detachment of expediters, supervising the hundreds inside leaped for the doors to fight back the surging mob. But the mob inside the doors, the long orderly lines before the interviewing clerks, now split into a hundred screaming, milling centers of panic. Some rushed toward the doors; some broke for the halls of the vaults themselves. I couldn’t see what was going on outside any more. I was swamped in a rush of women panicked out of their senses.
Panic was like a plague. I saw doctors and orderlies struggling against the tide, a few scattered expediters battling to turn back the terrified rush. But I was swept along ahead of them all, barely able to keep my feet. An expediter fell a yard from me. I caught up his gun and began striking out. For this was what Lawton had feared—the mob loose in the vaults!
I raced down a side corridor, around a corner, to the banked elevators that led to the deeps of the clinic. There was fighting there, but the elevator doors were closed. Someone had had the wit to lock them against the mob. But there were stairs; I saw an emergency door only a few yards away. I hesitated only long enough to convince myself, through the fear, that my duty was to the Company and to the protection of its helpless wards below. I bolted through the door and slammed it behind me, spun the levers over and locked it. In a moment, I was running down a long ramp toward the cool immensities of the vaults.
If Lawton had not mentioned the possible consequences of violence to the suspendees, I suppose I would have worried only about my own skin. But here I was. I stared around, trying to get my bearings. I was in a sort of plexus of hallways, an open area with doors on all sides leading off to the vaults. I was alone; the noise from above and outside was cut off completely.
No, I was not alone! I heard running footsteps, light and quick, from another ramp. I turned in time to see a figure speed down it, pause only a second at its base, and disappear into one of the vaults. It was a woman, but not a woman in nurse’s uniform. Her back had been to me, yet I could see that one hand held a gas gun, the other something glittering and small.
I followed, not quite believing what I had seen. For I had caught only a glimpse of her face, far off and from a bad angle—but I was as sure as ever I could be that it was Rena dell’Angela!
She didn’t look back. She was hurrying against time, hurrying toward a destination that obsessed her thoughts. I followed quietly enough, but I think I might have thundered like an elephant herd and still been unheard.
We passed a strange double-walled door with a warning of some sort lettered on it in red; then she swung into a side corridor where the passage was just wide enough for one. On either side were empty tiers of shelves waiting for suspendees. I speeded up to reach the corner before she could disappear.
But she wasn’t hurrying now. She had come to a bay of shelves where a hundred or so bodies lay wrapped in their plastic sacks, each to his own shelf. Dropping to her knees, she began checking the tags on the cocoons at the lowest level.
She whispered something sharp and imploring. Then, straightening abruptly, she dropped the gas gun and took up the glittering thing in her other hand. Now I could see that it was a hypodermic kit in a crystal case. From it she took a little flask of purplish liquid and, fingers shaking, shoved the needle of the hypodermic into the plastic stopper of the vial.
Moving closer, I said: “It won’t work, Rena.”
She jumped and swung to face me, holding the hypodermic like a stiletto. Seeing my face, she gasped and wavered.
I stepped by her and looked down at the tag on the cocooned figure. Benedetto dell’Angela, Napoli, it said, and then the long string of serial numbers that identified him.
It was what I had guessed.
“It won’t work,” I repeated. “Be smart about this, Rena. You can’t revive him without killing him.”
Rena half-closed her eyes. She whispered, “Would death be worse than this?” I hadn’t expected this sort of superstitious nonsense from her. I started to answer, but she had me off guard. In a flash, she raked the glittering needle toward my face and, as I stumbled back involuntarily, her other hand lunged for the gas gun I had thrust into my belt.
Only luck saved me. Not being in a holster, the gun’s front sight caught and I had the moment I needed to cuff her away. She gasped and spun up against the tiers of shelves. The filled hypodermic shattered against the floor, spilling the contents into a purple, gleaming pool of fluorescence.
Rena took a deep breath and stood erect. There were tears in her eyes again. She said in a detached voice: “Well done, Mr. Wills.”
“Are you crazy?” I crackled. “This is your father. Do you want to kill him? It takes a doctor to revive him. You’re an educated woman, Rena, not a witch-ridden peasant! You know better than this!”
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