Abruptly there was a blinding flash. A white acrid cloud billowed out, and then came a sharp pop. The entrance-lock remained motionless as the hand dropped to the floor, its work done. V-Stephens put out his cigarette, got leisurely to his feet, and crossed the cube to collect it.
With the hand in place and acting as part of his own neuromuscular system again, V-Stephens gingerly grasped the lock by its perimeter and after a moment pulled inward. The lock came without resistance and he found himself facing a deserted corridor. There was no sound or motion. No guards. No check-system on the psych patients. V-Stephens loped quickly ahead, around a turn, and through a series of connecting passages.
In a moment he was at a wide view-window, overlooking the street, the surrounding buildings, and the hospital grounds.
He assembled his wristwatch, cigarette lighter, fountain pen, keys and coins. From them his agile flesh and metal fingers rapidly formed an intricate gestalt of wiring and plates. He snapped off the cutting-thumb and screwed a heat-element in its place. In a brief flurry he had fused the mechanism to the underside of the window ledge, invisible from the hall, too far from ground level to be noticed.
He was starting back down the corridor when a sound stopped him rigid. Voices, a routine hospital guard and somebody else. A familiar somebody else.
He raced back to the psych ward and into his sealed cube. The magnetic lock fitted reluctantly in place; the heat generated by the short had sprung its clamps. He got it shut as footsteps halted outside. The magnetic field of the lock was dead, but of course the visitors didn't know that. V-Stephens listened with amusement as the visitor carefully negated the supposed magnetic field and then pushed the lock open.
"Come in," V-Stephens said.
Doctor LeMarr entered, briefcase in one hand, cold-beam in the other. "Come along with me. I have everything arranged. Money, fake identification, passport, tickets and clearance. You'll go as a webfoot commercial agent. By the time Gannet finds out you'll be past the Military monitor and out of Earth jurisdiction."
V-Stephens was astounded. "But --"
"Hurry up!" LeMarr waved him into the corridor with his cold-beam. "As a staff member of the hospital I have authority over psych prisoners. Technically, you're listed as a mental patient. As far as I'm concerned you're no more crazy than the rest of them. If not less. That's why I'm here."
V-Stephens eyed him doubtfully. "You sure you know what you're doing?" He followed LeMarr down the corridor, past the blank-faced guard and into the elevator. "They'll destroy you as a traitor, if they catch you. That guard saw you -- how are you going to keep this quiet?"
"I don't expect to keep this quiet. Gannet is here, you know. He and his staff have been working over the old man."
"Why are you telling me this?" The two of them strode down the descent ramp to the subsurface garage. An attendant rolled out LeMarr's car and they climbed into it, LeMarr behind the wheel. "You know why I was thrown in the psych-cube in the first place."
"Take this." LeMarr tossed V-Stephens the cold-beam and steered up the tunnel to the surface, into the bright mid-day New York traffic. "You were going to contact Color-Ad and inform them Earth will absolutely lose the war." He spun the car from the mainstream of traffic and onto a side lane, toward the interplan spacefield. "Tell them to stop working for compromise and strike hard -- immediately. Full scale war. Right?"
"Right," V-Stephens said. "After all, if we're certain to win --"
"You're not certain."
V-Stephens raised a green eyebrow. "Oh? I thought Unger was a veteran of total defeat."
"Gannet is going to change the course of the war. He's found a critical point. As soon as he gets the exact information he'll pressure the Directorate into an all-out attack on Venus and Mars. War can't be avoided, not now." LeMarr slammed his car to a halt at the edge of the interplan field. "If there has to be war at least nobody's going to be taken by a sneak attack. You can tell your Colonial Organization and Administration our warfleet is on its way. Tell them to get ready. Tell them --"
LeMarr's voice trailed off. Like an unwound toy he sagged against the seat, slid silently down, and lay quietly with his head against the steering wheel. His glasses dropped from his nose onto the floor and after a moment V-Stephens replaced them. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "You meant well, but you sure fouled everything up."
He briefly examined the surface of LeMarr's skull. The impulse from the cold-beam had not penetrated into brain tissue; LeMarr would regain consciousness in a few hours with nothing worse than a severe headache. V-Stephens pocketed the cold-beam, grabbed up the briefcase, and pushed the limp body of LeMarr away from the wheel. A moment later he was turning on the motor and backing the car around.
As he sped back to the hospital he examined his watch. It wasn't too late. He leaned forward and dropped a quarter in the pay vidphone mounted on the dashboard. After a mechanical dialing process the Color-Ad receptionist flickered into view.
"This is V-Stephens," he said. "Something went wrong. I was taken out of the hospital building. I'm heading back there now. I can make it in time, I think."
"Is the vibrator-pack assembled?"
"Assembled, yes. But not with me. I had already fused it into polarization with the magnetic flux. It's ready to go -- if I can get back there and at it."
"There's a hitch at this end," the green-skinned girl said. "Is this a closed circuit?"
"It's open," V-Stephens admitted. "But it's public and probably random. They couldn't very well have a bug on it." He checked the power meter on the guarantee seal fastened to the unit. "It shows no drain. Go ahead."
"The ship won't be able to pick you up in the city."
"Hell," V-Stephens said.
"You'll have to get out of New York on your own power; we can't help you there. Mobs destroyed our New York port facilities. You'll have to go by surface car to Denver. That's the nearest place the ship can land. That's our last protected spot on Earth."
V-Stephens groaned. "Just my luck. You know what'll happen if they catch me?"
The girl smiled faintly. "All webfoots look alike to Earthmen. They'll be stringing us up indiscriminately. We're in this together. Good luck; we'll be waiting for you."
V-Stephens angrily broke the circuit and slowed the car. He parked in a public parking lot on a dingy side street and got quickly out. He was at the edge of the green expanse of park. Beyond it, the hospital buildings rose. Gripping the briefcase tightly he ran toward the main entrance.
David Unger wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then lay back weakly against his chair. "I don't know," he repeated, his voice faint and dry. "I told you I don't remember any more. It was so long ago."
Gannet signaled, and the officers moved away from the old man. "It's coming," he said wearily. He mopped his perspiring forehead. "Slowly and surely. We should have what we want inside another half hour."
One side of the therapy house had been turned into a Military table-map. Counters had been laid out across the surface to represent units of the web-foot and crow fleets. White luminous chips represented Earth ships lined up against them in a tight ring around the third planet.
"It's someplace near here," Lieutenant West said to Patterson. Red-eyed, stubble-chinned, hands shaking with fatigue and tension, he indicated a section of the map. "Unger remembers hearing officers talking about this convoy. The convoy took off from a supply base on Ganymede. It disappeared on some kind of deliberate random course." His hands swept the area. "At the time, nobody on Earth paid any attention to it. Later, they realized what they'd lost. Some military expert charted the thing in retrospect and it was taped and passed around. Officers got together and analyzed the incident. Unger thinks the convoy route took it close to Europa. But maybe it was Callisto."