The cloud of smoke thinned as it carried to the rear but was now so thick at the start that this merely expanded it. Soon it was larger than the train, drifting just above us and slightly to the side.
“Okay, Casey,” I said. “Put us in it.”
Casey got on the com. “Okay, mate; damp her down and up the nulls; guide her in steady.”
“I wisht someone was watching this,” Jones muttered back.
“Someone is ,” I pointed out. “The enemy train.”
“Hang on,” Casey said. “Reality's 'bout to take a beating.”
Hopie and I smiled and took firm hold on the anchored furniture, as did the others in the chamber.
The big propulsion-wheel fans damped down. The train slowed immediately and began to fall, as it depended on forward velocity to maintain its elevation. Then the gee-shields increased their effect, and we lost weight. Soon we were in free-fall, dead in the atmosphere and moving up toward our own voluminous cloud of smoke. It was a perfectly simple maneuver in the atmosphere of Jupiter, but to those of us who were watching it through the vision of old Earth, it was fantastic.
First our train slowed on the track, and the enemy train overhauled us rapidly. Then, just as the other was drawing up beside us, its passenger cars illuminated from inside so that we could see the armed men peering out at us, aiming their lasers, we left the track and floated into the sky. Hopie gave a little sigh of amazement, locked into the vision, and I was startled myself though I had known exactly what to expect.
As it was, one laser beam angled in through the window, but after passing through the thick, glassy panes of each car, it lacked its originally punishing force. Glass may pass a laser beam through, but it tends to diffuse and deregister it, causing it to become more like ordinary light. Which is not to say a person can't be hurt by a laser through a window, just that he will be hurt less.
We left the other train below. We maneuvered on the small wheel fans of the cars, angling them down to provide propulsion. Slowly we ascended into our great cloud of smoke. I took a last look at the snowy mountains beneath, bidding adieu to the remnant of my vision. I saw the enemy train blundering on ahead, caught by surprise by our maneuver. It had no special equipment, such as a flatcar-mounted cannon, fortunately. Such weapons existed, and they could be devastating, but they were hardly available to illicit assassination squads on short notice in the outlying districts. So this enemy could not simply blast us out of the atmosphere, and, in fact, could not fire any solid projectile at us, because any attempt to do so through the windows would cause the cars of that train to leak and perhaps implode. The men inside were confined to lasers which, as we had seen, were relatively ineffective in this situation.
Then the cloud enveloped us, and darkness reigned outside. We had disappeared into our smoke.
“We got away from them!” Hopie exclaimed happily.
“Not exactly,” I said. “We have smoke for only half an hour, and when it dissipates, we'll still be out here, and so will they.”
“What will they do then?” she asked, worried.
“They'll board us. We're like spaceships; the locks can be mated and used anytime the pressure is equal on both sides.”
“Maybe we'd better phone for help, then.”
We had already checked that. “They're jamming the broadcast.”
“Can't we stop them?” She didn't have to ask what they would do once they got aboard our train.
“We could laser them down as they entered,” I said. “If we could guard every lock. But they'll mate the whole train and could cross through any of a dozen locks. They're bound to get in sooner or later.” I was answering her questions seriously, because at thirteen she was old enough to understand, and I didn't want her to be exposed to combat conditions without being prepared.
She was taking it well enough so far. “So we're holed up in here, in this sealed chamber, where they can't reach us, anyway?”
“That's part of it.”
“But won't they just pry open the door and—”
“Yes. That will take them a little while, however, because they won't have heavy-duty equipment.”
“But after that little while—”
“They would be in,” I concluded. I suffered a momentary vision of one of the times in my own youth when pirates had boarded our refugee bubble, when Spirit and I had bracketed Hopie's present age.
Violence, rape, and murder had ensued. This was not a vision I cared to share with my daughter, and I intended to protect her from ever experiencing it.
She glanced at me cannily. “But you're cooking something, aren't you?”
“I think you'd rather not know, honey.”
“I think I'd rather not not know, Daddy,” she countered. “I'm scared.”
She spoke for those other than herself. It seemed better to reassure them all, especially Megan, who was sitting pale and tight-lipped. Again I was reminded that these were not combat personnel. Only Spirit and I had been toughened to this sort of thing, and Coral could handle it. The others were in trouble.
“Mrs. Burton is arranging to shunt some steam inside,” I said.
“Steam?” She didn't grasp the relevance.
“It will make them uncomfortable,” I explained.
“Oh.” She still didn't get it but did not pursue the matter further, and the others who did comprehend did not comment.
Our time passed. The other train could not connect to us because it could not see us. To enter the cloud blind would be to risk a collision that could cause both trains to implode, and obviously they didn't want to perish with us. But we knew they were outside, waiting.
Our smoke thinned. “Are you ready, Mrs. Burton?” I asked on the com.
“Not yet, boss. This thing's tough!”
“But our smoke is dissipating.”
“Don't I know it!” she retorted. “But this baby's a stinker. I've got to have more time.”
The enemy train was coming into view as the smoke continued to fade. “Casey, how sure are you about the implosion resistance of this train?”
Casey shook his head. “Not sure at all, Gov'nor. She's pretty old.”
“Then the other train won't be sure, either.”
“For sure. We all get nervous about going down.”
“So if we go down, they may not.”
Casey swallowed. “I'd sure rather go up , Gov'nor!”
I angled my head, peering up. “That contrail—isn't that a high-velocity plane?”
Spirit glanced up, nodding. “Navy surplus dual element fighter,” she said. “I've been watching it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It was there before the smoke?”
“Dual-element” meant that it functioned in either space or thin atmosphere.
“Affirmative. Circling above us.”
“So if we rise, we'll get strafed.”
“Seems likely,” she agreed. “And one bullet through our seal—”
“I got the message,” Casey said. “They figured to drive us up, then hole us. We can't go up.”
“We can't go up,” I agreed. “They can't come down this deep, but they don't need to, as long as that other train's here. We must go down—until Mrs. Burton's ready.”
“I hope she's ready soon,” he said fervently. Casey was no coward, but the notion of implosion had him green about the gills. I suppose those who travel in atmosphere all their lives feel about implosion the way we who have traveled much in space feel about sudden depressurization. We all have our peculiar horrors. Still, I remembered the way that city-bubble had gone down during the storm a dozen years before, and I knew I was not immune to that fear.
The enemy train drew alongside us again, ready to lock on. We dropped suddenly as our gee-shields moved to quarter-gee. It took the enemy a moment to reorient; then it dropped, too, but we dropped faster. It took them another period to phase in on our rate; then they closed again.
The alarm klaxon went off on our train: pressure had reached six bars. Everybody jumped, and Casey stiffened. “God, I'm not a praying man, but if they don't stop soon, we'll have to.”
The enemy train slowed its descent, evidently similarly wary of the pressure. We slowed, not going any deeper than we needed to. But then they tried to close again, and we had to drop farther. Six point five bars. Six point six. We were all getting uncomfortable.
“Resume forward motion,” I ordered the engineer.
“Gotcha, Gov'nor.” He sounded just like Casey. The train commenced forward motion, and as the vanes took hold, the gee-shields eased, allowing trace gravity to return. That was a comfort.
But the enemy matched velocity and closed again. We had gee but not freedom. "Ready yet, Mrs.
Burton?" I inquired, keeping my voice calm.
“Almost,” she replied. “I've got the bypass, but I don't have the stuff I need for the release. I'll have to rig a mechanical release, and that'll take time.”
“We're down about as far as we dare go,” I said. “If we go too far—”
“I know, boss. But without a remote-control unit—”
“Well, rig your chain,” I said. “Then get over here as fast as you can—you and Jones. They're about to lock on and board.”
“We can let them board at the tail end,” Spirit pointed out. “There are five cars back there we won't be using. One guard at the back of the diner can hold them off for a while.”
“And we can concentrate our force at engine, travel car, and diner,” I agreed. “Between us we have six lasers; two lasers per person, one person guarding the rear, one the engine, and one the travel car—”
“Three, right,” Coral said. “But you not one of them.”
“But I'm trained,” I protested.
“You the king. You die, all dead.” She was right. My life could not be risked any more than that of the king in a chess game. It was the single nonexpendable piece.
The locks were four-way affairs, actually almost separate units, which clamped to the ends of the connected cars to provide access from either side and/or an open passage between cars. They could be closed, but we had the car access open for our own convenience. This meant that the enemy train could connect by one lock between each two cars, for, of course, it could only tie in on one side of us or the other. We had, in effect, a series of T-connectors to guard, with the enemy coming through the stem of the T .
Spirit went to the rear of the diner to guard the access from the back of the train; she would retreat to the home chamber when she had to. Coral went to the front, guarding the entrances to both diner and passenger car—a difficult position but one for which she was most competent. Ebony was ready to go to the engine, but Casey protested. “Can't send a little gal into that,” he said. “That's a man's job. I'll do it.”
“This isn't your quarrel,” I reminded him. “You just come with the train.”
“And it's my train they're raiding,” he said. “And my pal Jones up there in the cab. Gimme that laser.”
I had to acquiesce; he surely would be more effective than Ebony. I gave him two lasers and let him go.
“But when I call you in, you and Mrs. Burton and Jones come in here fast,” I told him. “You know what we're planning.”
“Sure do,” he said, and headed grimly out.
The enemy train closed the moment we stopped maneuvering. We tried to confuse it by jogging up and down, but they flung magnetic grapples, normally used for moving individual cars about, and captured us.
Now we could see that the enemy cars were packed with armed men; there must have been fifty of them.
This was going to be rough, indeed.
Still, a single person with a laser could hold off an army at a narrow aperture, and all the locks were narrow. As long as the laser charges held out we could hold on, and we hoped that would be long enough for Mrs. Burton to complete her job.
We closed off the restaurant chamber, but the com kept us in touch with the rest of the train. We could see Spirit's post, overlooking the entrance to the sleeping car; she had good coverage of the locks there.
Coral had similar coverage of the passenger car, but her job was more difficult because she could not risk firing toward the engine unless she was sure that Jones and Mrs. Burton were clear. Casey had the easiest post, backed by our own people, but it was also farthest from the security of the diner. When we contracted, Coral would have to protect the retreat from the engine; then she and Spirit would follow, leaving the rest of the train to the raiders.
The enemy connected with a series of clanks as each car lock mated with its opposite. These things were largely automatic; with five bars pressure outside, or more, it was foolish to risk the unreliability of human beings for the multiple couplings. It made sense, but I was struck by the similarity of this situation to the one we had faced as refugees in a bubble-ship in space, unable to prevent the entry of pirates.
Surely these were pirates here!
They did not come cautiously; they came with the abandon of grossly superior numbers, seeking to overwhelm us in an instant. Every lock opened simultaneously, and men came through each, holding their lasers ready.
They were met by the fire of our own lasers. One beam from Spirit, one from Coral, and two men fell, each holed efficiently in the throat. Casey, untrained in this, hesitated, but when a beam coruscated into the frame of the lock beside him, he fired back, winging an enemy. The man fell but fired again, and a second man appeared behind him.
“Shoot for the face,” I told Casey. “One beam per man, no more; they outnumber us.” Of course, the enemy could hear the com speaking, but that couldn't be helped.
Casey gulped and did it, taking out the second man and then the first. Casey was no killer, but it was his train he was defending, and he knew he was in a desperate situation.
After that initial round the enemy paused; no man came into our range. But they were boarding all along the rear of the train, and now they knew exactly where we were.
“Progress, Mrs. Burton?” I asked, still keeping my voice calm. I knew that our time was running short—very short.
“Close enough,” she said. “I'm rigging a line; I can pull the cork from the diner; I think it'll work.”
“Then unroll your line, Mrs. Burton,” I said. “Get back here quickly—you and the engineers.”
She strung her line, and the three of them retreated from the engine, entering the passenger car. But, as they reached the center, more men burst in at the now-unguarded engine lock, threw themselves into the crannies of the cab, and began firing into the passenger car. Casey whirled to face them but too slowly; a beam seared into his leg, and he cried out and fell, dropping his own weapon. Coral aimed her laser but could not fire at the enemy without striking our own people.