The guard had carried a wallet.
She leapt again, caught the knob and turned it, pushed the wallet between the door and the jamb, where the catch of the lock ought to be. Again she dropped, and again she leapt. This time she slapped the flat of her hand hard against the door. It flipped upward…and over.
Far down the curve of the corridor someone yelled, “What’s going on down there?”
Polly’s chest heaved, pulling deep lungfuls of air through her nose, under perfect control. She jumped a last time, caught the jamb, and pulled herself up. Heavy footsteps…Before someone could come into sight, she had closed the door.
There was a ladder here, built into what had been the ceiling. Doubtless the Planck’s original crew had used it to climb down from those six control chairs after the First Landing. Polly used it now.
She squirmed into the second seat on the left and found the control panel and the bypass. Part of the wall had been pried up, and a simple iron bar had been welded into place between two plates, removing control from the flight control room and giving it directly to the fusion room. In flight both control points had been necessary: the fusion room to keep the drive working and stable, and the flight control room to keep it pointed. Now the fusion drive was used only for making electricity. And Polly’s control panel was dead.
She went down the ladder fast. There was a tool closet by the door. If it held a welding arc—
It did.
And if there was no anesthetic gas around—or if it wasn’t inflammable…
Nothing exploded as she turned on the welder. She began welding the door shut.
Almost immediately she attracted attention. She could hear excited voices, muffled by the door. Then there was the faint numbness of a sonic beamer. The door didn’t conduct subsonics well, but she couldn’t take this long. Nonetheless she finished the welding job before she went back up the ladder.
She used the welding arc to cut away the bypass. It was slow work. Implementation would surely have barged in on her before she finished. Now they could whistle for entrance. She had all the time in the world. In their world.
Matt reached the corridor and began to walk, leaving the interrogation room open behind him. He walked bent, with his chest half collapsed and his arms folded over the pain. He’d forgotten to take the remaining sonic.
“I’m not the domineering type,” he muttered, perversely enjoying the sound of his own voice. And, “Either that, or I’m trying to dominate the wrong woman.”
A heavy figure came pounding around the curve. Jesus Pietro Castro, wearing a gas filter and carrying a heavy mercy-sliver gun, looked up in time to avoid a collision. He jerked to a stop, and then his mouth dropped open as he took in blue eyes, brown hair, a bitter and angry colonist’s face, an ear with a small piece bitten out of it, and blood soaked into the collar of a crewish overjacket.
“You agree?” Matt said brightly.
Castro raised his gun. The “luck” was off.
And all the rage and humiliation in Matt broke loose. “All right,” he yelled, “look at me! Damn you, look at me! I’m Matthew Keller.”
The Head stared. He did not fire. He stared.
“I crashed my way into your crummy Hospital single-handed, twice! I came through walls and void mist and sleepy gas and mercy bullets to rescue that damn woman, and when I got her loose, she punched me in the gut and folded me up like a flower! So go ahead and look!”
Castro looked and looked.
And finally Matt realized that he should have fired.
Castro swiveled his head from side to side in a negative motion. But his eyes never left Matt. And slowly, slowly, as if he were knee deep in hardening cement, he moved one slow step forward.
Abruptly Matt realized what was happening. “Don’t look away,” he said hastily. “Look at me.” The Head was close enough now, and Matt reached out and pushed the barrel of the mercy-gun aside, still striving to hold Castro’s eyes. “Keep looking.”
They stared eye to eye. Above his bulky false nose, Castro’s eyes were remarkable: all white and black, all whites and huge, expanded pupils, with practically no iris showing. His jaw hung loose under the snowy handlebar moustache. He was melting; the perspiration ran in slow streams into his collar. Like a man in an ecstasy of fear, or awe, or worship…he stared.
Contract the pupils of eyes not your own, and you got psychic invisibility. Expand them, and you got…what? Fascination?
For damn sure, he had the Head’s complete attention. Matt drew back his fist, cocked it—and couldn’t follow through. It would have been like attacking a cripple. Castro was a cripple: one of his arms was in a sling.
There was shouting from down the corridor, from the direction Polly had taken.
The Head moved another gluey step forward.
Too many enemies, before and behind. Matt slapped the gun out of Castro’s hand, then turned and ran.
As he dropped through the door to the coffin room, he saw the Head still looking after him, still held in the strange spell. Then he pushed the door closed above him.
Polly cut the last of the bar away, and the control board came alight. She ran her eyes quickly over the lighted dials, then once more, slowly.
According to the control board, the fusion drive was as cold as Pluto’s caves.
Polly whistled between her teeth. It was no malfunction of the board. The several dials checked each other too well. Someone had decided to black out the colony regions.
She couldn’t start the drive from here. And she’d never reach the fusion room; she’d locked herself in with a vengeance.
If only this had been the Arthur Clarke! Castro would never dare cut power to the crew. The Clarke’s fusion plant must be going full blast.
Well, now, she thought in growing excitement. She slid out onto the ladder. There might be a way to reach the Clarke.
Jesus Pietro felt a hand shaking his shoulder. He turned and found Major Jansen. “What is it?”
“We’ve flooded the Planck with gas, sir. Everyone who wasn’t warned should be unconscious, unless he’s behind doors. I wish there weren’t so many filters floating around, though. Whoever we’re after has had too good a chance to pick one up.”
“Good,” said Jesus Pietro. He couldn’t concentrate. He wanted to be alone, to think…no, he didn’t want to be alone…“Carry on,” he said. “Try the coffin room. He may be in there.”
“He isn’t. Or if he is, there’s more than one traitor. Somebody’s in the flight control room, welded in. It’s a good thing the fusion plant is off.”
“Get him out. But try the coffin room, too.”
Major Jansen moved off in the direction of all the commotion. Jesus Pietro wondered what he’d find when he finally looked in the coffin room. Had Keller’s ghost really gone in there, or had he faded out while running up the corridor? Jesus Pietro wasn’t sure.
But he was sure of the ghost.
He would never in his life forget those eyes. Those binding, blinding, paralyzing eyes. They would haunt him the rest of his life—however many minutes that might be. For surely the ghost didn’t intend to let him go now.
His handphone rang. Jesus Pietro picked it off his belt and said, “The Head.”
“Sir, we’re getting some very strange reports,” said the voice of Miss Lauessen. “A large number of cars are converging on the Hospital. Someone claiming to represent the Council is accusing you of treason.”
“Me? Of treason?”
“Yes, sir.” Miss Lauessen sounded strange. And she kept calling him Sir.
“What grounds?”
“Shall I find out, sir?”
“Yes. And order them to land outside the defense perimeter. If they don’t, set patrol cars on them. It’s obviously the Sons of Earth.” He clicked off and immediately thought, But where did they all come from? And where did they get the cars?
And he thought, Keller?
His handphone buzzed.
Miss Lauessen’s v
oice had turned plaintive—almost querulous. “Sir, the fleet of cars is led by Millard Parlette. He accuses you of malfeasance and treason, and he orders you to give yourself up for trial.”
“He’s gone insane.” Jesus Pietro tried to think. It was all coming at once. Was this why Keller had appeared to him, shown himself at last? No mysterious symbols, this time; no invisible breaking of fingers. Keller’s eyes…“Try to land the old man without hurting him. The other cars too. Order them to set their cars on autopilot. Tell them they won’t be hurt. Give them one minute; then knock them out with sonics.”
“I hesitate to remind you, sir, but Millard Parlette is your superior officer. Will you give yourself up?”
Then Jesus Pietro remembered that Miss Lauessen was almost pure crew. Did her veins carry Parlette blood? It was reputedly easy to come by. He said the only thing he could.
“No.”
The phone cut off, cut him off from the Hospital switchboard and from the world outside.
He’d gone off half-cocked, and be knew it. Somehow Polly’s blow in the belly had made him want to die. He’d stumbled out into the corridor to be captured.
Not this time. He scooped up the remaining sonic and started for the ladder. This time he’d know just what he was doing when he went through that door.
But why go through it at all? The thought stopped him at the foot of the ladder. If Polly was going to blow the drive—
No, she’d never get that far. And she’d had all the rescuing she was entitled to. It was time to think about escape. He looked up at the exit—and shivered.
Some escape hatch. The moment he poked his head out there, somebody would shoot at it. He had to see his enemy to use the “luck,” and he couldn’t see in all directions at once.
Yet, this room was no place to stand off a siege. All anyone would have to do would be to fire mercy-needles down toward the floor. If he looked before he fired, the “luck” would get him; but that statement applied to an ordinary sonic stunner. And so he wouldn’t look.
He had to get out.
But—Castro’s nose piece. It meant Implementation was using gas. The corridor must be already full of it.
Too many things to think about! Matt cursed and began going through a guard’s pockets. The guard stirred and tried to strangle Matt with limp fingers. Matt played the sonic over them both, then finished his search. Neither guard had a gas filter.
Matt looked up at the door. He could chance it, of course, but if there was gas in the corridor, only that airtight door was protecting him now. It had to be airtight, of course.
Get to another room? There were the doors leading to what must be bedrooms. But they were halfway up the walls and too far from the ladder.
And there, just under the exit, was a small door placed where any good apartment would have a coat closet. He might be able to reach it.
It wasn’t a coat closet, of course. It held two spacesuits.
And it wasn’t easy to reach. Matt had to lean far out from the ladder to turn the knob, let the door fall open, and then jump for the opening. Leaving the cubbyhole would be just as bad when the time came.
Spacesuits. They had hung on hooks; now they sprawled on the floor like empty men. Thick rubbery fabric, with a heavy metal neck-ring set with clamps to hold the separate helmet. Metal struts in the fabric braced the rocket backpack and the control unit under the chin.
Would the air converter still work? Ridiculous, after three hundred years. But there might still be air in the tank. Matt found a knob in the control panel of one suit, twisted it, and got a hiss.
So there was still stored air. The suit would protect him against gas. And the big fishbowl of a helmet would not interfere with his vision, nor his “luck.”
He snatched up the gun when the door to the corridor dropped open. A long moment later two legs came into sight of the ladder. Matt played the sonic over them. A man grunted in surprise and toppled into view, and down.
A voice of infinite authority spoke. “You! Come out of there!”
Matt grinned to himself. Quietly he put the gun aside and reached for the suit. A wave of dizziness made the world go dreamy. He’d been right about the gas.
He turned the air knob on full and put his head through the neck ring. He took several deep breaths, then held his breath while he slid feet first into the suit.
“You haven’t got a chance! Come on out or we’ll come in after you!”
Do that. Matt pulled the helmet over, his head and resumed breathing. The dizziness was passing, but he had to move carefully. Especially since the suit was a size too, small for him.
The door dropped open suddenly, and there was a spattering of mercy-slivers. A snarling face and a hand came into view, the hand firing a mercy-gun. Matt shot at the face. The man slumped, head down, but he didn’t fall; someone pulled him up out of sight by his ankles.
The air in the suit had a metallic smell thick enough to cut. Matt wrinkled his nose. Anyone else would have been satisfied with one escape from the Hospital. Who but Lucky Matt Keller would have—
There was a roar like a distant, continuous explosion. What, Matt wondered, are they trying now? He raised the gun.
The ship shook, and shook again. Matt found himself bouncing about like a toy in a box. Somehow he managed to brace his feet and shoulders against walls. I thought the son of a bitch was bluffing! He snatched at the stunner as it threatened to slide out into space.
The ship jumped, slapping hard against his cheekbone, as one whole wall of the ship ripped away. The roar was suddenly louder, much louder.
“We’re too close,” said Parlette.
Hood, in the driver’s seat, said, “We have to be close enough to give orders.”
“Nonsense. You’re afraid someone will call you a coward. Hang back, I tell you. Let my men do the fighting; they know what they’re doing. We’ve practiced enough.”
Hood shrugged and eased back on the 3-4 throttle. Already theirs was the last car in a swarm of more than forty, an armada of floating red taillights against the starry night. Each car carried two of Parlette’s line, a driver and a gunman.
Parlette, hovering like a vulture over the car’s phone, suddenly crowed, “I’ve got Deirdre Lauessen! All of you, be quiet. Listen, Deirdre, this is an emergency…”
And the others, Harry Kane and Lydia Hancock and Jay Hood, listened while Parlette talked.
It took him several minutes, but at last he leaned back, smiling with carnivorous white teeth. “I’ve done it. She’ll put our accusation on the intercom. Now we’ll have Implementation fighting each other.”
“You’ll have a tough time justifying that accusation,” Harry Kane warned him.
“Not at all. By the time I finished, I could convince Castro himself that he was guilty of treason, malfeasance of duty, and augmented incest. Provided—” He paused for effect. “Provided we can take the Hospital. If I control the Hospital, they’ll believe me. Because I’ll be the only one talking.
“The main point is this. In law I am the man in charge of the Hospital, and have been since Castro was the size of Hood. If it weren’t me, it would be some other crew of course. In practice, it’s Castro’s Hospital, and I have to take it away from him. We have to have control before we can begin changing the government of Mount Lookitthat. But once I’ve got control, I can keep it.”
“Look ahead.”
“Police cars. Not many.”
“Tight formation. I wonder if that’s good? None of us ever had any training in dogfights.”
“Why didn’t you fight each other?”
“We expected to fight,” said Parlette. “We never expected to fight the Hospital. So we—”
“What the Mist Demons is that?”
Parlette was leaning far forward in his seat, his mismatched hands bracing him against the dashboard. He didn’t answer.
Harry shook his shoulder. “What is it? It looks like fire all around one end of the Hospital.” Parlette seemed rigid w
ith shock.
And then one whole end of the Hospital detached itself from the main structure and moved sedately away. Orange flame bloomed all around its base.
“That,” said Millard Parlette, “is the Planck taking off on its landing motors.”
Polly was in the upper-left-hand seat. She manipulated the controls in front of her with extreme delicacy, but still the knobs turned in short jumps. Minute flakes of rust must be coming loose somewhere in the chain of command that led from this control chair to the fission piles.
Finally the piles were hot.
And Polly tried the water valves.
It seemed to her that long ago someone had decided to keep the slowboats ready for a fast takeoff. It must have been during the first years of the colony, when nobody—crew or colonist—had been sure that an interstellar colony was possible. Then, others had forgotten, and the only changes made since then had been the necessary ones.
Until the slowboats themselves were part of the structure of the Hospital, and the interiors of the lifesystems were a maze of ladders and jury-rigs. Until the organ banks were moved entirely out of the ships, and the suspended animation rooms were closed off for good. Until the ships were nothing more than electrical generating plants—if one turned a blind eye to the interrogation room and perhaps to other secrets.
And still the tool closets were undisturbed. And still there were spacesuits in the upended rooms, behind doors which hadn’t been opened for centuries.
And still there was water in the landing fuel tanks and uranium in the landing motors. Nobody had bothered to remove them. The water had not evaporated, not from tanks made to hold water for thirty years against interstellar vacuum. The uranium…
Polly valved water into the hot motors, and the ship roared. She yipped in triumph. The ship shuddered and shook along her whole length. From beneath the welded door there were muffled screams.
There was more than one way to tell a joke! The Planck’s fusion drive was dead, but the Arthur Clarke’s drive must be running hot. And when Polly dived the Planck on it from the edge of atmosphere, the explosion would tear the top from Alpha Plateau!