“Okay,” Salovitz said. “Set up a cordon around the shack, and don’t go inside again.”
“You got it, Detective,” the sergeant said.
The forensic tech in the Antarctic room called over the police scene link. “We found something, Detective. Another portalhouse room, close to the Lorenzo property, with a broken window. I tried sending a drone through, but something killed it.”
Alik and Salovitz looked at each other and headed back up the beach fast. As they went inside the shack, Shango checked with Alik’s office. The Antarctic gear courier was en route, estimated three minutes from Central Park West.
“Run,” Alik ordered them.
The tech in the Antarctic room was standing beside the window; her eyes closed as she controlled the drones through her altme. Snow was melting on the floor around her feet.
“Speak to me,” Salovitz said.
“I sent five drones out,” she said. “Their flight’s not good in the snow, and the visual imagery is poor. I’m relying a lot on the millimeter wave radar. But they found another portalhome room a hundred and fifty meters away. The window is programmable glass, but it’s not open; there’s just a hole in it, roughly a meter across. I’ve tried sending two drones through now, but each one died. It’s like an explosion. They fall apart, but there’s no heat or energy flash.”
“Buzz shot,” Alik said. “The hole could be tangled with filament.”
“What use is making a hole in the glass you can’t get through?” Salovitz asked.
“If you take a buzz gun on a job, you wear the right protective armor,” Alik told him. “Those filaments aren’t the most reliable when it comes to traveling in the right direction after expansion.”
“So they could have gotten through the hole?”
“Most likely.”
The courier arrived with their Antarctic gear—five suits with “FBI” printed in bold yellow across the back. They were one-piece units, with boots and a hood that had a sealable visor, fully heated. Practically space suits. Alik and Salovitz started putting them on, as did the forensic tech and two cops.
“Try and avoid shooting your pistols,” Alik told them. “The cold will affect them.”
They gave him uncertain glances but agreed they’d hold off unless they were taking fire.
Alik took an electron pistol out of his underarm holster and clipped it onto the Antarctic suit’s belt. The cold would make it brittle, but he thought the components would still work. Probably.
Shango confirmed the suit’s integrity and ordered the glass to open. Snow swirled in.
Alik’s feet sank a good ten centimeters into the loose snow as he started to tramp across to the next portalhome. He kept the drone sensor imagery on sharp resolution across his tarsus lenses, merging the bright scarlet grid of the millimeter radar with his own eyesight. The lens had a low-light amplification program that kicked in as soon as he got outside. He’d never liked the sparkly-green shading the two-tone image always produced. It wasn’t much use in the Antarctic, either; a snowfield at night had as much contrast as a franchise coffee shop.
At least the suit worked okay, keeping him decently warm.
They all lined up facing the room. Most of the structure was covered in a layer of snow, making it look like a futurist’s igloo, with the curving glass panorama window a jarring black bulge along the front. The three remaining disc-shaped drones hovered outside, constantly swooping about like alcoholic sparrows as they tried to hold position in the sharp squalls of freezing air.
Alik studied the hole carefully, but not even his tarsus lens enhancements could see if there was a hash of filaments clinging to it.
“If someone in a protective suit went through, wouldn’t it clear the filaments away?” Salovitz asked.
“The bulk of them, yeah,” Alik agreed. “But there will be plenty of strands left behind. You need a proper hazard disposal team to clear the area before it’s rated human-safe again. The worse the environment you fire a buzz shot in, the bigger the dispersal problem. We just need to clear the hole enough to send one of those drones through.”
“Your e-pistol?”
“Let’s find out.” He knelt down, knees compacting the snow, and angled the electron pistol up at the hole. That way, the beam would only strike the ceiling beyond. Shango selected a defocused beam on high power. He fired ten pulses.
Snowflakes inside the electron stream vaporized into steam puffs, shrouded in their own fizz of St. Elmo’s fire. The hole itself scintillated with bright elongated sparks as the filaments broke down from the energy barrage.
“Send a drone through now,” he said once the mini-fireworks had finished popping.
One of the drones flashed forward, passing unharmed through the hole. Its visual images improved immediately in the calmer air of the room. There were two bodies lying on the floor, a man and a woman in late middle age, both shot through the head. The sensors couldn’t pick up any active power circuits, and that included the portal on the back wall.
“The escape route,” Salovitz declared.