The four men separated when they came to the cross-corridor. The lift shaft was in the center of the cross-corridor, and there were deep bays at each corner to permit traffic of big machines. The shaft could be entered from four sides. Li Po and Gull went to the right down the cross-corridor and took positions behind partly closed doors about a hundred feet from the shaft. Burton continued down the corridor and entered a room that was about a hundred feet from the shaft. Frigate was to go to the left at the intersection and take a station behind a door about two hundred feet from the shaft.
When Star Spoon left the shaft at this level, she would be the target of cross-fire from five beamers.
Burton’s room was dark except for the glow of the computer console screen. He watched the orange light, waiting for it to move into the shaft and ascend toward the third level.
“She’s certainly taking her time,” he muttered. What was she doing? Trying to imagine all the possible traps? Or had she lost her nerve?
Very early that morning, Burton had taken one hundred pounds of plastic explosive from the e-m converter. Using his flying chair to elevate himself to the tops of seven lift shafts and along the sides, working furiously, he had pressed the explosive around the entrances of the nearest shafts. He had not applied the plastic to the bottom of the entrances because Star Spoon would probably see it before exiting. By the time she had left the shaft, even if she saw the plastic on the sides, she would be too late to escape. Proximity fuses would set off the explosive.
These might be useless, since she might take a distant shaft. But if she passed close to a mined opening, she still might set off one.
He looked down the corridor and through the opening of the shaft. Then he glanced back at the screen. Ah! The orange light was ascending the lines indicating the shaft near which they waited.
He crouched by the door. A few seconds later, a transparent vehicle, in the center of which Star Spoon sat, rose into full view. It halted, suspended in the shaft, allowing him to see it in all its details. It was much like the armored chair that he had fashioned except that there were more heavy beamers than in his.
He could only see her back until she turned her head to give him a half-profile. She was expressionless.
The armor would resist for a while the ray of a beamer on full-power. Only if the ray could be kept on one spot could it penetrate the armor. And Star Spoon would keep her vehicle moving.
What was discouraging was that, if she was killed, she would be resurrected elsewhere in the tower. Any victory by her enemies was only a half-victory for them and a temporary setback for her. Yet they had to keep fighting and hope that they would catch her before she could kill herself or be killed. Or that her record-spheres would be found out and, eventually, she would be in the same situation they were. The next death would be the final death.
Burton had expected her to appear in an armored vehicle, and he hoped that its armor would absorb just enough of the explosive shock to knock her out. That was why he had lined each entrance with only 3.57 pounds of the explosive. As it was, he was not sure that he did not have more than he needed for his purpose.
He said, “Go on! Go on! What’re you waiting for?”
The moment the vehicle moved from the center of the shaft toward the opening, he would step back, and, pressing his fingertips into his ears, would stand by the wall out of the way of the direct shock waves. So would the others.
At last, Star Spoon made up her mind. She had looked down the corridor straight ahead and seen that all the doors to the apartment suites were open but one. She would know that the door was Burton’s, and she would, he hoped, believe that all five were holed up in it. Her survey of the corridor at right angles to the one straight ahead had shown her that all the doors on both sides were open. That was as it was almost everywhere in the tower.
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