"I don't understand," said the man in the knitted jacket; as the angry man slowly and stiffly reseated himself, glaring at Hal.
"I do, Jabez," said the middle-aged woman with the piercingly dark eyes. "By starting street fights, we can gradually drain off the interior strength of the Center. All right, Hal Mayne, but the Militia officers'll have figured out ahead of time how many men they can safely spare and not send any more out than that."
"They'll try not to, of course," said Hal. "But our plan would be to give them a gradually escalating situation to deal with, over about a fifty to seventy-five hour period; both to lead them gradually to overstretch themselves and to wear out both them and the men they send out into the streets with lack of sleep. Wear them out until the judgment and reflexes of all of them are less than the best. In fact, what we'll try to do is bring everyone in the Center to the ragged edge of exhaustion. For that, forty-eight to seventy-two hours is about the limit. More than that, and they'll have a chance to adjust. Also, of course, time's critical in getting Rukh out. We know she's alive now, but not what kind of condition she's in; and how much longer she can endure in there."
Hal paused and took a second to check the expressions on the faces around the table. If nothing else, he had their full attention now, although fury still showed in the expression of the thin man he had provoked earlier.
"It might work," said the man in the knitted jacket - not to Hal but to the table in general. He turned to Hal. "Assuming it would, at least to the extent of draining off most of the fighting personnel of the Center, and exhausting them, where do we go from there?"
"When the time's ripe, we send a team into the Center through a service entrance, securing a route as we go through whatever service ways are used to deliver meals to the Cells section or take out anything - from laundry to dead prisoners. This team liberates Rukh and brings her back out the way it went in."
"And everybody left in the Center is waiting for them when they try to go back out!" said the thin man, harshly.
"Not necessarily," said Hal. "Remember, the Militia are going to be thinking primarily in terms of the outside disorders, which by then are going to have escalated to where they begin to look like a potential city-wide riot. Their first thought, when the alarm reaches them that they've been invaded through the service area, will be that this is simply another uncoordinated outbreak of the rioting, a group aiming at damaging the Center, or stealing as much as possible, and then getting away again. There'll be no evidence available to make them suspect that all the rioting is an excuse to get one prisoner - one prisoner only - out of their Cells."
There was silence in the warehouse.
"A pretty large gamble - that they won't suspect," said Athalia.
"It shouldn't be," said Hal. "For one thing the odds are going to be pared by the fact that just before the team goes in after Rukh, we'll mount a diversionary attack on the front door of the Center. It should look - only look, of course - as if the attackers in front are trying to fight their way in; and that ought not only to draw off what Militia strength is left in the building to that front area, but explain any reports that a smaller party has broken in through the service area."
"You're still gambling on the way the Militia's going to think," said Athalia.
"We can help the way they think, considerably," said Hal. "For one thing, simply by properly dressing up our team going into the Cells and having its members act to give the impression that they're simply a bunch of looters taking advantage of the fact there's an attack going on out front to slip in and grab what they can while the grabbing's good - what's a Militia cone rifle and ammunition worth, sold under the table, nowadays?"
Athalia nodded grudgingly.
"A lot," she said.
"So," said Hal, "I think we can be pretty confident the Militia officers are going to send only a small part of their available strength to deal with what they think must be a lightly armed, untrained bunch off the street, that will run at the first sight of a uniform. Meanwhile, if we move with proper speed, we can have reached Rukh, got her out and be on our way back. We ought to be able to shoot our way through the first opposition they send from the front of the building against us; and be outside the Center by the time reinforcements reach the area where we were. Remember, at least according to the information I've been given, all the important parts of the Center are up front - the Record sections, the Armory, and so forth. The first instinct of Colonel Barbage and his men is going to be to protect that area first, and get around to mopping up the incursion through the service area when they've got more time."
He stopped talking. His own first instinct had been merely to give them a moment to let them think over what he had just said. But a fine-tuned perception in him now told him that he had, in fact, achieved more than he had hoped for, at this stage.
"Excuse me a minute," he said. "I'll be right back."
He turned and walked out through the door that connected the warehouse proper with Athalia's living quarters. Even as he passed through and shut it behind him, he could hear their voices break out in sudden discussion which came, blurred but unmistakable, through the wooden panel of the door behind him.
Let them discuss it among themselves, he thought. Let them talk. He glanced at the chronometer on his wrist. Give them five minutes and then he would go back in…
He wandered about the main room of Athalia's home, killing time. His thoughts drifted, and he thought of Rukh in the Militia Center. The image of her as he had first seen her came back to him, the whole scene of it caught between the tree-shadow of the conifers by the little stream, and the sunlight; with the green moss and the brown, dead needles underfoot - and overhead the wind-torn clouds, black and white, against the startling blue of the open sky - and Rukh and he and all the rest standing looking at each other, in that moment.
He remembered how he had thought then that she had looked, tall, slim and erect, in her bush-jacket, woods trousers and gunbelt - like the dark blade of a sword in the sunlight. He thought of her again now, as he had seen her in that moment, and that image was followed by another, one of her in the hands of the Militia; and it was as if something broke in him, without warning, like a small, hard explosion high in his chest near his throat, that spread its effect outward through all his body and limbs, chilling him.
He stood, chilling…
A door opened noisily behind him, and he whirled about like a tiger. Athalia stood framed in the opening to the warehouse.
"What's keeping you?" she said. "We're all waiting."
"Waiting?" he echoed. He glanced at his chronometer, but he could not remember what it had said when he had looked at it just a short while before.
"It's been more than ten minutes," said Athalia, and jerked her head toward the warehouse interior behind her. "Come along. We've got a lot of questions for you."
Chapter Fifty-four
Opening the door into the warehouse, he found a change in those waiting there; and a change in the very atmosphere of the wide, chill, echoing enclosure. For a second, the faces at the table looked up at him in a savage eagerness, with the glitter of excitement found in the eyes of starving people held back too long from food spread plainly before them. It came to him then that he had forgotten how many years people like these had suffered from the Militia, without a chance to strike back in equal measure. It was small credit to him after all, he told himself, that he should be able to move them now to the point of action for Rukh and against such an enemy.