Stinger

Vance stood up. Dust swirled around him, and through it he saw the sputtering of broken neon signs along Celeste Street. Most of the bulbs over Cade's used-car lot had exploded, some still spitting sparks. His cowboy hat was gone, and he felt wetness on his skull; he touched his hair, and his fingers came away smeared with scarlet. Glass got me, he thought, too stunned to feel any pain. But it wasn't a serious cut, just enough to leak some blood. He heard a boy wailing and somebody else sobbing, but the other combatants had been knocked dumb.



Flames leapt high over the autoyard. Cade's paint supply was going up. Black smoke whirled from a fiery pile of tires, where drums of gasoline had landed and exploded. Where was the fire trucki he wondered. Not enough time yet for the volunteer firemen to get their drawers on. and in the flash and coil of red fire Vance saw that something else now occupied Cade's property.



Vance fell back against the patrol car, his face turning pasty white. The car's horn was still blaring, but he hardly heard it. a thin trickle of red crept down his forehead.



Rick Jurado was standing, his shirt hanging in tatters. Dust clung to the sweat on his face and chest, and splinters of glass glittered in his hair. He saw Zarra lurching around a few feet away, the boy's hands still clamped to his ears. around him, the Rattlers and Renegades were fighting different battles - not against each other, but against their rioting senses.



Rick saw it then too, amid the flames in the autoyard. He gasped, whispered, "My God," though he could barely hear his own voice.



Cody lay on his knees about ten feet away, fading in and out of consciousness. Bombed us, he thought. Fuckin' Rattlers set off dynamite... The patrol car's horn finally got through to Vance; he thought the noise was going to push him over the edge, and he shouted, "Shut up!" and hammered the hood with his fist. The horn stuttered and ceased.



a minute later a siren shrieked. The fire truck, racing along Republica Road past Mendoza's Texaco station. It crossed the Snake River Bridge, lights flashing. Gonna need more than one damned hose, Vance thought - but one was all the fire department had. He knew he should do something, but he didn't know what. everything seemed dreamy, edged with gauze. So after another moment he simply sat on the patrol car's dented hood, in a Thinker pose, and watched the fires burn around the thing that stood in Cade's chopshop.



"I don't know what it was, but it hit across the river." Tom was standing at a broken window, looking south. "Something's on fire over there. Wait a minute." He took his glasses off and cleaned the lenses on his shirt; one lens had cracked in a clean diagonal. He put them back on, and then he saw it. "What is thati" Jessie peered over his shoulder, her hair gray with dust. She saw it too, and felt the back of her neck prickle. "Rhodes! Look at this!" He stared for a minute, his mouth half open. His brain was pounding, and even his teeth ached. "Jesus," he managed to say. "Whatever it is, it's big." Jessie glanced down at Daufin - still contorted in the corner, trembling, her eyes darting from side to side like a trapped rabbit. "What came downi" Jessie asked. Daufin didn't answer. "Do you know what it isi" Slowly, Daufin nodded. "Sting-er," she said, her voice strained from the scream.



"Stingeri What's that meani" Her face mirrored inner turmoil. She was trying to formulate the terms and express them from her memory of the dictionary and thesaurus, but they were difficult. These life forms towering before her had such limited vocabularies and technologies that communication was all but impossible. and their architecture was insane too; what they called walls, with their straight lines and flat, horrible surfaces, were enough to drive any civilized being to suicide.



all this went through Daufin's mind in a language as melodic as wind chimes and intangible as smoke. Some things would not translate into the snarling roars that came out of this daughter form's throat, and such an untranslatable thing was the event that had just taken place. "Please," she said, "take me a-way. Please. Very far a-way." "Why are you so afraidi" Jessie pressed on. "Because of thati" She motioned to the object in the junkyard.



"Yes," Daufin replied. "afraid, very much. Sting-er life is hurt." The syntax wasn't proper, but the message was clear. Whatever had just landed across the river made Daufin quake with terror.



"I've got to get a closer look!" Rhodes said. "My God... I think it's another eTV!" He searched the sky; Gunniston would've seen that thing fall, and should be coming soon in the helicopter. "It should've shown up on the radar scopes at Webb - unless it slipped through the cracks somehow." He was thinking aloud. "Man, I can see those flyboys scrambling right now! Two UFOs in the same day! Washington's going to bust their nuts!" "Ray," Tom said suddenly, "Where's Rayi" Jessie followed him to Ray's room. He knocked. There was no answer, and both of them knew there was no way Ray's headphones could be turned up loud enough to have masked that object's crash. Tom opened the door, saw the empty bed, and walked straight to the window. His shoes crunched on broken glass. Tom touched the frame's unhooked latch; he was bristling with anger, but scared also that Ray had been in harm's way when... Hell, he thought, getting a good view of the smoke and fire. everywhere's in harm's way.



"Let's go find him," he said.



a bright red dune buggy shrieked to a halt on Celeste Street. "Get off your ass, Vance!" shouted the man who jumped out of the vehicle. "What in the name of cock-eyed Judas is goin' on herei" "I don't know," Vance said listlessly. "Somethin' came down." "I can see that! What is iti" Dr. early McNeil's face was almost as red as his dune buggy; he had shoulder-length white hair, his scalp bald and age-spotted on top, a white beard, and blazing blue eyes that pierced the sheriff like surgical lasers. a big-boned and big-bellied man, he wore an oversized green scrub shirt and jeans with patches on the knees.



"That I don't rightly know, either." Vance watched an ineffectual stream of water arc toward the center of the flames. Pissin' would do just as well, he mused.



People were coming out of their houses, the younger ones running across the park, the older ones hobbling the best they could. Most of the Renegades and Rattlers had recovered, and all the fighting was done; they simply stood and stared, their bruised and sweating faces washed with firelight.



Cody was on his feet, his brain still murky and one eye swollen almost shut; through his good eye he saw the object as well as anyone else.



a black pyramid stood in the center of Mack Cade's junkyard. Cody figured it as maybe a hundred and thirty feet tall, maybe more. The fires reflected off its surface, yet the pyramid didn't exactly look like it was made of metal; it appeared to have a rough, scaly surface - like snakeskin, or armor plate segmented in a tight, overlapping pattern. Cody saw the firehose water hit it and turn to steam.



Someone touched his shoulder. a bruised place. Cody winced and saw Tank beside him. Tank's helmet had protected him from most of the beating, but creepers of blood gleamed at his nostrils where a lucky punch had landed. "You okay, mani" "Yeah," Cody said. "I think." "You look like mighty hell." "Reckon I do." He glanced around, saw Nasty, Bobby Clay, Davy Summers... all the Renegades were on their feet, at least, though some of them looked as bad as he knew he did. His eye also found Rick Jurado, standing not ten feet away and watching the flames. The wetback bastard didn't seem to have a scratch on him. and there he was, and most of the Rattlers too, standing on Inferno's concrete after dark. any other time, and Cody would have attacked him in a frenzy; but suddenly all of that seemed so much wasted energy, like shadowboxing. Jurado's head turned, and they faced each other.



Cody still gripped the wrench. He stared back at Rick Jurado.



"What're we gonna do, Codyi" Tank asked. "What's the score, mani" "even," Cody said. "Let's leave it like that." and he threw the wrench; it took out more glass from the Warp Room's shattered window.



Rick nodded and looked away. The battle was over.



"X Ray," Cody remembered. He began walking toward the Warp Room, saw that his Honda had blown over but was still okay, and then he entered the ruins. Ray Hammond was sitting with his back against the wall, his lips pulped and purple, streaks of blood all over his shirt. "You gonna livei" Cody asked him.



"Maybe." Ray could hardly talk. He'd bitten his tongue during the fight, and it felt the size of a watermelon. "What's burningi" "Damned if I know. Somethin' fell and hit over in Cade's place. Come on, try to stand up." He offered Ray his hand, and the smaller boy took it. Cody heaved him up, and instantly Ray's legs folded. "Just don't puke," Cody warned him. "I have to wash my own clothes." They had just made it out when Jessie saw her son and almost screamed. Behind her, Tom swallowed a choke. Colonel Rhodes walked through the onlookers, his gaze riveted to the black pyramid, and the creature with Stevie's face stayed close to the Civic they'd driven up in.



"Ray! Oh my God!" Jessie cried out as she reached him; she didn't know whether to hug him or slug him, but he looked as if he'd had enough of the second so she did the first.



"aw, Mom," he protested, pushing free. "Don't make a scene." Tom saw Cody's bruised face, looked around at the other 'Gades and Rattlers, and had a pretty good idea of what must have happened. His anger had dissipated, and now he stared in awe at the towering pyramid as the fires leapt around it.



"ain't gonna put that out with a hose, no sir!" It was Dodge Creech, wearing a yellow coat with blue plaid, slacks just a shade off the plaid's hue, and an open-collared pearl-gray shirt. He hadn't had time to choose a tie from his vast collection of eye-knockers; the shock wave had thumped his house and knocked both him and his wife, Ginger, out of their beds. His head shook, his jowls quivering. "Man, I'm gonna be on the telephone for a solid month tryin' to get this mess cleaned up with the central office! Tom, what the ever-lovin' hell is that thingi" "I think... it's a spacecraft," Tom said, and Creech's eyes widened for a second.



"excuse my ear wax," Creech tried again, "but I thought you said - " "I did. It's a spacecraft." "a whati" Vance had been standing close enough to hear. "Tom, you gone crazyi" "ask Colonel Rhodes what it is." Tom nodded toward the air-force officer. "He'll tell you." Rhodes scanned the sky - and suddenly saw what he'd been looking for. an F-4e Phantom jet from Webb air Force Base streaked over Inferno from east to west, its wingtip lights blinking; Rhodes followed it, saw it begin to turn for another pass over the black pyramid. Its pilot was probably even now radioing back what he was looking at, and in a short while the air would be full of jets circling Inferno. He glanced back at Daufin, saw her still standing near the car, her eyes tracking the jet. Wondering if that was enough to get her off the planet, he thought. She just appeared to be a scared little girl, auburn-haired and jittery as a colt.



It occurred to him that she'd just learned to walk. She probably didn't know how to run yet, or she would've already taken off.



"You know somethin' about this, Coloneli" Rhodes pulled his attention away from Daufin. The sheriff and another man, dressed in a god-awful yellow-and-blue-plaid sportscoat, had approached him. "What the shit is that thingi" Vance asked, his face marked with a solitary creeper of blood. "Where'd it come fromi" "I don't know any more about it than you do." "That's not what Tom Hammond just said, mister!" Dodge Creech challenged. "Look at this damned mess! Half the town's tore up! and you know who's gotta pay for iti My insurance company! Now what the hell am I supposed to tell 'emi" "It ain't a meteor this time, for sure." Vance smelled a whiff of deceit. "Hey, listen here! Is this the same kinda thing that fell out in the deserti" "No, it's not." Of that, Rhodes was certain; the color was different, and the eTV that had crashed out there was about a fifth the size of this one. He watched the Phantom return for another low pass. Where the hell was Gunny and the chopperi Rhodes had been trained in "fact guarding," as the Bluebook Project manual put it, but how could you hide something as big as that -  There was a low, reverberating sound over the noise of the flames; it sounded to Rhodes like a wet, husky gasp.



and in the next second a thin column of glowing violet light shot from the pyramid's apex, ascending another two hundred feet or so into the sky.



"What's it doin'i" Vance hollered, taking a backward step.



Daufin knew, and her hands curled into tight fists that left the marks of fingernails in her palms.



The column of light began to rotate like a stationary cyclone. The stream of water from the firehose ceased as the firemen fled. Strands of light coiled from the column, as it rotated faster and faster, and the strands began to interweave. Lines of violet darted off, crossing the horizon to the east, west, north, and south, gridding the sky over Inferno and pulsing with silent, steady power.



"Looks like a damn bug zapper!" Cody heard Tank say - and then he saw the jet go into a sharp upward angle, intending to pierce the violet mesh.



The Phantom's nose hit the grid and crumpled inward. The jet exploded in an orange ball, and Rhodes shouted, "No!" Pieces of the aircraft struck the grid and all of them burst into flame, the burning fragments spinning down to land in the desert three or four hundred yards south of Bordertown.



The grid continued to grow, covering the sky with sickly purple light.



Roughly seven miles in a circle around Inferno and Bordertown, the grid bent and plunged toward earth. It sliced through the telephone and power lines that marched along Highway 67, and a truck driver who was too slow on the brakes hit the grid at sixty miles an hour; the truck mashed inward like an accordion, tires blowing and engine hurtling backward through the cab. The truck bounced off the grid and blew up, as surely as if it had plowed into a wall of stone. a jackrabbit on the grid's other side panicked and tried to run through it to his hole, but he was fried and sizzling before his brain registered pain.



The grid's lines sank through the earth, anchoring deep, and on the way down they cut the water pipeline that snaked south and ended it in an underground roar of steam.



along Celeste Street the lights went out without a flicker. Houses darkened. Television sets died, and electric clocks ceased ticking. Refrigeration pumps in the Ice House moaned and stopped. The caution lights went out, and so did the three unbroken glass globes on the Snake River Bridge.



Jessie heard it, and so did Tom, and Rhodes and Vance, Cody and Rick: the whine of power failing, the huge everyday network of machinery that ran Inferno and Bordertown now lurching in a lockstep, everything from the air conditioning in the funeral chapel's embalming room to the bank's electronic vault locks running down their final seconds.



and then, just like that, it was over.



Inferno and Bordertown lay under the violet glow of the skygrid, and there was silence but for the snarl of flames.



Rhodes's mouth had gone dry. To the east, another spark of flame erupted against the inside of the grid - probably a second jet trying to escape and exploding. It faded quickly, and what appeared to be cinders fell to earth. Rhodes realized he was looking at a force field, generated by a power source inside the pyramid.



"Oh... Lordy," Dodge Creech moaned.



The chutchutchut of rotors made Rhodes turn toward the southwest. From that direction came an air-force helicopter, flying about seventy feet from the ground. It gave the black pyramid a wide berth, slowly circled Inferno, and set down again in Preston Park. The colonel ran to it and saw Gunniston getting out in a crouch. Jim Taggart, the lanky, red-haired pilot, cut the chopper's engine and the rotors whined to a halt.



"We saw the fire!" Gunniston said when Rhodes reached him. "We were flying when the sky lit up with that... whatever it is. What happened to the lightsi" "Power's out. That's a force field, Gunny. I just watched two Phantoms get dusted when they haloed into it. Damn thing must go on for miles!" Gunniston stared at the pyramid, his cheeks flushed with excitement and the red glare of the autoyard's fire shining in his eyes. "another eTV," he said.



"Right. The other choppers on the wayi" "No sir. We were the only ones who lifted off. Sanders and O'Bannon are still out at the site." "I'd say this site has just become our number-one priority, wouldn't youi Follow me." He strode toward Sheriff Vance, with Gunniston right behind him. "We have to talk," Rhodes told Vance, whose bewildered eyes still begged for an explanation he could understand. "Send somebody to find the mayor. Better get your church pastors too, and anybody else who can help with crowd control. We'll meet in your office in fifteen minutes, and we'll need flashlights, candles, whatever you can round up." "Fifteen minutes," Vance repeated. He nodded numbly. "Yeah. Right." He gazed up at the grid and his adam's apple bobbled as he swallowed. "We're... we're caught in a cage, ain't wei I saw that plane blow to pieces. That damned cage goes right over the hori - " "Listen to me very carefully," Rhodes said in a low, controlled voice, pushing his face toward the sheriff's. He could smell the man's sour sweat. "I expect you to be clearheaded and thinking straight. Next to myself and Captain Gunniston, you're in charge here. Do you understandi" Vance's eyes bulged; never in his wildest nightmares had he ever really believed he'd be in charge of a crisis situation in Inferno. The most worrisome problem he'd ever faced was keeping the Rattlers and Renegades from killing each other. But now, in the space of seconds, his whole life was changed. "Y-yes sir," he answered.



"Go!" Rhodes ordered, and Vance hurried away. Now to round up Tom and Jessie and get them to the meeting too. Have to check the phones - though he already figured they were going to be dead, disrupted by the same force that had severed the power lines - and try the sheriff's battery-powered CB radio. There was the chance a radio transmission might get through to Webb aFB, but Rhodes had no idea what the limitations of the force field might be or, indeed, if there were any. Caught in a cage, Vance had said. "You've got that right," he said under his breath.



He glanced toward Tom's Civic and suffered another shock.



Daufin was not there.



Nor was she anywhere in sight.



Jessie had seen at about the same time, and her first cry was "Ste - " She checked it. "Tom, Daufin's gone!" she said, and Tom saw the empty space where Daufin had been just a moment or two before. They began to search through the onlookers as Ray sat down on the curb and counted his teeth. all of them remained, but he felt right on the edge of passing out.



In a few minutes Tom and Jessie found that Daufin was no longer on Celeste Street.



The flames were roaring through the supplies of paint and lubricant in Cade's autoyard, and black billows of smoke rose from burning tires and oil. The smoke rose to the top of the grid and collected there like thunderclouds, and overhead the moon turned ebony.