Chapter II: Part 2

He reached out with his empty hand to guide Meyers to him, then very carefully delivered one of the capsules to the other.

"We're supposed to swallow that big lump?" whispered Meyers.

"Just don't lose it," admonished Taranto.

He relayed the instructions as precisely as he could.

"One thing more," he concluded. "You stay awake to make sure I stay awake until it's time to take the stuff."

"We could take watches," suggested Meyers.

"_I_ could," said Taranto bluntly, "but I'm not sure about you. In the second place, I ain't going to have you sleep while I don't. We're going to play this as safe as possible."

Meyers grumbled something inaudibly. In the darkness, a sardonic smile twisted Taranto's lips.

"If you know how," he advised, "pray! We're goin' to our funeral in the morning."

FOUR

Westervelt sat at his little desk in the corner, doodling out possible ways and means of breaking out of a cell thirty fathoms or so under water. From time to time Beryl or Simonetta offered a suggestion. He knew that everyone in the office was probably engaged in the same puzzle. Smith believed in general brain-storming in getting a project started, since no one could tell where a good idea might not originate.

"If I ever get into space," Willie muttered, "it will never be to a planet as wet as Trident. What ever made this Harris think he was a pearl diver?"

"Is that what he was after?" asked Beryl.

"No, I just made that up."

He glanced over at Simonetta, who winked and continued with the letter she was transcribing. An earphone reproduced Smith's dictation from his tape. As she listened, she edited mentally and spoke into the microphone of her typing machine, which transcribed her words as type. Westervelt realized that it was more difficult than it seemed to do the job so smoothly. He had noticed Beryl rewriting letters two or three times, and Parrish was more likely than the boss to set down his thoughts in a logical order.

"I've heard so many wild ideas in this office," said Beryl, "that I simply don't know where to start. How do they decide on a good way?"

"They guess, just the way we've been doing. They're better guessers than we are, from experience."

"It's just a matter of judgment, I suppose," Beryl admitted.

"They make their share of mistakes," Simonetta put in.

"Yeah, I read an old report on a great one," said Westervelt. "Ever hear of the time they were shipping oxygen tanks to three spacers jailed out around Mizar?"

Simonetta stopped talking her letter, and the girls gave Willie their attention.

"It seems," he continued, "that an exploring ship landed on a planet of that star and found a kind of civilization they hadn't bargained for. The natives breathed air with a high chlorine content; so when they grabbed three of the crew for hostages, the ship had to keep supplying fresh tanks of oxygen."

"How long could they keep that up?" asked Beryl.

"Not indefinitely, anyway. They weren't recovering any carbon dioxide for processing, the way they would in the ship. The captain figured he'd better lift and orbit while he tried to negotiate. Meanwhile, he sent to the Department for help, and they came up with a poor guess."

"What?"

"They got the captain to disguise some spacesuit rockets as oxygen tanks and send them down by the auxiliary rocket they were using to make deliveries and keep contact. The idea was that the prisoners would fly themselves over the walls like angels, the rocket would snatch them up, and they'd all filter the green-white light of Mizar from their lenses forever."

"And why didn't it work?"

"Oh, it worked," said Westervelt. "It worked beautifully. The only trouble was that when they got these three guys aboard and were picking up stellar speed, they found that the Mizarians had pulled a little sleight of hand. They'd stuck three of their own into the Terran spacesuits--pretty cramped, but able to move--and sent them to spy out the ship. Well, the captain took one look and realized it was all over. He couldn't supply the Mizarians with enough chlorine to keep them alive until they could be sent back. He just kept going."

"But the men they left behind!" exclaimed Beryl. "What happened to them?"

Westervelt shrugged.

"They never exactly found out."

Beryl, horrified, turned to Simonetta, who stared reflectively at the wall.

"For all we know," said the dark girl, "they were dead already."

"It was about even," said Westervelt. "The Mizarians never heard exactly what happened to theirs either."

There was a period of silence while they considered that angle. Simonetta finally said, "Why don't you tell her about the time they gave that spacer the hormone treatment for a disguise?"

"Oh ... you tell it," said Westervelt, trapped. "You know it better than I do."

"That one," began Simonetta, "happened on a world where there's a colony from Terra that isn't much talked about. It's a sort of Amazon culture, and they don't allow men. They were set to execute this fellow who smuggled himself in for a lark, when the Department started shipping him drugs that changed his appearance."

Westervelt admired Beryl's wide-eyed intentness.

"Finally," Simonetta continued, "his appearance changed so much that he could dress up and pass for a woman anywhere. He just walked out when the next scheduled spaceship landed, and was halfway back to Terra before they finished searching the woods for him. It made trouble, though."

"What happened?" breathed Beryl.

"They never quite succeeded in changing him back. His wife wound up divorcing him for infidelity when he gave birth to twins."

Beryl straightened up abruptly.

"Oh...! You--come on, now!"

Westervelt reminded himself that the blush must have resulted less from the joke than from having been taken in. They were still laughing when a buzzer sounded at Beryl's desk phone. She flipped the switch, listened for a moment, then rose with a toss of her blonde head at Westervelt.

"Mr. Parrish wants me to help him research in the dead files," she said. "I bet _he_ won't try that kind of gag on me!"

"No," muttered Westervelt as she strode out, "he has some all his own."

He looked up to find Simonetta watching him with a grin. She shook her head ruefully as Westervelt grew a flush to match Beryl's.

"Willie, Willie!" she said sadly. "You aren't letting that bottle blonde bother you? I didn't think you were that kind of boy!"

Westervelt grinned back, at some cost.

"Is there another kind?" he asked. "After, all, Si, she's only been around a few weeks. It's the novelty. I'll get used to her."

"_Sure_ you will," said Simonetta.

She returned to her letters, and Westervelt hunched over his desk to brood. He wondered what Parrish and Beryl were up to in the file room. He could think of no innocent reason to wander in on business of his own. Perhaps, he reflected, he did not really want to; he might overhear something he would regret.

He passed some time without directing a single thought to the problems of the Department. Then the door beyond Simonetta opened and Smith strolled out. He carried a pad as if he, too, had been doodling.

"Well, Willie," he said cheerfully, "what are we going to do about this Harris fellow?"

"All I can think of, Mr. Smith, is to offer to trade them a few people we could do without," said Westervelt.

Smith grinned. He seemed to be willing to make up a little list.

"Some who never would be missed, eh? And let's head the page with people who take messages from thinking fish!"

He pottered about for a few moments before winding up seated on a corner of the unoccupied secretarial desk.

"I was actually thinking of skin divers," he confided. "Then I realized that if it takes a twenty foot monster to wander the undersea wilds of Trident without being intimidated, maybe those waters wouldn't be too safe for Terran swimmers."

"Unless they could get one of the monsters for a guide," suggested Westervelt.

The three of them pondered that possibility.

"I can see it now," said Simonetta. "My name Swishy. Me good guide. You want find pearl? Not allowed here; we no steal from other fish!"

They laughed, and Smith demanded to know how one _thought_ in pidgin talk. They discussed the probability of fraud in the reports that Smith had received, and concluded reluctantly that, whether or not some trick might be involved, there was bound to be some truth in the story.

"I suppose we'll have to use this fishy network to locate him," sighed Smith at last. "It would take too long to ship out parts of a small sub to be assembled on Trident. The whole thing makes me wonder if I'll ever eat another seafood dinner!"

"Maybe somebody else will think of something," said Westervelt, partly to conceal the fact that he himself had come up with nothing.

"Tell you what," said Smith, nodding. "Suppose you go along and see how Bob Lydman is making out, while I sign these letters. You might check at the com room sometime, too, in case anything else on the case comes in."

Westervelt agreed, made sure he had something in his pocket to write upon should the need arise, and left.

A few minutes later, he reached the end of the corridor, having cocked an ear at the door of the old file office as he passed and heard Beryl giggling at some remark by Parrish. He unclenched his teeth and knocked on Lydman's door.

He waited a minute and tried again, but there was still no answer.

He hesitated, wondering what would happen should he walk in and find that Lydman was physically present but not in a mood to recognize any one else's existence. Slowly, he walked back to the washroom on the opposite side of the hall.

Washing his hands with deliberation, Westervelt decided that it might be best to get Lydman on the phone. He could not, in fact, understand why inside phone calls were not more popular in the office. He supposed that the face-to-face habit had grown up among the staff, probably reflecting Smith's preference for getting everyone personally involved in everything. There might even be a deeper cause--they were so often in contact with distant places by the tenuous beaming of interstellar signals that there must be a certain reassurance and sense of security in having within physical reach the person to whom one was speaking.

"I'll have to watch for that if I stay here long enough," Westervelt told himself. "You don't have to be a prizefighter to get punchy, I guess."

He examined himself critically in the mirror over the sink, thinking that he could do with a neater appearance. A coin in the slot of a dispenser on the wall bought him a disposable paper comb with which he smoothed down his dark hair.

_I need a haircut almost as bad as Castor P._ he thought. _I wonder if that really stands for Pollux? What a thing for parents to do! On the other hand, from people that came up with one like him, you'd expect almost anything!_

No one came in while he was in the washroom, much as he would have welcomed an excuse for conversation. He dawdled his way through the door into the corridor, not liking the thought of inflicting his presence upon Beryl and Parrish. That meant he would have to walk back as far as the spare conference room to find a phone.

"Of course, there's the lab," he muttered.

That was only a few steps away, and he could hardly do much damage between the door and the phone.

Reaching the end of the corridor once more, he decided to make one last try at Lydman's door. Again, there was no reply to his knock, so he turned away to the laboratory door and entered.

He was faced by a vista of tables, workbenches with power tools, and diverse assemblies of testing apparatus, most of the latter dusty and presenting the appearance of gold-bergs knocked together for temporary use and then shoved aside until someone might need a part from one of them. By far the greater space, however, was occupied by shelves and crates and stacks of small cartons or loosely wrapped packages in which various gadgets seemed to be stored after plans of them had been transmitted to the field. Half a dozen large files for drawings and blueprints reached nearly to the ceiling. Racks of instruments in relatively recent use or consideration stood here and there among the tables and workbenches.

To Westervelt's right, near the far wall behind which lay the communications room, he caught sight of a prowling figure. He recognized Lydman's broad shoulders and hesitated.

The ex-spacer had paused to examine a gadget lying on one of the tables. From Westervelt's position, it appeared to be a wristwatch or something similar. Lydman picked it up and turned toward a part of the wall where a thick steel plate had been fastened to an insulated partition of brick. He raised the "watch" to eye level, as if aiming.

A thin pencil of white flame leaped from the instrument to spatter sparks against the already scarred and stained steel. Sucked up by the air-conditioning, the small puff of smoke disappeared so quickly that Westervelt realized that the scorched odor was entirely in his imagination.

Lydman replaced the instrument casually before strolling over to another table. He inspected an open pack of cigarettes with a grim smile, but let them lie there in plain sight. Westervelt reminded himself never to grub one of those, just on general principles. Lydman went on to a small cylinder somewhat larger than an old-fashioned battery flashlight. Something clicked under his finger, and from one end of the cylinder emerged the folding blades of a portable fan. The ex-spacer pressed a second switch position to start them spinning. He turned the fan to blow across his face, as if to check its cooling power, then held the thing at arm's length as he thumbed the switch to a third position.

A low, humming sound reached Westervelt. It rose rapidly in pitch until it passed beyond his hearing range. He shook his head slightly. For some reason, he found it difficult to concentrate. Perhaps Lydman's presence, unexpected as it was, had upset him, he thought. He decided that he must be getting a dizzy spell of some sort. Then he became concerned lest he turn nauseous.

The final stage, hardly a minute after Lydman had last moved the switch, found Westervelt tensing as a wave of sheer panic swept over him.

He stepped back toward the door, noticing dizzily that Lydman wore a strange expression too. Part of the youth's mind wondered if some of the ultra-sonic effect were reflected from the walls to the ex-spacer; another part insisted upon leaving the scene as hastily as possible.

He got himself into the corridor again, actually panting as he eased the door closed behind him. He started to walk, finding his knees a trifle loose. Passing the washroom, he hesitated; but he decided that he could make it to the conference room. Once there, however, he slipped inside and sat down to recover.

"What does it take to have a mind like that?" he whispered to, himself. "It's like a hobby to him. I think some day I ought to look for a job with reasonably normal people!"

A few minutes of peace and quiet refreshed him. He returned to the main office, just as Smith was surrendering a stack of signed letters to Simonetta Diorio. They looked around as he entered.

"Well, Willie, did he have anything going?" asked Smith.

"I ... uh ... he was kind of busy," said Westervelt.

"What did he seem to have in mind?" Smith started to reach for Simonetta's phone switch.

"He ... that is ... I didn't ask him. He was ... busy, in the lab."

"Oh," said Smith.

He peered at Westervelt's expression, and added, "Then ... perhaps we'd better not disturb him. It might spoil any ideas he's putting together."

Westervelt managed a grunt of assent as he turned to walk back to his desk.

_Whatever he's putting together_, he thought, _I'd rather stay out of the way._

He hunched over his desk, staring unseeingly at the notes he had scribbled earlier. He was vaguely conscious of the cessation of talk in the background, but he did not notice Simonetta's approach until the girl stood beside him.

"What happened, Willie?" she asked. "You look as if he threw you out."

"No. Not deliberately, anyhow," said Westervelt. "At least, I don't _think_ he knew I was even there--although how can you tell if he doesn't want to let on?"

He told her what had happened in the laboratory. She nodded thoughtfully.

"I suppose it has its uses," said Westervelt. "I hate to think of the way he plays around with things in there. Wasn't there a time when someone killed himself in that lab?"

"That was years ago," said Simonetta.

She hugged herself as if feeling a sudden chill, her large, soft eyes serious. Westervelt realized that she was actually a very beautiful girl, much more so than Beryl, and he wondered why he felt so differently about them. Simonetta seemed too nice to fit the ideas he got concerning Beryl. Something told him that his thinking was mixed up.

_I guess you just grow out of that_, he reflected silently. _Maybe they're the same under the skin._

FIVE

When Beryl walked in, Westervelt was at one of the tall windows with Simonetta, dialing filter combinations to make the most of the setting sun. They had the edge of it showing as a deep crimson ball beside another building in the vicinity.

"What are you two doping out?" asked the blonde. "Some disappearing trick?"

Simonetta laughed as Westervelt shoved the dial setting to afternoon normal.

"It's an idea," he said, scowling at Beryl.

"For underwater?" she demanded mockingly.

"Ever hear of a squid?" retorted Westervelt. "_They_ hide themselves underwater. Maybe a cloud of dye would be as good as a filter."

"Willie, that _is_ an idea!" said Simonetta. "You ought to tell Mr. Smith."

Westervelt looked at her sourly. Now Beryl knew that they really had been wasting time, and had a point to score against him in their next exchange.

_Oh, well. I can't hold a thing like that against Si_, he thought. _I can think of people who'd be on the way to Smitty already, calling it their own idea._

Beryl had done a ladylike collapse into her chair and crossed her legs. She dug into her purse for cigarettes and requested a light.

"Why don't you buy a brand with a lighter in the box?" asked Westervelt.

Nevertheless, he walked over to the switchboard cubicle for the office desk lighter that had been appropriated by Pauline. Returning with it after a moment, he lit Beryl's cigarette and inquired, "Well, what did you and Parrish dig up?"

"I don't know," she sighed, leaning back, "but, boy, did we dig!"

"Yeah, I thought I heard the shovel clink once," said Westervelt, thinking of the laughter he had heard through the door of the dead file office.

Beryl, concerned with her own complaints, ignored him.

"We must have looked up thirty or forty cases," she went on. "I never even heard of most of those places on the newscasts!"

"Did he find anything that gave him an idea?" asked Simonetta.

"Not a thing! There seemed to be some real crazy spots in the records, but nobody ever got in jail at the bottom of an ocean."

"You'd think it would have happened sometime," said Simonetta thoughtfully.

"I suppose," suggested Westervelt, "that on any planet where Terrans were taken underwater, they didn't live long enough to be one of our cases. On a place like Trident, they usually wouldn't have any trouble. They'd stay on land, and any local life would stay in the sea. It took a nut like Harris to go poking around where he wasn't wanted."

"That's what Mr. Parrish hinted," said Beryl. "All I know is that it sounds like a story out of a laughing academy. They shouldn't allow them to get into places like that."

"Then we'd all be looking for work," said Westervelt. "Don't complain, Beryl--maybe it will happen to you someday."

The blonde shivered and turned to face her desk.

"Not me," she declared. "I'm staying on Terra, even if they do offer me a field trip as a sort of vacation."

_Ah, he's already started that line on her, thought Westervelt. I wonder if there's anything in the files on how to spring a secretary from a penthouse?_

Lydman and Parrish walked in, the latter pausing to exchange remarks with Pauline, the switchboard operator. A moment later, Smith opened his door as if expecting someone. He must have phoned them for a change, Westervelt realized.

"Oh, there you are, Willie," said the chief. "I suppose you might as well sit in on this too. We might need something, and meanwhile, you can be picking up a tip or two."

Westervelt rose and followed the others into Smith's office, where he took a chair by the window. The others clustered around the chief's desk, a vast plateau of silvery plastic strewn with a hodge-podge of papers and tapes.

The office itself was like a small museum. The walls were lined with photographs, mostly of poor quality but showing "interesting" devices that had been used in various department cases. The ones in which the color was better usually showed Smith in company with two or three men wearing space uniforms and self-conscious looks. Sometimes, a more assured individual was shown in the act of presenting some sort of memento or letter of appreciation to Smith. Lydman and Parrish also appeared in several of the pictures.

_The record of our best cases_, thought Westervelt. _The bad ones are buried in the files._

Standing along the walls, or on little tables and bases of their own, were a good many models of spaceships, planetary systems, and non-humanoid beings. A few of the latter statues were enough to have made Beryl declare she was perfectly happy to stay out of Smith's office and be someone else's secretary. One model, which Westervelt secretly longed to examine at leisure, showed an entire city with its surrounding landscape on a distant planet.

Westervelt tore his attention from the mementoes and turned toward the group as Smith settled himself behind the desk.

"This is no longer even approximately funny," said the department head. "I've had a few calls put through. Do you know how little we're going to have to work with?"

"I gather that it is not very much," said Parrish calmly.

"There are less than fifty Terrans on that whole planet!" declared Smith, running the fingers of one hand through his already untidy hair. "The nearest colony or friendly spaceport from which we could have equipment sent in is twenty odd lightyears away."

"Well, that could be done," said Lydman mildly.

"Oh, of course, it could be done," admitted Smith. "But how long do we have to fool around? We don't know under what conditions Harris is being held."

Parrish leaned forward to rest his elbows on Smith's desk.

"We can deduce some of them pretty well," he suggested. "In the first place, if he got out several messages--which we'll have to assume he did--they must have found some means of providing him with air."

"He could have lived a while on the air in this submarine he built," said Lydman.

"Yes, but in that case, he would have used its radio for communication. We have to assume that they pried him out somehow, no?"

The others nodded.

"He wouldn't last too long in a spacesuit, even if they pumped in air under pressure," said Lydman judiciously.

"So they must have built some kind of structure to house him, if only a big tank," said Parrish.

Westervelt stirred, then closed his mouth rather than interrupt. Smith, however, had seen the motion and looked up.

"Speak up, Willie," he invited. "It won't sound any sillier than anything else that's been said in this room."

"I ... I was wondering about these Tridentians," said Westervelt. "Does anybody know how they live? Do they have cities built on the sea bottom?"

"If they have water jet vehicles, they certainly have the technical--"

Smith stopped as he saw Parrish lean back and roll his eyes toward the ceiling.

"What now, Pete?" he demanded apprehensively.

"I don't know why that didn't occur to me sooner," groaned Parrish. "A hundred to one they have a nomadic set-up. It would be typical, with an environment like that. This is worse than we thought."

"You mean," muttered Smith after a few moments of silence, "how can we get a direction fix on a thought?"

"Something like that," said Parrish. "I suppose they have bases, where they keep permanent manufacturing facilities. Probably set up at points where they have access to minerals--unless they know how to extract what they need from the water itself."

"Nothing hard about that," agreed Smith. "I'll have to send out a few more questions. Of course, they'll take the attitude that I should be doing something instead of asking about irrelevant subjects...."

"We're used to that," smiled Parrish, showing his beautiful teeth.

Westervelt wondered how broadly he would smile if it were his own responsibility. He had an idea that Parrish might be rather less than half as charming if he were running the operation and not getting much help from the others in solving the problem. He had to admit, however, that the man had a knack for spotting alien culture patterns. When he had asked his question about the cities, it was merely because he had half-pictured some Terran-style dome underwater and knew that that image was unlikely.

"Anyway," Parrish was going on, "we should probably think of them as being free as birds to go where they like. Even before they developed machines, they probably migrated about their world by swimming. I gather that these other ... fish, I suppose we'll have to call them...."

"Thinking fish!" murmured Smith sadly. He ran his hand through his hair again.

"I suppose those things still do, besides other types we still haven't heard of, which would fill the place of Terran animals. So, then--we'll have to look for temporary locations and think in terms of a fast raid rather than a careful penetration."

"If we could find them, there must be some way we could armor a few spacesuits against pressure and drop down on them," said Lydman. "I think I can dig up a weapon or two that will work underwater in a way these clams never thought of."

"Maybe we could do better to have Swishy the thinking fish hypnotize them into bringing Harris back," said Westervelt.

They looked at him thoughtfully, and he was horrified to see his joke being taken seriously. He squirmed in his chair by the window, wishing he had kept his mouth shut.

"I wonder ..." mused Smith. "If they can actually exchange thoughts...."

"They might have natural defenses," said Parrish tentatively.

"What could we bribe a fish with?" asked Lydman, but hopefully rather than derisively.

Smith made another note, then drummed his fingers on his desk top. The four of them sat in silence. Westervelt hoped that the others were engaged in more productive thoughts than his own. It was nice to have their attention, and get the reputation of a bright young man who came up with suggestions; but when they decided upon some reasonable course of action they might remember him for making a foolish remark.

"Willie," said Smith, coming to a decision, "circulate around and ask the others if they can stick it out a couple of hours tonight. Maybe there's time to pry some useful information out of Trident, and at least get something started before we close down. If I know some guy out in space is working on it, I can sleep anyway."

Westervelt left his place by the window and went into the outer office. He told Simonetta and Beryl. The latter acted less than thrilled. Westervelt wondered jealously what kind of date she had scheduled for the evening. He stopped at the window of the switchboard cubbyhole.

"Oh, it's you, Willie!" exclaimed Pauline.

"Yeah, you can turn on the projector again," he grinned. "What is it, a love movie?"

Pauline edged a small tape projector out from behind the side of her board.

"It's homework, if you have to know," she told him.

"That's right, you still go to college," Westervelt recalled. "Why don't you switch to alien psychology? Then you could qualify for office manager around here."

"When do we have alien visitors here? Once in a ringed moon!"

"Who is to say which are the aliens?" said Westervelt. "There are days when I think I could feel more understanding to something with twelve tentacles and a tank of chlorine than to a lot of the mentalities that get loose right in this office. There's a crash program on for the evening, by the way, and Smitty wants the staff to hang on a while."

A look of dismay flashed over Pauline's youthful features.

"I know; you have a class tonight," Westervelt deduced. "Chuck it all. Stay in the file room with Mr. Parrish and you'll learn twice as much."

Pauline offered to throw the projector at him, but laughed. Westervelt told her that no one would miss her if she connected a few of the main office phones to outside lines and hooked up the communications room with Smith's desk.

He left her wondering if she ought to stay anyhow, and headed for the hall. Halfway along to the communications room, he heard the elevator doors open and close. He stopped and looked back.

Around the corner strolled one of the TV men, Joe Rosenkrantz. Westervelt looked at his watch and realized that it was a shift change for the communications personnel, who kept touch with the universe twenty-four hours a day.

_In case someone somewhere makes a dumb mistake like Harris_, thought Westervelt. _They overdo it a little, I think. I suppose it's the typical pride and joy of Terran technical culture to signal halfway across the galaxy to fix something that might have been cured beforehand when Harris was a little boy. I wonder what the psychologists should have done about me to keep me out of a place like this?_

"Hello, Willie," said Rosenkrantz, catching up. "Going to the com room?"

Westervelt admitted as much, and gave the operator a brief outline of the afternoon's developments. Rosenkrantz remained unperturbed.

"Hope they don't get intoxicated with ingenuity, and insist on sending messages all over," he grunted. "I was looking forward to a quiet night shift."

They went in to tell Colborn, who took it well. He pointed out to Westervelt that he would in no case have been concerned with the overtime operation. When he was relieved, he was relieved--period.

"I forget this crazy place the minute the elevator door closes behind me," he said grinning, having handed over to Rosenkrantz his log and a few unofficial comments about traffic he had heard during recent hours. "There are some who wait till they hit the street, but I believe in a clean cut. I walk in, push 'Main Floor,' and everything else goes blank."

He went out the door, refusing to dignify their jeers by any defense, and made for the elevators. By the time he reached the corner of the hall, he had slipped into his topcoat. He pushed the button to call the elevator.

When it arrived, Colborn stepped inside and rode down to the ninety-fifth floor. He switched to a public express elevator, which picked up several other people before becoming an express at the seventy-fifth floor.

"Lived through it again," he muttered to a man next to him as they reached the main floor.

He joined the growing stream of office workers flowing through the lobby of the building, taking for granted the kaleidoscopic play of decorative lights on the translucent ceiling. He noticed them when they suddenly went out.

There was first silence, then a babble of voices until small emergency lights went on. Someone spoke of a fuse blowing. Colborn looked outside, and saw no street lights or illuminated signs. His first thought was power for his set upstairs.

"No, that's special," he told himself, "but I'd better call and see if the elevators are working."

SIX

For a jail cell, the chamber was quite commodious. The walls were of bare stone, like most of the buildings on Greenhaven which Maria Ringstad had visited during her short period of sightseeing. She thought that it must have entailed a great deal of extra labor to provide such large rooms in a stone building, especially when the materials had to be quarried by relatively primitive means.

On Greenhaven, everything had evidently been done the hard way. She had heard about that facet of the Greenie character before leaving the ship, and she now wished that she had listened more carefully. It was difficult to picture in her mind just how far away that spaceship was by this time.

That had been the worst, the feeling of having been abandoned.

Meanwhile, having turned up her nose at the sewing chores they had assigned to her but having nothing else to occupy her, she sat on the edge of the austere wooden shelf that doubled as a bed and a bench. The Greenie guard standing in the doorway looked as if he had expected to find the sewing done.

"Can't you understand, honey?" said Maria lightly. "You can cart that basket of rags away. I have no intention of sticking my fingers with those crude needles you people use."

The Greenie was a short, sturdy young man, uniformed in the drabbest of dun-colored clothing. A shirt with a high, tight collar starched like cardboard held his chin at a dignified elevation. It also seemed to keep his eyes wide open, Maria thought, unless that was his naturally naive expression.

"Did anyone ever tell you those hats would make good spittoons?" she asked.

"It is forbidden to speak vainly of any correction official," said the young man stiffly.

"Correction official!" echoed Maria. "Look, honey, don't kid with me! I bet you're just a janitor here. If I thought you were a real official, who might be cuddled into letting me out of this cage, I'd be a lot more friendly."

She gave him an amiable grin. It was not returned.

The Greenie stood gripping the thick edge of the blank wooden door until his knuckles whitened. He looked like a man who had just discovered a worm in his apple. Half a worm, in fact.

"Now, I may be pushing thirty-five," said Maria, "but I _know_ I don't look _that_ bad. Actually, alongside your Greenie girls, I stack up pretty well, don't you think? For one thing, I'm shorter than you are. For another, I fill out my clothes and don't look like a skinny old horse."

"You ... you ... are not ... dressed as an honest woman," the guard got out.

Sitting on the edge of the wooden bunk, Maria crossed her knees--and thought he would choke. She tugged slightly at the short skirt that had attracted so many lowering stares when she had strolled down the main street of First Haven. She was used to being among men, but this poor soul was outside her experience.

Maria Ringstad was aware of both her visual shortcomings and attractions. After a month here, her hair was beginning to grow in darker and less auburn. She was a trifle solid for her five-feet-four, but that came of having a durable frame. Her face was squarish, with a determined nose, and her hazel eyes looked green in some lights. On the other hand, she had a nice smile, and she had spent much time in places where few women went. She was used to being popular with the opposite sex, even in face of competition from members of her own. In the Greenie women, with their voluminous, drab dresses and hangdog expressions devoid of the least make-up, she saw little competition.

"Really," she said, "no one else would think of me as a criminal. I just tried to buy a picture in that little shop. Then the heavens fell in on me."

"The heavens do not fall on Greenhaven," said the guard firmly.

"Well, anyway, some very sour characters trumped up all sorts of charges against me, and here I am. But I didn't _do_ anything!"

"The attempt is equal to the deed!"

Maria shook her head and sighed. She stood up and took a few steps toward him.

"You must keep your place," ordered the young man, with an undercurrent of panic in his tone. "I have not come to debate justice with you. You have sinned and you have been sentenced."

_I bet he'd faint if I threw my arms around him_, thought Maria.

"But what was the sin, honey?" she demanded. "You'd think I'd written a bad article about Greenhaven for my syndicate. Honestly, I didn't even have time to see the place."

The young man released the edge of the door, but still looked worried.

"Greenhaven was founded by colonists who sought liberty and were willing to create a haven for it by the sweat of their brows," he informed her. "Conditions were inhospitable. There were plagues to test their faith and ungainly beasts to test their courage. What has been built here has been built by a great communal struggle, and it is not to be hazarded by the sinful attitudes of old Terra, and--you should have paid the listed price."

"But he wouldn't sell me one at that price when I offered it!"

"Then he did not have one. You attempted to bribe him."

"Well, it was just a friendly offer," said Maria, straightening her skirt. "It didn't amount to anything."

"On the contrary, it amounted to bribery, immorality, and economic subversion. Procedures such as purchase and merchandising must be strictly regulated for the good of the community. We cannot permit chaos to intrude upon the peace of Greenhaven."

"You know, honey," she remarked, studying him with her head cocked to one side, "you talk like a book. A very old book."

The guard rolled his eyes toward the hall. He relaxed for the first time, in order to lean back and listen to something in the corridor.

"I must caution you to cease addressing me as 'honey,'" he said in a lower voice. "I hear the steps of my superior."

Maria laughed, a silvery ripple that made the young man grit his teeth.

"Maybe he's jealous," she suggested. "Or bored. What do you fellows have to do, anyway, except go around handing out cell work and picking it up?"

"There is no place on Greenhaven for idle hands," said the young man, eyeing the untouched sewing with disapproval.

"Isn't there ever any excitement? How often does someone try to escape?"

"It is forbidden to escape," said the guard soberly. He looked as if he wished that he himself could escape.

Heavy steps halted outside the door of the cell to signal the arrival of the chief warden. The latter turned a severely inquiring stare upon the young man, who hastily stepped aside to admit his chief.

"Have you been conversing with the prisoner?" asked the older man.

He was clad in a similar uniform with, perhaps, a slightly higher collar. His dark-browed features reflected greater age and asceticism. Otherwise, Maria thought ruefully, there was little to choose between them. He seemed to have a chilling effect upon the guard.

"Only in the line of duty, sir," the young man responded.

The warden spotted the basket of undone work. He frowned.

"This should have been attended to long ago," he said. "What excuse can there be?"

Maria planted both hands on her hips.

"Plenty!" she announced. "In the first place, you have no right to hold a Terran citizen in a hole like this. In the second, that ridiculous five year sentence is going to be appealed and cancelled as soon as the Terran consul gets things moving."

"That is at least doubtful," retorted the warden, favoring her with a wintry smile which raised the corners of his mouth an eighth of an inch. "Meanwhile, there are methods we can use to enforce obedience. Would you rather I summon some of the women of the staff?"

"I'd rather you'd explain to me what was so awful about trying to buy a picture of the city in that little shop? If they weren't for tourists to buy, why did they have them?"

"Such nonsensical objects are provided for tourists and others who must from time to time be admitted to Greenhaven. That does not excuse flouting our laws and seeking to cause dissatisfaction through the example of bribery. The city of First Haven has been wrung from the wilderness, but the struggle to complete our building of the colony must not be hindered or subverted. It is necessary--"

"Aw, hell! You talk like a book too!" exclaimed Maria.

The two men stared at her, silent, wide-eyed, utterly shocked at this open evidence of dementia.

"The price list is sacred to you," she snapped, "but it's all right to put that junk on sale to clip the tourists, isn't it? Why doesn't that strike you as being immoral? They're no good, but their money is, is that it?"

She turned and stalked back to the shelf-bed, where she sat down and deliberately crossed her legs.

"You will not be required further," the warden told the young man. "See that you spread not the plague by repeating any of this Jezebel's loose talk!"

The guard left hurriedly. Maria discovered the warden gaping at her knees, and defiantly tossed her head.

"You never see a leg before?" she demanded. "Or are all the Greenie girls bowlegged? Is that why they wear those horrible Mother Hubbards?"

She gave her skirt a malicious twitch, revealing a few more inches of firm thigh. The warden began to turn red. He muttered something that actually sounded closer to a prayer than a curse, and turned his eyes away.

"I hope those in authority will yield to the importunities of your depraved fellow who calls himself the Terran consul, and sullies the clean air of Greenhaven by his very--I hope they do deport you!"

"Oh, honey! Could you arrange it?" cried Maria, leaping up and advancing on him.

She grabbed him just above the elbows, and he broke her hold by sweeping both hands upward and outward. This offered Maria the opportunity to take a double grip upon his belt. When he lowered his hands to free himself, she threw both arms about his neck.

"I knew someone could fix things up!" she exclaimed. "You're going to let me out of here until they decide what ship to put me on, aren't you?"

The warden's expression was horror-stricken. With a heavy effort, he got both hands against her and shoved. Maria staggered back all the way to the bunk. The warden, apparently not quite sure what he had done, looked down at his hands. He turned them palm up, then, as his gaze met Maria's, made as if to thrust them behind his back.

"Relax, honey," she said. "You were a little high. I don't imagine you have any laws here against shoving a lady on her can--as long as you're careful where you shove."

"May the Founders protect me from a forward woman!" breathed the warden. "Will you be still and listen to me, Jezebel? Or would you continue ignorant of the news I brought?"

"What news?"

"I am instructed to inform you that you have an official visitor. Do you wish to see him?"

Maria shoved herself away from the edge of the bunk and assumed a dignified stance. She tugged her clothing into order.

"I should be most honored to receive this visitor," she said in her best imitation of Greenie formality. "I deeply appreciate your announcing his presence--at last!"

The warden glared at her. Finding no words worthy of the state of his blood pressure, he stepped back and slammed the heavy door shut. It muffled somewhat his departing footsteps.

"I'm out!" yipped Maria.

She did a little jig, ran to the door to press an ear against it, and turned to survey the cell with the fingers of one hand beating a light tattoo against her lips.

She crossed to the bunk. From beneath it, she dragged the small overnight bag she had succeeded in obtaining from the ship before it had left for the next planet. She began to go about the room, collecting the few odds and ends she possessed and packing them.

She was fingering the bristles of her toothbrush for dampness when she heard returning footsteps.

_The hell with brushing my hair_, she thought. _I'll go as is._

She threw the toothbrush into the bag, tossed her hairbrush on top, and snapped the catch. She considered herself ready.

The door opened and the warden ushered another man into the cell. Maria felt a sudden chill.

The newcomer was a Greenie.

She looked over his shoulder, hoping for a glimpse of the Terran consul, but there were just the two Greenies facing her. The stranger was nearer in age to the young guard than to the warden. On the other hand, the severity of his expression was a challenge to the older man. The uniform was about the same.

"My name is John Willard," he announced flatly.

He reached into an inner pocket to produce a fold of papers. At the edge of one, Maria caught sight of what she guessed to be an official seal. Willard opened the papers and turned to the warden.

"You identify the prisoner before us as one Maria Ringstad, native of Terra?"

"I do!" said the warden, righteously.

"You will please sign this statement to that effect!"

There was silence in the cell as the warden held the document against the door to scribble his signature. Maria watched in growing chagrin. Willard folded the statement of identification, returned it to his pocket, and faced her.

"Maria Ringstad," he said, "I am to inform you that your appeal has been denied. You will accompany me to Corrective Farm Number Five, where I will deliver you to the authorities who will supervise the serving of your sentence."

Maria dropped her bag.

"_What?_ You're lying! Let me see those phony papers! This is some sort of--"

Willard let her have the back of his left hand across the face. Maria never saw it until she was falling. She sat down with a thump, her legs stretched out straight before her.

Unbelievingly, she watched Willard sign a copy of his order for the warden. The latter examined it with satisfaction before tucking it away. They turned to look down at her, and Willard announced that he was ready to leave.

He seemed to think that a good way to forestall an argument was to get her moving as quickly as possible. He yanked on one elbow, the warden pulled on the other, and Maria headed for the door at a smart trot, wondering how she had risen.

"My bag!" she protested.

"I have it," said Willard.

"Turn left for the stairs," said the warden.

"I'm not going!" she yelled.

"Yes, you are," said Willard.

"Yes, you are!" echoed the warden.

They reached the head of the stairs, where the warden released his grip. Willard shoved her forward, and the two of them descended with breakneck lack of balance. At the bottom, they paused for the warden to catch up.

Maria seized the chance to kick Willard in the shin. He turned white, but urged her on as the warden led the way through a barred door into an open courtyard. They crossed the courtyard by fits and starts, with Maria expressing her opinion in words she had never before uttered. The meaning of certain of them still eluded her, but Willard seemed to understand the general drift.

The warden spoke to a guard, ordering him to open the main gate. Willard boosted her through with a knee in the behind. The massive portal swung to with a thud, leaving them out in the street.

"I'll be damned if I go to any prison farm!" Maria shouted in his ear. "I demand to see the Terran consul! This is an outrage!"

Willard glared at a passing Greenie who seemed disposed to look on. He tightened his grip on Maria's arm, the better to tow her twenty feet down the street away from the gate. There, he backed her roughly against the blank granite wall.

"If you don't shut your face," he growled between set teeth, "I'll _really_ belt you one!"

Maria gasped in a breath and looked at him. It was easy, since he had thrust his face to within a few inches of hers. Little droplets of perspiration stood out on his forehead.

He looked scared.

SEVEN

Westehvelt was still sitting with Joe Rosenkrantz in the communications room when Colborn's call came through. He looked over Joe's shoulder as the operator swiveled to face his telephone viewer.

"How come you remembered the number?" he greeted Colborn. "Did the elevator doors close on you?"

"Very-funny-ha-ha!" retorted Colborn. "Look, Joe--have you got power?"

Westervelt peered closer, thinking that the redhead looked unusually concerned. Rosenkrantz seemed not to have noticed.

"Power?" he said. "Have I got power! I can pull in stations you never heard of, just on willpower! _You_--you poor slob--you don't even remember if you're on your way home or coming to work! What is it now?"

"I'll tell you what it is," shouted Colborn. "It's a power failure! They don't even have any lights out in the street. I nearly got trampled to death getting back in the lobby to phone you."

Westervelt and Rosenkrantz looked at each other.

"Come to think of it, Charlie," said the operator, "the lights did blink a minute ago. I wonder if that was our own power taking over for the whole floor?"

They saw Colborn turn his head, and heard him expostulating with someone who plainly was impatient to get into the phone cubicle.

"I'll go check the meters," said Rosenkrantz. "Watch the space set for me, Willie!"

"Whuh-wh-wha?" stuttered Westervelt, groping after him. "Charlie! He went away! What do I do if a call comes in?"

Colborn finished dealing with his own problem downstairs, and returned his attention to Westervelt. He requested a repeat.

"I said that Joe went around the corner to check the power," babbled the youth. "What do I do if a space call comes in? He said to watch the set."

"Oh," said Colborn. "You see the little red, star-shaped light at the left of the board under the screen?"

"Yeah, yeah! It's out, Charlie!"

"Well, it should be. It's an automatic call indicator set for our code. If it goes on, it shows you're getting a call even if you have the screen too dark or the audio too low to notice. So you look for a green one like it on the other side...."

"Yeah. I see it."

"You push the button beside it, and our code goes out automatically to acknowledge. Then you push the next button underneath, which puts out a repeating signal to stand by. Got that so far?"

"I got it," said Westervelt. "Then what?"

"Then you go scream for Joe at the top of your lungs. That covers everything. You are now a deep-space operator. Just don't touch any of those buttons until you get a license!"

"But, Charlie--!"

He was saved by the return of Rosenkrantz, for whom he thankfully vacated space before the phone. Colborn was again engaged in making faces at some other desperate commuter.

"You were right, Charlie," said Rosenkrantz. "We're strictly on our own private power. The whole floor, as near as I can tell. I thought they were being fussy when they put it in, but maybe it will pay off at that. How does it look down there?"

"It's a mess," said Colborn. "You wouldn't believe there were so many people working in our building."

"No, no!" said Rosenkrantz. "I mean, what's the situation? Is it just this building that's cut off, or the whole city, or what?"

"You can't believe anything they're saying," Colborn told them, "but they had somebody yapping on the public address system. It seems there's a whole section of the city, about fifty blocks square, cut off. They're talking about a main cable overloading."

"I can imagine what they're saying," said Rosenkrantz. "The poor guys stuck with finding and replacing it, I mean."

Colborn gave a hollow laugh.

"You think they're the only ones stuck? There ain't a single subway belt moving to the surburban heliports. All the local surface monorails are stopped. You should see the way they're packing the ground taxis, and the cops won't let any more helicabs come down."

"They're supposed only to pick up from the roofs," said Rosenkrantz.