Urbis

As matters progressed in other parts of the city, at the power plant the situation was grim. The emergency had already developed beyond Stage Three, and was into the final phase of criticality.

By mid morning, Dr. Jim Coleman was all out of options. His attempt to induce natural circulation of the coolant in a single phase flow had proved impossible because too much water had been lost from the primary system. He had then turned his efforts to two-phase cooling, both by means of condensation and by reflux, sending coolant backwards through the system, but it had been in vain, because water levels on the secondary side of the steam generators had been too low. The situation had been further complicated by the failure of an emergency back-up system: a valve failure had prevented an auxiliary feedwater line from opening. The instruments before him told an absurd story: safety equipment had failed in the radioactive environment created by the kind of accident in which that equipment was supposed to provide protection.

And then he had found that his attempts were being further stymied by the presence in the higher parts of the system of non-condensible hydrogen, generated by the reaction of zircaloy and steam in the desperately overheated reactor core. The gas was blocking the flow of steam to the now cooled steam generator tubes.

A disaster was inevitable. His sole consolation was, in a further twist of irony, that the Energy Minster had overruled his bid for a fast breeder running on plutonium-239, against which there was no protection, and which would leave Urbis uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of years. The isotope which was now destined to spew out over the city was iodine-131, against which the power plant was able to offer a preventive measure, in the shape of potassium iodide, but still no cure.

Wearily he rose from his chair. “You people better get out of here. Head north, upwind, and get away as far as you can.”

“But Dr. Coleman...” one bewildered aide ventured.

“Just do it!” Coleman barked. “But before you go, how many choppers do we have on site?”

“Five operational,” said Graves. “Two down.”

“Do we have five pilots?” said Coleman.

Four hands went up. Coleman swore. Slowly, Graves added his hand. “I’ve been up with my pa a few times, and he let me try the controls, but I wouldn’t exactly call myself a pilot.”

"I’m calling you a pilot,” said Coleman. “Do your best. There are millions - millions! - of lives to be saved. Now, I want five volunteers to accompany the pilots.”

All remaining hands went up. Coleman was gratified. He pointed at random. “You, you, you, you, you. Get to the medstore. You will find there our stocks of potassium iodide. Put as much into the choppers as they will carry. You will only be able to make one trip, I suspect. Fan out across the city, from the bay to the mountains, and scatter the pellets as widely as you can. You will have to cope with the war that seems to be going on as best you can. Go. Go now. And hurry.”

Reluctantly they edged towards the door. “What about you, Dr. Coleman?” said Graves timorously.

“I will do what I can here,” Coleman replied. “I may be able to get the robots to do something.” He looked at them again as they hesitated at the door. “Go! For pity’s sake, go! And don’t forget to take pellets yourselves!”

He sprang from his seat again and hustled them out of the door, then locked it behind the last of them. He walked to the far end of the room and opened a wall panel. Within lay a keypad in a locked container and a large lever. Pulling out a keyring he selected a red key and turned it in the lock. He opened the container and keyed in a number known only to himself and the Energy Minister. The code number freed the lever. He gripped it tightly and pulled it down.

Powered directly from the plant, bypassing the disabled substations, klaxons at every street corner in the entire city suddenly burst into life, issuing a strident, unmistakeable, and, after a minute, nauseatingly monotonous note. In most parts of the city it burst startlingly out of the sepulchral silence that reigned where the normal functions of civilisation had ground to a halt. In other places, however, it added to the frenzied martial cacophony that accompanied the pitched battles being fought between the Underground and Security.

Its sound carried, muffled, but no less insistent, into the warren of storm drains and other tunnels, where Josie and Crispin waited on tenterhooks for the word to move forward to attack, and Josie calmly explained to Crispin in as simple language as she could the deadly danger it presaged.

The fighting wavered as all eyes turned towards the source of a death that would strike down combatants of both sides and non-combatants indiscriminately: the distant grey outline of the power plant away to the north on the shore of the bay. But there was no pall of smoke, no visible sign that anything was amiss. And the same thought crossed many minds: this must be a ploy by the enemy to distract us.

And the fighting resumed its intensity.

Officers Gerard Maclean and Ray Howett were patrolling over the bay when they spotted something strange on their heat-sensing scanner. The screen displayed an unbroken red line up its middle, indicating something in the water below them. But a visual inspection indicated nothing unusual.

“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with the scanner?” Maclean interrogated his co-pilot.

“Sure I’m sure,” answered Howett, scratching his scalp under his helmet. The technical guys had her down the day before yesterday, remember? They gave her a clean bill of health, remember?”

“Okay, okay,” said Maclean. “But we’re going to look mighty silly reporting something that isn’t there.” He flicked on his communicator. “Patrol Three-Niner to control.”

“Go ahead, Three-Niner.”

“Control, our heat detector indicates a column, repeat, a column, moving across the bay in the direction of sector one, but we see no evidence of activity on the surface. Querying detector malfunction.”

“One moment, Three-Niner, I’ll run a check.” The officer in control ran a quick check on the detector systems in the hovering helicopter. His readouts indicated nothing abnormal. A check on the aircraft’s position relative to Sector One did, however reveal something of interest. “Three-Niner, return to regular patrol, please, but give us regular updates on the heat sensor reading at that location.”

“Will do,” said Maclean, and spun the machine on its axis to resume its course.

The control officer called Shah directly. “Mr. Shah? Our patrol reports what would appear to be a column of guerrillas approaching through the Sector One sewer link.”

“That seems appropriate,” said Shah. “Thank you control. We’ll be waiting for them.”

A hundred of Shah’s handpicked Security Specials stomped down the companionways leading into the bowels of Sector One, level below level of store rooms, utilities, fortified bunkers with blaster-proof doors, and complex networks of pipes and conduits. Led by the manager of the sewage plant, who was held at blaster-point, they arrived at the point where the sewage artery entered the base of the island, and gathered around the access hatch.

Presently, the sound of soft footsteps was heard in the tunnel, and lights on the hatch control indicated that it was being opened from the other side. A lethal semicircle of blasters was trained on the hatchway.

The hatch swung silently open, and Kirsty Unwin, leader of the Sector Four Underground, found herself eye to eye with Emil de la Perouse, leader of the Security Specials.

“Nice try, my little sewer rats,” de la Perouse grinned toothily, “but you blew it. Drop your weapons.”

A rain of fire dropped onto the Security Specials from overhead walkways, and more of Tarrant’s men emerged on soundless rubber soles from behind immense storage tanks, firing as they came. De la Perouse and his men were caught off guard, and Kirsty and those following her out of the hatchway finished them off.

“A good disguise,” Elizabeth Grant concluded, running her eyes over Tana’s olive green battledress. “You’ll pass for a regular Security officer rather than the lovely woman that you are, my dear.” She glanced repeatedly out of the window at the scenes of carnage being enacted below. “But it won’t help. There is going to be fierce fighting. We evidently have traitors in our midst. Security men fighting alongside these Underground rabble, for some misguided notion or other.” She sucked in a deep breath, swelling the slight bosom under her suit. “It pains me more than I can say, but we are going to have to beat a retreat while Shah and his men put paid to the upstarts and turncoats.”

Tana looked at her with incomprehension. “A retreat?”

“I know,” said Elizabeth. “I scoffed at it myself last night. But that was before I knew we had been infiltrated. By all that’s wonderful, if I find who’s betrayed us this way, I’ll have him skinned alive. Literally.”

Tana had no doubt that she was sincere.

Dashwood entered from the room next door. “Leader, we must be going. Before the helipad is overrun.”

Elizabeth stared at him. “The helipad? They have penetrated that far?”

“Not yet. But they are not far off.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak again, but at that point the klaxons sounded, announcing imminent meltdown at the power plant. She and Dashwood ran to the window and stared in the direction of the plant. Bemused, Tana ran after them.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“Death,” said Dashwood. “If the radioactive smoke gets out, millions of Urbians will die.”

“Wait a minute,” said Elizabeth. “Surely you can see this for the stratagem it is? The Underground have obviously found a way to trip the alarm, in order to panic us.” She looked northwards again along the bay. There was as yet no sign of trouble from the power plant. She then looked again at Dashwood and at Tana. “Nevertheless, your other argument for discretion, Dashwood, is valid.”

He bowed his head in solemn acknowledgement.

“Come,” said Elizabeth. “We must find ourselves a pilot and depart, though at the moment I’m not sure where we should go.”

She was already heading for the door, with Dashwood close behind her.

“I will join you shortly,” Tana said. “I have a personal matter to attend to first.”

Elizabeth spun round. “What kind of personal matter?”

“It does not concern you,” Tana said simply.

“I demand to know,” Elizabeth insisted, shrugging Dashwood’s restraining hand off her shoulder. Her eyes widened. “Another lover, I suppose. Man or woman? Oh, it doesn’t matter. Have your touching little farewell, but be quick. We can’t wait long. We’ll be on the helipad.”

She swept out, with Dashwood hurrying, in spite of his long legs, to keep up.