Billig gave a great gasp and began to squeal.
The blue beams winked out. The gun clanked on the floor. The squeal
changed to a clucking and Billig swayed. Jack jumped to catch him.
Phil sprang forward and his fingers touched buttons he'd seen Billig
touch. The bars in the garage gateways shot up. Phil was on the
telescoped stairs almost before they began to move, and rode them to
the ground through layers of stinging ozone and golden harmony. The
jeep had trembled to a stop just short of Mitzie, who stared at it
groggily, her whole figure slack, as if a puff of wind could have
felled her.
When the stairs touched the floor, momentum carried Phil forward a half
dozen steps but he kept his footing and circled back at a run. When
he plunged into the area between the green cat and the spot where the
jeep had been abandoned, he felt a shiver of sudden and extreme terror,
which even as he felt it, began to fade.
But he hardly had time to ask himself whether that was what had
stampeded Carstairs and the rest, for the next instant he was calling,
"Lucky!" and Lucky was saying "Prrt!" and he was scooping up the
unresisting cat, his fingers trembling as they touched the green fur,
and darting back toward Mitzie and the jeep. Her groggy look had now
become a dazed smile of triumph and pride.
He grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her toward the jeep. "Get in!"
he shouted in her ear. "We're getting out of here. You're driving."
A little life seemed to come back into her as her hands touched the
wheel. She kicked the starter as he scrambled in beside her, Lucky
gently clutched to his chest. "Which way?" she asked thickly.
"Any exit gateway," he told her.
With a rather wheezy hum, the jeep started toward the nearest gateway.
Phil felt a thinning of the golden peace around them, as if, he told
himself, Lucky were resting. The jeep, though gaining a little speed,
seemed to move as slowly as a school slideway. But looking back, he saw
that the group on the balcony was still standing as motionless as dress
display dummies with the power off--all except Billig, who was once
again moving about rapidly.
"Get them," Phil could barely hear Billig's cracked voice implore, as
he darted from one to the other. "Kill them."
The jeep nosed through the high doorway and started up a ramp.
"Dora!" Phil heard Billig yell. "Grab my ortho and kill them."
The effect of the golden wave must be wearing off, Phil thought, for
just as the top of the gateway was cutting off his view he saw the
violet blonde stoop rapidly behind the guard wall.
The next second a blue beam flashed, and smoke and starry splatter
sprayed up just behind the jeep. The beam moved up and encountered the
top of the gateway. It notched that, came a little closer to them, and
then was stopped by the thickness of the wall. The ramp turned and Phil
saw a half dozen men in the Fun Incorporated company guard uniform. Two
of them had drawn their guns and the other four hadn't. They seemed to
be arguing hurriedly about something. They turned and saw the jeep. The
two with guns raised them and the others reached for theirs.
Then Lucky sat up on Phil's lap straight as the statuette of Bast, and
Phil felt him let go of another of those great golden invisible waves.
Phil could tell the moment it hit the guards from the sudden change in
their tough faces. They watched the jeep with awe and incredulous grins
as it went past.
Farther on they found themselves approaching an expanse of gray cold
light, against which a party of some twenty heavily armed men was
partly silhouetted, although they were advancing warily along the
walls. They were carrying guns, nets and sprays that could swiftly
immobilize men in plastic cocoons, and what looked like bird cages.
They leveled their weapons, but once again and mightier than ever, so
mighty it made Phil shiver with understanding, the golden wave rolled
forward to engulf them. Once again the jeep glided past astonished,
troubled faces that smiled in spite of themselves. As the jeep rolled
out into the cool, shadowy dawn, Phil stroked Lucky's soft, springy fur
and murmured, "Little peace maker. You even gentled the FBL."
Lucky looked up at him coquettishly and then yawned tremendously and
curled up on Phil's lap. The feeling of golden harmony subsided until
only a ghost of it lingered.
"I know," Phil said, "you're tired from so much peace making." He
suddenly felt extremely tired himself, yet he went on to say, in
slurred syllables, "Lucky, I don't care whether you come from Egypt,
Russia, or the jungles of the Amazon--you're good for the USA."