“

I

don’t know," the drone said, “but I rather doubt it would be Culture agents. Who or what do you think these supposed agents

are after.

You."

“What if they were." Horza took another look at the holo display of the GSV’s internal layout. He briefly magnified the volume

around

Smallbay 27492 before switching the repeater screen off. The drone was silent for a second, then backed off through

the doorway.

“Great. I’m locked in an antique with a paranoid lunatic. I think I’ll go and look for somewhere safer than this."

“You do that!" Horza yelled down the corridor after it. He turned the hangar circuit back on. “Aviger." he said.

“I’ve done it," said the old man’s voice.

“Right. Get to the mess fast and strap in." Horza killed the circuit again.

“Well," Wubslin said, sitting back in his seat and scratching his head, looking at the bank of screens in front of him with

their arrays of

figures and graphs, “I don’t know what it is you’re intending to do, Kraiklyn, but whatever it is, we’re as

ready as we’ll ever be to do it." The stout

engineer looked across at Horza, lifted himself slightly from his seat and pulled

the restraining straps over his body. Horza grinned at him, trying

to look confident. His own seat’s restrainers were a little

more sophisticated, and he just had to throw a switch for cushioned arms to swing over

and inertia fields to come on. He pulled

his helmet over his head from the hinged position and heard it hiss shut.

“Oh my God," Wubslin said, looking slowly away from Horza to stare at the almost featureless rear wall of the Smallbay shown

on the main

screen. “I sure as hell hope you’re not going to do what I think you are."

Horza didn’t reply. He hit the button to talk to the mess. “All right."

“Just about, Kraiklyn, but—" Yalson said. Horza killed that circuit, too. He licked his lips, took the controls in his gloved

hands, sucked in a

deep breath, then flicked the thumb buttons on the

CAT

’s three fusion motors. Just before the noise started he heard Wubslin say:

“Oh, my God, you are—"

The screen flashed, went dark, then flashed again. The view of the Smallbay’s rear wall was lit by three jets of plasma bursting

from

underneath the ship. A noise like thunder filled the bridge and reverberated through the whole craft. The two outboard

motors were the main

thrust, vectored down for the moment; they blasted fire onto the deck of the Smallbay, scattering the

machinery and equipment from underneath

and around the craft, slamming it into walls and off the roof as the blinding jets

of flame steadied under the vessel. The inboard, lift-only nose

motor fired raggedly at first, then settled quickly, starting

to burn its own hole through the thin layer of ultradense material which covered the

Smallbay floor. The

Clear Air Turbulence

stirred like a waking animal, groaning and creaking and shifting its weight. On the screen, a huge

shadow veered across the

wall and the roof in front as the infernal light from the nose fusion motor burned under the ship; rolling clouds of gas

from

burning machinery were starting to haze over the view. Horza was amazed that the walls of the Smallbay had held out. He flicked

the bow

laser at the same time as increasing the fusion motor power.

The screen detonated with light. The wall ahead burst open like a flower seen in time lapse, huge petals throwing themselves

toward the

ship and a million pieces of wreckage and debris flashing past the vessel’s nose on the shock wave of air bursting

in from the far side of the

lasered wall. At the same time, the

Clear Air Turbulence

lifted off. The leg-weight readouts stopped at zero, then blanked out as the legs,

glowing red with heat, stowed themselves

inside the hull. Emergency undercarriage cooling circuits whined into action. The craft started to slew

to one side, shaking

with its own power and with the impact of debris swirling about it. The view ahead cleared.

Horza steadied the ship, then gunned the rear motors, flinging some of their power backward, toward the Smallbay doors. A

rear screen

showed them glowing white hot. Horza would dearly have liked to head that way, but reversing and ramming the doors

with the

CAT

would have

probably been suicidal, and turning the craft in such a confined space impossible. Just going forward was going

to be hard enough….

The hole wasn’t big enough. Horza saw it coming toward him and knew straightaway. He used one shaking finger on the laser

beam-

spread control set in the semi-wheel of the controls, turning the spread up to maximum then firing once more. The screen

washed out with light

again, all around the perimeter of the hole. The

CAT

stuck its nose and then its body into another Smallbay. Horza waited for something to hit

the sides or roof of the white-hot

gap, but nothing happened; they sailed through on their three pillars of fire, throwing light and wreckage and

waves of smoke

and gas before them. The dark waves blasted out over shuttles; the whole Smallbay they were now moving slowly through was

full of shuttles of every shape and description. They were floating over them, battering them and melting them with their

fire.

Horza was aware of Wubslin sitting on the seat beside him, his eyes locked on to the view ahead, his legs drawn up as far

as possible so

that his knees stuck up above the edge of the console, and his arms locked in a sort of square over his head,

each hand grasping the biceps of

the other arm. His face was a mask of fear and incredulity when Horza turned round to glance

at him, and grinned. Wubslin pointed frenziedly at

the main screen. “Watch!" he shrieked over the racket.

The

CAT

was shaking and bouncing, rocked by the stream of superheated matter pouring from under its hull. It would be using the

atmosphere

around it to produce plasma, now that there was air available, and in the relatively confined space of the Smallbays the turbulence

created was enough to shake the vessel bodily.

There was another wall ahead, coming up faster than Horza would have liked. They were slewing slightly again as well; he narrowed

the

laser angle again and fired, pulling the ship round at the same time. The wall flashed once around its edges; the roof

and floor of the Smallbay

flashed in loops of flame where the laser caught them, and dozens of parked shuttles ahead of them

pulsed with light and heat.

The wall ahead started to fall slowly back, but the

CAT

was coming up on it faster than it was crumpling. Horza gasped and tried to pull

back; he heard Wubslin howl, as the vessel’s

nose hit the undamaged center of the wall. The view on the main screen tilted as the ship rammed

into the wall material. Then

the nose came down, the

Clear Air Turbulence

quivered like an animal shaking water from its fur, and they were

rocking and yawing into yet another Smallbay. It was totally

empty. Horza gunned the engines a little more, took a couple of bursts with the laser

at the next wall, then watched in amazement

as this wall, instead of falling back like the last one, crashed down toward them like a vast castle

drawbridge, slamming

in one fiery piece onto the deck of the empty Smallbay. In a fury of steam and gas, a mountain of water appeared over

the

top of the collapsing wall and poured out in a huge wave toward the approaching ship.

Horza heard himself shouting. He rammed the motor controls full on and kept the laser fire button hard down.

The

CAT

leapt forward. It flashed over the surface of the cascading water, enough of the plasma heat smashing into its liquid surface

to

instantly fill all the space of Smallbays its passage had created with a boiling fog of steam. As the tide of water continued

to pour from the

flooded Smallbay and the

CAT

screeched above it, the air about the ship filled with superheated steam. The external pressure gauge went up

too quickly

for the eye to follow; the laser blasted even more vapor off the water in front, and with an explosion like the end of the

world the next

wall blew out ahead of the vessel—weakened by the laser and finally blasted away by the sheer pressure of steam.

The

Clear Air Turbulence

shot out from the tunnel of linked Smallbays like a bullet from a gun.

Motors flaming, in the middle of a cloud of gas and steam which it quickly outdistanced, it roared into a canyon of air-filled

space between

towering walls of bay doors and opened accommodation sections, lighting up kilometers of wall and cloud, screaming

with its three flame-filled

throats, and seemingly pulling after it a tidal wave of water and a volcano-like cloud of steam,

gas and smoke. The water fell, turning from a

solid wave into something like heavy surf, then spray, then just rain and water

vapor, following the huge flapping card of the bay door tumbling

through the air. The

CAT

wrenched itself round, twisting and slewing through the air in an attempt to check its headlong rush toward the far wall

of Smallbay doors facing it across that vast internal canyon. Then its motors flickered and went out. The

Clear Air Turbulence

started to fall.

Horza gunned the controls, but the fusion motors were dead. The screen showed the wall of doors to other bays on one side,

then air and