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She didn't hear. Matt looked up at the door. It didn't move, and there were no ominous noises.
"It's all right," he said. "It's okay now. You're out." She had her face buried in the hollow of his shoulder, and she was moving against him. Her arms were tight around his chest with a grip of desperation. "You're out now." He massaged her neck and shoulder muscles, trying to do what Laney had done night before last.
The way she kept touching things, kneading them--he understood now. She was making sure they were real. The time in the coffin must have been worse than he could imagine. She must have lost all touch with reality, all her faith in the solidness of things outside that artificial womb. And so she ran her hands along his back, traced the lines of his shoulder blades and vertebrae with her fingertips; and so she moved against him with a sliding motion, with her toes, her thighs, her arms, her body--as if sensing, sensing with every square inch of skin...
He felt himself coming alive in response. Trapdoors and curved metal walls, guns and Implementation police, ceased to matter at all. There was only Polly.
"Help me," she said, her voice muffled.
Matt rolled over onto her. The soft, flimsy looking fabric of her jumper tore like tissue. Fleetingly, Matt wondered why it was there at all. And that didn't matter either.
Presently Polly said, "Well. I'm real after all."
And Matt, drifting peacefully down from some far peak of Nirvana, asked, "Was that what you meant by help?"
"I didn't know what I meant. I needed help." She smiled slowly, with her eyes as well as her mouth. "Suppose it wasn't what I meant. Then what?"
"Then I've callously seduced you." He moved his head back a little to look her in the face. The change was incredible. "I was afraid you'd gone off the beam for good."
"So was I."
Matt glanced up at the trapdoor, then stretched to reach, for the sonic. Nirvana was over.
"You really came to rescue me?"
"Yah." He didn't mention Laney, not yet. No point in spoiling this moment.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome. We've still got to get out of here."
"You don't have any questions to ask me?"
What was she doing, testing him? Didn't she trust him now? Well, why should she? "No," he said, "no questions. But there are things I've got to tell you--"
She stiffened under him. "Matt. Where are we?"
"In the Hospital. Deep in the Hospital. But we can get out.
She rolled away and came to her feet in one smooth motion. "We're in one of the slowboats! Which one?"
"The Planck. Does it matter?"
She scooped the other guard's sonic stu
"Set off--Are you out of your mind?"
"We'd wipe out the Hospital and most of Alpha Plateau." She picked up her ripped mock-playsuit and threw it down again. "I'll have to depants one of these police. And that'll be it! We'd win, Matt! All in one stroke!"
"What win? We'll be dead!"
She stood up with her hands on her hips and regarded him with disgust. Now she wore a pair of Implementation uniform pants too big for her. Matt had never seen anyone more thoroughly alive. "I'd forgotten. You aren't a Son of Earth. AL right, Matt, see how far you can get. You may be able to get out of range of the blast. Personally, I doubt it."
"I've got a personal interest in you. I didn't come all this way to have you commit suicide. You're coming with me."
Polly do
Matt blocked her way. "You haven't a prayer of getting anywhere without me. You're coming with me, and we're leaving the Hospital--if we get that far."
Polly hit him.
She hit him with stiffened fingertips just under the sternum, where the ribs make an inverted V. He doubled up, trying to curl around the pain, not yet trying to breathe, but gaping like a fish. He felt fingers at his throat and realized that she'd seen the gas filter and was taking it.
He saw her as a blur at the corner of his eye, climbing the ladder. He heard the door open, and a moment later, close. Slow fire was spreading through his lungs. He tried to draw air, and it hurt.
He'd never learned to fight. "The luck of Matt Keller" had made it u
Inch by inch he uncurled, straightened up. He drew his breath in shallow, painful sips. When the pain over his heart would let him move again, he started up the ladder.
CHAPTER 13
IT ALL HAPPENED AT ONCE
POLLY MOVED at a gliding run. The gas filter was in place over her nose. She held the sonic straight out ahead of her, pointed around the curve of the i
As one of the i
Flight Control. The door was closed. No ladder.
Polly crouched and sprang. She caught the handle at the top of her leap. The door was not locked; it was closed, because nobody ever used the flight control room. Unfortunately the door opened inward, upward. She dropped back, frustrated, landing silently on her toes.
If she'd chosen the fusion room... but the fusion room was for fine control. There, the Hospital electricians kept power ru
The guard had carried a wallet.
She leapt again, caught the knob and turned it, pushed the wallet between the door and the jamb, where the catch of the lock ought to be. Again she dropped, and again she leapt. This time she slapped the flat of her hand hard against the door. It flipped upward... and over.
Far down the curve of the corridor someone yelled, "What's going on down there?"
Polly's chest heaved, pulling deep lungfuls of air through her nose, under perfect control. She jumped a last time, caught the jamb, and pulled herself up. Heavy footsteps... Before someone could come into sight, she had closed the door.
There was a ladder here, built into what had been the ceiling. Doubtless the Planck's original crew had used it to climb down from those six control chairs after the First Landing. Polly used it now.
She squirmed into the second seat on the left and found the control panel and the bypass. Part of the wall had been pried up, and a simple iron bar had been welded into place between two plates, removing control from the flight control room and giving it directly to the fusion room. In flight both control points had been necessary: the fusion room to keep the drive working and stable, and the flight control room to keep it pointed. Now the fusion drive was used only for making electricity. and Polly's control panel was dead.