Immediately adjacent to the stairway, on the right, was a public tele-booth. Through the glassite door they could see a portly, well-dressed man speaking earnestly to his female equivalent, mirrored in the visor screen. Three other citizens were waiting outside the booth.
Gaines pushed past them, flung open the door, grasped the bewildered and indignant man by the shoulders, and hustled him outside, kicking the door closed after him. He cleared the visor screen with one sweep of his hand, before the matron pictured therein could protest, and pressed the emergency-priority button.
He dialed his private code number, and was shortly looking into the troubled face of his Engineer of the Watch, Davidson.
“Report!”
“It’s you, Chief! Thank God! Where are you?” Davidson’s’ relief was pathetic.
“Report!”
The Senior Watch Officer repressed his emotion and complied in direct, clipped phrases, “At seven-oh-nine p.m. the consolidated tension reading, strip twenty, Sacramento Sector, climbed suddenly. Before action could be taken, tension on strip twenty passed emergency level; the interlocks acted, and power to subject strip cut out. Cause of failure, unknown. Direct communication to Sacramento control office has failed. They do not answer the auxiliary, nor the commercial line. Effort to re-establish communication continues. Messenger dispatched from Stockton Subsector Ten.
“No casualties reported. Warning broadcast by public announcement circuit to keep clear of strip nineteen.
Evacuation has commenced.”
“There are casualties,” Gaines cut in. “Police and hospital emergency routine. Move!”
“Yes, sir!” Davidson snapped back, and hooked a thumb over his shoulder-but his Cadet Officer of the Watch had already jumped to comply. “Shall I cut out the rest of the road, Chief?”
“No. No more casualties are likely after the first disorder. Keep up the broadcast warnings. Keep, those other strips rolling, or we will have a traffic jam the devil himself couldn’t untangle.” – Gaines had in mind the impossibility of bringing the strips up to speed under load. The rotors were not powerful enough to do this. If the entire road was stopped, he would have to evacuate every strip, correct the trouble on strip twenty, bring all strips up to speed, and then move the accumulated peak load traffic. In the meantime, over five million stranded passengers would, constitute a tremendous police problem. It was simpler to evacuate passengers on strip twenty over the roof, and allow them to return home via the remaining strips. “Notify the Mayor and the Governor that I have assumed emergency authority. Same to the Chief of Police and place him under your orders. Tell the Commandant to arm all cadets available and await orders. Move!”
“Yes, sir. Shall I recall technicians off watch?”
“No. This isn’t an engineering failure. Take a look at your readings; that entire sector went out simultaneously. Somebody cut out those rotors by hand. Place offwatch technicians on standby status-but don’t arm them, and don’t send them down inside. Tell the Commandant to rush all available senior-class cadets to Stockton Subsector Office number ten to report in. I want them equipped with tumblebugs, pistols, and sleepy bombs.”
“Yes, sir.” A clerk leaned over Davidson’s shoulder and said something in his ear. “The Governor wants to talk to you, Chief.”
“Can’t do it-nor can you. Who’s your relief? Have you sent for him?”
“Hubbard-he’s just come in.”
“Have him talk to the Governor, the Mayor, the press – anybody that calls – even the White House. You stick to your watch. I’m cutting off. I’ll be back in communication as quickly as I can locate a reconnaissance car.” He was out of the booth almost before the screen cleared.
Blekinsop did not venture to speak, but followed him out to the northbound twenty-mile strip. There Gaines stopped, short of the wind break, turned, and kept his eyes on the wall beyond the stationary walkway. He picked out some landmark, or sign – not apparent to his companion – and did an Eliza-crossing-the-ice back to the walkway, so rapidly that Blekinsop was carried some hundred feet beyond him, and almost failed to follow when Gaines ducked into a doorway and ran down a flight of stairs.
They came out on a narrow lower walkway, ‘down inside’. The pervading din claimed them, beat upon their bodies as well as their ears. Dimly, Blekinsop perceived their surroundings, as he struggled to face that wall of sound. Facing him, illuminated by the yellow monochrome of a sodium arc, was one of the rotors that drove the five-mile strip, its great, drum-shaped armature revolving slowly around the stationary field coils in its core. The upper surface of the drum pressed against the under side of the moving way and imparted to it its stately progress.