Hank Merry looked at his chief. “You saw what the boy did, John. He didn’t go by transmatter.”
“I know what I saw,” McEvoy snapped. “But I also know this woman, and I know she thinks this Threshold universe is her personal property, somehow, so she can just shut me out any time I get too close to it. Well, she’s wrong. There’s not a nickel’s worth of evidence that your transmatter has anything to do—”
He broke off as the wall speaker suddenly blared his name. “Dr. McEvoy…Dr.
McEvoy…extension 301, please. Urgent!” Glowering at Gail Benedict, McEvoy stalked to the lab phone. He spoke sharply into it, then listened in silence for a long moment, his face going gray. “You’re dead certain they’re onto that?…Yes…Yes…” He shot a glance at Gail.
“Look—tell them she’s gone. No, I don’t know where, just gone. And tell them that we’ve run into snags and had to close down the machine for a while, and then route the Security people to me personally. I can snarl them up for a while.”
McEvoy turned away from the phone, obviously shaken. “Okay, you win,” he said to Gail.
“Your call through the Hoffman Center was traced by Security, and now somebody in Washington has connected up our old Threshold project with these disasters, and they want you for questioning, very badly. As well as Merry and me. They didn’t sound very pleasant about it, either. Especially since there’s been another—incident.”
“Philadelphia?” Gail said.
“Upstate New York, just a few minutes ago,” McEvoy said. He slammed his hand viciously into his palm. “A square mile chunk of farmland disappeared, left a hole forty miles deep. With all of Lake Erie pouring into it.”
There was a stunned silence. Then Robert said, “A government interrogation could tie us up for weeks.”
“I know. But you’re going to have to get out of here fast if you want to avoid it. When the Security boys move in they don’t waste time.”
“Can you get this machine stopped, and cover for us?”
McEvoy nodded. “I’ll stop it as fast as I can get the red tape unwound. But I can’t stop it indefinitely. The pressures to get a transmatter operating are going to pull it right out of my hands.”
“Then we’ll have to work fast,” Robert said. “I have an idea of what we might do, but I’ll need some help. Can Dr. Merry go with us?”
“If I can help,” Hank said.
“Then let’s move!” Robert jotted down a Massachusetts phone contact for McEvoy.
“This number and address aren’t listed, and even Security can’t pry it loose without risking a privacy suit. Keep a line open for us; we’ll keep you posted on what we’re doing.”
“You’d better. But get moving; the guards here are already alerted. If Security gets here first, you’ll never get out of the building.”
“We’ll get out,” Robert said confidently. “Don’t worry.”
They started down the corridor from the lab, Gail on one side of Hank Merry, Robert on the other. “Now listen carefully,” Robert said to Hank. “We may have to short-cut if we run into trouble. We can take you too, if we have hold of your arms. If you hear me say, ‘Here goes!’ you shut your eyes and keep them shut, and hold your breath. We’ll be able to do the rest—I think.”
It seemed like an unnecessary precaution until Robert saw two tall men falling in behind them down the corridor. “Oh, oh,” he said. “Walk fast, but don’t run.” As they quickened their pace, so did the men. The first one caught up with them as they stepped into the elevator.
Robert placed both hands on the man’s chest and shoved him back into the corridor as Gail punched the up button for the next higher floor. The door slammed in the man’s face and the elevator shot upward.
The next floor looked clear until they spotted a man standing near the stairwell. “The other way,” Hank Merry said. “We can get the executive elevator.”
“No time,” Robert said. The man was already moving in on them. “This way.” He started down the corridor away from the man, with Gail and Hank on his heels. He tried a door along the corridor, found it locked. He half-ran to the next door as the Security man broke into a run, shouting at them. Finally a third door opened. “Quick,” Robert said. “In here!”
The door slammed in the Security man’s face as he approached it. He jerked it open, tumbled into a small lab room; a single technician looked up from his work, startled.
“Where did they go?” the detective demanded.
“Huh? Who?” said the technician.
“The three of them. They just came in here—” The detective stared around the small empty room. There were no other doors. Baffled, he began throwing open cabinets. “I saw them come in.”
The technician snorted. “Nobody’s opened that door all morning.”
The Security man made a choking sound. Turning back to the corridor door, he thrust it open…
…and walked into nothing.
A mile outside the Telcom Laboratory gates a cruising aircar paused to load three passengers, and then buzzed into the sky in a northeasterly direction.
—13—
For the first ten minutes or so, it appeared they had succeeded. The aircar buzzed steadily northward. Robert and Gail got settled in front; Hank Merry sat clutching the arms of the rear seat, looking decidedly green about the gills. He had felt Robert suddenly clutch his arm there in the corridor, and he had closed his eyes as instructed…but he had not been prepared for the sudden lurch, the sudden gaping void of silence and weightlessness, the terrifying sensation of whirling helplessly down into a bottomless pit; and then, equally suddenly, the second lurch and the unexpected blow of solid ground under his feet again as Robert said, “Okay, you can open your eyes now.” His stomach was still churning, and he felt so weak and drained that he couldn’t even ask what on earth had happened.
Nor could Robert have told him, nor Gail either. Gail had been braced for the jolt when they passed through to the Other Side. For Robert it was an everyday experience. But for a practical scientist who expected two plus two to equal four every time, no matter what, there was no possible preparation that could have helped at all.
Hank was still trying to get his breath when the little aircar suddenly veered from its course, and began to lose altitude rapidly. The loudspeaker on the dashboard suddenly squawked. “Fasten your seat belts, please, and prepare for landing.”
“That’s funny,” Robert said. “They couldn’t have spotted us so soon.”
Hank glanced at his watch. “I’m afraid they could have. With a fast alarm, the computers could tag every aircar that took off within a fifty-mile radius of the place at the critical time, and drag them all in to the nearest control center.”
“But we can’t face a dragnet right now,” Robert said.
“I think we can beat it,” Hank said. “Watch.” He crawled into the front seat, threw a switch under the altimeter, and began manipulating control buttons by hand. The speaker fell silent and the car turned northward again. “Now, if we just disconnect the air-ground control, they’ll have to scan several hundred thousands cubic miles of space to be sure they’ve got us,” he said. “We may have time to get where we’re going.”