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Not this time. He scooped up the remaining sonic and started for the ladder. This time he'd know just what he was doing when he went through that door.
But why go through it at all? The thought stopped him at the foot of the ladder. If Polly was going to blow the drive--
No, she'd never get that far. And she'd had all the rescuing she was entitled to. It was time to think about escape. He looked up at the exit--and shivered.
Some escape hatch. The moment he poked his head out there, somebody would shoot at it. He had to see his enemy to use the "luck," and he couldn't see in all directions at once.
Yet, this room was no place to stand off a siege. All anyone would have to do would be to fire mercy-needles down toward the floor. If he looked before he fired, the "luck" would get him; but that statement applied to an ordinary sonic stu
He had to get out.
But Castro's nose piece. It meant Implementation was using gas. The corridor must be already full of it.
Too many things to think about! Matt cursed and began going through a guard's pockets. The guard stirred and tried to strangle Matt with limp fingers. Matt played the sonic over them both, then finished his search. Neither guard had a gas filter.
Matt looked up at the door. He could chance it, of course, but if there was gas in the corridor, only that airtight door was protecting him now. It had to be airtight, of course.
Get to another room? There were the doors leading to what must be bedrooms. But they were halfway up the walls and too far from the ladder.
And there, just under the exit, was a small door placed where any good apartment would have a coat closet. He might be able to reach it.
It wasn't a coat closet, of course. It held two spacesuits.
And it wasn't easy to reach. Matt had to lean far out from the ladder to turn the knob, let the door fall open, and then jump for the opening. Leaving the cubbyhole would be just as bad when the time came.
Spacesuits. They had hung on hooks; now they sprawled on the floor like empty men. Thick rubbery fabric, with a heavy metal neck-ring set with clamps to hold the separate helmet. Metal struts in the fabric braced the rocket backpack and the control unit under the chin.
Would the air converter still work? Ridiculous, after three hundred years. But there might still be air in the tank. Matt found a knob in the control panel of one suit, twisted it, and got a hiss.
So there was still stored air. The suit would protect him against gas. And the big fishbowl of a helmet would not interefere with his vision, nor his "luck."
He snatched up the gun when the door to the corridor dropped open. A long moment later two legs came into sight of the ladder. Matt played the sonic over them. A man grunted in surprise and toppled into view, and down.
A voice of infinite authority spoke. "You! Come out of there!"
Matt gri
He turned the air knob on full and put his head through the neck ring. He took several deep breaths, then held his breath while he slid feet first into the suit.
"You haven't got a chance! Come on out or we'll come in after you!"
Do that. Matt pulled the helmet over, his head and resumed breathing. The dizziness was passing, but he had to move carefully. Especially since the suit was a size too, small for him.
The door dropped open suddenly, and there was a spattering of mercy-slivers. A snarling face and a hand came into view, the hand firing a mercy-gun. Matt shot at the face. The man slumped, head down, but he didn't fall; someone pulled him up out of sight by his ankles.
The air in the suit had a metallic smell thick enough to cut. Matt wrinkled his nose. Anyone else would have been satisfied with one escape from the Hospital. Who but Lucky Matt Keller would have-
There was a roar like a distant, continuous explosion. What, Matt wondered, are they trying now? He raised the gun.
The ship shook, and shook again. Matt found himself bouncing about like a toy in a box. Somehow he managed to brace his feet and shoulders against walls. I thought the son of a bitch was bluffing! He snatched at the stu
The ship jumped, slapping hard against his cheekbone, as one whole wall of the ship ripped away. The roar was suddenly louder, much louder.
"We're too close," said Parlette.
Hood, in the driver's seat, said, "We have to be close enough to give orders."
"Nonsense. You're afraid someone will call you a coward. Hang back, I tell you. Let my men do the fighting; they know what they're doing. We've practiced enough."
Hood shrugged and eased back on the 3-4 throttle. Already theirs was the last car in a swarm of more than forty, an armada of floating red taillights against the starry night. Each car carried two of Parlette's line, a driver and a gunman.
Parlette, hovering like a vulture over the car's phone, suddenly crowed, "I've got Deirdre Lauessen! All of you, be quiet. Listen, Deirdre, this is an emergency..."
And the others, Harry Kane and Lydia Hancock and Jay Hood, listened while Parlette talked.
It took him several minutes, but at last he leaned back, smiling with carnivorous white teeth. "I've done it. She'll put our accusation on the intercom. Now we'll have Implementation fighting each other."
"You'll have a tough time justifying that accusation," Harry Kane warned him.
"Not at all. By the time I finished, I could convince Castro himself that he was guilty of treason, malfeasance of duty, and augmented incest. Provided--" He paused for effect. "Provided we can take the Hospital. If I control the Hospital, they'll believe me. Because I'll be the only one talking.
"The main point is this. In law I am the man in charge of the Hospital, and have been since Castro was the size of Hood. If it weren't me, it would be some other crew of course. In practice, it's Castro's Hospital, and I have to take it away from him. We have to have control before we can begin changing the government of Mount Lookitthat. But once I've got control, I can keep it."
"Look ahead."
"Police cars. Not many."
"Tight formation. I wonder if that's good? None of us ever had any training in dogfights."
"Why didn't you fight each other?"
"We expected to fight," said Parlette. "We never expected to fight the Hospital. So we--"
"What the Mist Demons is that?"
Parlette was leaning far forward in his seat, his mismatched hands bracing him against the dashboard. He didn't answer.
Harry shook his shoulder. "What is it? It looks like fire all around one end of the Hospital." Parlette seemed rigid with shock.
And then one whole end of the Hospital detached itself from the main structure and moved sedately away. Orange, flame bloomed all around its base.
"That," said Millard Parlette, "is the Planck taking off on its landing motors."
Polly was in the upper-left-hand seat. She manipulated the controls in front of her with extreme delicacy, but still the knobs turned in short jumps. Minute flakes of rust must be coming loose somewhere in the chain of command that led from this control chair to the fission piles.
Finally the piles were hot.
And Polly tried the water valves.
It seemed to her that long ago someone had decided to keep the slowboats ready for a fast takeoff. It must have been during the first years of the colony, when nobody-crew or colonist--had been sure that an interstellar colony was possible. Then, others had forgotten, and the only changes made since then had been the necessary ones.