D-99: a science-fiction novel by H. B. Fyfe (cool books to read TXT) 📗

A great number of hands seemed to be grabbing at him, and his own were very heavy as he groped out for the leg.

He got some sort of fumbling grip, and started to haul himself up. The slowness of his motions alarmed him, in a foggy way. He tried to tuck his chin behind his left shoulder because he knew that there was something ... something ... coming....

It came. The Syssokan officer's big foot took him behind the ear with a brutal thump.

Taranto, however, sinking into gray nothingness, did not really feel it....

ELEVEN

Smith stood at the corner of the corridor, leaning back every half minute or so to peek around at the stretch leading toward the library and communications room.

Westervelt had propped himself with folded arms against the opposite wall, facing the door to the stairs.

Beryl hovered behind Parrish, who faced Smith impatiently between darting glares at Westervelt.

"All right, I guess I have to tell you, Pete," said Smith in a low tone. "You might say we are temporarily inconvenienced."

"By him?" asked Parrish, jerking a thumb in Westervelt's direction. "That I could understand. The kid's beginning to think he's a comedian. He started out just now playing Charley's Aunt."

"Sssh!" said Smith softly.

Westervelt turned his head toward the main entrance, wondering how far Parrish's voice had carried.

Smith's dapper assistant looked from one to the other. Seeking some evidence of sanity, he turned with raised eyebrows to Beryl. The blonde rounded her blue eyes at him and shrugged.

"Pete, this is no joke," insisted Smith. "I wish it hadn't gotten around so fast, but there it is."

"There what is?" demanded Parrish, in a tone bordering on the querulous.

"Well ... there's been some kind of power failure throughout the business district. There aren't any elevators running, and we don't know how long it will be until the power company copes with the trouble."

"No elevators?" repeated Parrish.

He stared at the sliding doors of the elevator shaft as if unable to comprehend the lack of such service. The idea seemed to sink in.

"No elevators? And ninety-nine stories up?"

"Sssh!" said Smith, glancing down the corridor.

"What's the matter with you, Castor?" asked Parrish. "Are you watching for someone ... someone ... oh!"

"See what I'm thinking?" asked Smith.

They faced each other for a moment in silence.

"Well, it ought to be all right, as long as he can get down the stairs if he wants to," said Parrish. "I'm sorry, Beryl. We'll have to make it some other time."

"But how are we going to get home?" asked the blonde.

"Oh, they'll probably have it fixed by the time we're finished here," said Parrish.

"Then what's all the trouble about. Why is Willie looking so sour?"

Westervelt braced himself against the impact of three glances and tried not to sneer. The other two men cleared their throats and looked back at Beryl.

"I'm going to have to ask your co-operation, Beryl," said Smith. "First, Pete, I'd like to point out to you a little gem of modern design. This door here is powered to slide open automatically for a fire or other emergency."

"Of course," said Parrish curiously.

"But there isn't any power," Smith pointed out.

Parrish reached out impatiently and tried the door. He wrenched at it two or three times, then bent to peer for the latch.

"No use, Pete," said Smith, glancing down the hall again. "Willie already went through that whole routine. I've been on the phone to the building manager, and there isn't anything he can do except send a party up from the seventy-fifth floor to burn open the door from the stair side."

"Is he doing it?"

"Well, frankly ... I told him it wasn't necessary," said Smith, getting a stubborn look on his long face.

"But you know Bob!" expostulated Parrish. "If he gets the idea that he's penned in here—"

"I know, I know," said Smith. "On the other hand, we can always get something from the lab and break out from this side, provided we take care not to let him know what is going on until later."

Westervelt eyed Beryl sardonically. He had seldom seen an expression so blended of impatience and vague worry. He wondered if anyone would explain to her.

Parrish shook his head.

"I think it might be better to call downstairs again, and have them come up," he said.

"I don't want to do that," said Smith.

"Why not?"

"It would get around. Pretty soon, the story would be all over the D.I.R."

Parrish actually leaned forward slightly to study his chief's face. He found no words, but his very expression was plaintive. Smith sighed.

"We're in the business of springing spacers from jails all over the explored galaxy," he said. "We're supposed to be loaded to the jets with high-potency brainwaves and have a gadget for every purpose! How is it going to look if we're locked in our own office and can't get out without help?"

Parrish threw up his hands. Pivoting, he walked loosely a few feet along the corridor and back, squeezing his chin in the palm of one hand. He clasped his hands behind his back, then, and peered around Smith at the empty wing of the corridor.

"Maybe we could dope him," he suggested, without much feeling.

"I should have thought of that," admitted Smith, "but he's finished eating."

"Can't we find something in the lab to shoot a dart?"

As Smith tried to remember, Westervelt interrupted.

"If you decide on that, I'm not volunteering, thank you. Did you ever see Mr. Lydman move in a hurry? Whoever tries it had better not miss with the first dart!"

Smith said, "Harumph!" and Parrish looked uncomfortable. The assistant glanced momentarily at Beryl, but shook his head immediately.

Westervelt followed his thinking. For one thing, Lydman was known to be devoted to his wife and two children; for another, who knew how badly Beryl might miss?

"Now, if everyone will just keep calm," said Smith, "and we can keep Bob busy, we'll probably get along fine until they restore power. How long can it take, after all? They can't waste any time with a large part of a modern city like this cut off. It's unthinkable."

"I suppose you're right," said Parrish.

Smith turned to Beryl.

"What I meant by asking your co-operation," he said, "is that we'll need to have someone with Mr. Lydman most of the time. Willie has been doing it until now, but we don't want it to look like deliberate surveillance."

"But why?" asked Beryl. "I mean ... I see that it worries all of you that ... that he might find out. But what if he does?"

"Possibly nothing," answered Smith. "On the other hand, Mr. Lydman was once imprisoned, in his space traveling days. He was held for a long time under very trying conditions; and the experience has left him with a problem. It is not exactly claustrophobia...."

He paused, as if to let Beryl recall other remarks about Lydman. Their general air of gravity seemed to impress her.

"I'll be ... glad to help," she said reluctantly.

"Fine!" said Smith. "Probably nothing will be necessary. Now, I think we had better go in and tell Si, so that everyone will be alerted to the situation."

Westervelt caught the glance that passed between Parrish and Beryl. He was almost certain that each of them was mentally counting the people who had known before they had been told.

That's what you get for being so busy in the dead files, he thought.

They trouped in behind Smith. Simonetta watched as if they had been a parade. Smith, with an occasional comment from Parrish, told her the story.

"So that is the partial reason for staying late," he concluded, "although, of course, the case of Harris comes first."

Westervelt had wandered over to a window. He adjusted the filter dial for maximum clarity and looked out.

From where he was, he could see a great black carpet across part of the city, spreading out from somewhere beneath his position until it was cut by a sharp line of street lights many blocks away. Beyond that, the city looked normal. To the near side of the invisible boundary and, he supposed, for a like distance in the opposite direction behind his viewpoint, there were only sparse and faint glows of emergency lights. Some were doubtless powered by buildings with the equipment for the purpose, others were the lights of police and emergency vehicles on the ground or cruising low between the taller buildings.

I wonder what they actually do when something like this happens? he thought. What if they think they have it fixed, turn on the juice again, and it blows a second time?

His reverie was interrupted by the sound of Simonetta's phone. From where he was, he could see Joe Rosenkrantz's features as the operator asked for Smith.

"Oh, there you are, Mr. Smith," said Joe. "Pauline has been trying all over. Trident is transmitting, and I thought you would want to be here. They say they have a relay set up right to Harris."

Smith let out a whoop and made for the door.

"He'll be right there," Simonetta told the grinning TV man.

Parrish and Westervelt trailed along. When the latter looked back, he saw that Simonetta had replaced Beryl; and he could hardly blame the blonde for seizing the chance to sit down and collect her thoughts. He felt like crawling into a hole somewhere himself.

Passing the library, Parrish cocked an eyebrow at him. Westervelt nodded. He went in and told Lydman about the call. The ex-spacer was interested enough to join the procession.

When Westervelt followed him into the communications room, Joe Rosenkrantz was explaining the set-up to Smith.

"Like before, we go through Pluto, Capella VII, and an automatic relay on an outer planet of the Trident system, but you won't see anything of that. It's after we get Johnson that the fun begins."

He leaned back in his swivel chair before the screen and surveyed the group.

"Johnson is gonna think to a fish near his island. This fish thinks to one swimming near Harris. They claim Harris answers."

Smith ran both hands through his hair.

"We try anything," he said. "Let's go!"

Joe got in contact with Johnson, the Terran D.I.R. man, among other things, on Trident. The latter was not quite successful in hiding an I-told-you-so attitude.

"Harris himself confirms that he is being held on the ocean floor," he said. "He seems to be a sort of pet, or curiosity."

"Can you make sense out of the messages?" asked Smith. "I mean, is there any difficulty because of a language barrier? We don't want to make some silly assumption and find out it was based on a misunderstanding."

After the weird pause caused by the mind-numbing distance, Johnson replied.

"There isn't any language barrier in a thought, but you might say there's sometimes an attitude barrier. Usually, we can pick up an equivalent meaning if we assume, for instance, that our time sense is similar to that of these fish."

"Well, try asking Harris how deep he is," suggested Smith.

They watched Johnson look away, although the man did not seem to be going through any marked effort of concentration. Hardly thirty seconds of this had elapsed when they saw him scowl.

"This fish off my beach can't get it through his massive intellect that he can't think directly to another fish at your position. He thinks you must be pretty queer not to have someone to do your thinking for you."

Smith turned a little red. Westervelt admired Joe Rosenkrantz's pokerface. Johnson appeared to be insisting.

"Harris says he is two minutes' swim under the surface," he reported.

"Well, how far from your position, then?" asked Smith.

The distance turned out to be a day-and-a-half swim.

"Does he need anything? Are they keeping him under livable conditions?"

The pause, and Johnson relayed, "They pump him air and feed him. He needs someone to get him out."

"How can we find him?" asked Smith. "Can he work up any way of signaling us?"

"You are signaling him now, he says. He wants you to get him out."

Smith looked around him for questions. Lydman suggested asking how Harris was confined. Smith put it to Johnson, and after the maddening pause, got an answer.

"He says he's in a big glass box like a freight trailer. It's like a cage. Inside, he is free to move around, and he wants to get out."

"Then have him tell us where it is!" snapped Smith.

"He doesn't know," came the reply. "They move about every so often."

"What did I say?" whispered Parrish. "Nomadic."

No one took the time to congratulate him because Smith was asking what the Tridentians were like. Johnson's mental connection seemed to develop static. They saw him shake his head as if to clear it. He turned a puzzled expression to the screen.

"I didn't get that very plainly," he admitted. "A sort of combination of thoughts—they feed him and they don't taste good."

"Well, tell your fishy friend to keep his own opinions out