Terror. Horror. Dizziness and nausea.
Far and away and far, nothing and nothing. Only the glare, and the high
blue, and the far far horizon, and the broken gray slag stretching out,
way down below.
"Do you see?" he demanded. "Look down there! We're so high up, it's
hard to see, but _look_ for it. Do you see it? Do you see the green?
Do you know what that means? There are green things growing again
Outside! Not much yet. It's only just started back, but it's begun. The
radiation is down. Plants are growing again."
The power of suggestion. And, of course, the heightened sensitivity
caused by the double threat of a man beside me carrying a gun that
yawning aching expanse of nothing beyond the window. I nearly fancied
that I did see faint specks of green.
"Do you see it?" he asked me.
"Wait," I said. I leaned closer to the window, though every nerve in me
wanted to leap the other way. "Yes!" I said. "Yes, I see it! Green!"
He sighed, a long painful sigh of thanksgiving. "Then now you know," he
said. "I've been telling you the truth. It _is_ safe Outside."
And my lie worked. For the first time, his guard was completely down.
I moved like a whirlwind. I leaped, and twisted his arm in a hard
hammerlock, which caused him to cry out and drop the gun. That was
wrestling. Then I turned and twisted and dipped, causing him to fly
over my head and crash to the floor. That was judo. Then I jabbed
one rigid forefinger against a certain spot on the side of his neck,
causing the blood in his veins to forever stop its motion. That was
karati.
* * * * *
Well, by the time the Army men had finished questioning me, it was
three o'clock in the afternoon, and I was five hours late. The Army
men corroborated my belief that the man had been a spy, who had
apparently lost his mind when cornered in the elevator. Outside was
still dangerous, of course, they assured me of that. And he'd been
lying about having been here two months. He'd been in the Project less
than two days. Not only that, the Army men told me they'd found the
radiation-proof car he'd driven, and in which he had hoped to drive
back to his own Project once he'd discovered all our defenses.
Despite the fact that I had the most legitimate excuse for tardiness
under the roof, Linda refused to forgive me for not making our ten
o'clock meeting. When I asked her to marry me she refused, at length
and descriptively.
But I was surprised and relieved to discover how rapidly I got over my
heartbreak. This was aided by the fact that once the news of my exploit
spread, there were any number of girls more than anxious to get to know
me better, including the well-cleavaged young lady from the Transit
Staff. After all, I was a hero.
They even gave me a medal.