“Obviously, he knew,” Joe Chip said. He felt sure of it.
Rapid, agitated activity crossed Runciter’s face; he started to speak to Stanton Mick, then changed his mind and said to Joe in a low voice, “Let’s get back to Earth; let’s get our inertials right out of here now.”
Aloud, to the others, he said, “Collect your possessions; we’re flying back to New York. I want all of you in the ship within the next fifteen minutes; any of you who aren’t in will be left behind. Joe, get all that junk of yours together in one heap; I’ll help you lug it to the ship, if I have to – anyhow, I want it out of here and you with it.” He turned in Mick’s direction once again, his face puffy with anger; he started to speak-
Squeaking in his metal-insect voice, Stanton Mick floated to the ceiling of the room, his arms protruding distendedly and rigidly. “Mr. Runciter, don’t let your thalamus override your cerebral cortex. This matter calls for discretion, not haste; calm your people down and let’s huddle together in an effort to mutually understand.” His rotund, colorful body bobbed about, twisting in a slow, transversal rotation so that now his feet, rather than his head, extended in Runciter’s direction.
“I’ve heard of this,” Runciter said to Joe. “It’s a self-destruct humanoid bomb. Help me get everybody out of here. They just now put it on auto; that’s why it floated upward.”
The bomb exploded.
Smoke, billowing in ill-smelling masses which clung to the ruptured walls and floor, sank and obscured the prone, twitching figure at Joe Chip’s feet.
In Joe’s ear Don Denny was yelling, “They killed Runciter, Mr. Chip. That’s Mr. Runciter.” In his excitement he stammered.
“Who else?” Joe said thickly, trying to breathe; the acrid smoke constricted his chest. His head rang from the concussion of the bomb, and, feeling an oozing warmth on his neck, he found that a flying shard had lacerated him.
Wendy Wright, indistinct although close by, said, “I think everyone else is hurt but alive.”
Bending down beside Runciter, Edie Dorn said, “Could we get an animator from Ray Hollis?” Her face looked crushed in and pale.
“No,” Joe said; he, too, bent down. “You’re wrong,” he said to Don Denny. “He’s not dead.”
But on the twisted floor Runciter lay dying. In two minutes, three minutes, Don Denny would be correct.
“Listen, everybody,” Joe said aloud. “Since Mr. Runciter is injured, I’m now in charge – temporarily, anyhow, until we can get back to Terra.”
“Assuming,” Al Hammond said, “we get back at all.” With a folded handkerchief he patted a deep cut over his right eye.
“How many of you have hand weapons?” Joe asked. The inertials continued to mill without answering. “I know it’s against Society rules,” Joe said. “But I know some of you carry them. Forget the illegality; forget everything you’ve ever learned pertaining to inertials on the job carrying guns.”
After a pause Tippy Jackson said, “Mine is with my things. In the other room.”
“Mine is here with me,” Tito Apostos said; he already held, in his right hand, an old-fashioned lead-slug pistol.
“If you have guns,” Joe said, “and they’re in the other room where you left your things, go get them.”
Six inertials started toward the door.
To Al Hammond and Wendy Wright, who remained, Joe said, “We’ve got to get Runciter into cold-pac.”
“There’re cold-pac facilities on the ship,” Al Hammond said.
“Then we’ll lug him there,” Joe said. “Hammond, take one end and I’ll lift up the other. Apostos, you go ahead of us and shoot any of Hollis’ employees who try to stop us.”
Jon Ild, returning from the next room with a laser tube, said, “You think Hollis is in here with Mr. Mick?”
“With him,” Joe said, “or by himself. We may never have been dealing with Mick; it may have been Hollis from the start.” Amazing, he thought, that the explosion of the humanoid bomb didn’t kill the rest of us. He wondered about Zoe Wirt. Evidently, she had gotten out before the blast; he saw no sign of her. I wonder what her reaction was, he thought, when she found out she wasn’t working for Stanton Mick, that her employer – her real employer – had hired us, brought us here, to assassinate us. They’ll probably have to kill her too. Just to be on the safe side. She certainly won’t be of any more use; in fact, she’ll be a witness to what happened.
Now armed, the other inertials returned; they waited for Zoe to tell them what to do. Considering their situation, the eleven inertials seemed reasonably self-possessed.
“If we can get Runciter into cold-pac soon enough,” Joe explained, as he and Al Hammond carried their apparently dying employer toward the elevators, “he can still run the firm. The way his wife does.” He stabbed the elevator button with his elbow. “There’s really very little chance,” he said, “that the elevator will come. They probably cut off all power at the same moment as the blast.”
The elevator, however, did appear. With haste he and Al Hammond carried Runciter aboard it.
“Three of you who have guns,” Joe said, “come along with us. The rest of you-”
“The hell with that,” Sammy Mundo said. “We don’t want to be stuck down here waiting for the elevator to come back. It may never come back.” He started forward, his face constricted with panic.
Joe said harshly, “Runciter goes first.” He touched a button and the doors shut, enclosing him, Al Hammond, Tito Apostos, Wendy Wright, Don Denny – and Glen Runciter. “It has to be done this way,” he said to them as the elevator ascended. “And anyhow, if Hollis’ people are waiting they’ll get us first. Except that they probably don’t expect us to be armed.”
“There is that law,” Don Denny put in.
“See if he’s dead yet,” Joe said to Tito Apostos.
Bending, Apostos examined the inert body. “Still some shallow respiration,” he said presently. “So we still have a chance.”
“Yes, a chance,” Joe said. He remained numb, as he had been both physically and psychologically since the blast; he felt cold and torpid and his eardrums appeared to be damaged. Once we’re back in our own ship, he reflected, after we get Runciter into the cold-pac, we can send out an assist call, back to New York, to everyone at the firm. In fact, to all the prudence organizations. If we can’t take off they can come to get us.
But in reality it wouldn’t work that way. Because by the time someone from the Society got to Luna, everyone trapped sub-surface, in the elevator shaft and aboard the ship, would be dead. So there really was no chance.
Tito Apostos said, “You could have let more of them into the elevator. We could have squeezed the rest of the women in.” He glared at Joe accusingly, his hands shaking with agitation.
“We’ll be more exposed to assassination than they will,” Joe said. “Hollis will expect any survivors of the blast to make use of the elevator, as we’re doing. That’s probably why they left the power on. They know we have to get back to our ship.”
Wendy Wright said, “You already told us that, Joe.”
“I’m trying to rationalize what I’m doing,” he said. “Leaving the rest of them down there.”
“What about that new girl’s talent?” Wendy said. “That sullen, dark girl with the disdainful attitude; Pat something. You could have had her go back into the past, before Runciter’s injury; she could have changed all this. Did you forget about her ability?”
“Yes,” Joe said tightly. He had, in the aimless, smoky confusion.
“Let’s go back down,” Tito Apostos said. “Like you say,
Hollis’ people will be waiting for us at ground level; like you said, we’re in more danger by -”
“We’re at the surface,” Don Denny said. “The elevator’s stopped.” Wan and stiff, he licked his lips apprehensively as the doors automatically slid aside.
They faced a moving sidewalk that led upward to a concourse, at the end of which, beyond air-membrane doors, the base of their upright ship could be distinguished. Exactly as they had left it. And no one stood between them and it.
Peculiar, Joe Chip thought. Were they sure the exploding humanoid bomb would get us all? Something in the way they planned it must have gone wrong, first in the blast itself, then in their leaving the power on – and now this empty corridor.
“I think,” Don Denny said, as Al Hammond and Joe carried Runciter from the elevator and onto the moving side-walk, “the fact that the bomb floated to the ceiling fouled them up. It seemed to be a fragmentation type, and most of the flak hit the walls above our heads. I think it never occurred to them that any of us might survive; that would be why they left the power on.”