by H. B. Fyfe
“Relax, honey,” she said. “You were a little high. I don’t imagine you have any laws here against shoving a lady on her can—as long as you’re careful where you shove.”
“May the Founders protect me from a forward woman!” breathed the warden. “Will you be still and listen to me, Jezebel? Or would you continue ignorant of the news I brought?”
“What news?”
“I am instructed to inform you that you have an official visitor. Do you wish to see him?”
Maria shoved herself away from the edge of the bunk and assumed a dignified stance. She tugged her clothing into order.
“I should be most honored to receive this visitor,” she said in her best imitation of Greenie formality. “I deeply appreciate your announcing his presence—at last!”
The warden glared at her. Finding no words worthy of the state of his blood pressure, he stepped back and slammed the heavy door shut. It muffled somewhat his departing footsteps.
“I’m out!” yipped Maria.
She did a little jig, ran to the door to press an ear against it, and turned to survey the cell with the fingers of one hand beating a light tattoo against her lips.
She crossed to the bunk. From beneath it, she dragged the small overnight bag she had succeeded in obtaining from the ship before it had left for the next planet. She began to go about the room, collecting the few odds and ends she possessed and packing them.
She was fingering the bristles of her toothbrush for dampness when she heard returning footsteps.
The hell with brushing my hair, she thought. I’ll go as is.
She threw the toothbrush into the bag, tossed her hairbrush on top, and snapped the catch. She considered herself ready.
The door opened and the warden ushered another man into the cell. Maria felt a sudden chill.
The newcomer was a Greenie.
She looked over his shoulder, hoping for a glimpse of the Terran consul, but there were just the two Greenies facing her. The stranger was nearer in age to the young guard than to the warden. On the other hand, the severity of his expression was a challenge to the older man. The uniform was about the same.
“My name is John Willard,” he announced flatly.
He reached into an inner pocket to produce a fold of papers. At the edge of one, Maria caught sight of what she guessed to be an official seal. Willard opened the papers and turned to the warden.
“You identify the prisoner before us as one Maria Ringstad, native of Terra?”
“I do!” said the warden, righteously.
“You will please sign this statement to that effect!”
There was silence in the cell as the warden held the document against the door to scribble his signature. Maria watched in growing chagrin. Willard folded the statement of identification, returned it to his pocket, and faced her.
“Maria Ringstad,” he said, “I am to inform you that your appeal has been denied. You will accompany me to Corrective Farm Number Five, where I will deliver you to the authorities who will supervise the serving of your sentence.”
Maria dropped her bag.
“What? You’re lying! Let me see those phony papers! This is some sort of—”
Willard let her have the back of his left hand across the face. Maria never saw it until she was falling. She sat down with a thump, her legs stretched out straight before her.
Unbelievingly, she watched Willard sign a copy of his order for the warden. The latter examined it with satisfaction before tucking it away. They turned to look down at her, and Willard announced that he was ready to leave.
He seemed to think that a good way to forestall an argument was to get her moving as quickly as possible. He yanked on one elbow, the warden pulled on the other, and Maria headed for the door at a smart trot, wondering how she had risen.
“My bag!” she protested.
“I have it,” said Willard.
“Turn left for the stairs,” said the warden.
“I’m not going!” she yelled.
“Yes, you are,” said Willard.
“Yes, you are!” echoed the warden.
They reached the head of the stairs, where the warden released his grip. Willard shoved her forward, and the two of them descended with breakneck lack of balance. At the bottom, they paused for the warden to catch up.
Maria seized the chance to kick Willard in the shin. He turned white, but urged her on as the warden led the way through a barred door into an open courtyard. They crossed the courtyard by fits and starts, with Maria expressing her opinion in words she had never before uttered. The meaning of certain of them still eluded her, but Willard seemed to understand the general drift.
The warden spoke to a guard, ordering him to open the main gate. Willard boosted her through with a knee in the behind. The massive portal swung to with a thud, leaving them out in the street.
“I’ll be damned if I go to any prison farm!” Maria shouted in his ear. “I demand to see the Terran consul! This is an outrage!”
Willard glared at a passing Greenie who seemed disposed to look on. He tightened his grip on Maria’s arm, the better to tow her twenty feet down the street away from the gate. There, he backed her roughly against the blank granite wall.
“If you don’t shut your face,” he growled between set teeth, “I’ll really belt you one!”
Maria gasped in a breath and looked at him. It was easy, since he had thrust his face to within a few inches of hers. Little droplets of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
He looked scared.
SEVEN
Westervelt was still sitting with Joe Rosenkrantz in the communications room when Colborn’s call came through. He looked over Joe’s shoulder as the operator swiveled to face his telephone viewer.
“How come you remembered the number?” he greeted Colborn. “Did the elevator doors close on you?”
“Very-funny-ha-ha!” retorted Colborn. “Look, Joe—have you got power?”
Westervelt peered closer, thinking that the redhead looked unusually concerned. Rosenkrantz seemed not to have noticed.
“Power?” he said. “Have I got power! I can pull in stations you never heard of, just on willpower! You—you poor slob—you don’t even remember if you’re on your way home or coming to work! What is it now?”
“I’ll tell you what it is,” shouted Colborn. “It’s a power failure! They don’t even have any lights out in the street. I nearly got trampled to death getting back in the lobby to phone you.”
Westervelt and Rosenkrantz looked at each other.
“Come to think of it, Charlie,” said the operator, “the lights did blink a minute ago. I wonder if that was our own power taking over for the whole floor?”
They saw Colborn turn his head, and heard him expostulating with someone who plainly was impatient to get into the phone cubicle.
“I’ll go check the meters,” said Rosenkrantz. “Watch the space set for me, Willie!”
“Whuh-wh-wha?” stuttered Westervelt, groping after him. “Charlie! He went away! What do I do if a call comes in?”
Colborn finished dealing with his own problem downstairs, and returned his attention to Westervelt. He requested a repeat.
“I said that Joe went around the corner to check the power,” babbled the youth. “What do I do if a space call comes in? He said to watch the set.”
“Oh,” said Colborn. “You see the little red, star-shaped light at the left of the board under the screen?”
“Yeah, yeah! It’s out, Charlie!”
“Well, it should be. It’s an automatic call indicator set for our code. If it goes on, it shows you’re getting a call even if you have the screen too dark or the audio too low to notice. So you look for a green one like it on the other side…”
“Yeah. I see it.”
“You push the button beside it, and our code goes out automatically to acknowledge. Then you push the next button underneath, which puts out a repeating signal to stand by. Got that so far?”
“I got it,” said Westervelt. “Then what?”
“Then you go scream for Joe at the top of your lungs. That covers everything. You are now a deep-space operator. Just don’t touch any of those buttons until you get a license!”
“But, Charlie—!”
He was saved by the return of Rosenkrantz, for whom he thankfully vacated space before the phone. Colborn was again engaged in making faces at some other desperate commuter.
“You were right, Charlie,” said Rosenkrantz. “We’re strictly on our own private power. The whole floor, as near as I can tell. I thought they were being fussy when they put it in, but maybe it will pay off at that. How does it look down there?”
“It’s a mess,” said Colborn. “You wouldn’t believe there were so many people working in our building.”
“No, no!” said Rosenkrantz. “I mean, what’s the situation? Is it just this building that’s cut off, or the whole city, or what?”
“You can’t believe anything they’re saying,” Colborn told them, “but they had somebody yapping on the public address system. It seems there’s a whole section of the city, about fifty blocks square, cut off. They’re talking about a main cable overloading.”
“I can imagine what they’re saying,” said Rosenkrantz. “The poor guys stuck with finding and replacing it, I mean.”
Colborn gave a hollow laugh.
“You think they’re the only ones stuck? There ain’t a single subway belt moving to the suburban heliports. All the local surface monorails are stopped. You should see the way they’re packing the ground taxis, and the cops won’t let any more helicabs come down.”
“They’re supposed only to pick up from the roofs,” said Rosenkrantz.
“That isn’t where the people are. The people are all down here with me, and half of them are trying to get in the booth to tell their wives they won’t be home. Well, there’s a lot of us won’t get home tonight, if the boys don’t find that break pretty soon.”
Westervelt and Rosenkrantz exchanged glances. The youth shrugged; he had been planning on staying late anyhow.
“Tell him to come back up, Joe,” he suggested. “We have food in the locker for visitors, and he can clear a table in here to snooze on.”
Colborn had heard him, and was shaking his head.
“I’d like nothing better, Willie,” he said, “but I might as well start walking. It’s better on the level than on the stairs.”
“What do you mean—stairs?”
“I don’t know about the other buildings around here, but they regretfully announced that there will be no elevators running above the seventy-fifty floor in this one. In fact, they only have partial service that high, on the building’s emergency power generator.”
Rosenkrantz looked worried. Broodingly, he fumbled out a box of cigarettes.
“What do you think, Charlie?” he asked. “I mean…Lydman.”
“That’s why I called,” said Colborn. “I think you better check the stairs and tell Smith. If he starts our boy down them, the ninety-nine floors will give him something to keep his mind busy.”
The pressure from outside finally intimidated him into switching off. The last they saw of him on the fading phone screen, he was striving desperately to ease himself out of the booth in the face of a bellowing rush of harried commuters for the phone. Joe sighed, trying to light his smoke from the wrong end of the box.
“I’m going to check our elevator, Joe,” Westervelt said.
He left the communications room and trotted up the corridor and around the corner. Through the main doors, he caught sight of Pauline peering out of her compartment. A thought struck him.
He hurried over to her and thrust his head close to the opening in her glass partition.
“Were you still on that line, Cutie?” he demanded.
“What line?” demanded Pauline indignantly. “Oh, Willie, does this mean we have to walk down twenty-five floors tonight?”
“You little—Listen! Don’t let out a peep about this until we know more!”
“Why not, Willie?”
“Do you want to get everybody upset? How can they dream up brilliant ideas while they’re worrying about ordering sandwiches sent up? Promise!”
Pauline reluctantly gave her word not to say anything without consulting him. Westervelt returned to the hall, where he pressed the button for the elevator.
He waited about three times as long as it usually took to get a car, then tried again with the same lack of results. Looking up, he discovered that even the red light over the entrance to the stairs was out. That, apparently, had not been part of ninety-ninth floor system now powered by their own generator.
Westervelt took the few steps to the doorway concealing the stairs. There was a beautifully reproduced notice on the door, informing all persons that this was an emergency exit and that the door would open automatically in case of fire or other emergency. It further offered detailed directions on how to leave, which in simple language meant “go downstairs.”
“The door is shut,” muttered Westervelt, “so that proves there isn’t any emergency.”
He tried the handle. It did not budge, except for a slight clicking.
Feeling slightly uneasy, he leaned over to squint at the crack of the door. He spotted the latch, a sturdy bar, and saw that he was moving it. There was, however, another bar which did not move, and the door refused to slide open.
“Of course,” he breathed. “It’s made to open automatically. How would they do that? By electricity. What haven’t we got plenty of? The damn’ thing’s locked! Somebody designed a beautiful set-up!”
He looked about the empty corridor, jittering indecisively.
“I could call downstairs before I tell Smitty,” he reminded himself.
For the sake of having a handy shoulder to cry on, he went all the way back to the communications room to use a phone. He made a gesture of throwing up his hands as Joe looked around, then got Pauline on the phone.
“See if you can get me the building manager’s office,” he requested. “Don’t be surprised if it’s busy for a couple of minutes.”
It was nearer fifteen minutes before his call went through. During that time, he learned that Rosenkrantz took a serious view of the inconvenience.
“I guess you heard some of the talk about Bob Lydman,” said the operator. “Well, some is imagination, but a lot of it’s true. He spent a long time in hellhole out among the stars; and if there’s anything that might shove him off course, it’s the idea that he can’t get out. No matter where he is, he has to know he can leave when he feels like it!”
“But if he doesn’t know about it?” asked Westervelt.
“How long can you keep it quiet? I bet you can see a blackout from the window. Watch the set—I’ll take a look.”
“Aw, now, wait a minute, Joe!”
Westervelt’s consternation was diverted by the call that came through at that moment. A perspiring face with ruffled gray hair—which Westervelt could remember having seen occasionally about the lobby downstairs, looking extremely sleek and well-groomed—appeared on the phone screen.
“If you’re above the seventy-fifth, walk down that far. If you’re lower, walk down as far as you can,” said the man hoarsely. “If you can stay put, that’s the best thing.”
“Tell me, what—?”
“Power failure, not responsibility of the building management,” said the sweating gentleman. “Please co-operate!”
“But what—?”
“We’re doing all we can and this phone is busy, young man! Will you please—”
“The stairs are locked!” shouted
Westervelt.
For a moment, he doubted that he had penetrated the official’s panic. Then he saw new outrage in the man’s eyes.
“What did you say?”
Westervelt explained about the door to the stairs. The gentleman downstairs clapped both hands to his moist cheeks. He had begun to look numb.
After a long pause, he pulled himself together enough to promise that he would look into the matter. As he switched off, Westervelt heard him muttering that it was just too much.
“You hear that, Joe?” he asked.
“Yeah, an’ I didn’t like it,” replied the operator. “What does that leave us…no elevators, no stairs…how about the helicopter roof?”
“You have to walk up a flight of stairs to get there,” said Westervelt, thinking of the department’s three helicopters garaged on their private tower roof. “It’s the same door. I suppose the door at the top is frozen too.”
“Well, anyway, that could be worse,” said Joe. “That makes two doors to knock open, an’ I bet your boys have some little gadget around that will do that.”
Westervelt felt better. There was always a way out, he told himself. Just the same, he thought he had better let Smith know about the situation.
He told Joe where he was going and headed back up the hall. When he reached the corner, he tried the door again for luck. The luck was the same.
He wondered whether to go look in the lab for some burning tool. On second thought, he decided that if any damage had to be done to the building, it was not his responsibility. He turned to enter the main office, flashing Pauline a wink that he hoped would look reassuring.
Simonetta was busy with a case folder but Beryl was seizing an opportunity to repair her nail polish of iridescent gold. She eyed him curiously as he bent over to whisper into the brunette’s ear.
“Are they still talking in there, Si?” he asked.
She drew away with a mock frown, demanding, “What’s so confidential? Are you spying for Yoleen?”
Westervelt scowled over her head out the window. It was twilight outside, and he noted that there were only a few dim lights in nearby tall buildings.