The Ardleys, knowing nothing of the events of this night, supposed that the girls were being abducted, and decided I should be informed.
"d.a.m.n right, Dud. We"ll come at once. You two wait for us?"
"Sure. If you got instruments, maybe we can track "em. It wasn"t a quarter of a mile from here, over toward the river. Plenty of rotten dumps down there."
"Wait for us, Dud. We"ll come in a rush."
I slammed shut the audiphone. Snap, beside me, had heard it all. He shoved the astonished orderly out of the way.
"What"s the nearest exit-route out of here?"
"To the city roof, sir. Up this incline."
We dashed up the spiral incline, through a low exit-port, and were in the starlight of the city roof.
"Connect it, Gregg! You can"t tell; her message might come over any minute."
I tuned my coils to the seldom used oscillation frequency which Halsey had told us Anita"s transmitter was sending.
"Anything, Gregg?"
"No. Dead channel."
The air, in Anita"s channel, was bafflingly silent.
We had been challenged by a roof-guard when we appeared from the upper port of the Conclave Hall; the city roof was not open to public traffic. But with our identifications, he found us a single-seat hand-tram, and started us southward on the deserted route.
It was a cloudless night, with stars like thickly-strewn diamonds on purple velvet. The city roof lay glistening in the starlight. In my great-grandfather"s time there had been no roof here; the open city was exposed to all the inclement weather. But gradually the arcades and overhead viaducts, cross balconies and catwalks which spanned the canyon street between the giant buildings became a roof. It spread, now terraced and sloped to top the lofty buildings, like a great rumpled sheet propped by the knees of sleeping giants. Some of the roof was of opaque alumite, dark patches, alternating with the great gla.s.site panes which in places admitted the daylight.
Our little tram sped along southward, wending its way over the terraces. Save for the guards and lookouts in their occasional cubbies, and the air-traffic directors in their towers, we were alone up here. The roof was tangled with air-pipes, line-wire conduits, aerials, arterial systems of the ventilating and lighting devices. As far as one could see the ventilators stood fronting the night breeze like listening ears. There were water tanks, great cross-bulkheads and flumes to handle the rain and snow. A few traffic towers maintained order in the overhead air-lanes. Their beacons shot up into the sky when the pa.s.sing lights marked the thinly-strewn trinight traffic.
We were stopped at intervals, but in each case were pa.s.sed promptly.
"Nothing yet, Gregg?"
"No."
Anita"s channel remained empty. It was, I suppose, no more than ten minutes during which we sped south along the grotesque maze of the roof; but to us it was an eternity. If only some message would come!
"I"ll pull up here."
"Yes."
I gathered up my little audiphone, thrust it under my dark flowing cloak. If only our cloaks were magnetic!
We leaped from our car. "In a rush, Haljan?" asked a guard.
"That"s us. Orders from Mr. Brayley."
We left him and plunged into a descending automatic lift. A drop of a thousand feet; we shot downward past all the deserted levels, past the ground-level, the undersurface transportation lanes, the sub-river tubes, the sub-cellar, down to the very bottom of the city.
"Come on, Gregg. Two segments from here."
We advanced at a run. At this hour of night, hardly a pedestrian was in evidence. It was an arched vaulted corridor, almost a tunnel, dimly blue-lit with short lengths of fluorescent tubes at intervals on the ceiling. For all the vaunted mechanisms of our time, the air here was heavy and fetid. Moisture dripped from the concrete roof. It lay on the metal pavement of the ground; the smell of it was dank, tomb-like.
There were frequent cross-tunnels. We turned eastward into one of them. For a segment there were the lower entrances to the cellars of the giant buildings overhead. We pa.s.sed a place where the tunnel-corridor widened into a great underground plaza. The sewerage and wire-pipes lay like tangled pythons on its floor. Half across it, by the glow of temporary lights strung on a cable, a group of repairmen were working. We pa.s.sed them, headed in to where the tunnel narrowed again and there were now occasional cubby entrances to underground dwellings.
It was a rabbit warren from here to the river, haunted by criminals and by miserable families, many of whom never saw the daylight for weeks at a time. The giant voices of the city hardly carried down here, so that an oppressive silence hung upon everything.
"That next crossing, Gregg. They said they"d wait for us there."
Occasional escalators led upward. In advance of us was a narrow intersection. There were a few lights in the bullseyes of the subterranean dwelling rooms, but most of them were dark.
"Easy, Snap. Not so fast."
I pulled Snap to a walk. We edged over against the tunnel side. We had pa.s.sed a small lighted audiphone cubby, evidently the one from which Dud and Shac had paged us. They should have been here waiting; but there was nothing but the empty, gloomy tunnels.
"Something is coming!" Snap clutched at me; we drew our cloaks around us and waited in a shadowed recess. Down a side incline, a segment behind us, a small automatic food truck came lurching. It pulled up at an arcade entrance. Its driver slid the portals, deposited his cases of food, locked the panel after him; and in a moment he and his truck were gone up the incline.
We heard, in the ensuing silence, a low groan near at hand; then abruptly it stopped. We saw, within twenty feet of us, two dark figures lying on the pavement grid in a black patch of shadow where the mailtube came down in a curve and disappeared into the tunnel wall.
We bent over the figures of two men. They lay together, one half upon the other, black-garbed figures with white, staring faces. One twitched a little and then lay still.
They were Shac and Dud Ardley.
"Murdered, Gregg! Good Lord!"
Both were dead, but we could see no marks on either of them.
I found my wits. "Snap, we can"t stand like this wholly visible."
I pulled Snap away. We darted a few feet. The light of the tunnel intersection was directly over us. "Not here, Snap! Run!"
Under the curving vacuum tube a little further along, we found shelter. Snap murmured: "The girls went past here. But which way, Gregg?"
As though I knew!
I felt at that moment, under the shirt against my skin, the anode of my audiphone tingling. A receiving signal! In the gloom, I could see Snap"s white face as he watched me bring it out.
We heard a tiny microphonic voice, Anita"s voice.
"Colonel Halsey. Yes I have the location. Lafayette 4--East corridor, lowest level. A descending entrance. Don"t you speak again; I"ve only a minute! Venza safe--but send help. Something we don"t understand--a strange mechanism here."
Then Halsey"s interrupting voice. "Anita, escape! You and Venza!"
"We can"t. They"ve got us!"