But he couldn’t stop now. The ones he was approaching had seen him coming and were watching him. He tried to walk past them casually. He noticed now that the glass panels of the doors had been painted black on the outside.
The bigger of the two policemen spoke as Keith reached for the door to open it. But his voice was courteous, respectful—even, Keith thought, a little awed.
«Are you armed, sir?» he asked.
«No.»
«It’s pretty dangerous out there,» the policeman said. «We haven’t the authority to make you stay, but we advise it.»
DANGER! Was it some danger of which he knew nothing that kept these thousands of people, the late arrivals on the last trains from here and there, inside the station? What had happened to New York? But it was too late for him to back down now. Besides, he thought grimly, he was in danger anywhere until he knew the score and the ropes a lot better than he did.
He said as casually as he could, «Haven’t far to go. I’ll be all right.»
«It’s your business,» said one of the cops. And the other grinned. «We hope it ain’t your funeral. Okay, mister.» He opened the door.
Keith almost stepped back. It hadn’t been black paint on the outside of the panes. It had been—blackness. A kind of utter black darkness he’d never seen before. Not a glimmer of light showed anywhere. The dimmed lights inside the station didn’t seem to cut into that blackness at all. Looking down, he could see the paving of the walk for only a foot or two beyond the edge of the open doorway.
And—was it his imagination, or was a little of that outside blackness drifting into the station itself, through the open door, as though it weren’t darkness at all but a palpable blackness, a mist, a pall?
But he couldn’t admit—whatever was out there—that he hadn’t known about it. He had to go through that open doorway now, whatever it led to.
He walked through and the door closed behind him. It had been like walking into a closet. This was a blackout beyond blackouts. It must be—he remembered that phrase—«the mist-out,» one of the many things he’d wondered about while reading the newspaper. This must be it.
He looked up, and there wasn’t a sign of moon or star—and it had been, in Greeneville at least, a bright clear night. Yes, undoubtedly this wasn’t darkness. It was a black mist.
Reaching out to touch the building and trailing his hand along it as he walked, groping with his free hand before him, he started walking west, toward the Vanderbilt Avenue corner. He kept his eyes open, straining against the black, but he might as well have closed them for all the good they did him. He knew now how a blind man felt. A cane, to tap ahead of him on the invisible sidewalk, would have been welcome.
Why hadn’t he followed the little man’s lead and taken a cot in the station?
His trailing hand encountered emptiness, the corner of the building. He paused a moment, wondering if he should go on at all. He couldn’t go back into the station but why not just sit down here on the walk, his back to the building, and wait for morning—if morning did bring dissipation of the black mist?
Certainly getting to his bachelor apartment down in the Village was out of the question. Taxicabs couldn’t be running. He had a hunch no other form of transportation would be running either. Only fools like himself would even be trying to get anywhere in soup like this.
But he decided against the sidewalk. There might be police patrols that would question him, wondering why he was outside the sanctuary of the station.
Now with only his shuffling feet to guide him, he made his way to the curb and out into the street. If there was any traffic—but there couldn’t be.
He found the curb on the far side by falling over it, shuffled across the sidewalk and again was able to touch solidity with a guiding right hand as he groped along 42nd Street. Forty-second Street, only a few blocks from Broadway and Times Square, and he might as well have been in the deepest, darkest forest of Africa. There wasn’t a sound, either.
Except the soft shuffle of his own footsteps and he realized that, for no conscious reason, he was walking on tiptoe to disturb that awful quiet as little as possible. He traversed the short block to Madison, crossed it, and began to grope his way toward Fifth Avenue. Where was he going?
Well, why not Times Square? Unless he just sat down in the open, he had to be going somewhere and why not to the center of things? If there was anything going on in New York at all it would be there. And if Times Square were as bad as this he’d see if the subways were open. It might be light down in the subway stations—as in Grand Central—even if the trains weren’t running.
Anywhere, out of this blackness.
He’d been trying every door he’d passed. They were all locked. He thought of the Borden Publishing Co. office, only three blocks south—and he had the key to it. But no, the outer door of the building would be locked. All these other buildings he’d been passing were locked.
He crossed Fifth Avenue. Across the street from him now would be the Public Library. For a moment he thought of going to it, and spending the night on the steps there. He’d try Times Square and the subway first.
He tried another door—locked, as had been all the others—but in the brief instant when his footsteps paused as his hand tried the knob, a soft sound came to his ears. The sound of footsteps approaching him from the direction of Broadway. Footsteps that were even more soft and cautious than his own, stealthy footsteps. Something inside told him that, there was danger in them, deadly danger.
CHAPTER V
The Nighters
AS HE STOOD STILL the footsteps came closer. Whoever, whatever it was—there wasn’t any way of avoiding a meeting, unless he turned and worked his way back the way he had come. It was, it seemed to Keith suddenly, a one-dimensional world. There was only forward and backward in it as long as they each—he and the unknown—groped their way along the building fronts. Like ants crawling along a string they must meet and pass unless one of them turned.
But before he made up his mind to turn it was already too late—a groping hand had touched him and a whining voice was saying, «Don’t rob me, mister. I ain’t got no money,» and Keith sighed with relief.
«Okay,» he said. «I’ll stand still. You go around me.»
«Sure.»
Hands touched him lightly, and a strongly alcoholic breath almost made him gasp as the man groped past him.
There was a chuckle in the blackness. «Just an old space dog on a spree,» the voice said. «And rolled already. Look, mister, I’ll give you a tip. The Nighters are out. A gang of twenty or thirty of ’em, over Times Square way. You better not keep on the way you’re goin’.»
The man was past him now. His hand still touched Keith’s arm to maintain contact.
«They’re the ones who robbed you?» Keith asked.
«Them? Mister, I’m alive, ain’t I? Would I be if the Nighters had got me? I ask you.»
«That’s right,» Keith said. «Maybe I’d better not go that way after all. Uh—are the subways open?»
«The subways? Man, you really want trouble, don’t you?»
«Where is a safe place to go?» Keith asked.
«Safe? A long time since I heard that word. What’s it mean?» A drunken laugh. «Mister, I was on the Mars-Jupe run in the days of the plat rush, when they said the last rites over us before they closed the airlocks. I’d as soon be back there as messing around this mist-out and playing tag with Nighters.»