That looked like the logical first stop. It was shelter, and the absence of light suggested it was at the moment unoccupied. Grofield headed in that direction, not rushing this time but just plodding steadily along through the snow, feeling the tingles in his feet and ears and face and fingertips. His ankles and wrists were very cold, and he vaguely remembered reading somewhere that one should keep one’s wrists and ankles warm because that’s where the blood is closest to the surface and you don’t want to cool your blood. At the moment, however, there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Flashlight. Grofield stopped, and saw the light bobbing out from the lodge. A second later, another one followed. Not coming directly this way, but traveling at an angle to Grofield, so that his route and their route would intersect — at the building Grofield was heading for.
The bastards. They’d thought it over and decided Grofield would go to ground in the empty building, and they didn’t want that. It would be so much simpler and neater for everybody if Grofield would just quietly freeze to death overnight, out in the refreshing air. Then they could come out in the morning and see if he’d checked out in an interesting position — standing on one foot with a finger raised, for instance — and if he had they could then run wiring up through him, stick a light bulb in his mouth, and turn him into a lamp.
The flashlights bobbed toward the building, and Grofield watched them, knowing he couldn’t get to it before them, and even if he could it wouldn’t do him any good. He was unarmed, a condition he doubted they shared.
Still, there was nowhere else to go. He plodded forward, moving more slowly now to give them a chance to get inside the building before he arrived.
But they weren’t going in, at least not at first. He stopped again and watched, and saw one of the flashlights disappear while the other one bobbed along beside the building. The other one eventually appeared again at the back of the building, and the two flashlights came together once more.
Checking for tracks. Being sure he wasn’t already inside. Grofield didn’t like them at all.
The flashlights moved together now, and suddenly disappeared again. And then lights began going on, in the middle of the building at first, and then spreading out both to left and right, until every ground floor window was gleaming. And then nothing more happened at all.
It wasn’t until he moved again that Grofield realized how numb his feet were getting. And his ears weren’t tingling any more either. His fingers had become more painful, but they too would soon be numb if he stayed out here in the cold.
And there was still nowhere else to go but this building dead ahead. The others were full of people, but in this one there were only two. And both dressed for the outdoors. With any luck, one of them would have boots that would fit Grofield.
He moved forward again, and his body seemed heavier than it had ever been before. It was an effort to get the muscles to work, to make them lift a foot, move it forward, set it down again, shift the arms and shoulders to shift the weight so the other foot could be lifted, all of it heavy work, almost too much to do. It would be so much easier just to stand where he was. Nothing much hurt any more except his fingers and his throat when he inhaled through his mouth, and those aches would soon go away.
It was amazing how fast it happened, how easily a person could find a spot on his own native planet in which human life was impossible. He was being killed by temperature, silently and not too very painfully and very very quickly. He had to get angry at himself to keep himself in motion, angry at Colonel Rahgos and Vivian and Marba and General Pozos and Ken and even Laufman, the driver who’d loused up the getaway from the armored-car job and got him into this mess in the first place. Anger was a good fuel, it kept him warm enough to move, it gave him the determination to survive this mess somehow and spit icicles in everybody’s eyes.
There were no windows near the corner of the building, very little light-spill there. Grofield staggered forward, his feet now plowing a furrow through the snow, too heavy to be lifted up over the snow, and when he got to the wall of the building he sagged against it and just breathed for a while.
He closed his eyes too, and that was almost a fatal mistake. Happily he wasn’t balanced right against the wall, so when he started to fall over he woke up again, startled, realizing he’d lost consciousness, not knowing for how long, knowing only that if he’d been propped more securely against the wall he never would have awakened again.
No. It wasn’t going to happen, he was damned if he was going to let it happen. Could he allow himself to be so easily gotten rid of? They put him out for the night, and it’s all over.
He inched along the wall to his left, supporting a part of his weight on the wall, and when he came to the first window he peered cautiously in.
It was a storage room, with rough wooden partitions and rough wooden shelves full of cardboard cartons. The room was empty, but the door opposite the window stood open, with a well-lit hall outside and another open door beyond leading to another lit-up storage room. Grofield nodded, explaining to himself what he was seeing in an attempt to keep himself awake, and moved on.
All the windows looked into similar storage cubicles with open doors facing the same hall and more storage rooms on the far side. Halfway along the wall there was a door, with glass panes in the upper half, and looking through that Grofield could see a short hall leading to the central hall, and sitting in there were two black men, on kitchen chairs, facing in opposite directions, looking down the hall to left and right. They had machine guns on their laps, and they were smoking, and their heavy mackinaws were hanging open. They both wore high leather boots.
Grofield moved away from the door again, leaned against the wall, and began to mumble to himself. “All right,” he muttered. “Let’s wake up and think about this thing. The other half of the building is gonna be the same as this half. Right? Right. The way they’ve got it set up, I can’t get in without them hearing me or seeing me. All these windows are going to be locked, so if I break one they’ll hear it and they’ll know where I am. Right? Right. So there’s no way in. Right? Wrong. What do you mean, wrong? I mean, there’s got to be a way in because I need a way in.”
He stopped mumbling and stood there trying to think. There was less feeling in his fingers now, and the backs of his knees were hurting. His neck seemed stiff. His mind seemed stiff and fuzzy and full of glue and cobwebs.
He said, “Second floor.” He looked up, and faintly he could see windows up there, but dark. They hadn’t concerned themselves with the second floor, which meant they didn’t believe it possible for him to get in up there, and they probably knew more about this place than he did.
Still, it was worth checking out. He didn’t see any way to climb up along this wall, so he made himself move again, going on down toward the far end of the building to check out the other sides.
The other end of the building was mostly given over to one large storage area full of machinery, plows, and other mechanized devices, with an overhead door on the end wall. Grofield blundered along past this door, glancing in through the small window in its middle and seeing that an open space had been left down the center of the garage area, with an open door at the end leading to the corridor. He could plainly see the two of them sitting at their ease way down there in the middle of the corridor. Warm, comfortable, alert, well-armed. He hated them both.
He kept on moving, and at the end of the long door his hand bumped into a projection on the wall. He frowned at it and saw it was a metal box with a button on the front. A doorbell beside a garage door?