Part 5 (1/2)

”Don't bother,” said Dalroi. ”I hate plat.i.tudes.”

The telephone rang and Madden listened impatiently. Then he slammed down the receiver, cast a critical eye over Dalroi's bonds and left the office by a rear door.

Minutes later the lights went out. Dalroi wondered about this but could attach no significance to the fact, nor did it offer him any advantage. The plastic thonging about his limbs gripped like bands of steel, leaving him helpless and immobile. Soon he thought he heard a sound in the darkness, as of a door opening and closing. He strained his eyes in the dim moonlight filtering through closed Venetian blinds and his flesh began to crawl as he made out a shadowy figure advancing across the room, something metallic glittering in his hand.

”Who are you?” asked Dalroi, quelling the fear which rose in his voice.

Abruptly a hand clamped over his mouth. ”Malmud,” hissed a voice in his ear. ”Make no sound, Dalroi.

You're in a tight spot.”

The steel instrument snickered in the darkness and he felt the pressure of the bonds relax. In a few seconds he was free and able to stand.

”Thanks!” breathed Dalroi. ”Perhaps I can do the same for you one day.”

”I'm counting on it,” said Malmud softly. ”Have you got a gun?”

”No, Madden took mine.”

”Then take this.” The broad b.u.t.t of a radiation pistol was thrust into his palm. ”From now on you're on your own. Don't try to follow.”

Then he was gone. With a slight click the door opened and closed. Dalroi checked the safety trip and thrust the radiation pistol into his pocket, counted ten, and then he too left the office.

From memory he knew he was in the broad corridor, one end of which led down to the reception area.

The corridor itself was dark, but where it joined the stairs an atomic safety-lamp gave forth a patch of dim blue fluorescence sufficient to give him orientation. Dalroi turned away from the light and headed into the unknown darkness, touching the walls and doors soundlessly with his fingertips to maintain direction.

At fifty yards or so another corridor ran at right-angles to the first, and this he also traversed, attracted by the deep power-hum conducted through the walls.

He guessed the direction in which he was heading was taking him deeper into Failway, and, at this level, he should soon strike the vast hall from which the transfinite shuttles started. His fingers contacted a heavy, insulated door which he reasoned must lead into the great hall. Then the lights came on and an alarm bell began ringing in the corridor behind him. Men were running up the corridor he had recently left.

Soon they would be at the corner ... He opened the insulated door quietly and slipped into the loud warmth beyond.

He found himself not at floor level as he had supposed, but on the great balcony surrounding the hall.

Huge lamps overhead flooded the whole area with a light as bright as day and the hall, nearly a mile in length and a quarter of a mile across, lost its far end in the blue mistiness of a light, smoky haze.Directly below, on the floor of the hall, was the network of narrow-gauge railway lines which guided the rapid bogies of the Failway shuttle capsules from the a.s.sembly bays into the gigantic polarising matrix-field a.s.sembly and then on down the gradient chute where the capsules left their bogies and pa.s.sed into transfinite s.p.a.ce. There were no pa.s.sengers at this hour, but a heavy traffic of service shuttles rocketed down the fine carrying stores and liquefied gases. Equally busy was the ins.p.a.ce route where the returning capsules leaped into existence above the slide and were synchronised deftly with electro-magnetic bogies and brought to a frantic halt to discharge the unwanted debris of six pleasure-hungry outworld levels. Above and behind him was the control room where the matrix programmers balanced the transfinite fields which deftly plucked a capsule out of one actuality and centred it on another.

At the balcony's edge, a flight of stairs led down the hundred-odd yards to the floor of the hall. Dalroi moved along the wall until he was in line with the stair head, then sauntered unconcernedly across the balcony ignoring any eyes watching his back. He was halfway down the seemingly interminable flights of stairs before he noticed the TV pickups on the under-side of every flight watching every move he made.

Somewhere a whistle shrilled, and a knot of men drew out from a further bay and ran towards his point of descent. Dalroi estimated speeds and positions silently, vaulted the rail and dropped the last twenty-two feet straight down the centre wall. He landed like a coiled spring and immediately made towards the rail-tracks, leaping the narrow-gauge lines and synchronising his movements to avoid the capsules speeding towards outs.p.a.ce. Then turning between the sets of lines and heedless of the hurtling traffic pa.s.sing close to either shoulder, he sped down the hall towards the matrix polariser and the chute.

EIGHT.

He began to doubt the wisdom of the action even as he started to run. The outs.p.a.ce capsules reached two hundred miles an hour on a carefully determined path through the matrix polariser. What would happen to a man who pa.s.sed through the polariser at a stumbling run? Nothing perhaps, or perhaps twisting electrocution? The gradient chute lay beyond, where the giant electrodes drained the potential out of the speeding capsules and dropped them into lower energy universes. Would a man burn-out without the s.h.i.+elding of a capsule or would he be fired unprotected into some airless, theoretical void?

The matrix polariser was a wide tunnel, the walls of which were composed of the counterpoised coils and edgewise laminations which induced the polarising fields to affect the molecular orientation of the capsules and their contents before they hit the potential gradient. Without pausing in his pace he threw himself into the tunnel and was mildly surprised to feel no difference in thought or activity. It struck him that the fields might not be activated unless programmed for the pa.s.sage of a capsule. If he could clear the tunnel before the next capsule came through he had a miniscule chance of staying alive.

A glance over his shoulder charged him with frenzied activity. Two capsules, borne by frantic, accelerating bogies, were speeding up behind him, one on either side. With the best of superhuman effort it was doubtful if he could clear the polarising coils before one capsule, at least, activated the field. He sprang wildly, almost s.n.a.t.c.hing at the air to help his progress. Five steps more ... now two ...

Foimp! Something caught him by the heels and hurled him into the air like a rag doll tossed by a puppy.

Foimp! A second twisting bolt of energy knocked the breath from his body and threw him outward over the chute. Then he was falling, tumbling and b.u.mping down a concrete gradient of one in three, brus.h.i.+ng monstrous high-voltage insulator stacks and avoiding E.H.T. lines by a burst of blind, inspired hopelessness. He clutched at a metal stanchion to break his fall, missed a handhold by a fraction of an inch and fell sideways across the track. As he did so the speeding blur of a capsule topped the chute and began to descend upon him.He had no chance to move. Like some gigantic super-bullet the capsule fell, projected by its own inertia as the bogies checked magnetically on the slope. The fantastic projectile, travelling on unseen wings, weighed down to crush him where he sprawled. Then it was gone, s.n.a.t.c.hed into the realms of transfinity a few scant yards from his body. The implosion was the air rus.h.i.+ng in to fill the void left by the disappearing capsule. It sucked the air from his lungs and threw him down again to sprawl among springs and buffers at the bottom of the chute. The bogies checked to a halt only half a yard behind him.

He lay for a full half minute exploring the b.u.mps and abrasions on his body. Surprisingly, nothing seemed to be broken and he limped painfully to his feet and explored his position. He was at the foot of the Failway gradient chute, in a concrete pit perhaps fifty feet below the level of the hall. The rear wall was a sheer height of concrete and in one corner a small, greasy service-door gave access to the s.p.a.ce beyond.

The door was locked, but this was no time for finesse. The radiation pistol was still in his pocket. He narrowed the beam to a hairline shaft and applied it round the lock, wincing as the moisture in the wood turned to superheated steam and threw out a blast of burning fibrous wood streamers into his face and eyes.

A savage kick and the door gave way. Above and behind him two more capsules burst into transfinity, but the pace was slowing as they cleared the hall for the security men to come in and get him. The little room he entered was full of lubricating equipment, pressure-greasing guns and tanks of hydraulic oil. He paused to open as many oil taps as he could find, and the room was filling with a light oil-fog from the sprays when he fired the radiation pistol and departed through the further door.

The result was more nearly an explosion than a fire. The burning oil gushed out into the corridor behind him, unhampered by the effects of the carbon-dioxide injection system which quickly smothered the fire at its original source. The free oil burning in the pa.s.sage was an unexpected bonus to his original intention to seal the route behind him.

Ahead a bell was ringing as a flame detector sensed the fire and prepared to close a fire-shutter across the corridor. Dalroi jammed the shutter with a fire axe and leaped clear of the advancing tide of fire which followed hungrily at his heels into the crowded emptiness of a sleeping toolroom.

Chaos is a weapon seldom employed to full advantage: to a professional trouble-maker like Dalroi it was a technique worthy of the fullest exploitation. The wings of panic could carry him out of his present predicament whereas an air of pervading calm would see him set in concrete at the bed of the river, one of the inverse statues of the men who didn't quite make out.

On the wall he found a telephone and dialled the emergency number, warily watching the flames spreading towards him through the machine-tool jungle. ”Fire!” he screamed. ”The whole d.a.m.n place is burning!”

”Don't panic!” said the operator. ”Give me your location.”

He left the receiver dangling on its cord and headed down the shop. A bolt from his radiation pistol cut another fire-alarm into action. In the welding section he opened the c.o.c.k of an oxygen bottle and savagely rolled the shrieking cylinder back into the advancing sea of fire.

Another door and he was out into one of the broad intersecting gangways which laced the Failway terminus. He propped the door open to encourage the inferno at his heels.

”Fire!” he shouted. ”Fire!” and began to run like a madman. Somebody looked hastily out of a doorway ahead.”Fire!” shouted Dalroi. ”Get the h.e.l.l out of here but for Gossake don't panic!”

The man, who had no intention of panicking, was caught off balance by Dalroi's petulant semblance of fear. He shouted something to some others in the room and then rushed madly in Dalroi's wake. Others joined him, needing only the evidence of their noses to convince them of the wisest course of action. As if to verify their fears, a speaker cut in with directions for the a.s.sembly of a fire-fighting crew.

Dalroi let the others gain on him, deliberately inciting panic with a frenzied insistence to calm. Once, he stopped dead and caused a collision. Nothing disarms a frightened man like heavy physical contact. A violent scuffle ensued in which the fear rose to fever pitch and survival reactions reared an ugly head.

Then the fear-laden carnival met the fire crew doubling in the opposite direction.

”Too late!” screamed Dalroi. ”Get the h.e.l.l out! n.o.body's paying you to burn!”

If the fire crew were unconvinced, the hysterical ma.s.s of humanity which hit them at running speed did much to affect the issue. The only man who stayed did so because the stampede had trampled him underfoot. Herd instinct replaced individual judgement and Dalroi was now riding a tide of terror which nothing could stop.

The mob s...o...b..lled. In a frenzy of screaming hysteria, the wild stampede swept down the gangway, crashed the unyielding panic-bolts and splintered the doors to fragments as it spilled out into the night.

”Don't move!” The command, urgent and imperative, was blasted across the intervening s.p.a.ce from a battery of hailers at the gate. At the same moment the floodlights came on, flooding the walls with light and blinding the bewildered men who fought their way out of the door.

The area between the building and the outer fence was swarming with cars deploying the black-uniformed men of Failway Security. Dalroi's heart sank. The enemy had divined his intention and ranged their forces across his path. This was battle.

”Don't move!” ordered the speaker again. ”There is a murderer among you. Spread out along the wall with your hands on your heads. Security ... ”