An hour after the sled’s return, Lomax appeared in the room which he had allocated to Stirling. His brown lips were twitching with anger.
“I expected no cooperation from those four … animals we caught with you, but I thought you were an impartial observer, Stirling.”
“I don’t get you.” Stirling met his gaze squarely.
“You must have known how many of these people there were on the He, but you didn’t tell me. Why not?”
Stirling shook his head. The question was a difficult one, even for him. He was opposed to Hodder and the idea of the nation’s sole food supplier acquiring all the powers of government, but he had never been the type to sacrifice his own interests to a political ideal. Had he some more personal, deeply buried motive for wanting the whole He business to blow up hi everybody’s faces?
“All right, don’t answer,” Lomax snapped thinly. “But remember, I’m holding you responsible for the lives of those two men. I am also confining you to this room until the Authority decides what action to take against you. Don’t try to leave.”
Stirling gave a mock salute as Lomax went out. He sat down on the edge of his folding bed and wished that half a year in Heaven had not ruined his taste for a cigarette.
Within a matter of hours F.T.A. reinforcements began to arrive at the elevator head. Eight negative-gravity sleds fitted with armored bubbles of superglass drifted off the cars, waltzing slightly, nudging each other’s bumper rings. With each sled was a crew of F.T.A. security men carrying blotch guns and an assortment of more conventional weapons.
Stirling watched the little flotilla course off over the He’s gravity gradients in the pewter light of dawn. The first sortie lasted three hours and, he learned later, was an almost complete failure due to the fact that the security men where unable to find the village. On the second sortie, the unharmed member of the original hapless trio led the way; and they found the village, but no villagers.
At that point, Lomax began to lose interest; he realized that his building program was free to carry on for as long as it took to reach the eastern end of the lie and that by that time, the problem of the villagers would have sorted itself out. The expeditions became sporadic, almost casual affairs which seemed to be governed by how restless or adventurous the security men felt on any particular day. As the prospect of an imminent explosion began to dwindle, Stirling began to realize he really was—once more—a prisoner, and his sentence would last for perhaps two years. He had an unsatisfactory interview with Lomax at which he learned that the two wounded men would live and that the F.T.A. was still determined to keep Stirling confined to his room. Two armed security men escorted him back to his quarters, and the precision with which they remained beyond the range of fists, but inside the effective radius of a blotch gun made Stirling wonder, strickenly, if he was going to be cooped up for the foreseeable future.
A few hours later, one of the patrols accidentally made contact and returned with two prisoners. One of them died on the sled ride back to the elevator head.
The other was Melissa Latham.
“All right, Stirling, outside.” The security guard held open the door of Stirling’s room and waved him out into the corridor with drawn blotch gun.
“What’s happening?” Stirling left his vantage point at the window.
“Mr. Lomax has finished talking to that girl we brought in, and he’s giving her your room until we ship the lot of you downstairs.”
“So where do I go?”
“In with your buddies, of course. If they try to knife you again, just sing out. I’m a light sleeper.”
“You’re such a comfort, Milburn.” Stirling reluctantly gathered up his jacket and walked out ahead of the guard. Melissa! How had she managed to get caught? Why did it have to be her? How many forces were working to prevent him going back?
Part way along the narrow corridor, a door opened in front of him, and Melissa was ushered out of an office by Lomax. He was smiling behind her; and his fingers traced the contours of her shoulders—not quite touching the skin —as he directed her to Stirling’s old room. Melissa’s flat-planed face was pale, masked with dust. It makes no difference, he thought. Her eyes widened for an instant as she saw Stirling, and she tried unsuccessfully to smile. “It makes no difference,” he told himself, but the words came out differently.
“What do you think you’re doing, Lomax? You can’t keep the girl here.”
“I don’t intend to,” Lomax replied pleasantly. “The Authority has arranged new quarters down below for you and all other trespassers we catch. I’m sending you down in the morning.”
Stirling saw a pulse begin to flicker in Melissa’s throat, and he tried to visualize her reactions to being buried in a Compression prison. He had a strong conviction that she would, quite simply, die.
“Keep moving, big man,” Milburn said from behind. Stirling glanced back and saw that the guard had not forgotten the basic theory of firearms: when you have a weapon which acts at a distance, don’t throw away your advantage by going up close. If Stirling tried anything, Milburn would get off at least one shot, and apparently it was not necessary to be very accurate with a blotch gun. I’m sorry, Melissa, he thought. I hope this doesn’t hurt too much.
He put his hand on Melissa’s arm, as if to sympathize with her, then tightened his grasp, and jerked hard. Melissa was lifted right off her feet and hurled towards Milburn. There was a vicious splat as the guard fired instinctively; and Stirling saw an octopus of silvery metal wrap itself around Melissa binding her instantly into a rigid human spindle. Then he was past her, pushing the gun aside with one hand and pile-driving Milburn down onto his knees with the other. Stirling snatched the gun and turned around in time to see Lomax sprint towards his office door. He fired the unfamiliar weapon twice and saw Lomax topple sideways, wrapped up like a Christmas present. Melissa had gone down too; so Stirling lifted her under his left arm and ran for the outer door. Nobody got in his way, and in less than ten seconds he was outside in the cool darkness. The eight large negative-gravity sleds and the two smaller ones were parked in a neat row beside the entrance. Stirling unceremoniously dumped Melissa into a small one, then ran along the line firing the blotch gun into the controls of the other nine. The gun felt no-ceably lighter when he had finished, but nobody was going to come after him that night—unless they came on foot.
He ran back to the sled in which Melissa lay, leaped in, and boosted the tiny craft off towards the east in a prolonged burst of acceleration which threatened to drag him back from the controls. The lighted windows and frantically running figures of the F.T.A, headquarters shrank abruptly, like a scene on a deflated balloon.
Stirling felt a surge of pleasure, then he remembered there was nowhere to run to in the darkness that lay ahead. Nowhere, except the village.
Chapter Twelve