A pocket-size heater was the next offering, but he shook his head at that. “Don’t want it,” he told her. “Don’t need it.”
She put the gun back into her own pocket without protest, almost as though she had expected him to refuse it.
“One more thing,” she said. “A visitor’s badge. It won’t help you on the upper three levels, but below that, it will keep anyone from asking you questions.”
He took that, and put it on right away.
“Anything else?”
“Only this. Ten yards ahead, to your right, is a lavatory. Go in there and lock the door. Memorize this diagram thoroughly and then destroy it. And remember that if you’re caught, it will do no good to tell the truth; your word won’t mean a thing against-you know whose.”
He smiled grimly. “I won’t be caught,” he assured her. “I might he killed, but I won’t be caught.”
Their eyes locked for a second, and then she turned quickly without speaking again and went through a door behind her.
He went on along the corridor, through the portal. In the lavatory he memorized the diagram quickly but thoroughly and then destroyed it. He had nothing to lose by following orders implicitly.
There was another portal before he came to the ramp. The radioactive bar she’d given him prevented whatever deathtrap it concealed from operating.
He made the twenty-ninth level and the twenty-eighth without having met anyone. The next one, the twenty-seventh, would be the crucial one; the first of the three floors of cells and courtrooms. Despite that diagram, he didn’t believe that there wouldn’t be at least one guard between that floor and the one below, the top floor to which elevators went and the public-with visitor’s permits-was allowed.
The ramp ended at the twenty-seventh floor. He had to go out into the corridor there, and to another ramp that led to the floor below. He felt sure there would be a guard at the door that led from the end of that ramp to freedom. And there was. He walked very quietly down the ramp. There was a sharp turn at the bottom of it and he peered around the turn cautiously. A guard was sitting there at the door, all right.
He smiled grimly. Either Olliver or the woman technician must have known the guard was there. It was only common sense that there’d be a guard at that crucial point, in addition to any deathtrap that might be in the door itself. Olliver didn’t want him-unless he was good enough to do at least part of his own jailbreaking.
And, of all things, to have offered him a heater-gun. That would really have been fatal. There, right over the guard’s head, was a hemispherical blister on the wall that could only be a thermocouple, set to give off an alarm at any sharp increase in temperature. A heater ray, whether fired by or at a guard, would give an immediate alarm that would alert the whole building and stop the elevators in their shafts. A fat lot of good that heater would have done him, and the gorgeous technician who’d offered it to him must have known that.
Crag studied the guard. A big, brutish man, the kind who would fire first and ask questions afterward, despite the visitor’s badge Crag wore. And there was a heater in the guard’s hand, lying ready in his lap. With a different type of man, or even with a ready-to-shoot type with a holstered heater, Crag could have made the six paces. But, with this guard, he didn’t dare risk it.
He stepped back and quickly unstrapped the twelve-pound hand from his wrist and held it in his right hand. He stepped into sight, pulling back his right arm as he did so.
The guard looked up-Crag hadn’t even tried to be silent-and started to raise the heater. It was almost, but not quite, pointed at Crag when the heavy artificial hand struck him full in the face. He never pulled the trigger of the heater. He’d never pull a trigger again.
Crag walked to him and got his hand back, strapping it on again quickly. He picked up the guard’s heater, deliberately handling it by the barrel to get his finger-prints on it. They’d know who killed the guard anyway-and he’d rather have them wonder how he’d taken the guard’s own weapon away from him and bashed his face in with it than have them guess how he had killed the guard. That method of killing was part of his stock in trade. A trade secret. Whenever he killed with it and there was time afterwards, he left evidence in the form of some other heavy blunt instrument that the police would think had been used.
He went through the door, using the key that had hung from the guard’s belt, and whatever death-trap had been in the portal of it didn’t operate. He could thank the girl technician for that much, anyway. She-or Olliver-had given him a fair break, knowing that without that radioactive bar, it would have been almost impossible for him to escape. Yes, they’d given him a fair chance.
Even if she hadn’t told him to get rid of the bar here and now. It would have been had if he hadn’t known that, outside of the sacred precincts, those bars sometimes worked in reverse and set off alarms in elevators or at the street entrance. The guards never carried theirs below the twenty-sixth level. So he got rid of the bar in a waste receptacle by the elevator shafts before he rang for an elevator. The waste receptacle might conceivably have been booby-trapped for radioactive bars. But he took a chance because he didn’t want to put it down in plain sight. No alarm went off.
A few minutes later he was safely on the street, lost in the crowd and reasonably safe from pursuit.
A clock told him that it was now sixteen o’clock; he had six hours before his appointment with Olliver. But he wasn’t going to wait until twenty-two; the police might expect him to go to Olliver’s house-not for the real reason he was going there, but to avenge himself on the judge who had sentenced him. As soon as he was missed, that house would be watched more closely than it was now. That was only common sense.
He looked up the address and took an autocab to within two blocks of it. He scouted on foot and spotted two guards, one at the front and one at the back. It would have been easy to kill either of them, but that would have defeated his purpose. It would definitely have focused the search for him on Olliver’s house.
Getting into the house to hide would be equally dangerous; before they posted additional guards they’d search thoroughly.
The house next door was the answer; it was the same height and the roofs were only ten feet apart. And it wasn’t guarded. But he’d better get in now. Later there might be a cordon around the whole block.
He took a tiny picklock out of the strap of his artificial hand: a bent wire as large as a small hairpin but as strong as a steel rod; and let himself in the door as casually as a returning householder would use his key. There were sounds at the back of the house, but he drew no attention as he went quietly up the stairs. He found the way out to the roof but didn’t use it yet. Instead, he hid himself in the closet of what seemed to be an extra, unused bedroom.
He waited out five hours there, until it was almost twenty-two o’clock, and then let himself out on the roof. Being careful not to silhouette himself, he looked down and around. There were at least a dozen more vehicles parked on the street before Olliver’s house and in the alley back of it than there should have been in a neighborhood like this one. The place was being watched, and closely.
The big danger was being seen during the jump from one roof to the next. But apparently no one saw him, and he landed lightly, as an acrobat lands. The sound he made might have been heard in the upstairs room immediately below him, but no farther. His picklock let him in the door from the roof to the stairs and at the foot of them, the second floor, he waited for two or three minutes until utter silence convinced him there was no one on that floor.