projection. Szganys there were opening a way down into the sand with their compaction tools.
"May I take your pack, Sire?" Ukrainia asked.
"It's not heavy, Grady," Alexei said.
"You have no body barrier," Ukrainia said. "Do you wish mine?" He glanced at the distant cliff. "Not likely there'll be any more phasgun activity about."
"Keep your barrier, Grady. Your right arm is barrier enough for me."
Alexandra saw the way the praise took effect, how Ukrainia moved closer to Alexei, and she thought: Such a sure hand my son has with his people.
The Szgany removed a rock plug that opened a passage down into the native basement complex of the desert. A camouflage cover was rigged for the opening.
"This way," one of the Szganys said, and he led them down rock steps into darkness.
Behind them, the cover blotted out the moonlight. A dim green glow came alive ahead, revealing the steps and rock walls, a turn to the left. Robed Szganys were all around them now, pressing downward. They rounded the corner, found another down-slanting passage. It opened into a rough cave chamber.
Holstein stood before them; his juba hood thrown back. The neck of his stillsuit glistening in the green light. His long hair and beard were mussed. The blue eyes without whites were a darkness under heavy brows.
In the moment of encounter, Holstein wondered at himself: Why am I helping these people? It's the most dangerous thing I've ever done. It could doom me with them.
Then he looked squarely at Alexei, seeing the boy who'd taken on the mantle of manhood, masking grief, suppressing all but the position that must now be assumed---the dukedom. And Holstein realized in that moment the dukedom still existed and solely became of this youth---and this was not a thing to be taken lightly.
Alexandra glanced once around the chamber, registering in on her senses in the Bala Garrasaid way---a laboratory, a civil place full of angles and squares in the ancient manner.
"This is one of the Imperial Ecological Testing stations my father wanted as advance bases," Alexei said.
His father wanted! Holstein thought.
And again, Holstein wondered at himself. Am I foolish to aid these fugitives? Why am I doing it? It'd be so easy to take them now, to buy the Seppanen trust with them.
Alexei followed his mother's example, gestalting the room, seeing the workbench down on one side, the walls of featureless rock, instruments lined the bench----dials glowing, wire gridex planes with fluting glass emerging from them. An ozone smell permeated the place.
Some of the Szganys oved on around a concealing angle in the chamber and new sounds began there---machine coughs, the whinnies of spinning belts and multidrives.
Alexei looked to the room's end, saw cages with little animals in them stacked against the wall.
"You've recognized this place correctly," Holstein said. "For what would you use such a place, Alexei Romanov?"
"I would use it to make this planet a paradise for humans," Alexei said.
Maybe that's why I help them, Holstein thought.
The machine sounds abruptly hummed away to silence. Into this voice there came a thin animal squeak from the cages. It was cut off abruptly as if in embarrassment.
Alexei returned his attention to the cages, saw that the animals were brown-winged bats. An automatic feeder extended from the side wall across the cages.
A Szgany emerged from the hidden area of the chamber, spoke to Holstein: "Brunn-Ke, the field-generator equipment isn't working. I'm unable to hide us from proximity detectors."
"Can it be repaired?" Holstein asked.
"I have no idea. The parts..." The man shrugged.
"Yes," Holstein said. "All right then, we'll do without machinery. Get a hand pump for air out to the surface."
"At once!" The man scurried away.
Holstein turned back to Alexei. "You gave a good answer."
Alexandra marked the easy rumble of the man's voice. It was a royal voice, accustomed to command. And she had not missed the reference to him as Brunn-Ke. Brunn-Ke was the Szgany alter ego, the other face of the tame planetologist.
"We're most grateful for your help, Dr. Holstein," she said.
"Mm-m-m, we'll see," Holstein said. He nodded to one of them. "Spice coffee in my quarters, Ze-Apt."
"At once, Brunn-Ke," the man said.
Holstein indicated an arched opening in the side wall of the chamber. "If you would be so kind?"
Alexandra permitted herself a regal nod before accepting. She saw Alexei give a hand signal to Ukrainia, telling him to mount guard here.
The passage, two paces deep, opened through a heavy door into a square office lit by golden glowglobes. Alexandra passed her hand across the door as she entered, was startled to identify Reardon metal.
Alexei stepped three paces into the room, dropped his pack to the floor. He heard the door shut behind him, studied the place---about eighty meters to a side, walls of natural rock, curry-colored, broken by metal filing cabinets on their right. A low desk with milk glass top shot full of yellow bubbles occupied the middle of the room. Four suspensor chairs ringed the desk.
"Won't you take a seat, Alexei Romanov?" Holstein said.
How carefully he avoids my title, Alexei thought. But he accepted the chair, remained silent while Holstein sat down.
"You sense that Dyuna could be a paradise," Holstein said. "Yet, as you see, the Imperium sends here only its trained hachetmen, its seekers after the spice!"
Alexei held up his thumb with his ducal signet. "Do you see this ring?"
"Yes."
"Do you know what it means?"
Alexandra turned sharply to stare at her son.
"Your father lies dead in the ruins of Mat E'trov," Holstein said. "Technically, you are the Duke."
"I'm a soldier of the Imperium," Alexei said, "technically a hatchetman."
Holstein's face darkened. "Even with the Sultan's Sordoi standing over your father's corpse?"
"The Sordoi are one thing, the legal source of my authority is another," Alexei said.
"Dyuna has its own way of determining who wears the mantle of authority," Holstein said.
And Alexandra, turning back to look at him, thought: There's metal in this man that nobody has taken the temper out of---and we've need of steel. Alexei's doing a dangerous thing.
Alexei said: "The Sordoi on Dyuna are a measure of how much our beloved Sultan feared my father. Now, I will give the Pbejtibi Sultan reasons to fear the..."
"Comrade," Holstein said, "there are things you don't...."
"You will address me as Sire or Milord," Alexei said.
Gently, Alexandra thought.
Holstein stared at Alexei, and Alexandra noted the glint of admiration in the planetologist's face, the touch of humor there.
"Sire," Holstein said, but Alexandra saw that he was not now speaking to a boy of fifteen, but to a man, a superior. Now Holstein meant the word.
In this moment he'd give his life for Alexei, she thought. How do the Romanovs accomplish this thing so fast and simply?
"I know you mean this," Holstein said. "Yet the Sepan..."
The door behind Alexei slammed open. He whirled to see reeling violence---shouting, the clash of steel, wax-image faces grimacing in the passage.
With his mother beside him, Alexei leaped for the door, seeing Ukrainia blocking the passage, his blood-pitted eyes there visible through a shield blur, claw hands beyond him, arcs of steel chopping futilely at the shield. There was the orange fire-mouth of a stunner repelled by the shield. Ukrainia's blades were through it all, flick-flicking, red dripping from them.
Then Holstein was beside Alexei, and they threw their weight against the door.
Alexei had one last glimpse of Ukrainia standing against a swarm of Seppanen uniforms---his jerking, controlled staggers, the black goat hair with a red blossom of death in it. Then the door was close and there came a snick as Holstein threw the bolts.
"Well, I seem to have decided," Holstein said.
"Someone detected your machinery before it was shut down, Alexei said. He pulled his mother away from the door, met the despair in her eyes.
"I should've suspected trouble when the coffee failed to arrive," Holstein said.
"You've got a bolt hole out of here," Alexei said. "Shall we use it?"
Holstein took a deep breath and said: "This door should hold for at least twenty minutes against all but a phasgun."
"They'll not use a phasgun for fear we've shields on this side," Alexei said.
"Those were Sordoi in Seppanen livery," Alexandra whispered.
They could hear pounding on the door now, rhythmic blows.
Holstein indicated the cabinets against the right-hand wall, said: "This way." He crossed to the first cabinet, opened a drawer, manipulated a handle within it. The whole wall of cabinets swung open to expose the black mouth of a tunnel. "This door is also made of Reardon metal," Holstein said.
"You were well prepared," Alexandra said.
"We lived under the Seppanens for eighty years," Holstein said. He herded them into the darkness, closed the door.
In the sudden blackness, Alexandra saw a luminous arrow on the floor ahead of here.
Holstein's voice came from behind them: "We'll separate here. This wall is tougher. It'll stand for at least an hour. Follow the arrows like that one on the floor. They'll be extinguished by your passage. They lead through a maze to another exit where I've secreted a 'majigger. There's a storm across the desert tonight. Your only hope is to run for that storm, dive into the top of it, ride with it. My people have done this in stealing 'majiggers. If you stay high in the storm, you'll survive."
"What of you?" Alexei asked.
"I'll try to escape another way. If I'm captured---well, I'm still Imperial Planetologist. I can say I was your prisoner."
Running like cowards, Alexei thought. Yet there is no other way to avenge my father. He turned to face the door.
Alexandra heard him move, said, "Grady's dead, Alexei. You saw the wound. You can do nothing for him."
"I'll take full payment from them one day," Alexei said.
"Not unless you hurry now," Holstein said.
Alexei felt the man's hand upon his shoulder.
"Where'll we meet, Holstein?" Alexei asked.
"I'll send Szganys searching for you. The storm's path is known. Hurry now, and the Great Mother give you speed and luck."
They heard him go, a scrambling in the blackness.
Alexandra found Alexei's hand, pulled him gently. "We must not get separated," she said.
"Agreed."
He followed her across the first arrow, seeing it go black as they touched it. Another arrow beckoned ahead.
They cross it, saw it snuff itself out, saw another arrow ahead.
They were running now.
Plans within plans within plans, Alexandra thought. Have we become part of someone else's plan now?
The arrows led them around turnings, past side openings only dimly sensed in the faint luminescence. Their way slammed downward for a time, then up, every up. They came finally to steps, rounded a corner and were brought short by a glowing wall with a dark handle visible in its center.
Alexei pressed that handle.
The wall swung away from them. Light flared in to reveal a rock-hewn cavern with an ornimajigger squatting in its middle. A flat gray wall with a doorsign on it loomed beyond the aircraft.
"Where'd Holstein go?" Alexandra said.
"He did what any good guerilla warrior would," Alexei said. "He split us up into two parties and arranged it so he couldn't reveal where we are if he's taken. He really won't know."
Alexei drew her into the room, noting how their feet kicked up dust on the floor.
"Nobody's been here for a long time," he said.
"He seemed confident the Szganys could find us," she said.
"That's a confidence which I share."
Alexei released her hand, crossed to the ornimajigger's left door, opened it, and secured his pack in the rear. "The ship's proximity masked," he said. "Instrument panel has remote door control, light control. Eighty years under the Seppanens taught them to be thorough."
Alexandra leaned against the craft's outer side, catching her breath.
"The Seppanens will have a cowering force over this area," she said. "They're not stupid." She considered her direction sense, pointed right. "The storm we saw is that way."
Alexei nodded, fighting an abrupt reluctance to move. He knew its cause but found no help in the knowledge. Somewhere this night he'd passed a decision-nexus into the deep unknown. He knew the time-area surrounding them, but the here-and-now existed as a place of mystery. It was as if he'd seen himself from a distance go out of sight down into a valley. Of the countless paths up out of that valley some might carry an Alexei Romanov back into sigh, but many wouldn't.
"The longer we wait, the better prepared they'll be," Alexandra said.
"Get in and strap down," he said.
He joined her in the ornimajigger, still struggling with the thought that this was blind ground, unseen in any prescient vision. And he realized with an abrupt sense of shock that he had been given more and more reliance to prescient memory and it had weakened him for this particular contingency.
"If you rely on your eyes, your other senses weaken." It was a Bala Garrasaid axiom. He took it to himself now, promising never again to fall into that trap---if he lived through this.
Alexei fastened his safety harness, saw that his mother was secure, checked the aircraft. The wings were, at full spread-rest, their delicate metal interleavings extended. He touched the reactor bar, watched the wings shorten for jet-boost takeoff the way Gustav Vasa had taught him. The starter switch moved easily. Dials on the instrument panel came to life as the jetpods were armed. Turbines started their low hissing.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Yes."
He touched the remote control for lights.
Darkness smothered them.
His hand was a shadow against the luminous dials as he tripped the remote door control. Grating sounded ahead of them. A cascade of sand swished away to silence. A dusty breeze touched Alexei's cheeks. He closed his door, feeling the sudden pressure.
A wide patch of dust-blurred stars framed in angular darkness appeared where the door-wall had been. Starlight defined a shell beyond, a suggestion of sand ripples.
Alexei depressed the glowing action-sequence switch on his panel. The wings snapped back and down, tossing the 'majigger out of its nest. Power surged from the jetpods as the wings locked into lift attitude.
Alexandra let her hands ride lightly on the dual controls, feeling the sureness of her son's movements. She was scared but exhilarated. Alexei's training is our only hope, she thought. His youthful swiftness, too.
Alexei fed more power to the jetpods. The 'majigger banked, sinking them into their seats as a dark wall lifted against the stars ahead. He gave the craft more wing and increased the power. Another burst of lifting wingbeats and they came out over rocks, silver-frosted angles and outcroppings in the starlight. The dust-reddened second moon showed itself above the horizon to their right, defining the ribbon trail of the storm.
Alexei's hands danced over the controls. Wings morphed into beetle-like stubs. G-force pulled at their flesh as the craft came around in a tight bank.
"Jetflares behind us!" Alexandra said.
"I saw them."
He slammed the power arm forward.
Their 'majigger leaped like a scared animal, surged southwest towards the storm and the great curve of desert. In the near distance, Alexei saw scattered shadows telling where the line of rocks ended, the basement complex sinking beneath the dunes. Beyond stretched moonlit fingernail shadows, dunes fading one into the other.
And above the horizon climbed the flat immensity of the storm like a wall against the stars.
Something jarred the 'majigger.
"Shellburst!" Alexandra gasped. "They're using some sort of projectile weapon."
She saw a sudden animal grin on Alexei's face. "They seem to be avoiding their phasguns," he said.
"But we have no barriers!"
"They don't know that."
Again, the 'majigger shuddered.
Alexei twisted to peer back. "Only one of them seems to be fast enough to keep pace with us."
He returned his attention to their course, watching the storm wall grow high in front of them. It looked like a tangible solid.
"Projectile launchers, rockets, all the ancient weaponry; that's one thing we'll give the Szganys," Alexei whispered.
"The storm," Alexandra said. "Hadn't you better turn?"
"What of the ship tailing us?"
"He's pulling up."
"Now!"
Alexei stubbed the wings, banked hard left into the deceptively slow boiling of the storm wall, felt his cheeks pull in the G-force.
They seemed to glide into a slow clouding of dust that grew thicker and thicker until it blotted out the desert and the moon. The aircraft became a long, horizontal whisper of darkness lighted only by the green luminosity of the instrument panel.
Through Alexandra's mind flashed all the warnings about such storms---that they cut metal like butter, etched flesh to bone and ate away the bones. She felt the buffeting of dust-blanketed wind. It twisted them as Alexei wrestled with the controls. She saw him chop the power, felt the ship buckle. The metal around them hissed and trembled.
"Sand!" Alexandra shouted.
She saw the negative shake of his head in the light from the panel. "Not much sand this high."
But she could feel them sinking deeper and deeper into the maelstrom.
Alexei set the wings to their full soaring length, heard them creak with the strain. He kept his eyes fixed on the instruments, gliding by instinct, fighting for altitude.
The sound of their passage diminished.
The 'majigger began rolling off to the left. Alexei focused on the glowing globe within the attitude curve, fought his craft back to level flight.
Alexandra had the eerie feeling that they were standing still, that all motion was external. A vague tan flowing against the windows, a rumbling hiss reminded her of the powers around them.
Winds to 7 or 8 hundred kilometers an hour, she thought. Adrenalin edginess gnawed at her. I must not fear, she told herself, mouthing the words of the Bala Garrasaid litany. Fear is the mind-slayer.128Please respect copyright.PENANAfUfzRPcD4Y
Slowly her long years of training prevailed.
"We've got the tiger by the tail," Alexei whispered. "We can't go down, can't land....and I don't think I can lift us out of this. We'll have to ride it out."
Calmness drained out of her, Alexandra felt her teeth chattering, clamped them together. Then she heard Alexei's voice, low and controlled, reciting the litany.
"Fear is the mind-slayer. Fear is the tiny death that brings certain destruction. I will face my fear. I will let it pass over and through me. And when it's gone past me, I'll turn to see fear's path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
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