The waitress flushed a little, as if afraid that she had said too much. She turned and walked slowly toward the coffee percolator at the far end of the counter.
He was glad now that he had ordered the coffee. The coffee would help too. He suddenly felt that he was under observation, that hostile eyes were watching him. But it was no more than just a feeling; and coffee and sympathy might drive it away.
How blindly, stupidly foolish could a guy be? Corriston thought. If he had any sense at all he wouldn’t wait for the coffee. He’d get up quickly and head for the door at the other end of the cafeteria. He’d either do that, or swing about abruptly and attempt to catch the silent watcher by surprise.
Corriston decided to wait for the coffee.
The waitress looked at him strangely when she returned. She set the coffee down before him and started to turn away, her eyes troubled. Then, suddenly, she seemed to change her mind. She leaned close to him and whispered: “You’d better leave by the promenade door. That man over there has been watching you. I know him very well. He’s a Security Guard.”
Corriston nodded and stared at her gratefully for a moment. He was more relieved than alarmed. It was far better to have a Security Guard watching him than a killer with a poisoned barb. He wasn’t exactly happy about it, but he was confident he could elude the agent.
The waitress’ eyes were suddenly warm and friendly again. “Space-shock?” she asked.
“So they claim,” Corriston said. “I happen to think they’re mistaken.”
He started sipping the coffee. It was hot but not steaming hot. He could have tossed it off like a jigger of rye but he had some quick thinking to do.
“Tell me,” he said. “Just where is that guard sitting?”
“At the other end of the counter,” the waitress replied, the anxiety coming back into her eyes. “He’s close to the door. You’d have to go past him. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think you want to get away from him. So you’d better go the way you came—by the promenade door.”
“That’s not too good an idea, I’m afraid,” Corriston said. “He’d follow me and get assistance on the promenade. What’s beyond the other door? Where does it lead to?”
“It opens on a corridor,” the waitress said quickly. “If you can get past him you might have a better chance that way. There’s nothing but a corridor with two side doors. One opens on an emergency stairway that goes down to the Master Sequence Selector compartments.”
She seemed to take pride in her knowledge. Due to a space-shocked guy’s difficulties, the Master Sequence Selector had become an important secret shared between them. Corriston wondered if she knew that the Selector functioned on thirty-two separate kinds of automatic controls.
If he ever got the chance, he’d come back and tell her exactly how grateful he was. Right at the moment one consideration alone dominated his thinking. If he could get past the guard he could hide out in an intricate maze of machinery. Even if they sent a dozen guards down to look for him it would take them some time to locate him. He could hide-out and gain a breathing spell.
The waitress had a very small hand. Abruptly Corriston clasped it and held it for an instant, his fingers exerting a firm, steady pressure. “Thanks,” he said.
Corriston swung about without glancing toward the end of the counter. He’d pass the guard quickly enough; there was no sense in alerting the man in advance. As for recognizing him, that would be no problem at all. You couldn’t mistake a Security Guard no matter what kind of clothes he wore.
Corriston took his time. He walked slowly, refusing to hurry. A man under surveillance should never hurry. He should be casual, completely at his ease, for there is no better way of keeping an observer guessing.
He kept parallel with the long counter, his shoulders swaying a little with the assurance of a man who knows exactly where he is going. Presently the entire length of the counter was behind him, and he was less than a yard from the door.
He hadn’t glanced once at the counter. He didn’t intend to now. One quick leap would carry him through the door and beyond it, and to hell with recognizing the guard. When it was touch and go and odd man out, you altered your plan as you went along.
He’d seen a girl disappear when everyone said it didn’t happen. Confined to a psycho-ward, he had simply walked out, eluded a killer, and watched a ship explode on the green hills of Earth. He’d survived all that, so how could one lone Security Guard stop him now?
He was preparing to leap, when something got in his way—a shadow—a shadow for an instant between himself and the door, and then a dark bulk stepping right into the shoes of the shadow and filling it out.
The Security Guard was not at all the kind of person he’d expected him to be. He was not a big ape, not even a muscular-looking man. He had simply seemed big for the instant he took to fill the place of his shadow. He was a man of average height, average build. He blocked the doorway without bluster, looking very calm and relaxed. Only his eyes were cold and accusing and dangerously narrowed as he surveyed Corriston from head to foot.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to the ward now,” he said. “You picked a bad time to take a turn about the Station. Ordinarily you’d be privileged to do so. That’s part of the therapy. But you picked a very bad time.”
“I’m beginning to realize that,” Corriston said. “I couldn’t help it, though. I had no way of knowing that freighter was out of control. I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake, too, though. I’m not going back to the cell.”
Corriston had been watching the man’s right arm. Suddenly it went back and his fist started rising, started coming up fast at an angle that could have sent it crashing against Corriston’s jaw.
Corriston had no intention of letting that happen. He side-stepped quickly and delivered a smashing blow to the pit of the guard’s stomach. The blow was so solid that it doubled the guard up. His knees buckled and he started to fold.
Corriston didn’t take the folding for granted. A second blow caught the man squarely on the jaw and a third thudded into his rib section. For an instant he looked so dazed that Corriston felt sorry for him.
He was still half-doubled up when he sank to the floor and straightened out. He straightened out on his side first, and then rolled over on his back and stopped moving. His lips hung slackly, his eyes were wide and staring.
The look on his face gave Corriston a jolt. It was a very strange look. The fact that his features had become slack was not startling in itself, but there was something unnatural, unbelievable, about the way that muscular relaxation had overspread his entire countenance. His features were putty-gray and they seemed to have no clearly defined boundaries.
His nose, eyes, and forehead looked as if the ligaments which held them together had snapped from overstrain or had been severed by a surgeon’s scalpel…severed and allowed to go their separate ways without interference.
In fact, there was no real expression on the man’s face at all—no recognizably human expression—not even the stuporous look of a man knocked suddenly unconscious.
There was agitation now in the cafeteria, a hum of angry voices, a rising murmur that was coming dangerously close. Corriston shut his mind to it. He knelt at the guard’s side and swiftly unbuttoned the unconscious man’s heavy service jacket. He felt around under the jacket until he was satisfied that he could move on through the doorway with a clear conscience. The guard’s heart was beating firmly and steadily. There was a reassuring warmth under the jacket as well, a complete absence of clamminess.
Suddenly the guard groaned and started to roll over on his side again. Corriston didn’t wait for him to complete the movement. He arose quickly and was through the door in four long strides.
He preferred not to run. He was not so much fleeing as seeking a security he was entitled to, a reasonably safe port in a storm that was threatening to take away his freedom
by blanketing him in a dark cloud of unjust suspicion and utter tyranny.
The corridor was as deserted as he’d hoped it would be. With no one to get in his way or sound an alarm, he had no difficulty at all in locating the emergency passageway which descended in a rail-guarded spiral to the Master Sequence Selector. He kept his right hand on the safety rail as he moved downward into the darkness. For the first time he felt extremely tired.
7
The drone of machinery in a high-vaulted, metal-walled compartment awakened Corriston. It was for the most part a steady, low, continuous sound. But occasionally it ceased to be a drone, in a strict sense, and became high-pitched. It became a shrill, almost intolerable whine, impinging unpleasantly on his eardrums and preventing him from going to sleep again.
For interminable minutes he lay stretched out at full length in the lidded, coffinlike rag bin into which he had crawled, a lethargic weariness enveloping him like a shroud. Above his head steel-blue surfaces crisscrossed, vibrating planes of metal and wire intricately folded back upon themselves.
After a moment, when the steady drone was well in the ascendency again, he sat up and stared about him. He had a throbbing headache and there was a dryness in his throat which made swallowing difficult.
He was certainly not an exceptional man in regard to such matters. During moments of crises he could remain fairly calm and self-possessed but the aftermath could be killing.
He felt now as if all of his nerves had been squeezed together in a vise. He looked at his wrist watch and was amazed to discover that he had slept for eight hours. If a search had been made for him, he had no reason to complain about his luck. He hadn’t even closed the lid of the bin. But perhaps the oil-stained waste he had drawn over himself had given them the idea that he was just more waste underneath.
Perhaps the guards didn’t give a damn whether they found him or not. It was quite possible. On a low official level a cynical desire for self-comfort could dominate the thinking of a man.
It was quite possible that the guards who had been sent down to search for him—or one of the guards, at least—had been angry at his superiors. Just a quick look and to hell with it—that must have been his attitude.
It made sense in another way. They wouldn’t suspect the bin because the bin was so conspicuous and obvious a hiding place. The Purloined Letter sort of thing. Crawl into an empty coffin at a funeral and no one will give you a second glance. All dead men look alike.
The Master Sequence Selector compartment was a coffin, too—a big, all-metal coffin arching above him and hemming him in. If he hoped to get out of it alive, he’d have to do more than just beat on the lid with his fists.
Almost instantly he was ashamed of his thoughts. He had been extremely lucky so far. The funeral was over, the sod firmly in place. They would not be likely to dig him up on suspicion, and he could stay buried until he starved to death.
The worst would be over when they found him. The thirst torment would be the worst, but if it became unbearable he would still have the choice of surrendering himself.
Quite possibly he would die of thirst. Quite possibly he could shout his lungs out and still remain trapped. If a search had been made and they had failed to find him, sullen anger might have tempted them to do an unthinkable thing. They might have locked the door of the compartment so that the corpse would have no opportunity of escaping prematurely and making them look like fools.
Corriston was just starting to climb out of the bin to investigate the truth or falseness of that utterly demoralizing possibility when he heard the sound. It was a very peculiar sound, three or four times repeated, and he heard it clearly above the low drone of the Selector’s automatic controls.
He stood up in the bin, straining his ears. It came again, louder this time. It was only a short distance away and it was a voice sound, unmistakably a voice sound.
He climbed out of the bin, grasped a metal rod that projected from one of the cross-beams, and descended cautiously to the base of the Selector. The droning increased for an instant, rising to a whine so high-pitched that he could no longer hear the voice.
He started moving around the edge of the Selector, keeping well within its shadow, watching shafts of dull light move backwards and forwards across the floor. He hardly expected anyone to leap out at him. The voice had not seemed quite that near; in fact, he was by no means sure that it had come from the compartment at all. But if not from the compartment, where?
He found out quickly enough. There was a square, windowlike grate a few feet from the Selector’s automatic control panel, set high up on the wall. A faint, steady glow came from it.
Corriston paused for an instant directly below the glow, measuring the distance from the floor to the aperture with his eyes. He strained his ears again, waiting for the whine to subside. It continued shrill, but suddenly he heard the voice again, heard it above the whine.
There was stark terror in the voice. It was despairing and desperate in its pleading, and it seemed to Corriston that he would remember it until he died. He thought he recognized the voice, but he couldn’t be sure.
It was perhaps merciful that he couldn’t, for the grate was at least ten feet above the floor and had he known beyond the faintest shadow of doubt that it was Helen Ramsey’s voice, his inability to reach her would have been fiendish torment.
He hoped only one thing—that he had to reach that voice in time.
First of all he had to stay calm. Even a calm man could not hope to scale a ten-foot wall with his bare hands, but an agitated man would have no chance at all. Something to stand on! A box—anything!
A box would help, a ladder would be better. But what were his chances of finding a ladder in the Selector compartment? Not good at all. Still, he could search for a ladder. Quickly now. No time to waste, but don’t lose your head. Take thirty seconds, a good long thirty seconds to look around for a metal ladder. There just might be one standing somewhere against the wall.
There was! Not one ladder, but two, leaning against the wall directly opposite the glimmering front section of the Selector.
It was amazing how desperation could change a man. In the great moments of danger and desperation small, neurotic concerns ceased to matter.
He was sure now. He had recognized the voice beyond any possibility of doubt. The ladder scraped against the wall and swayed a little, and for an instant he feared it might slide out from under him. He paused to make sure, and then went swiftly on up until his head was level with the grate.
He grasped the heavy grillwork with both hands and raised himself higher. He could see clearly through the grill into the compartment beyond now. The entire compartment was visible from where he stood. It was small and square and dimly lighted by an overhead lamp, and there was a paneled door leading into it.
Close to the door a man was standing. Corriston couldn’t see his face. He was half-turned away from the wall opposite him, and the girl who was struggling to escape from him was more than two-thirds concealed by his massive shoulders.
He was holding her in a tight, merciless grip. He had locked one hand on her wrist and was preventing her from moving either backwards or forwards. It was costing him no effort. He simply stood very straight and still while she struggled vainly to free herself.
Immense strength seemed to emanate from him, complete assurance and a coldly calculating kind of brutality which appeared to be slowly undermining her will to resist. Her struggles became less frantic second by slow second, and that she was about to stop struggling altogether was evident from the way her right arm had begun to dangle and her body to sag.
The man was holding her by the left wrist in a left-handed grip. He was cruelly twisting her wrist and suddenly she cried out again in pain and despairing helplessness.
The blood started mounting to Corriston’s temples. He began tugging at the grate with both hands, exerting al
l his strength in a desperate effort to dislodge it. It began to move a little, to become less firmly attached to the wall. He could feel it moving under his hands, rasping and creaking as it loosened inch by inch.
He was covered with sweat. Already in his mind he had killed the man, and Helen Ramsey was tight in his arms, happy and alive.
The man did not seem to hear the rasp of the grate coming loose. He neither turned nor raised his head. His free hand had gone out and across the girl’s face. But if he had struck her on the face, she gave no sign. She did not recoil as if from a blow and there was something strange about the movement. It was as if the man had reached out to tear something from the girl’s face—a veil or a mask.
His hand whipped back empty but his fingers were oddly twisted, as if he had clawed at something that had failed to come free.
Corriston pulled back his shoulders and his posture on the ladder grew more erect. He knew that his exertions might send the ladder toppling but it was a risk he had to take.
The grate was freely movable now. He could move it backwards and forwards, six or eight inches each way; but he still could not rip it completely free.
He kept on tugging, his neck cords bulging, the ladder swaying dangerously. The grate could be moved upward now, just a little. No, it was finally coming completely loose. He could move it in all directions and even push it outward at right angles to its base.
Twice he heard Helen Ramsey cry out again, and her screams became a goad that turned his wrists to steel. With a sudden, convulsive wrench he twisted the grate sideways. It came loose in his hands. It was so surprisingly light that an incongruous rage surged up in him. It was cruelly perverse, intolerable, that he should have been so long delayed by a thin sheet of metal that hardly seemed to have any weight at all.
The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel Page 6