He looked after the dwindling cab a moment, then walked quickly
along the concrete toward the elevators. To his left, a procession
of assorted vehicles hurried in either direction through the tunnel.
Occasional cabters, long-cars, and congyribles pulled up to openings
in the railing to let out passengers who approached one or another
of the elevator doors. Herl passed three clumps of people waiting for
transportation to other floors and noticed that the panels beside the
doors, which listed the offices to be found on the ninth, eighth, and
seventh floors respectively, were all listings of headquarters of some
sort of civil control ... health insurance, building permits, fire
inspection, inoculations, etc.
There were both men and women among those waiting, most of them in what
Earth would call informal dress (a pair of simple trousers and knitted
shirt in gray or brown, often topped off with a heavy furred cape or
swathing capelike coat); and most of them were much more warmly dressed
than the driver of his cab. Apparently there was not such a shortage of
heat-holding fabrics as he had assumed.
As he reached the fourth elevator, the door opened and the group was
sucked into its recesses. Herl joined it and the doors closed. "Express
to the sixth floor: face the rear of the car please," said the tinny
voice from an overhead speaker. Twenty people stood glumly motionless
as the car glided up with the faintest of vibrations but with a heavy
pressure against the soles of Captain Hofner's feet.
A door opened at the rear of the elevator chamber and the crowd pushed
out and spread wide in the large lobby ahead. Herl Hofner shifted
his case to his left hand and looked around for some clue to the
whereabouts of Crawford's office. That worthy might have the whole
floor, but he must have his particular sanctum at some particular place.
Most of the lobby was filled by comfortable looking upholstered couches
and chairs, and these in turn were filled by what Herl judged to be
a couple of hundred people talking, reading pamphlets, or glancing
preoccupiedly through pages of forms that looked like the ones he'd
filled out earlier. In a chair near him, Herl saw an old man gazing
blankly ahead and approached him.
"I wonder if you would be so good as to tell me where I could find
Commissioner Crawford," he requested hopefully.
"What say?" the man blinked and turned his gaze on the red uniform
jacket at about the level of Herl's floating ribs.
"Where would I find Commissioner Crawford?"
"Down that way somewhere, I suppose." The man's voice was toneless as
he indicated direction with one elbow.
Yes, almost at the corner of the room was a broad paneled door on which
the stencilled name Mr. Commissioner A. G. Crawford became legible as
Herl approached it. He knocked briskly just below the letters; and the
door swung slowly inward to admit him.
Inside sat a receptionist at a switchboard. She looked up at Herl's
entrance; and he could see that she was a homely brunette with dull
skin and a shapeless figure. Her glance at his trim scarlet uniform
was approving and she said, "You're Captain Hofman from Galactic
Information, aren't you?"
"Hofner, from Coordination," he corrected. "May I see the Commissioner?
I believe he's expecting me."
"The Commissioner is in conference at the moment with some of the men
he wants you to talk to. If you could wait in the lobby a few minutes,
I'm sure he'll be ready to see you soon."
"Can't I wait in here?"
"I'm afraid not," she replied reluctantly. "It's a rule that no one can
wait in the offices. They'd be filling the place to the ceiling if we
let them get in this far. Not," she added with what she seemed to think
was a fascinating smile, "that you'd try to get in ahead of your
turn ... but some would."
* * * * *
Herl retreated with his case of papers to the lobby and took the
nearest of two vacant chairs about fifteen feet from Crawford's
door. He sat down and pulled a stilo and permanote pad from his
breast pocket. Using his case as a writing desk he noted down several
questions he wanted to ask somebody. There were vacant planets in his
catalogue: maybe he had a market for one of those: and while there
wasn't any commission on such a 'sale', there was usually a lot of
kudos.
He glanced up at Crawford's door again, and a motion on his left
drew his eye. There was someone in the chair next to him only ten feet
away ... a woman, no, a girl. The thought flitted through his mind
that she was a quiet one to slip into the chair without his noticing.
She was looking at him, and he turned his head to look directly at her.
Shock like a heavy charge of electricity gripped and tingled in him.
This was no girl, it was a ... a ... a ... who knows what. Wrapped in a
thin golden haze, she sat, as if in the midst of an incandescent cloud,
through which her face shone as if it, too, were illumined from inside.
One bare arm lay along the upholstered arm of the chair, but not quite
touching it, as though the cloud gave a little support; but the perfect
arm was merely the lower frame for the exquisitely lovely face with
its blue eyes that seemed to penetrate his awareness to its depths and
the smile that smoothed his irritation at another tedious wait into
nothingness.
Herl sat and regarded her a long instant, a foreverness of perhaps ten
seconds. Then he came fumblingly to himself and smiled back at her.
"Waiting for Crawford, too?" he asked lamely.
The tones of her voice were rippling water, a chord on a stringed
instrument. "No."
Herl had a moment of ridiculous longing to stand up and see over the
thick arm of the chair to find out what the rest of her looked like.
Then embarrassment came and he lowered his eyes. "Excuse me," he
apologized, "I'm a stranger to Delight. I didn't mean to pry."