The Chaos Weapon Read Free Page A

smoothest terrain available. He appeared to be always watching the forbidding snow-mass hanging above the scarp. Rutter had switched on some of the cameras with telephoto lenses that had been trained on the city itself and obtained some close-ups of the back of the man for whom destiny appeared to have such a strange affinity. The pictures yielded no new information, but all were haloed by the same optical fringe that was gradually narrowing the field of view, giving the figure an apparently radiant outlinewhich under the circumstances was most disconcerting.
    Despite this effect, however, it was obvious that the man had both purpose and objective. Although many times the watchers lost his image as he passed behind some of Edel’s buildings, he always came back into view at a predictable point, assuming he was taking the shortest route straight to the city’s center.
    “Find me a map of Edel,” the dark man said suddenly. “We keep speaking of Chaos Omega, but I don’t think any of us have looked to see what is actually at epicenter.”
    Rutter produced a map and spread it over a console. It showed a city plan typical of many established on planets after the Great Exodus from Terra. The early fathers had attempted a geometrical design radiating from a central focus. Now the centerpoint was ringed by the vast restructured administrative complex for the local government, and the seat of the Council for the Monai Space Confederation. Under the Chaos Omega point, however, Edel’s original government buildings had found a second lease on life through conversion into a commercial interspace trading center.
    As he turned back to watch the trudging figure, the breath caught sharply in Rutter’s throat. In the middle of a broad highway not far from the Chaos Omega epicenter and at a point where he was clearly in view, the man turned suddenly and ran back toward the package attached to the end of the rope. For one moment he was looking almost directly into the distant cameras, and although the warm-suit hid most of his features there was no mistaking the level of tension on his face.
    “This is it!” said Saraya. “He knows something we don’t.” He seized the radio handset. “Marshal—watch out for yourself. Something’s about to break. Our friend looks as if he’d had a vision of hell itself.”
    “Check! I can just see him. But there’s nothing down here which explains …”
    The man had dropped to his knees and was tearing urgently at his snow-covered bundle. The purpose ofthis maneuver was not apparent, but suddenly something blossomed close to the kneeling man. It looked like a white, expanding ball. The distortion of the picture became almost complete, and the final phase of the action was lost in a muted blur.
    All eyes in the lab-ship returned to the monitors checking the physical parameters which might signal the onset of catastrophe. It was not the monitors but their senses, however, that finally revealed the numbing truth. With a burst of subterranean thunder, the whole valley shook so violently that even on the great plateau the stabilizers of the lab-ships had difficulty maintaining the vessels in their vertical position. One of the technicians gave a cry of horrified realization as the nature of the disaster became apparent. With a fantastic heave, the whole valley floor rose and shook itself then settled again to leave a jagged chasm extending east to west approximately along the line previously followed by the Spring River.
    With the first recoil of the shock, the interference on the screens had cleared itself. Before their uncomprehending eyes there flowed wave upon wave of subterranean movement which rippled the valley’s surface as if the scene were being moved from below by a succession of gigantic underground rollers. The effect was that of a waterless sea, with dry waves breaking angrily against the foot of Edel scarp and drowning whole sectors of the city with the fall of its mirthless