Chapter 20

Westervelt watched them walk up the hall. He thought of going back into the laboratory to find the open window. In his mind, he could see the straight, twenty-five story drop down the side of the dark tower to the roof of the larger part of the building.

He recalled having looked down once or twice. The people down there had paved patios outside their offices. A hurtling body would...

He shook the thought out of his head and hurried to catch up to Parrish and the two girls.

They trouped into the main office and took turns in telling Smith the story. He flatly refused to believe it for about five minutes. Ultimately convinced, he told Pauline to check Rosenkrantz by phone every ten minutes.

“If we’re wrong,” he said, “it’s unfair to have him sitting down there all alone. Bob might somehow have outsmarted us, but if he did it to this extent, it means he isn’t safe on the loose!”

Westervelt noticed that Simonetta was looking pale. He wondered about his own features. The eye would probably stand out very picturesquely.

“I don’t believe it,” he said when the others had all fallen silent.

They looked at him, hoping to be convinced.

“He isn’t that kind,” said Westervelt. “All right, you tell me he had a hard time in space and it left him a little off; but this doesn’t sound like the direction he would go off in.”

“What do you mean, Willie?” asked Smith intently.

“Well ... maybe he’d run wild. Maybe he’d get desperate and blow something up. I could see him taking a torch to that door and burning anybody that tried to stop him...”

He paused as they hung on his words.

“ ... but I can’t see him quitting!” said Westervelt. “If he was that kind, he never would have gotten back to Terra, would he?”

Smith snapped his fingers and looked around.

“Sure, sure,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking up in my imagination. We’ve all heard Bob utter a threat now and then, when some bems out in deep space broke his own private law, but no one ever heard him even hint at suicide.”

He grinned ruefully, and added, “I should have thought of it myself--I had to review his application and examinations when he came to us.”

“Some days,” said Parrish, “are just too much. Nobody’s fault.”

“Then, in that case,” said Westervelt, “there was one little thing I noticed.”

He told them about the open window. Who would keep a window open with the building air-conditioning operating as perfectly as it did?

Smith fell to running his hands through his hair again.

“Now, let’s think!” he muttered. “There must be some logical explanation.”

Logical explanations, Westervelt thought, are always the reasons other people think of, not me.

He found a space to sit on the edge of the empty desk. Simonetta leaned beside him, and Beryl wandered over to the window of the switchboard cubicle to listen as Pauline checked Rosenkrantz.

She shook her head to Smith’s inquiring look.

Then Lydman strolled through the double doors.

“What’s the conference about?” he asked.

Beryl let out a shriek. Her back had been to the corridor when she jumped, but she came down facing the other way.

Everyone stiffened.

Lydman stood quietly, regarding them with considerable calm.

After a moment, Beryl tottered back to lean against the glass of Pauline’s window. She pressed one hand to her solar plexus, looking as if she might fold up at any breath.

“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, Mr. Lydman...”

He examined her with a clinical detachment.

“Doesn’t someone have a tranquilizer for her?” he asked. “I don’t usually scare pretty girls.”

“Oh, no, no, no ... it’s just that ... I mean, everyone was worried about you,” stammered Beryl.

“Why?” asked Lydman. “Don’t you think I can take care of myself?”

For the first time, Westervelt noticed the curiously set expression on the ex-spacer’s face. He had until then been too busy watching Beryl and trying to calm his own nerves. He could not be certain, but it seemed as if Lydman’s forehead displayed a faint sheen of perspiration.

“Of course you can, Bob,” said Smith. “We were--”

Beryl, nearly to the point of hysteria in her relief, got the ball away from him.

“We were worried about the elevator being stopped,” she babbled. “And the door--you’ll never believe it, Mr. Lydman, but the door to the emergency stairs wouldn’t open!”

Westervelt thought he heard Parrish swear, then realized it had been his own voice. He started to step in front of Simonetta.

Parrish was moving slowly in Lydman’s direction, trying to look at ease but looking tense instead.

“Dammit!” shouted Smith. “Beryl, you’re fired!”

It did not seem to register on anybody, Beryl least of all. Lydman was confounding them all by standing quietly. His face tightened a little more at the news, but it did not seem to be the expression of a man who had just taken a bad jolt.

“I know,” he said. “I looked at it a couple of times after I saw the blackout downstairs.”

Smith regarded him warily.

“How do you feel, Bob?” he asked.

“You know how I feel,” said Lydman.

He let his gaze wander from one to another of them. Westervelt felt a chill as the handsome eyes looked through him in turn, but accepted the comforting realization that the stare was about as usual.

Beryl was the picture of a girl afraid to breathe out loud, but the others relaxed cautiously. Smith even planted one hip on the corner of Simonetta’s desk and tried to look casual.

“You seem to be doing pretty well,” he said. “We were thinking of looking in the lab for something to cut the latch with, but it might have been waste motion. They should be getting the power on any minute now.”

“I think...” Lydman began.

“Oh, I guess we could find something in the lists,” pursued Smith. “If you’d rather we look... ?”

“I have several things we could use,” said Lydman.

He walked into the office proper and looked about for a chair. Westervelt stepped back of the center desk and brought him the chair of the vacationing secretary. Lydman sat down beside the partition screening the active files opposite Simonetta’s desk.

“In fact,” continued the ex-space, “I got them out when I was trying to figure how much that door would stand. Then I decided that would only raise a commotion.”

Westervelt watched him with growing interest. Now that he had the man at closer range, he was sure that it was a tremendous effort of will that kept Lydman so relatively calm. The man seemed to be seething underneath his tautly controlled exterior.

“What did you think of doing?” asked Smith carefully.

“Oh, I dug out a better gadget, one that would do me more good, anyhow,” said Lydman. “It’s a little rocket gun attached to a cannister of fine wire ladder.”

“Wire ladder?” repeated Smith.

“Yeah. About six inches wide at the most. I opened a window and shot it up to the flight deck. Say--did you know some hijackers stole all three of our ‘copters?”

“Stole all three of...” Smith’s voice dwindled away. When no one else broke the silence, he forced himself to resume. “Yes, I knew. What I would deeply appreciate, Robert, is your telling me how the hell you knew!”