It seemed the best suggestion. The three of them walked out again, and Fred bobbed and danced some more in the sunlight while Nita and Kit walked slowly eastward along Forty-second Street, toward the Park Avenue overpass. "Dislocated," Kit muttered, "And who knows how long it'll take to come undisiocated? A perfectly good piece of time wasted." Nita stopped and turned, looking up into the air and trying to estimate where the deli lay under the Grand Central complex. She picked a spot that seemed about right, let her eye travel up and up, sixty, maybe seventy stories. "Kit," she said. "Kit! Look what's seventy stories high, and right next door."
Kit looked. Dark blue and silver, with its big stylized globe logo on one side, the Pan Am Building reared its oblong self up at least seventy stories high, right there—not only right behind Grand Central, but part of it. "Yeah," Kit said, his voice still heavy with annoyance. "So?"
"So you remember that shield spell you showed me? The one that makes the air solid? If you change the quantities in the spell a little, you can use it for something else. To walk on, even. You just keep the air hard."
She couldn't keep from grinning. Kit stared at Nita as if she'd gone crazy. Are you suggesting that we walk out to the worldgate and—" He laughed. How are we going to get up there?" There's a heliport on top of the building," Nita said promptly. "They aon t use it for big helicopters any more, but the little ones still land, and there's an elevator in the building that goes right to the top. There's a restaurant up there too; my father had lunch with someone up there once. I bet we could do it."
Kit stared at her. "If you talk the air solid, you 're going to walk on it first! I sa* that spell; it's not that easy."
1 practiced it some. Come on, Kit, you want to waste the timeslide? It's J most ten now! It'll probably be years before these guys are finished digging. Let's do it!"
'They'll never let us up there," Kit said with conviction.
"Oh, yes, they will. They won't have a choice, because Fred'll make a diversion for us. We don't even need anything as big as a Learjet this time. How about it, Fred?"
Fred looked at them reluctantly. (I must admit I have been feeling an urge to burp—)
Kit still looked uncertain. "And when we get up there," he said, "all those stories up, and looking as if we're walking on nothing — what if somebody sees us?"
Nita laughed- "Who are they going to tell? And who's going to believe them?"
Kit nodded and then began to grin slowly too. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah! Let's go, it's getting late."
Back they went into Grand Central, straight across the main concourse this time and up one of the six escalators that led up to the lobby of the Pan Am Building. They paused just outside the revolving doors at the end of the escalators. The Pan Am lobby was a big place, pillared and walled and paved in dark granite, echoing with the sound of people hurrying in and out of the station. They went up the escalator to the next floor, and Nita pointed off to one side, indicating an elevator bank. One elevator had a sign standing by it: copter club — helipad level — express, Also standing by it was a bored-looking uniformed security guard.
"That's it," Nita said.
"So if we can just get him away from there…"
"It's not that simple." She pointed down at the end of the hall between two more banks of elevators. Another guard sat behind a large semicircular desk, watching a row of TV monitors.
"They've got cameras all over the place. We've got to get that guy out of there too. Fred, if you're going to do something, do it right between them. Out in front of that desk."
(Well,) Fred said, sounding interested, (let's see, let's see…) He damped his light down and floated off toward the elevators, nearly invisible unless you were looking for him, and even then looking like an unusually large speck of dust, nothing more. The dustmote stopped just between the desk and the elevator guard, hung in midair, and concentrated so fiercely that Nita and Kit could both feel it thirty feet away.
(T-hupt) bang!
"That'll get their attention," Kit muttered. It did; both the guards started at the noise, began looking around for the source of it — then both went very very slowly over to examine the large barrel cactus in a brass pot that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the shiny floor. "Now," Kit said, and took off toward the elevator with Nita close behind'
Both the guards had their backs turned, and Nita, passing them, saw the elevator keys hanging off one guard's belt. (Fred,) she said hurriedly, (can you erab those real fast, the way you grabbed my pen? Don't swallow them!)
(Once I might make that mistake,) Fred said, (but not twice.) As they slipped into the elevator Fred paused by the guard's belt, and the keys vanished without so much as a jingle. He sailed in to them. (How was that?)
(Great. Quick, Nita, close the door!)
She punched one of the elevator buttons and the doors slid shut; the keys appeared again, and Kit caught them in midair before they fell. "It's always one of these round ones, like they use on coin phones," he said, going through the keys. "Fred, I didn't know you could make live things!" (I didn't know either,) Fred said, sounding unsettled, (and I'm not sure I like it!)
"Here we go/' Kit said, and put one key into the elevator lock, turning it to run, and then pressed the button marked 73—restaurant — helipad. The elevator took off in a hurry; it was one of the highspeed sort.
Nita swallowed repeatedly to pop her ears. "Aren't you going to have to change the spells a little to compensate for the gate being up high now?" she said after a moment. "A little. You just put in the new height coordinate. Oops!"
The elevator began to slow down quickly, and Nita's stomach churned for a moment. She and Kit both pressed themselves against the sides of the elevator, so they wouldn't be immediately visible to anyone who might hap-pen to be standing right outside the door. But when the doors slid open, no one was there. They peered out and saw a long carpeted corridor with a plate-glass door at one end. Through it could be seen tables and chairs and, more dimly, through a window, a hazy view of the East Side skyline. A muffled sound of plates and silverware being handled came down the hall to them.
(It's early for lunch,) Nita said, relieved. (Let's go before someone sees us.) (What about these keys?) (Hmm…)
(Look, let's leave them in the elevator lock. That way the guard downstairs'll just think he left them there. If they discover they're missing they'll start looking for whoever took them — and this would be the first place they'd look.) Ueah, but how are we going to get down?)
Well walk on air,) Kit said, his voice teasing. Nita rolled her eyes at the eiling. (Or we'll go down with the people coming out from lunch, if that °esn t work. Let's just get out of here first, okay? Which way do we go to get on the heliport?). There are stairs.) slipped out of the elevator just as it chimed and its doors shut again—probably the guard had called it from downstairs. The corridor off to the left was featureless except for one door at its very end. helipad access, the door said in large red letters. Nita tried the knob, then let her hand fall in exasperation. (Locked, Crud!) (Well, wait a moment,) Kit said, and tried the knob himself. "You don't really want to be locked, do you?" he said aloud in the Speech, very quietly. Again Nita was amazed by how natural the wizards' language sounded when you heard it, and how nice it was to hear — as if, after being lost in a foreign country for a long time, someone should suddenly speak warmly to you in English. "You 've been locked for a couple of days now," Kit went on, his voice friendly and persuasive, not casting a spell, just talking—though in the Speech, the two were often dangerously close. "It must be pretty dull being locked, no one using you, no one paying any attention. Now we need to use you at least a couple of times this morning, so we thought we'd ask—" Kt-chk! said the lock, and the knob turned in Kit's hand. "Thank you,"he said. "We'll be back later." He went through the door into the stairwell, Nita and Fred following, and as the door swung to behind them and locked itself again, there was a decidedly friendly sound to the click. Kit grinned trium-phantly at Nita as they climbed the stairs. "How about that?"