Again the jeep slammed past her.
“Double dumb-bell!” Mitzie howled.
The jeep, screaming into another tight turn, vanished under the balcony. There was a grating crash, then a sick, rasping sound, as if the jeep had sideswiped the wall but was still going.
At the same moment a dark shouldered but pink topped figure walked out rapidly from under the balcony. It was carrying a black bag. It stopped, leaned over, set the black bag on the floor, and opened it.
The black jeep came out from under the balcony, limpingly but gaining speed.
Something green and small stuck its head out of the black bag and looked toward the jeep.
The jeep didn’t stop, but it slowed, and Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck tumbled out and sprinted away from the green head as if from horror itself.
The jeep continued very slowly and haltingly toward Mitzie, like a blinded, badly injured animal.
The pink topped figure walked rapidly and mechanically back under the balcony, as if it didn’t understand the why of what it had been doing. Belatedly, Phil realized it must be Dr. Romadka.
The phone-light went on blinking.
The green cat leaped out of the black bag and lightly settled itself beside it.
“Stun it!” Billig knifed at Brimstine and Harris.
The green cat twisted its neck and looked up curiously.
Brimstine and Harris looked at Billig and each took a step and peered down over the railing and stopped stock-still. Behind them Dora was as pale and quiet as a ghost.
And then Phil felt it too – the same invisible golden wave of amiability and understanding as had quieted the quarrelers at the Akeleys’, but now in a flood, a spring tide.
“Stun that thing down there!” Billig demanded. The hidden wrinkles were showing themselves twitchingly on his face and he was backing away from the railing as if he couldn’t bear the golden wave.
Brimstine started to reach inside his coat, but instead picked up the phone beside the blinding light. After a moment he said quite casually, “The raid’s begun, just as Greeley told us it would. The FBL are coming in everywhere.”
“Stun it, I tell you! Get it somehow; it can save us,” Billig ordered, frantically fanning the air in front of his face as if to beat off the golden wave.
Harris just looked at him. Brimstine slowly and puzzledly shook his head.
Billig gave a shuddering gasp and clapped his free hand over his mouth and nostrils, as if the golden wave were something breathed in with the air, and fought his way to the railing. With his other hand he raised the big gun until it was high above his shoulder.
A needle of blue light jutted from either end of the big gun and made smoking trenches in the opposite wall of the garage and the wall behind them. Then Billig brought the gun steadily downward, lengthening the forward and rearward trenches. The air smelled acid, as if laced with ozone. The blue beam dimmed the bright lights and made everything shadowy.
The green cat still looked up at Billig curiously. Billig didn’t look straight back at it. The little muscles in his jaw and temple bulged around the hand clamping shut his mouth and nose.
The forward trench dug itself across the wall and floor, swung drunkenly past Mitzie and the doddering jeep, got ten feet from the green cat and hesitated. It swung this way and that, as if it had encountered a magic circle it couldn’t pierce – and stopped.
Jack murmured, “Sash was right.”
Billig gave a great gasp and began to squeal.
The blue beams winked out. The gun clanked on the floor. The squeal changed to a clucking and Billig swayed. Jack jumped to catch him.
Phil sprang forward and his fingers touched buttons he’d seen Billig touch. The bars in the garage gateways shot up. Phil was on the telescoped stairs almost before they began to move, and rode them to the ground through layers of stinging ozone and golden harmony. The jeep had trembled to a stop just short of Mitzie, who stared at it groggily, her whole figure slack, as if a puff of wind could have felled her.
When the stairs touched the floor, momentum carried Phil forward a half dozen steps but he kept his footing and circled back at a run. When he plunged into the area between the green cat and the spot where the jeep had been abandoned, he felt a shiver of sudden and extreme terror, which even as he felt it, began to fade.
But he hardly had time to ask himself whether that was what had stampeded Carstairs and the rest, for the next instant he was calling, “Lucky!” and Lucky was saying “Prrt!” and he was scooping up the unresisting cat, his fingers trembling as they touched the green fur, and darting back toward Mitzie and the jeep. Her groggy look had now become a dazed smile of triumph and pride.
He grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her toward the jeep. “Get in!” he shouted in her ear. “We’re getting out of here. You’re driving.”
A little life seemed to come back into her as her hands touched the wheel. She kicked the starter as he scrambled in beside her, Lucky gently clutched to his chest. “Which way?” she asked thickly.
“Any exit gateway,” he told her.
With a rather wheezy hum, the jeep started toward the nearest gateway. Phil felt a thinning of the golden peace around them, as if, he told himself, Lucky were resting. The jeep, though gaining a little speed, seemed to move as slowly as a school slideway. But looking back, he saw that the group on the balcony was still standing as motionless as dress display dummies with the power off all except Billig, who was once again moving about rapidly.
“Get them,” Phil could barely hear Billig’s cracked voice implore, as he darted from one to the other. “Kill them.”
The jeep nosed through the high doorway and started up a ramp.
“Dora!” Phil heard Billig yell. “Grab my ortho and kill them.”
The effect of the golden wave must be wearing off, Phil thought, for just as the top of the gateway was cutting off his view he saw the violet blonde stoop rapidly behind the guard wall.
The next second a blue beam flashed, and smoke and starry splatter sprayed up just behind the jeep. The beam moved up and encountered the top of the gateway. It noticed that, came a little closer to them, and then was stopped by the thickness of the wall. The ramp turned and Phil saw a half dozen men in the Fun Incorporated company guard uniform. Two of them had drawn their guns and the other four hadn’t. They turned and saw the jeep. The two with guns raised them and the others reached for theirs.
Then Lucky sat up on Phil’s lap straight as the statuette of Bast, and Phil felt him let go of another of those great golden invisible waves. Phil could tell the moment it hit the guards from the sudden change in their tough faces. They watched the jeep with awe and incredulous grins as it went past.
Farther on they found themselves approaching an expanse of gray cold light, against which a party of some twenty heavily armed men was partly silhouetted, although they were advancing warily along the walls. They were carrying guns, nets and sprays that could swiftly immobilize men in plastic cocoons, and what looked like bird cages.
They leveled their weapons, but once again and mightier than ever, so mighty it made Phil shiver with understanding, the golden wave rolled forward to engulf them. Once again the jeep glided past astonished, troubled faces that smiled in spite of themselves. As the jeep rolled out into the cool, shadowy dawn, Phil stroked Lucky’s soft, springy fur and murmured, “Little peace maker. You even gentled the FBL.”
Lucky looked up at him coquettishly and then yawned tremendously and curled up on Phil’s lap. The feeling of golden harmony subsided until only a ghost of it lingered.