He smoothed his hand over a bulge before him and the curved surface erupted into an intaglio of black lines and red circles. Beside her, the whiteness faded to an elongated transparency, forming a long elliptical window. The edges of the window remained milky, like frosted glass.

"We're going to leave now."

The third chamber city glided away beneath her. As the craft banked, the window filled with the austere grayness of the northern cap.

"I believe you'll truly enjoy where we're going," Olmy said. "I've grown to admire you. You have a remarkable mentality. The Hexamon will be impressed, too, I'm sure."

"Why don't you have a nose?" the distant Patricia asked.

Behind them, the Frant made a sound like an elephant grinding its teeth.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Soviet troops assigned to the second chamber had come down on a two-hundred-meter-wide strip of parkland separating the river from the southern cap. The squads had regrouped at two points on opposite sides of the zero bridge, each about three kilometers from that objective. Communications with the squads on the opposite side of the bridge were good.

Mirsky's group had taken shelter in a dense forest of gnarled pines; they had determined the bridge was heavily guarded and would soon be reinforced; they had to strike now. The equipment had not yet been dropped from Zhiguli, heavy-lifter seven, and fully three-fourths of the thirty squads were not up to full strength. Attrition in the bore hole had been hideous, and of those who survived the bore hole, about one out of twenty had not completed the journey and para-sail drop.

The squads were designed for flexibility; surviving sergeants shepherded broken squads together to form new ones. Mirsky had only 210 soldiers in his immediate command and, of course, little hope of getting more. Nobody knew how many had survived the drops in the other chambers.

Twenty SPETSNAZ diversionary troops assigned to Mirsky's battalion, communicating by radio after swimming the river, had established lookouts in the second chamber city.

They had been in the chamber for two hours now. The NATO troops at the bridge had not made an offensive move; this worried Mirsky. He knew that in the defenders' situation, the best plan would be an immediate and devastating offensive. They could conceivably have attacked as his men came down from the axis; apparently, they had been confused and not yet up to strength.

Between his group and the objective, there was the forest and several broad concrete foundations of unknown utility. While there was sufficient cover for his troops, momentarily, the cover could easily be turned into a series of disastrous pindowns.