Tangled in something invisible ahead, the wreckage of one of the heavy-lifters vibrated ponderously, fly caught in a web, surrounded by drifting bodies, most without helmets. Pieces of limbs and trunks drifted past.

A blinding nimbus surrounded them all. High-intensity spotlights played around the ships and their disgorged soldiers, dead and alive. Zhadov let go of Mirsky's strap, and Mirsky instinctively reached for the man's weapon but caught his arm instead. The suit squirmed in his grip and the body twisted fiercely, almost dragging Mirsky away from Ulopov. Zhadov's suit had been holed and the venting gas whirled him about like a released balloon. Mirsky reached out as far as he could and gripped the cannon. He handed it to Ulopov.

(As clear as reality—clearer, at the moment—he stood in a grassy field and contemplated this nightmare. He gathered his chute up from the yellow grass and shook his head, grinning at his imagination.)

Soldiers filled the bore hole, hundreds of them, and all around he could instinctively feel the invisible laser needles and projectiles searching, piercing, picking away.

Mirsky pulled Ulopov to him and swung his helmet beam around, looking for the wall they should be approaching. It was not visible. Zhadov's death had knocked them off course.

"Use your rocket pack," he told the major. "We break up now."

"Spshhome potato," the Major commented dryly, the voice-activated microphone cutting off the first sound of each phrase. "Sphshhotter than an oven. Spshhust be baked. Shhpood luck, Colonel!"

Mirsky let go of the strap and fired his thruster. He swung outward, away from the entangled wreckage and awful corpses. He cut the thruster and switched on his helmet display. Before his eyes, the beacon and his relation to it appeared on a small luminous stage. He adjusted with another thrust, as did hundreds of his comrades—how many hundreds he could not say.

He suddenly remembered the number of the entangled wreckage, now far behind. That had been the lunar ship—filled with those most recently and thoroughly trained for low-gravity combat. Their best.

Mirsky, alone now with his signal and his thruster—unconcerned for the moment about how many of his men were behind or ahead—flew down the bore hole toward the tiny circle of light.

"They've broken through," Kirchner said, slamming the side of his palm against the chair arm. "There's nothing in the bore hole but bodies and wreckage. About three heavy-lifters have backed out; we must have disabled the rest. Nobody's getting away, though—they can't go home."

"The pilots will wait until we're taken," Gerhardt said wearily on the comlink. He was now overseeing evacuation of the civilian teams to the forth chamber.

"You don't sound in the best of spirits, Oliver," Kirchner said. "Your turn now."

"We have some transmissions from the Persian Gulf," Pickney said. "We can unscramble them. Captain, would you like to listen in?"

"Let's hear them," Kirchner said.