"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."
"Well, thank god it floated up then," Wendy Wright said. "Good lord, it's chilly. The bomb must have put this place's heating system out of action." She trembled visibly.
The moving sidewalk carried them forward with shattering slowness; it seemed to Joe that five or more minutes passed before the sidewalk evicted them at the two-stage air-membrane doors. The crawl forward, in some ways, seemed to him the worst part of everything which had happened, as if Hollis had arranged this purposely.
"Wait!" a voice called from behind them; footsteps sounded, and Tito Apostos turned, his gun raised, then lowered.
"The rest of them," Don Denny said to Joe, who could not turn around; he and Al Hammond had begun maneuvering Runciter's body through the intricate system of the air-membrane doors. "They're all there; it's okay." With his gun he waved them toward him. "Come on!"
The connecting plastic tunnel still linked their ship with the concourse; Joe heard the characteristic dull clunk under his feet and wondered, Are they letting us go? Or, he thought, Are they waiting for us in the ship? It's as if, he thought, some malicious force is playing with us, letting us scamper and twitter like debrained mice. We amuse it. Our efforts entertain it. And when we get just so far its fist will close around us and drop our squeezed remains, like Runciter's, onto the slow-moving floor.
"Denny," he said. "You go into the ship first. See if they're waiting for us."
