"We know who he is," Lawton snorted. "Sign the commitment, that's all."
I signed the form he handed me, attesting that Luigi Zorchi,
serial number such-and-such, had requested and was being granted
immobilization and suspension in lieu of cash medical benefits. They
rolled the stretcher-cart away, with its thick foam-plastic sack
containing the inanimate Zorchi.
"Anything else?" I asked.
Lawton shook his head moodily. "Nothing you can help with. I told Defoe
this was going to happen!"
"What?"
He glared at me. "Man, didn't you just come in through the main
entrance? Didn't you see that mob?"
"Well, I wouldn't call it a mob," I began.
"You wouldn't _now_," he broke in. "But you will soon enough. They're
working themselves up. Or maybe they're waiting for something. But it
means trouble, I promise, and I warned Defoe about it. And he just
stared at me as if I was some kind of degenerate."
* * * * *
I said sharply, "What are you afraid of? Right outside, you've got
enough expediters to fight a war."
"Afraid? Me?" He looked insulted. "Do you think I'm worried about my
own skin, Wills? No, sir. But do you realize that we have suspendees
here who need protection? Eighty thousand of them. A mob like that--"
"Eighty _thousand_?" I stared at him. The war had lasted only a few
weeks!
"Eighty thousand. A little more, if anything. And every one of them
is a ward of the Company as long as he's suspended. Just think of the
damage suits, Wills."
I said, still marveling at the enormous number of casualties out of
that little war, "Surely the suspendees are safe here, aren't they?"
"Not against mobs. The vaults can handle anything that might happen
in the way of disaster. I don't think an H-bomb right smack on top of
them would disturb more than the top two or three decks at most. But
you never know what mobs will do. If they once get in here--And Defoe
wouldn't listen to me!"
As I went back into the hall, passing the main entrance, the explosion
burst.
I stared out over the heads of the dreadfully silent throng in the
entrance hall, looking toward the glass doors, as was everyone else
inside. Beyond the doors, an arc of expediters was retreating toward
us; they paused, fired a round of gas-shells over the heads of the mob
outside, and retreated again.
Then the mob was on them, in a burst of screaming fury. Hidden gas guns
appeared, and clubs, and curious things that looked like slingshots.
The crowd broke for the entrance. The line of expediters wavered but
held. There was a tangle of hand-to-hand fights, each one a vicious
struggle. But the expediters were professionals; outnumbered forty to
one, they savagely chopped down their attackers with their hands, their
feet and the stocks of their guns. The crowd hesitated. No shot had yet
been fired, except toward the sky.
* * * * *
The air whined and shook. From low on the horizon, a needle-nosed jet
thundered in. A plane! Aircraft never flew in the restricted area over
the Company's major installations. Aircraft didn't barrel in at treetop
height, fast and low, without a hint of the recognition numbers every
aircraft had to carry.
From its belly sluiced a silvery milt of explosives as it came in over
the heads of the mob, peeled off and up and away, then circled out
toward the sea for another approach. A hail of tiny blasts rattled in
the clear space between the line of expediters and the entrance. The
big doors shook and cracked.
* * * * *
The expediters stared white-faced at the ship. And the crowd began
firing. An illegal hard-pellet gun peppered the glass of the doors with
pock-marks. The guarding line of expediters was simply overrun.
Inside the waiting room, where I stood frozen, hell broke out. The
detachment of expediters, supervising the hundreds inside leaped for
the doors to fight back the surging mob. But the mob inside the doors,
the long orderly lines before the interviewing clerks, now split into
a hundred screaming, milling centers of panic. Some rushed toward the
doors; some broke for the halls of the vaults themselves. I couldn't
see what was going on outside any more. I was swamped in a rush of
women panicked out of their senses.
Panic was like a plague. I saw doctors and orderlies struggling
against the tide, a few scattered expediters battling to turn back the
terrified rush. But I was swept along ahead of them all, barely able to
keep my feet. An expediter fell a yard from me. I caught up his gun and
began striking out. For this was what Lawton had feared--the mob loose
in the vaults!
I raced down a side corridor, around a corner, to the banked elevators
that led to the deeps of the clinic. There was fighting there, but
the elevator doors were closed. Someone had had the wit to lock them
against the mob. But there were stairs; I saw an emergency door only
a few yards away. I hesitated only long enough to convince myself,
through the fear, that my duty was to the Company and to the protection
of its helpless wards below. I bolted through the door and slammed
it behind me, spun the levers over and locked it. In a moment, I was
running down a long ramp toward the cool immensities of the vaults.
If Lawton had not mentioned the possible consequences of violence
to the suspendees, I suppose I would have worried only about my own
skin. But here I was. I stared around, trying to get my bearings. I
was in a sort of plexus of hallways, an open area with doors on all
sides leading off to the vaults. I was alone; the noise from above and
outside was cut off completely.
No, I was not alone! I heard running footsteps, light and quick, from
another ramp. I turned in time to see a figure speed down it, pause
only a second at its base, and disappear into one of the vaults. It
was a woman, but not a woman in nurse's uniform. Her back had been to
me, yet I could see that one hand held a gas gun, the other something
glittering and small.
I followed, not quite believing what I had seen. For I had caught only
a glimpse of her face, far off and from a bad angle--but I was as sure
as ever I could be that it was Rena dell'Angela!
* * * * *
She didn't look back. She was hurrying against time, hurrying toward a
destination that obsessed her thoughts. I followed quietly enough, but
I think I might have thundered like an elephant herd and still been
unheard.
We passed a strange double-walled door with a warning of some sort
lettered on it in red; then she swung into a side corridor where the
passage was just wide enough for one. On either side were empty tiers
of shelves waiting for suspendees. I speeded up to reach the corner
before she could disappear.
But she wasn't hurrying now. She had come to a bay of shelves where a
hundred or so bodies lay wrapped in their plastic sacks, each to his
own shelf. Dropping to her knees, she began checking the tags on the
cocoons at the lowest level.
She whispered something sharp and imploring. Then, straightening
abruptly, she dropped the gas gun and took up the glittering thing
in her other hand. Now I could see that it was a hypodermic kit in a
crystal case. From it she took a little flask of purplish liquid and,
fingers shaking, shoved the needle of the hypodermic into the plastic
stopper of the vial.