The lock on the Hot Rod control room opened. Frantic tiny figures
burst forth, activated scuttlebugs, and started on the five-mile trek
back towards the big wheel.
Mike worked his way back through the clinging net to the catwalk,
failing completely to see the tiny figure that dodged beneath the rim
as he approached.
Glancing around he carefully scanned over the entire inner rim before
stepping out into the sunlight of the catwalk itself. Nothing.
Then a blink caught his eye, and he glanced up toward the observatory.
There. In the observatory.
He thought for a minute it was someone signaling, but it was only a
touch of sunlight on the shiny surface of the automatic tracking
telescope, which was poked out of the open shutters of the airless
observatory, still doing its automatic job of recording solar
phenomena in the absence of the astronomers.
* * * * *
Instead of re-entering the lock as he had intended, Mike linked his
safety line to one of the service lines that lay along the nearest
spoke, and kicked up it.
On Earth, he could have jumped maybe four feet with that motion. But
here, it carried him the full distance to the outer wall of the
hub-shielding tank, where he grasped another line, quickly transferred
his safety line, and began working his way toward the observatory.
As the intersection of the rim where Mike had been passed into
darkness, another figure moved and jumped up the same line he had
taken. But this Mike did not notice.
Reaching the bulge at the end of the shielding tank and crawling up
over it, Mike made his way up, at an odd reversed angle, through the
netting; and into the observatory dome through its open shutter.
Making his way about in the open vacuum in free-fall conditions of the
observatory, Mike carefully checked the lock at the main axis to make
sure that he could get into it without arousing an alarm for any
guards that might be nearby.
The lock showed vacant, and empty. Just as he was about to enter it,
he saw another figure in a spacesuit come drifting through the open
shutter where he had entered.
Mike stepped into the lock, closed the door behind him as though he
had not noticed, and cycled the lock. But he did not remove his suit
and did not leave.
As the lock showed clear, the observatory door opened again, and the
two spacesuited figures stood face to face. Mike with needle gun
raised checked himself in surprise. Then he motioned the other figure
into the lock.
"And just what are you doing here?" he inquired as the air around them
became sufficient to carry his voice.
"You might have needed help," answered Dr. Millie Williams in a small,
scared voice as she took off her helmet and shook out her long hair.
"And just _what_," Mike inquired, "were you planning to do about it
besides having me shoot you by mistake?"
Millie held up an oversize pair of calipers. "The Security people,"
she said, "are not the only ones with weapons. I borrowed this from
the machine shop."