Worlds Apart by Joe Haldeman Read Free Book Online

just you go one way and I go the other, and we burn anything that looks important.”
    “We ought to go together. We don’t want to get trapped if the building catches on fire.”
    “Okay, that makes sense. This way?”
    “Good as any.” They went down a corridor marked ZEITUNGSWESEN BEREICH . They encountered another stuck door, and Goodman kicked it open.
    “Well, I’ll be God damned. Would you look at that.”
    O’Hara’s glove slapped against her helmet as she instinctively tried to cover her mouth. Instead of screaming, she squeaked.
    They were in an observation area over a large room full of muted sunshine. There were forty or fifty consoles in neat rows, and forty or fifty bodies slumped over the consoles or sprawled on the floor. They wore identical white uniforms, stained, and their faces and hands were mummified, shrunken around bone, skin dark gray with a white dusting of mold.
    “What the hell happened to them, I wonder.”
    O’Hara leaned against a rail for support. “They—they’ve been sealed in here since they died. And they must all have died at the same time. Probably poison gas in the air conditioning. Or radiation, like a neutron bomb. I wonder who did it.”
    “Well, it must be the place we’re looking for. Let’s burn it up.”
    “Sort of hate to.”
    “Yeah.” They clumped down the stairs together. “Break the window first,” Goodman said. There was a bay window of polarized plastic, overlooking the landing strip and launch pads. He melted a hole in it and the Sun glared through.
    “Careful,” O’Hara warned. “We don’t want to be standing too close to those consoles when the picture tubes blow out.”
    “Don’t think they’re cubes. Look like flatscreens to me.” But he aimed carefully and sent a squirt of flame all the way across the room, enveloping the two farthest consoles. He was right; the screens just melted down. The bodies burned passively at first, and then their limbs started to stir.
    “Christ that’s ugly. Let’s get this shit over with.” He fanned the flame in a sustained roar over half the room, and O’Hara added hers to the inferno. They backed up the stairs together, spraying fire. The tile floor caught, burning bright orange with greasy black smoke.
    Something pinged against O’Hara’s tanks, and she saw a shiny needle spin off into the fire. She whirled around. “Jimmy!”
    It all happened in less than a second. At the top of the stairs were four boys, tall boys in their teens, naked except for body paint. Three of them held spears, and one had a large rifle with a wooden stock. He was working the bolt of it.
    O’Hara shot high and to the right, flame splashingagainst the wall behind the boys. The one with the rifle fired; his dart and the fire from Goodman’s gun crossed in midflight. All four boys were suddenly covered with burning oil. Two fell and two ran screaming.
    Goodman’s firestream tilted up, spraying the ceiling. O’Hara turned and saw him topple backwards down the stairs, a metal spike in his chest.
    He lay on his back on the burning floor. O’Hara started down to help him, saw the flames licking around the tanks of oxygen and fuel, hesitated, called herself a coward, grabbed his foot, and pulled with all her strength. Halfway up the stairs, she heard a terrible rattling groan. She looked at him through the helmet and he was dead, his face dark purple with eyes bulging, swollen tongue forcing his jaws apart. She let go with a cry and his body bumped down the stairs as she backed away. She almost tripped over one of the bodies at the top of the stairs, then turned and ran. She passed two more smoldering bodies in the hall. As she stepped outside there was a tremendous explosion, Goodman’s tanks, and the black window popped out in one piece, sailing through the air with ponderous grace in a rain of smoking human fragments.
    She stopped dead and sat down and tried to put her head between her knees. Then she remembered the drug