The remaining workers clawed at each other in panic as they tried to force their way through the narrow gap in the bars. Barbara shouted: 'One at a time or none of us will get out!' Plax, already on the other side, helped pull them through as rapidly as possible. A thin haze was filling the barracks cave. Barbara held her handkerchief over her nose and mouth, but still felt a heavy soporific chemical tang catch her throat.

Her head began to swim. Then only she and Susan were left and Susan was helping her through the gap while Plax pulled.

Finally they were all on the other side of the bars and stumbling along the short corridor into the dining hall. Slowly the gas filtered though the bars after them.

Barbara gasped fresh air. 'Thanks,' she choked out.

The lever teams were already working desperately on the next door and broke a bar loose even as the gas began to seep into the far end of the hall. This time they got the workers through without panic, though the gas was at their heels filling the hall. The short pa.s.sage beyond ended in the solid door that divided it from the equipment cave and the outside air.

Susan elbowed her way to the front of the crowd and examined the latch side of the door. 'It's not shut all the way.

Come on!'

As many men as possible crowded round the door, laying their hands flat against it and pushing sideways. The door shifted slightly against some resistance.

'It's working!' said Plax. 'Again!'

They heaved until the side of the door narrowly cleared its recessed slot in the wall. Plax jammed the tip of a lever bar into the narrow gap and leant against it with all his strength.

The gap opened slightly wider and another lever was thrust right through it. Suddenly something snapped and the door slid back, throwing them all to the ground in a heap.

The men scrambled to their feet and charged into the equipment cave with defiant yells, the rest of the workers following them. There were no guards to be seen. They'd just turned on the gas and left, Barbara thought. Too ashamed to watch them die? The mob s.n.a.t.c.hed pick handles and crowbars from the tool racks and ran through the pa.s.sage to the main cave, with Barbara, Susan and Plax in their wake. Plax looked back at the mist of gas in the pa.s.sage behind them.

'If they were going to kill us anyway, why didn't they do it as soon as they locked us up?'

'Maybe they were waiting until they were sure they didn't need any more heavy work done,' Susan suggested.

He looked at her. If you hadn't fixed that door we'd have been dead by now.'

'It was Barbara who provided the diversion,' Susan said.

'Yes, why did you do that?' Plax asked.

Barbara shook her head, then suddenly found herself giggling with the release of tension. 'I don't know, I really don't.' She laughed. 'Perhaps I'll never know. Isn't that strange?'

They followed the crowd into the main cave. The black creeper machine was parked where they had last seen it, but the alcoves opening off the cave that had served as offices were dark and silent.

'They've gone!' Semanov was shouting angrily.

'Wait... I can hear motors,' said Plax. 'They're coming from the back of the cave.'

They headed for the sound, those in front waving their improvised weapons. The cave narrowed and curved slightly so they came upon the scene without warning. A party of grey guards and administrators were standing with their backs to them watching the first of a long convoy of cars and trucks, headlights blazing, emerge from the mouth of a large tunnel.

The attackers would have taken the unsuspecting grey guards by complete surprise, so intent was the group on the convoy. But one of the drivers must have noticed the workers'

sudden appearance for a horn sounded urgently.

Four guards were clubbed down before the rest could gather their wits and use their guns. A dozen workers fell in a hail of bullets while the rest were driven back around the bend in the cave. Barbara saw an administrator desperately waving the convoy on so that it turned to its left and drove down a side tunnel. In seconds the last vehicle had pa.s.sed through the intersection. The guards fell back into the tunnel after the convoy, covering their retreat with random bursts of fire. A large solid door slid across the tunnel mouth and shut with a clang. The echoes of gunfire faded away.

There were almost twenty still bodies lying about the cave floor, together with a few wounded groaning in pain. Their horrified fellows went to their sides and began to tend to them as well as they could. Others were taking weapons from the fallen guards or banging angrily on the door that sealed off the side tunnel.

Plax turned to Barbara and Susan looking pale but under control.

'The larger tunnel must be the one we came along yesterday from the city,' he said. 'But why did all those vehicles come here? Why are the guards still here? If this is Zero Day, why hasn't everybody gone to the Ship?'

n.o.body could give him an answer. Barbara was looking about her, trying to get her bearings.

'If it follows the cliffside, that side tunnel leads towards the doors at the end of the embankment channel. The convoy must have been making for whatever's behind that.' She raised her voice: 'Does anybody know what it is?'

There was a general muttering and shaking of heads.

'It must be pretty important for them to have shut themselves in there,' Susan pointed out.

'What could be more important than the Ship?' Plax asked.

They realised they had gathered an audience. Abandoning their futile efforts to break down the door, several of the workers were listening. Semanov was among them carrying a liberated gun.

'Right, we're going to find out what they're hiding,' she said. 'Maybe we can get in through the embankment doors.

Come on.'

'Wait,' Susan said. 'Let's think about this for a moment.'

'We haven't the time,' Semanov replied. 'We can't get the work trucks up here, so we'll need that convoy to take us back to the city. Either way we need to get inside those doors.'

Tressel spoke up. 'Maybe we should consider other options first. We don't want any more bloodshed.'

Semanov snapped back: 'You asked me if I'd kill to get on the Ship. Well I will! It's them or us. Now are you with me or not?'

Tressel shrugged helplessly and nodded. There was a cheer of support and about fifty men and women headed back up the cave and into the open air. They swarmed down the twisting hillside track, then out across the edge of the plateau floor towards the huge doors at the end of the channel earthworks. Barbara and Susan hung back in the cave mouth.

'Why don't we go with them?' Plax asked. 'We're fighting back at last.'

'But we've lost the element of surprise,' Barbara said.

'The overseers must have planned for this sort of thing.'

The mob was almost at its objective. A few workers began to climb the embankments.

Sparkling points of light appeared at points high up on either side of the towering doors. The climbers twisted and fell as plumes of dust exploded from the earth all around them.

The cones of fire swung outwards to engulf the rest of the attackers. Screams were drowned by the harsh chatter of machine-gun fire. After what seemed like an eternity but could not have been more than fifteen seconds, the guns fell silent.

On the plateau floor nothing moved.

Susan turned her head aside, looking as though she was going to be sick. Plax swallowed and said faintly: 'It was a brave attempt.'

'It was foolish,' Barbara said bitterly.

The remaining workers were crowding about them, gazing down at the scene of the ma.s.sacre in disbelief. One of them grabbed Barbara's arm.

'So what are we going to do now?' she demanded, her voice half a sob. 'You have all the answers. Tell us.'

Barbara looked around at the sea of expectant faces. What could she say? Just then Susan called out: 'I can hear more cars coming!'

The workers fell back uncertainly, some slipping away into side caves while others clasped their makeshift weapons more firmly. If they're armed there's nothing we can do but run, Barbara thought desperately. A jeep, a pick-up and two low six-wheeled trucks emerged from the shadows at the back of the cave and rolled to a halt in front of them.

As they did so they saw familiar faces peering through the windshield of the leading car and suddenly despair turned to joy.

'Ian!'

'Grandfather!'

Then the men were out of the cars and hugging them, and they were laughing and crying at the same time.

'Father!' Plax shouted, and ran forward to embrace an older man bring helped out of the second car. It was some moments before they realised who had a.s.sisted the man.

Barbara blinked, wondering if she was seeing things.

'It's all right,' Ian said quickly, 'we can explain...'

Chapter Thirty-Three.

Justification Draad's feet felt like lead as he climbed the steps of the mobile inspection gantry that had been hastily wheeled out into the middle of the hangar floor. Just a little longer, he told himself.

This was probably the last public speech he would have to make... and also the hardest. But afterwards the responsibility would be over and he could surrender himself to fate and technology. There would be no more decisions to make.

He reached the top of the gantry and clung gratefully to the mil for support, catching his breath as he looked down on the sea of faces below him. Some, like Pardek, were knowing and expectant, but most of these people were confused and scared, with no comprehension of why they hadn't boarded the Ship along with the rest of the citizens. Hearing the firing from the gunports by the main doors hadn't helped calm them.

Quite a few of the younger children were clinging to their parents, with tear-streaked faces. He owed them at least his best. With an effort he straightened up and gave a rea.s.suring smile.

'Many of you will be feeling very confused and probably a little frightened right now. You thought you were taking your places in the Ship, and instead we have brought you here. I'll try to explain why we had to deceive you in a moment. First let me a.s.sure you that we do intend to leave for Mirath in a few hours and we have every chance of reaching it safely. It just won't be quite the way you were led to believe.'

They could all see and recognise the Lander behind him since it had towered above them at the summit of the Ship for years. But they would never have seen it like this, lying on its side on a metal sledge enclosed in a cradle of curving struts and braces.

'Professor Jarrasen will explain the technical details, but to put it simply we learnt a few years ago that there was no possibility that we could evacuate everybody in Arkhaven to Mirath. To reveal the fact publicly would have caused terrible anguish and the city would have degenerated into anarchy. So, the relative handful of us who knew...' He paused for a moment, then shrugged. 'We lied. We built this base secretly and prepared it for this moment as best we could. But we had to make a hard, a desperately hard, decision: who would we save?

'We could have simply chosen at random from the whole population: Functionaries, Elite families, Believers, even NC2s. But it was our cla.s.s who had conceived the Exodus plan, so we chose among them alone. The secret had to be kept while the project progressed, so within our cla.s.s it had to be those we could trust, and of course their families, even at the cost of excluding many good people. You are the results of that choice, smuggled here along a specially-built tunnel from the Ship.'

'What's happened to the Ship... to everybody else?'

somebody called out.

Now for the final lies, Draad thought. He would not mention the mistakes at the NC2 camp or the attack by the last of the Taklarians on the Ship. The bulk of the chosen ones had been evacuated before then and only he and a handful of others knew the truth. Let the people think the end was dignified.

'They're all dead,' he said aloud. 'But I can a.s.sure you it was done humanely. They were put under anaesthesia as planned... and then the Ship was destroyed.'

He saw incredulous faces, shaking heads, some tears.

'I know it sounds inhuman,' he continued, 'but there was no other way. To let them live through these last hours knowing their fate would have been the real cruelty?

Another voice: 'Who was responsible for that shooting just now?'

Why did they keep asking questions? He was so tired of questions. 'Some NC2s were used as manual labour on this project. A few escaped, but they won't be troubling us any longer. We plan to deal with the rest humanely before we leave.'

There was a deep, base rumbling so low that it could hardly be heard. The floor shook, setting the gantry swaying for a few seconds and disturbing dust that fell in streamers from the huge lattice girders bracing the roof.

Draad forced a smile. 'Just a warning that we don't have much time left.' He licked his dry lips. 'Now Professor Jarrasen will explain what's going to happen next.'

Jarrasen climbed the steps to stand by him. He was just as tired as Draad, but he was still sustained by an inner fire. His moment of triumph or tragedy was yet to come.

'When I announced some years ago that I had designed an atomic engine capable of lifting a vessel the size of the Ship into s.p.a.ce, I sincerely believed it to be true. But lack of funding in the early stages meant my research had been flawed. Subsequent trials proved my design was not practical.

The best I could achieve was a unit thrust two or three orders of magnitude less than we needed to power the Ship. But by then the Ship was under construction and the people of Arkhaven had come to believe in it. So we allowed the work to continue while exploring alternatives.

'We considered building an orbital station and transporting pa.s.sengers to it with a fleet of small short-range craft, then taking them to Mirath with specialised deep-s.p.a.ce vessels. But the high density of debris moving about Sarath made a station unsustainable.

'Eventually it became apparent that the journey to Mirath had to be made without orbital transfer, in a craft large enough to carry sufficient hull shielding to withstand the inevitable impacts of minor debris that it would encounter. There was only one vessel capable of making such a flight: the landing module. Even then we had to design an alternative launching system to boost it into s.p.a.ce. Given more time we might have been able to complete a second Lander... you can see its framework on the other side of the hangar. But time has run out. We can only take five hundred people to Mirath.

'Shortly you will be boarding the Lander. Take the same places you would have on the dummy craft that stood in the city. Internal ladders have been added to allow you to reach your bunks. As before, Captain Warvon and his crew will be flying the Lander, with Monitor as autopilot.'

The six men in flight uniforms standing close to the base of the gantry nodded and gave reserved waves to the crowd.

'However, I must warn you that the journey to Mirath will not take ten days as you were previously told, but six weeks.

Though Mirath is coming into a favourable point of opposition, we do not have the power to make the crossing any faster. It will be cramped and uncomfortable, but it is the only chance we have. Look.'

He indicated a corner of the hangar taken up by a duplicate Monitor terminal unit. The bank of large screens above it displayed images of the fragmenting moon and fire trails in the equatorial skies.

'Sarath only has a few hours left to live,' Jarrasen continued.' We must be well clear when the major impacts occur.' He checked his watch. 'An opportune launch time, avoiding the worst of the orbital debris, will occur in about two hours. We shall leave then. Now, if you have any questions I will do my best to '

A distant booming crash echoed from the mouth of the access tunnel that opened on to the back of the hangar.

Guards s.n.a.t.c.hed up their weapons and dashed into the opening. There came a second crash followed by a clang and rattle of broken metal. A screeching whine could be heard, becoming louder by the second.

The guards reappeared, retreating rapidly and firing over their shoulders.

The noise rose to a shrill peak as the Creeper burst into the hangar.