"Look, Fiorello," Manny said. "You chin if you want to; I'm doing a
fast fade."
"Don't act hastily, Manny. You know where you'll end."
"Wait a minute!" Dan shouted. "I'd like to make a deal with you
fellows."
"Ah-hah!" Kelly's voice blared from somewhere. "I knew it! Slane, you
crook!"
* * * * *
Dan looked about wildly. The voice seemed to be issuing from a speaker.
It appeared Kelly hedged his bets.
"Mr. Kelly, I can explain everything!" Dan called. He turned back to
Fiorello. "Listen, I figured out--"
"Pretty clever!" Kelly's voice barked. "Inside job. But it takes more
than the likes of you to out-fox an old-timer like Eddie Kelly."
"Perhaps you were right, Manny," Fiorello said. "Complications are
arising. We'd best depart with all deliberate haste." He edged toward
the cage.
"What about this ginzo?" Manny jerked a thumb toward Dan. "He's on to
us."
"Can't be helped."
"Look--I want to go with you!" Dan shouted.
"I'll bet you do!" Kelly's voice roared. "One more minute and I'll have
the door open and collar the lot of you! Came up through a tunnel, did
you?"
"You can't go, my dear fellow," Fiorello said. "Room for two, no more."
Dan whirled to the cot, grabbed up the pistol Kelly had supplied. He
aimed it at Manny. "You stay here, Manny! I'm going with Fiorello in
the time machine."
"Are you nuts?" Manny demanded.
"I'm flattered, dear boy," Fiorello said, "but--"
"Let's get moving. Kelly will have that lock open in a minute."
"You can't leave me here!" Manny spluttered, watching Dan crowd into
the cage beside Fiorello.
"We'll send for you," Dan said. "Let's go, Fiorello."
The balding man snatched suddenly for the gun. Dan wrestled with him.
The pistol fell, bounced on the floor of the cage, skidded into the
far corner of the vault. Manny charged, reaching for Dan as he twisted
aside; Fiorello's elbow caught him in the mouth. Manny staggered back
into the arms of Kelly, bursting red-faced into the vault.
"Manny!" Fiorello released his grip on Dan, lunged to aid his
companion. Kelly passed Manny to one of three cops crowding in on his
heels. Dan clung to the framework as Fiorello grappled with Kelly. A
cop pushed past them, spotted Dan, moved in briskly for the pinch. Dan
grabbed a lever at random and pulled.
Sudden silence fell as the walls of the room glowed blue. A spectral
Kelly capered before the cage, fluorescing in the blue-violet. Dan
swallowed hard and nudged a second lever. The cage sank like an
elevator into the floor, vivid blue washing up its sides.
Hastily he reversed the control. Operating a time machine was tricky
business. One little slip, and the Slane molecules would be squeezing
in among brick and mortar particles....
But this was no time to be cautious. Things hadn't turned out just the
way he'd planned, but after all, this was what he'd wanted--in a way.
The time machine was his to command. And if he gave up now and crawled
back into the vault, Kelly would gather him in and pin every art theft
of the past decade on him.
It couldn't be _too_ hard. He'd take it slowly, figure out the
controls....
* * * * *
Dan took a deep breath and tried another lever. The cage rose gently,
in eerie silence. It reached the ceiling and kept going. Dan gritted
his teeth as an eight-inch band of luminescence passed down the cage.
Then he was emerging into a spacious kitchen. A blue-haloed cook
waddled to a luminous refrigerator, caught sight of Dan rising slowly
from the floor, stumbled back, mouth open. The cage rose, penetrated a
second ceiling. Dan looked around at a carpeted hall.
Cautiously he neutralized the control lever. The cage came to rest an
inch above the floor. As far as Dan could tell, he hadn't traveled so
much as a minute into the past or future.
He looked over the controls. There should be one labeled "Forward"
and another labeled "Back", but all the levers were plain, unadorned
black. They looked, Dan decided, like ordinary circuit-breaker type
knife-switches. In fact, the whole apparatus had the appearance of
something thrown together hastily from common materials. Still, it
worked. So far he had only found the controls for maneuvering in the
usual three dimensions, but the time switch was bound to be here
somewhere....
Dan looked up at a movement at the far end of the hall.
A girl's head and shoulders appeared, coming up a spiral staircase. In
another second she would see him, and give the alarm--and Dan needed
a few moments of peace and quiet in which to figure out the controls.
He moved a lever. The cage drifted smoothly sideways, sliced through
the wall with a flurry of vivid blue light. Dan pushed the lever
back. He was in a bedroom now, a wide chamber with flouncy curtains, a
four-poster under a flowered canopy, a dressing table--
The door opened and the girl stepped into the room. She was young. Not
over eighteen, Dan thought--as nearly as he could tell with the blue
light playing around her face. She had long hair tied with a ribbon,
and long legs, neatly curved. She wore shorts and carried a tennis
racquet in her left hand and an apple in her right. Her back to Dan and
the cage, she tossed the racquet on a table, took a bite of the apple,
and began briskly unbuttoning her shirt.
Dan tried moving a lever. The cage edged toward the girl. Another;
he rose gently. The girl tossed the shirt onto a chair and undid the
zipper down the side of the shorts. Another lever; the cage shot toward
the outer wall as the girl reached behind her back....
Dan blinked at the flash of blue and looked down. He was hovering
twenty feet above a clipped lawn.
He looked at the levers. Wasn't it the first one in line that moved the
cage ahead? He tried it, shot forward ten feet. Below, a man stepped
out on the terrace, lit a cigarette, paused, started to turn his face
up--
Dan jabbed at a lever. The cage shot back through the wall. He was in a
plain room with a depression in the floor, a wide window with a planter
filled with glowing blue plants--
The door opened. Even blue, the girl looked graceful as a deer as she
took a last bite of the apple and stepped into the ten-foot-square
sunken tub. Dan held his breath. The girl tossed the apple core aside,
seemed to suddenly become aware of eyes on her, whirled--
With a sudden lurch that threw Dan against the steel bars, the
cage shot through the wall into the open air and hurtled off with
an acceleration that kept him pinned, helpless. He groped for the
controls, hauled at a lever. There was no change. The cage rushed
on, rising higher. In the distance, Dan saw the skyline of a town,
approaching with frightful speed. A tall office building reared up
fifteen stories high. He was headed dead for it--