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She went down the ladder fast. There was a tool closet by the door. If it held a welding arc--
It did.
And if there was no anesthetic gas around or if it wasn't inflammable...
Nothing exploded as she turned on the welder. She began welding the door shut.
Almost immediately she attracted attention. She could hear excited voices, muffled by the door. Then there was the faint numbness of a sonic beamer. The door didn't conduct subsonics well, but she couldn't take this long. Nonetheless she finished the welding job before she went back up the ladder.
She used the welding arc to cut away the bypass. It was slow work. Implementation would surely have barged in on her before she finished. Now they could whistle for entrance. She had all the time in the world. In their world.
Matt reached the corridor and began to walk, leaving the interrogation room open behind him. He walked bent, with his chest half collapsed and his arms folded over the pain. He'd forgotten to take the remaining sonic.
"I'm not the domineering type," he muttered, perversely enjoying the sound of his own voice. And, "Either that, or I'm trying to dominate the wrong woman."
A heavy figure came pounding around the curve. Jesus Pietro Castro, wearing a gas filter and carrying a heavy mercy-sliver gun, looked up in time to avoid a collision. He jerked to a stop, and then his mouth dropped open as he took in blue eyes, brown hair, a bitter and angry colonist's face, an ear with a small piece bitten out of it, and blood soaked into the collar of a crewish overjacket.
"You agree?" Matt said brightly.
Castro raised his gun. The "luck" was off.
And all the rage and humiliation in Matt broke loose. "All right," he yelled, "look at me! Damn you, look at me! I'm Matthew Keller."
The Head stared. He did not fire. He stared.
"I crashed my way into your crummy Hospital singlehanded, twice! I came through walls and void mist and sleepy gas and mercy bullets to rescue that damn woman, and when I got her loose, she punched me in the gut and folded me up like a flower! So go ahead and look!"
Castro looked and looked.
And finally Matt realized that he should have fired.
Castro swiveled his head from side to side in a negative motion. But his eyes never left Matt. And slowly, slowly, as if he were knee deep in hardening cement, he moved one slow step forward.
Abruptly Matt realized what was happening. "Don't look away," he said hastily. "Look at me." The Head was close enough now, and Matt reached out and pushed the barrel of the mercy-gun aside, still striving to hold Castro's eyes. "Keep looking."
They stared eye to eye. Above his bulky false nose, Castro's eyes were remarkable: all white and black, all whites and huge, expanded pupils, with practically no iris showing. His jaw hung loose under the snowy handlebar moustache. He was melting; the perspiration ran in slow streams into his collar. Like a man in an ecstasy of fear, or awe, or worship... he stared.
Contract the pupils of eyes not your own, and you got psychic invisibility. Expand them, and you got... what? Fascination?
For damn sure, he had the Head's complete attention. Matt drew back his fist, cocked it-and couldn't follow through. It would have been like attacking a cripple. Castro was a cripple: one of his arms was in a sling.
There was shouting from down the corridor, from the direction Polly had taken.
The Head moved another gluey step forward.
Too many enemies, before and behind. Matt slapped the gun out of Castro's hand, then turned and ran.
As he dropped through the door to the coffin room, he saw the Head still looking after him, still held in the strange spell. Then he pushed the door closed above him.
Polly cut the last of the bar away, and the control board came alight. She ran her eyes quickly over the lighted dials, then once more, slowly.
According to the control board, the fusion drive was as cold as Pluto's caves.
Polly whistled between her teeth. It was no malfunction of the board. The several dials checked each other too well. Someone had decided to black out the colony regions.
She couldn't start the drive from here. And she'd never reach the fusion room; she'd locked herself in with a vengeance.
If only this had been the Arthur Clarke! Castro would never dare cut power to the crew. The Clark's fusion plant must be going full blast.
Well, now, she thought in growing excitement. She slid out onto the ladder. There might be a way to reach the Clarke.
Jesus Pietro felt a hand shaking his shoulder. He turned and found Major Jansen. "What is it?"
"We've flooded the Planck with gas, sir. Everyone who wasn't warned should be unconscious, unless he's behind doors. I wish there weren't so many filters floating around, though. Whoever we're after has had too good a chance to pick one up."
"Good," said Jesus Pietro. He couldn't concentrate. He wanted to be alone, to think... no, he didn't want to be alone... "Carry on," he said. "Try the coffin room. He may be in there."
"He isn't. Or if he is, there's more than one traitor. Somebody's in the flight control room, welded in. It's a good thing the fusion plant is off."
"Get him out. But try the coffin room, too."
Major Jansen moved off in the direction of all the commotion. Jesus Pietro wondered what he'd find when he finally looked in the coffin room. Had Keller's ghost really gone in there, or had he faded out while ru
But he was sure of the ghost.
He would never in his life forget those eyes. Those binding, blinding, paralyzing eyes. They would haunt him the rest of his life--however many minutes that might be. For surely the ghost didn't intend to let him go now.
His handphone rang. Jesus Pietro picked it off his belt and said, "The Head."
"Sir, we're getting some very strange reports," said the voice of Miss Lauessen. "A large number of cars are converging on the Hospital. Someone claiming to represent the Council is accusing you of treason."
"Me? Of treason?"
"Yes, sir." Miss Lauessen sounded strange. And she kept calling him Sir.
"What grounds?"
"Shall I find out, sir?"
"Yes. And order them to land outside the defense perimeter. If they don't, set patrol cars on them. It's obviously the Sons of Earth." He clicked off and immediately thought, But where did they all come from? And where did they get the cars?
And he thought, Keller?
His handphone buzzed.
Miss Lauessen's voice had turned plaintive--almost querulous. "Sir, the fleet of cars is led by Millard Parlette. He accuses you of malfeasance and treason, and he orders you to give yourself up for trial."
"He's gone insane." Jesus Pietro tried to think. It was all coming at once. Was this why Keller had appeared to him, shown himself at last? No mysterious symbols, this time; no invisible breaking of fingers. Keller's eyes... "Try to land the old man without hurting him. The other cars too. Order them to set their cars on autopilot. Tell them they won't be hurt. Give them one minute; then knock them out with sonics."
"I hesitate to remind you, sir, but Millard Parlette is your superior officer. Will you give yourself up?"
Then Jesus Pietro remembered that Miss Lauessen was almost pure crew. Did her veins carry Parlette blood? It was reputedly easy to come by. He said the only thing he could.
"No."
The phone cut off, cut him off from the Hospital switchboard and from the world outside.
He'd gone off half-cocked, and be knew it. Somehow Polly's blow in the belly had made him want to die. He'd stumbled out into the corridor to be captured.