I checked Gorthak’s map, adjusting my course northeast toward what I hoped was the University District. The anti-grav belt hummed, its power indicator showing sixty-five percent left. That was good enough for now, but I should think about trying to conserve energy just to be sure.

  As I flew, my mind churned through everything that had happened to me here. Philip and his Homo habilis teleport team—would they try for me again? They’d wanted to capture me before, not kill me. That meant they needed something, or needed to prevent me from doing something.

  I grunted, banking around a tower.

  How much had Psi-Master Omilcar been involved with the Institute before I killed him? How much of my time on Tellus had been planned from the beginning?

  Why had Omilcar’s dead hand sent me here? Or had the Institute been responsible for that?

  Yeah. Now that I thought about it, how did all the races of the former Harmony of Planets fit with each other? There were the Krekelens, the Institute, the Zero Stones, Ophidians, and the nine-foot hominids of Tynar. Were they allies, enemies, or just different predators circling the same prey? After everything I’d been through these past years, I still knew so little about all this.

  The cityscape started changing. This area had taken more missile hits, as entire blocks were just fused glass sheets. Why focus so much firepower here?

  I checked the Geiger counter clipped to my belt. The radiation was bad, same as everywhere else in this hellhole, but not notably worse.

  I had my plan for that, as I’d said. Every time I’d gone through an obelisk, I’d emerged from the ziggurat refreshed and renewed. Maybe it was similar to that bath in the Deep Waters, some kind of cellular regeneration.

  Movement to the left caught my eye. A walker was tracking me, trying to draw a bead on me with its pulse rifle arm.

  I cursed, diving and zigzagging as a pulse beam flashed over me.

  I flew faster for a time and then dropped lower so the ground rushed up. I slowed, slowed more, and the anti-grav landing proved rougher than I’d expected. It was like jumping out of a plane, my feet hitting hard enough to jar my teeth. I stumbled, finally caught myself, and then scanned the area as I adjusted my heavy backpack.

  There were empty streets, broken buildings, and omnipresent gray dust. That was all fine, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me.

  I looked around, but couldn’t find the source of that feeling. I hoped it wasn’t more walkers. That would be just what I needed.

  I checked the map again. The University District was supposedly just ahead, past this area.

  I started walking, keeping the anti-grav belt ready to launch me if I needed to escape, but not wasting battery power flying when I could walk.

  The feeling of being watched intensified, and I hated that. I knew every shadow could hide an observer. Every broken window could conceal eyes or sensors.

  This was getting ridiculous.

  The Institute had stealth technology—observation spheres. They could be watching right now, gathering data on the human struggling through their experiment.

  I kept my pulse rifle ready, continuing my trek, ready to shoot to kill so I could get home to Mu.

  -38-

  I picked my way through what the map claimed was the University District, though you’d never know from looking. This place was just as blasted and broken as everywhere else in Ploor. Maybe worse, because whoever had fought here had really meant it.

  Ah, that might mean something. I trudged up to the base of what might have been a big old statue. Now, it was just a pair of legs in bronze or whatever metal; the rest was long gone. Pools of green water dotted the rubble. I gave them a wide berth.

  Then a big hairy rat scurried across my path. He stopped, sat up and twisted around to look back at me. His eyes had an unsettling intelligence, studying me as if it were taking mental notes. Great. Now there were smart rats. This was just what this hell world needed. What if the insects got smart too? The mantises had already been bad enough.

  The sooner I got off Tellus, the better. I bent down and picked up a chunk of concrete.

  The rat squealed and took off running before I could throw, scampering into hiding.

  Dropping the concrete, I checked Gorthak’s map and the plasti-sheet I’d taken from the storage area, trying to match the markings to the wasteland around me. According to this, the depot should be… there past a collapsed structure, near what might have been a library once.

  As I moved through the wreckage, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. I kept looking back, scanning the ruins. Nothing moved except the too-smart rats and the occasional drift of toxic dust. Did that leave the Institute?

  On impulse, I tried something else. Back on Mu and places like Atlantis, I’d dealt with psi-masters, often feeling their mental touch. I wasn’t telepathic myself, but I’d learned to recognize the sensation of psychic probing. I bent my head, concentrating, trying to feel if there was any mental presence observing me.

  I sensed nothing. As far as I knew, the Institute didn’t use psi-masters.

  I shook my head and kept moving.

  Finally, I reached what had to be the depot location, but there was no evidence of it. I looked down at huge chunks of concrete and twisted metal beams. I started shoving aside smaller pieces, looking for any sign of an entrance below.

  After half an hour, I spotted something deeper and seemingly more solid. Could that be a trapdoor hatch?

  I activated the baan and started cutting through the larger pieces blocking my way. The blade sliced through metal beams and huge concrete chunks, and I rolled the smaller pieces aside. That caused a clatter, but I no longer cared. I cut, pushed, pushed and cut again. The baan seemed to be working slower than before. Was it weakening or was this material more resistant? I shrugged. Maybe it was incredible that the ancient weapon still worked at all after who knew how many centuries of sitting around.

  Finally, after another half hour of hard work, cutting and clearing, I exposed a sealed hatch, military-grade from the look of it. There were warnings stenciled on it in the Tellus language: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY—RESEARCH STATION SEVEN.

  I started cutting through the hatch with the baan. This was even slower work, the plasma blade having to melt through layer after layer of what seemed like specialized steel. My arms tired from holding the baan at the right angle. The energy blade might be effectively weightless, but keeping it steady required constant effort.

  Finally, I broke through so a waft of stale air rushed out, making me cough and gag. What was that smell—old death, chemicals, radiation, or all of the above?

  I deactivated the baan, clipped it to my belt, and crouched by the hole I’d cut. The metal edges were still glowing orange, too hot to touch. I’d have to wait for it to cool.

  I tested the air coming out of it, but it didn’t seem as bad as it had at first.

  Something caught the corner of my eye. I jerked to the left and could have sworn I saw movement in the sky.

  I frowned. I thought something small had just darted behind a building. Could it be a drone or one of those spider scouts with flight capability? Maybe the Institute had deployed it to watch me.

  I kept my pulse rifle ready as I waited for the metal to cool, checking the sky constantly. This place was seriously getting to me.

  Finally, I touched the edge of the hole. It was still warm but manageable. I squeezed through with my heavy pack and found stairs leading down into darkness. The air was thick and stale, as if nobody had been here in a very long time.

  I pulled out my last emergency light stick, cracking it to release the chemical reaction. Green light flooded the stairwell. Then down I went, my footsteps echoing in the confined space.

  At the bottom, another blast door blocked my way. That made sense. Nothing could be easy on this planet.

  I set down the light stick and pulled out the baan again. The cutting was even slower this time. Maybe I was just tired—or maybe these deeper doors were made of something special, or maybe the air was working on me. My shoulders felt the effort as the blade carved through inch by inch.

  Something clicked behind me. Or was it above? I froze, holding my breath, listening. I couldn’t sense anything more. Could that have been my imagination, or rats?

  I kept cutting, feeling I was almost through.

  The blade finally punched through the last layer. There was another rush of air, this one even fouler, making me gag so I almost puked. It smelled like a tomb, which it probably was. I coughed, my eyes watering. Was this place irradiated? The Geiger counter on my belt wasn’t going crazy, so probably not. This was just three centuries of decay and sealed-in death.

  I hooked the deactivated baan back on my belt and waited for this hole to cool, too. The green light made everything look diseased, including my hands. Then more clicking sounds echoed down the stairwell. My pulse rifle ready, I sat waiting, but nothing appeared.

  When the metal had cooled enough, I squeezed through once again.

  This had to be it, right? Somewhere in here should be the shield generator technology that could help me on Mu. Assuming any of it still worked—and that I could find it before whatever was following me made its move.

  It was time to find out.

  -39-

  With the green light, I moved deeper into the subterranean structure. Was it some kind of ancient vault? There was power down here: I could feel a vibration in the floor. Then I heard a low, steady hum. I bet that meant a generator was still running after hundreds of years. Maybe it was an atomic generator for a secure vault.

  My Geiger counter wasn’t spiking, at least no worse than the background radiation I’d already absorbed. Time was limited, though. Every minute breathing this toxic air was slowly killing me. I had to get to the obelisk and back to Mu before the radiation finished its work.

  With the pack heavy on my shoulders and the pulse rifle ready, I continued forward. I soon found mummified, shriveled corpses with clothes in various stages of decay. They’d all died down here, sealed in since who knew when.

  I stopped as a thought struck. This was just like the command center Philip and I had found earlier.

  Imagine that. The little weasel had known far more about this world than he’d let on. I wondered what his real game had been. Now that I thought about it, it seemed as if there had been inconsistencies in his behavior.

  What did that mean?

  After a moment, I shrugged. Philip was Philip no matter which of the clones showed up. He’d always been a lying S.O.B., with several different angles in play at once.

  I continued and found stairs but no signs or directions. The place was eerily quiet except for the faint generator hum. It felt creepy to be surrounded by so many dead people, making me hunch and look around a second time.

  “They died hundreds of years ago,” I told myself. “Don’t let it worry you, dude. Focus on finding what you need.”

  It took me another ten minutes of wandering before I reached a door marked “TELLUS RESEARCH DIVISION.”

  The door slid open easily enough. The inside was in better shape than the outside. For one thing, the corpses weren’t as decayed. They were still mummified and shriveled, but their clothes, lab coats it seemed, were mostly intact.

  I scanned the room, noticing a console against a wall. It had a computer that looked surprisingly similar to what we had on Earth these days. I went over, studied it, and pressed a button here and another there.

  Suddenly, the screen flickered to life.

  I froze in surprise as my gut clenched. Talk about eerie. How was it possible this thing still worked after three centuries?

  That was the timeframe, right?

  Okay, get this. I could read the display, as the ziggurat had given me their language. After a moment, I figured why not see what I could find on the computer.

  I shrugged off my pack, setting it to the side, dusted off the chair and sat down. The interface proved as simple as could be. There was no encryption or passwords for one thing. Maybe a research station this deep hadn’t needed them.

  I soon found a file and opened it, beginning to read:

  I am writing this as a record of what I have discovered. I have been desperately trying to solve the problem before it engulfs our entire world. You see, it is my contention from what I’ve found that aliens inserted a virulent and hostile virus into the Synthetic Minds in order to create planet-wide destruction.

  For what reason? This I have been unable to determine.

  I frowned, thinking about that. This wasn’t like the Synthetic Mind Rebellion I’d learned about in the Chaunt System and later on Mars. That was supposed to have taken place 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, and had apparently shattered the Harmony of Planets. This had taken place 300 years ago, give or take, making it quite recent.

  Hmm, the writer claimed aliens had started it. He had also used “Synthetic Minds”—the Institute’s term, not “Atomic Brains” like the Togs called them.

  I rubbed my hands. This was crazy. I might have just stumbled onto the reason for the worldwide conflict started 300 years ago.

  What kind of aliens would have done this?

  I read on, soon finding this:

  Missiles have been flying since I discovered this horrible possibility. We voted and sealed ourselves in, hoping to find the solution before the prophesied Day of Doom engulfed all of Tellus.

  On a secondary note, could the First Folk advisors from the Institute have anything to do with this or are there indeed other aliens as the advisors have repeatedly warned us about?

  I stared at the screen as several factors hit me at once. The Institute had been here 300 years ago. The Synthetic Minds of Tellus hadn’t gone crazy like Skynet in the Terminator movies. This had been a deliberate act quite possibly started by aliens.

  I wondered if those of Tellus had independently developed synthetic minds, or if this alien influence had given them the knowledge.

  I stood up and shook my head. I wanted to study this further, but time might be an issue. As interesting as this was, it wasn’t the key. Finding the protective shield generators was the key, and so was getting off the damn planet and back to Mu with them.

  I sat back down, trying to see if I could figure out if the shield generators were here and where they might be. I clicked through menus, opened directories, searched for anything that might indicate defensive systems. The filing system was full of project codes and technical jargon I didn’t understand.

  I tried different combinations and search terms, clicking deeper into subdirectories, hoping to find anything that would point me in the right direction. There was a BioGen Division. That was deep, but not what I needed. Ah. What was this?

  I clicked onto something called Project Aegis—Sublevel 6, Vault B7.

  Wait a minute. I knew that name. Psi-Master Omilcar had told me before when I thought he was a good guy. I snapped my fingers, trying to—oh, yeah. Aegis had been the name for the shield of Zeus.

  I looked at the word. It was very much like the English word Aegis.

  I got a cold feeling in my chest as I considered that. If the Greek names of gods, goddesses, and their weapons were the same on more than one planet… that must mean something critical.

  During his good-guy phase, Omilcar had told me beings that Earthmen saw as the Greek gods had once been on our blue world. Later, he said he’d lied about all that. In fact, Omilcar had originally told me Sky Island on Mu had once been flying Mount Olympus on Earth. Then he’d said that also had been a lie.

  Could his first version have been the correct one?

  The implications of that, man… What was the truth about it?

  I had the fiery staff. Omilcar said the old beings, who Earthmen thought of as gods, had wielded such weapons in the distant past. I had the genetics to use it, and to use the interstellar obelisk teleport system.

  I shook my head. I needed to get a grip. Those kinds of questions could wait for quiet contemplation. Now, I needed to leave Tellus. First, I wanted something to bring home to Mu to help against the Saddoth dart riflemen.

  I looked at the computer screen and memorized the location for the Aegis thing, pushed back from the computer, shrugged on my backpack, and headed out to find a stairwell down.

  When I found the stairs, I started down again, hurrying.

  At Sublevel 3, I saw laboratory equipment. It didn’t strike me as wild science fiction stuff, but advanced medical research, maybe bioengineering. No, the BioGen Division was lower down. I didn’t know what they’d been researching on this level.

  At Sublevel 4, the walls were covered with schematics of synthetic minds. The designs looked almost identical to what I’d seen on Chaunt II. It wasn’t pure computer circuits but rods and crystals under a dome integrated with electronic connections.

  That showed it was likely the same kind of synthetic minds as on Chaunt II, and that was Anunnaki tech. They were the ones who had supposedly built the interstellar teleport system.

  What had been going on at Tellus 300 years ago? They had been tampering with ancient forces and technology, the kind that had supposedly brought down the Harmony of Planets.

  I kept moving down the stairs.

  Sublevel 5 was racks of pulse rifles and things that looked like portable missile launchers. I was tempted to grab some, but my pack was already heavy and I needed room for the shield generators, if they existed.