The guard, obviously confident that nothing, but nothing, could ever
happen in this welded metal crib, jauntily peered into a couple of the
rooms at random, took a long squint at the room I'd recently vacated,
and then went on to the end of the hall where he stuck a key in a
signal-box. On his way back he paused again to peer into my room,
straining to see if he could peer past the little shutter over the
bull's eye. Then he shrugged unhappily, and started to return.
I loped down the stairs to the second floor and waited. The elevator
came down, stopped, and the guard repeated his desultory search, not
stopping to pry into any darkened rooms.
Just above the final, first-floor flight, I stopped and sprawled on the
floor with only my head and the nose of my gun over the top step. Below
was the guard's desk and standing beside the desk with anger in every
line of his ugly face was Scholar Phelps!
The elevator came down, stopped, and the guard walked out, to be nailed
by Phelps.
"Your job," snapped the good Scholar coldly, "says you are to walk."
"Well, er--sir--it's--"
"Walk!" stormed Phelps angrily. "You can't cover that stairway in the
elevator, you fumbling idiot."
"But, sir--"
"Someone could easily come down while you go up."
"I know that, sir, but--"
"Then why do you disobey?" roared Phelps.
"Well, you see, sir, I know how this place is built and no one has ever
made it yet. Who could?" The guard looked mystified.
Phelps had to face that fact. He did not accept it gracefully. "My
orders are orders," he said stiffly. "You'll follow them. To the last
letter."
"Yes sir. I will."
"See that you do. Now, I'm going up. I'll ride and you walk. Meet me on
the fourth and bring the elevator down with you."
"Yessir."
I sloped upstairs like a scared rabbit. Up to the third again where I
moved down the corridor and slipped into the much-too-thin niche made by
a door. Stolidly the guard came up the stairs, crossed in front of the
elevator with his back to me, turned the far corner and went on up to
the fourth.
As his feet started up the stairs, I was behind him; by the time he
reached the top, I was half way up.
Phelps said, "Now, from this moment on, Waldron, you'll follow every
order to the absolute letter. And when I ring, don't make the error of
bringing the elevator. Send it. It'll come up and stop without a pilot."
"Yes sir. I'm sorry sir. But you understand, sir, there isn't really
much to guard, sir."
"Then guard nothing. But guard it well, because a man in your position
is gauged in success by the amount of boredom he creates for himself."
The guard started down and I darted up to poke my head out to see where
Phelps was going. As I neared the floor level, I had a shock like
someone hurling twenty gallons of ice water in my face. The top floor
was the end of the dead area, and I--
--pulled my head down into the murk like a diver taking a plunge.
So I stood there making like a guppy with my head, sounding out the
boundary of that deadness, ducking down as soon as the mental murk gave
me a faint perception of the wall and ceiling above me. Then I'd move
aside and sound it again. Eventually I found a little billowing furrow
that rose above the floor level and I crawled out along the floor, still
sounding and moving cautiously with my body hidden in the deadness that
rose and fell like a cloud of murky mental smoke to my sense of
perception.
I would have looked silly to any witness; wallowing along the floor like
a porpoise acting furtive in the bright lights.
But then I couldn't go any farther; the deadness sank below the floor
level and left me looking along a bare floor that was also bare to my
sense of perception.
I shoved my head out of the dead zone and took a fast dig, then dropped
back in again and lay there re-constructing what I'd perceived mentally.
I did it the second time and the third, each time making a rapid scan of
some portion of that fourth floor.
In three fast swings, I collected a couple of empty offices, a very
complete hospital set-up operating room, and a place that looked like a
consultation theatre.
On my fourth scan, I whipped past Scholar Phelps, who was apparently
deep in some personal interest.
I rose at once and strode down the hall and snapped the door open just
as Phelps' completely unexpecting mind grasped the perceptive fact that
someone was coming down his hallway wearing a great big forty five
automatic.
"Freeze!" I snapped.
"Put that weapon down, Mr. Cornell. It, nor its use, will get your
freedom."
"Maybe all I want out of life is to see you leave it," I told him.
"You'd not be that foolish, I'm sure," he said.
"I might."
He laughed, with all the self-confidence in the world. "Mr. Cornell, you
have too much will to live. You're not the martyr type."
"I might turn out to be the cornered-rat type," I told him seriously.
"So play it cagey, Phelps."
"Scholar Phelps, please."
"I wouldn't disgrace the medical profession," I told him. "So--"
"So what do you propose to do about this?"
"I'm getting out."
"Don't be ridiculous. One step out of this building and you'll return
within a half minute. How did you get out?"
"I was seduced out. Now--"
"I'd advise you to surrender; to stop this hopeless attempt; to put that
weapon down. You cannot escape. There are, in this building, your mental
and intellectual superiors whose incarceration bear me witness."
I eyed him coldly and quietly. "I'm not convinced. I'm out. And if you
could take a dig below you'd see a dead man and an unconscious woman to
bear me witness. I broke your Dr. Thorndyke's neck with a chop of my
bare hand, Phelps; I knocked Catherine cold with a fist. This thing
might not kill you, but I'm a Mekstrom, too, and so help me I can cool
you down but good."
"Violence will get you nothing."
"Try my patience. I'll bet my worthless hide on it." Then I grinned at
him. "Oh, it isn't so worthless, is it?"
"One cry from me, Mr. Cornell, and--"
"And you'll not live to see what happens. I've killed once tonight. I
didn't like it. But the idea is not as new now as it was then. I'll kill
you, Phelps, if for no other reason than merely to keep my word."
With a sneer, Phelps turned to his desk and I stabbed my perception
behind the papers and stuff to the call button; then I launched myself
across the room like a rocket, swinging my gun hand as I soared. The
steel caught him on the side of the head and drove him back from his
call button before his finger could press it. Then I let him have a fist
in the belly because the pistol swat hadn't much more than dazed him.
The fist did it. He crumpled in a heap and fought for breath
unconsciously.