The gang had gathered around Flick and now started to move off.
"Wait," said Madison. "There's enough soap and beauty supplies here to wash the whole Apparatus. I want every one of you to bathe, bathe, bathe before you go to bed. Got it?"
They started off again. "Wait!" shouted Flick. "One more thing: Don't nobody, and I mean nobody, go into ANY upper floor. You birds stay on this level, the seventy-sixth. If you go up above, it would be cheating! We got to plan how to rob the upper floors, so don't go jumping the gun! Got it?"
They all did, or so they said, and got busy.
Madison wandered off.
He seemed to be walking
through
doors that didn't open or close and he found it a bit disconcerting, but he supposed he could get used to it. Walking down a passageway he found that every hundred or so feet there was a tube which evidently went down to street level: they were just polished, rectangular shafts and he wondered if he would get nerve enough ever to simply step into empty space and hope he didn't fall 912 feet. He had put a bottle of soap in his pocket at the Beauty store: he took it out now and tossed it in a shaft, wondering what would happen.
It went down at an alarming rate. He listened for a far-off crash.
Suddenly the bottle reappeared, coming up to his level. It simply stopped there in midshaft. It must have gone to the bottom, hadn't gotten out onto the street as expected and had been brought back up to the floor again.
Madison reached into the shaft and retrieved the much-travelled bottle. He put it in his pocket, wondering if he would ever have the nerve to use these elevators. He decided he would specialize in airbuses.
He began to look into rooms. They seemed to be the sort of salons and sleeping quarters one might expect the very conservative rich to have in such a culture as this: posh, but a bit on the military side, even stark. It was sort of as if someone had put together a monastery out of the most expensive materials. Nothing warm or homey about it. However, he felt he could make good use of all this: there was lots of it. He found quantities of potential office space. He found an imposing apartment for himself with huge windows which gave a fantastic view of Joy City and the Homeview complex.
Down a hall where the beautifying supplies had been stacked, he could now hear running water and yells.
He became aware, suddenly, there was someone in the room behind him. He turned.
It was one of the circus girls, the one named Trotter. She was tall and statuesque, a brunette, quite handsome. She was wearing a sleeping robe and it was open widely all the way down the front from bare breasts to bare toes and she had on nothing else.
Madison flinched. "Get on some clothes!" he said.
"You ordered us to pick up working clothes!" said Trotter. "These ARE my working clothes. What's wrong?"
"Please leave," said Madison.
"Captain," said Trotter, "I just came to warn you about these other hussies. You have a tendency to be careless and you shouldn't trust them. Do you know that some of them are
criminals?"
Madison backed up. They were ALL criminals and that included Trotter. And she was an imposing chunk of woman, an awful threat!
"Now me," said Trotter, moving sensuously closer to him, "I'm different. And I'll prove it."
Madison could not back up any further unless the window opened up. Yet she came on. She had already bathed and perfume engulfed him. She was reaching out her hand.
Then he felt something in his palm! It was
not
her fingers!
He looked down hurriedly.
HIS WALLET!
He gawped at her. Then he hastily looked into it.
"You see?" said Trotter. "You can trust me. I didn't want anyone to rob you when we grabbed you on the beach so I just slid your wallet in between my legs. That isn't all you can slide there, hmmm?"
Madison checked the cards; they were all present. He counted forty-eight thousand credits: it was all there!
"Th-thank you," he said.
She was sliding up to him closer and she was too close already. "You just shouldn't leave valuables lying around with a gang like this. The only lying around that should be done is on beds, hmmmm? I spotted right away how cute you were and knew I'd better defend you. So why don't I make up that bed over there for you and why don't we just climb into it. I think a favor like I just did you is worth a little piece, don't you? Hmmm?"
Oh, this was an emergency with Madison. Her bare breasts were touching his jacket as her robe swung even wider. He thought fast.
"Trotter," he said with his best sincere-and-earnest look, "you are so devastatingly beautiful, that I had my eye on you from the very first moment. You are so tall, you are so handsome, you walk with such a wonderful grace, that you cause the heart to stir in even the coldest and most indifferent of men."
Her eyes began to glow. Her bare breasts heaved with a shuddering sigh of delight.
"So therefore," said Madison, praying that his pitch would work, "I am saving you as the star of the very first porno movie that we make."
"A bare-(bleep) movie?" said Trotter.
"Yes, indeed," said Madison, "with men climbing all over you and with the very best angles. A whole mob of them, fighting amongst themselves to be the first to get you, while you stand proud and stately, pushing them off with your feet until at last, you drop a golden robe, baring yourself totally to the camera and then, disdainfully with scornful finger, point to the one you will take and you do it then on a silken bed while the others grovel weeping on the floor."
"Hot Saints!" said Trotter. "And I'm the star?"
"Yes, indeed!" said Madison.
"Oh, blazing batfish! I can't wait to tell the girls!"
She rushed out, robe flying. Madison quickly figured out how to lock the door.
This life was not without its perils. But he felt a surge of confidence. She had bought the image he had built and swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. PR had triumphed once again. But he felt no surprise. After all, it was his trade and he was a master of it!
The movies he was going to make had nothing to do with Trotter. They would have everything to do with creating a brand-new image for Heller, one that would be stamped forever on men's minds: an outlaw! Hunted and chased by everyone! Famous beyond belief!
He turned back to the window. I wonder, he thought sadly, where Heller-Wister is right now. Already wanted on a general warrant, he was probably alone and shivering in some dark cave, unknown and depriving posterity of his potential notoriety. Well, he thought, with a confident smile, I can remedy that. With this crew I can do anything!
Oh my, won't Mr. Bury be proud! What a triumph for good, plain, old-time Earth PR! What an opportunity to show what he could really do!
Chapter 3
The crew were all bedded down, they had been bathed and fed. Being convicts, they did not care what the time of day was: it was always night in the Domestic Confederacy Prison.
Thus, quiet reigned throughout the nearby halls of floor seventy-six. A weary Flick was just reporting all was well. Madison lay back on his own austere but ample bed.
"They're all asleep, sir," said Flick. "You certainly got them under control, and we've got quite a gang. When I've had some rest myself, I can get busy and begin the plan how we're going to rob the upper floors. Oh, sir, you have no idea," concluded Flick in an emotion-choked voice, "how wonderful it is to have a dream like that come true."
Madison nodded. He had his own dream. He could be tolerant.
Flick gave Madison a single, cross-arm salute and turned to go to his own rest.
A wail was coming from somewhere.
It got louder.
Someone was shouting a single word. And shouting it with panic that held the raw screech of terror!
It wasn't a word Madison knew. It was being repeated over and over.
Pounding feet raced toward them. A single man flashed by Madison's open door, screaming that word loud enough to hurt the ears!
"The sealer!" cried Flick. "Come back here!"
But the man raced screaming straight on, tearing through the berthing apartments of the crew, still screaming!
PANDEMONIUM!
The crew began to yell. They were chasing the sealer, trying to get him to stop, shouting to head him off as he rounded turns.
Flick had vanished. Madison hastily climbed into his pants and raced toward the bedlam.
They had managed to cut the sealer off and herd him back and Madison was just in time to see two roustabouts jump on him.
The crew clustered wide-eyed.
The sealer continued to scream the word. He was writhing around, frothing with terror.
Madison yelled, "What's he saying?"
The horror-story writer, from the other side of the crowd, shouted at Madison through the tumult, "He's from the back country of Flisten, from his eye shape and long fingernails. They're like monkeys, those people."
"What's the word he's using?" shouted Madison.
"I don't speak Gnaop," the horror-story writer yelled back, "but I know that word. It means 'ghosts'!"
Madison imitated the syllables. They sounded like "slith-therg."He bent over and yelled it back at the sealer.
The small man repeated the word louder and pointed with a frantic hand toward the ceiling.
"Well, (bleep) him!" raged Flick. "He's gotten into the upper floors!"
"What does he mean, 'ghosts'?" shouted the director. He yelled down at the man on the floor, penetrating the din, "Where'd you see these ghosts?"
The Flisten man simply screamed louder and pointed harder upward.
The director promptly ran off down the hallway toward the first place the sealer had appeared.
The whole crowd went chasing after the director. Madison and Flick were left, trying to get the sealer to calm down and tell them more. He shortly began simply to sob and Madison and Flick looked up to see that the whole crew had run off. They could hear them clamoring down the hall and they sped in that direction.
They were just in time to see a woman on the tail end of the mob vanish up a ramp which led to the seventy-seventh floor.
"Come back!" screamed Flick. "You're cheating!"
He and Madison rushed up the ramp.
There was a clank right in front of their faces. They collided violently with what must be a sheet of bulletproof glass which had dropped as a barrier before them.
They could not get through.
From where they were hammering on the glass, they could see three corridors branching out. The crew was in there, split up into three mobs, racing along into the distance, looking into rooms and everywhere for ghosts!
Suddenly, the group in the right-hand corridor halted.
CHAOS!
They began to scream and retreat.
BLUEBOTTLES!
With raised stingers, a squad of police was charging straight at them!
"Oh, Gods, they were wise to us!" howled Flick. "Come back here. QUICK!"
The group in the middle hall suddenly blew apart and began to run.
SOLDIERS!
They were kneeling and firing at the criminals with deadly expressions! Flame slashed and roared in the hall.
The group in the left-hand hall heard the commotion. They turned around.
Too late!
ASSASSINS WITH ELECTRIC KNIVES WERE BEHIND THEM!
The group fled onward in total panic!
Madison and Flick looked anxiously back into the right-hand corridor.
IT WAS EMPTY!
They looked into the middle corridor.
NO SIGN OF THAT GROUP!
They looked into the left-hand corridor.
NOBODY THERE!
THE WHOLE CREW HAD VANISHED!
A wispy, filmy shape, a ghost indeed, drifted down toward the glass barricade and LAUGHED!
Oh, it was a horrible sound!
Madison and Flick fled.
Chapter 4
In Flick's room, he and Madison looked at each other.
It was all quiet now.
They were scared stiff but that was not what dominated their thoughts.
THEY HAD LOST THEIR CREW!
Flick had managed to get his gasping under control. "Let me think. Where could they have gone? Ah, I have it! That watchman warned me there were traps. They've fallen into floor traps. I think the lights must have gone out or something because we didn't see anyone drop, but that is the only thing that it can be. The crew must be up there someplace in floor traps. We've got to go back up there."
"I haven't got a gun," said Madison.
"You got your bare hands," said Flick. "And they're deadly enough."
Madison knew he would have to think fast. He did. "What about that box the watchman had?" said Madison. "What did you do with it?"
"It's in the airbus."
"And where were all those directions they gave us, that big stack?"
"Yes," said Flick, coming out of it. "It should tell us where the traps are. Maybe the crew is locked in somewhere."
In short order they had the four-foot stack of directions and manuals and began to look through feverishly. They couldn't make too much out of them. But now, armed with the box, they went back up to the top of the ramp.
Flick found the right button. The glass was one of the barriers the watchman had mentioned. It rose.
Flick found another button on the box that said General Disarm. He pushed it and they walked into the first hall of the seventy-seventh floor.
They didn't find anything. The place was terribly quiet except for their own footfalls. Flick flashed a torch about.
No sign of the police.
They walked into the middle hall where that segment of the crew had vanished.
No soldiers. Nothing.