Sunset of the Gods - By Steve White Page 0,54

centuries. The Authority couldn’t have done that without an appropriation request that would have precipitated an all-out political crisis. The Transhumanists had done it using a displacer so compact, and drawing so little power, that it could be concealed somewhere on Earth’s surface.

Rutherford has to be told about this! He cursed himself for not having somehow managed to leave word at the message-drop on Mount Pentelikon.

The pilot stepped to the ground and, with his back to Jason, fumbled for a hand communicator. Jason suddenly realized that, after the man reported in, his own window of opportunity to take any action would vanish. Without pausing for further thought, he bunched his legs and launched himself over the boulder.

It was fairly artless. Jason hit the totally surprised Transhumanist from behind, smashed him over prone. His sword-holding right arm went around the man’s neck, while his left hand grasped his left wrist and pulled that arm up behind his back.

But this Transhumanist was one of the genetic upgrades designed for, among other things, strength. His free right arm went up behind Jason’s neck while his legs sent both of them surging upwards until he had Jason practically piggy-back. Then, with a further surge, he threw Jason over his right shoulder.

Jason’s trained reflexes took over for him. He kept his grip on his sword, and hit the ground in a roll which brought him back up to his feet even as he whirled to face his enemy. The Transhumanist was already rushing him, hands outstretched in what Jason recognized as one of the positions of combat karate.

Jason’s options suddenly became very simple. He had hoped to take the man alive, but he had no desire to have blade-stiffened hands smash through his rib cage and pull out his lungs. With a twisting motion, he evaded those hands while driving his sword into the Transhumanist’s midriff. Then he dropped to his knees, wrenched the sword point-upward inside the guts in which it was lodged, and rammed it straight up. Blood gushed from the Transhumanist’s mouth as he fell to his knees and toppled forward, pulling the sword out of Jason’s hand by his sheer weight.

Jason retrieved his sword, wiped off the blade, and used the pommel to smash the communicator the Transhumanist had never had a chance to use. Then he examined the aircar. It was, as he had thought, a standard model aside from the decidedly non-standard invisibility field. He activated its nav computer and brought up its last departure point on the tiny map display.

It was a point in the heights just east of Tegea, just over ninety miles to the southeast as the crow or the aircar flies.

Just about where Pheidippides swore that Pan appeared to him, came the thought, bringing with it a flash of understanding.

Jason summoned up his implant’s clock display. He really needed to be getting back to camp. But at the aircar’s best speed he could cover the distance in less than half an hour. And this had to be looked into.

He had neither time nor tools to bury the Transhumanist’s body, but he didn’t want to leave it to be found. With difficulty, he hauled it into the passenger seat and tied a heavy stone to it. Then he set the computer to retrace its last course, lowered the canopy, activated the invisibility field, and took to the air.

Jason’s route took him over Mount Pentelikon and just north of Athens, but he was in no mood to appreciate the view, and at any rate the outside world appeared in blurry shades of gray when viewed from inside the field. He flew on into the dim-appearing afternoon sun. Soon he was over the island of Salamis, and the waters where ten years from now the navy that was now only a gleam in Themistocles’ eye would scatter the fleets of Xerxes. Then the waters of the Saronic Gulf were beneath him. He stopped, hovered only twenty feet above the waves, and made certain there were no boats nearby whose crews might have noticed a body appear out of nowhere in midair and fall into the sea. He raised the canopy and pushed his deceased passenger out.

Resuming his flight, Jason went feet-dry over the Argolid. He did not permit himself to glance to the right, toward Mycenae and the bones that lay buried there. Instead, he spent the few remaining minutes of flight wondering just what the aircar had been doing landing on Mount Kotroni. No answer came to