The drone of machinery in a high-vaulted, metal-walled compartment awakened Corriston. It was for the most part a steady, low, continuous sound. But occasionally it ceased to be a drone, in a strict sense, and became high-pitched. It became a shrill, almost intolerable whine, impinging unpleasantly on his eardrums and preventing him from going to sleep again.
For interminable minutes he lay stretched out at full length in the lidded, coffinlike rag bin into which he had crawled, a lethargic weariness enveloping him like a shroud. Above his head steel-blue surfaces crisscrossed, vibrating planes of metal and wire intricately folded back upon themselves.
After a moment, when the steady drone was well in the ascendency again, he sat up and stared about him. He had a throbbing headache and there was a dryness in his throat which made swallowing difficult.
He was certainly not an exceptional man in regard to such matters. During moments of crises he could remain fairly calm and self-possessed but the aftermath could be killing.
He felt now as if all of his nerves had been squeezed together in a vise. He looked at his wrist watch and was amazed to discover that he had slept for eight hours. If a search had been made for him, he had no reason to complain about his luck. He hadn't even closed the lid of the bin. But perhaps the oil-stained waste he had drawn over himself had given them the idea that he was just more waste underneath.
Perhaps the guards didn't give a damn whether they found him or not. It was quite possible. On a low official level a cynical desire for self-comfort could dominate the thinking of a man.
It was quite possible that the guards who had been sent down to search for him--or one of the guards, at least--had been angry at his superiors. Just a quick look and to hell with it--that must have been his attitude.
It made sense in another way. They wouldn't suspect the bin because the bin was so conspicuous and obvious a hiding place. The Purloined Letter sort of thing. Crawl into an empty coffin at a funeral and no one will give you a second glance. All dead men look alike.
The Master Sequence Selector compartment was a coffin, too--a big, all-metal coffin arching above him and hemming him in. If he hoped to get out of it alive, he'd have to do more than just beat on the lid with his fists.
Almost instantly he was ashamed of his thoughts. He had been extremely lucky so far. The funeral was over, the sod firmly in place. They would not be likely to dig him up on suspicion, and he could stay buried until he starved to death.
The worst would be over when they found him. The thirst torment would be the worst, but if it became unbearable he would still have the choice of surrendering himself.
Quite possibly he would die of thirst. Quite possibly he could shout his lungs out and still remain trapped. If a search had been made and they had failed to find him, sullen anger might have tempted them to do an unthinkable thing. They might have locked the door of the compartment so that the corpse would have no opportunity of escaping prematurely and making them look like fools.
Corriston was just starting to climb out of the bin to investigate the truth or falseness of that utterly demoralizing possibility when he heard the sound. It was a very peculiar sound, three or four times repeated, and he heard it clearly above the low drone of the Selector's automatic controls.
He stood up in the bin, straining his ears. It came again, louder this time. It was only a short distance away and it was a voice sound, unmistakably a voice sound.
He climbed out of the bin, grasped a metal rod that projected from one of the cross-beams, and descended cautiously to the base of the Selector. The droning increased for an instant, rising to a whine so high-pitched that he could no longer hear the voice.
He started moving around the edge of the Selector, keeping well within its shadow, watching shafts of dull light move backwards and forwards across the floor. He hardly expected anyone to leap out at him. The voice had not seemed quite that near; in fact, he was by no means sure that it had come from the compartment at all. But if not from the compartment, where?
He found out quickly enough. There was a square, windowlike grate a few feet from the Selector's automatic control panel, set high up on the wall. A faint, steady glow came from it.
Corriston paused for an instant directly below the glow, measuring the distance from the floor to the aperture with his eyes. He strained his ears again, waiting for the whine to subside. It continued shrill, but suddenly he heard the voice again, heard it above the whine.
There was stark terror in the voice. It was despairing and desperate in its pleading, and it seemed to Corriston that he would remember it until he died. He thought he recognized the voice, but he couldn't be sure.
It was perhaps merciful that he couldn't, for the grate was at least ten feet above the floor and had he known beyond the faintest shadow of doubt that it was Helen Ramsey's voice, his inability to reach her would have been fiendish torment.
He hoped only one thing--that he had to reach that voice in time.
First of all he had to stay calm. Even a calm man could not hope to scale a ten-foot wall with his bare hands, but an agitated man would have no chance at all. Something to stand on! A box--anything!
A box would help, a ladder would be better. But what were his chances of finding a ladder in the Selector compartment? Not good at all. Still, he could search for a ladder. Quickly now. No time to waste, but don't lose your head. Take thirty seconds, a good long thirty seconds to look around for a metal ladder. There just might be one standing somewhere against the wall.
There was! Not one ladder, but two, leaning against the wall directly opposite the glimmering front section of the Selector.
It was amazing how desperation could change a man. In the great moments of danger and desperation small, neurotic concerns ceased to matter.
He was sure now. He had recognized the voice beyond any possibility of doubt. The ladder scraped against the wall and swayed a little, and for an instant he feared it might slide out from under him. He paused to make sure, and then went swiftly on up until his head was level with the grate.
He grasped the heavy grillwork with both hands and raised himself higher. He could see clearly through the grill into the compartment beyond now. The entire compartment was visible from where he stood. It was small and square and dimly lighted by an overhead lamp, and there was a paneled door leading into it.
Close to the door a man was standing. Corriston couldn't see his face. He was half-turned away from the wall opposite him, and the girl who was struggling to escape from him was more than two-thirds concealed by his massive shoulders.
He was holding her in a tight, merciless grip. He had locked one hand on her wrist and was preventing her from moving either backwards or forwards. It was costing him no effort. He simply stood very straight and still while she struggled vainly to free herself.
Immense strength seemed to emanate from him, complete assurance and a coldly calculating kind of brutality which appeared to be slowly undermining her will to resist. Her struggles became less frantic second by slow second, and that she was about to stop struggling altogether was evident from the way her right arm had begun to dangle and her body to sag.
The man was holding her by the left wrist in a left-handed grip. He was cruelly twisting her wrist and suddenly she cried out again in pain and despairing helplessness.
The blood started mounting to Corriston's temples. He began tugging at the grate with both hands, exerting all his strength in a desperate effort to dislodge it. It began to move a little, to become less firmly attached to the wall. He could feel it moving under his hands, rasping and creaking as it loosened inch by inch.
He was covered with sweat. Already in his mind he had killed the man, and Helen Ramsey was tight in his arms, happy and alive.
The man did not seem to hear the rasp of the grate coming loose. He neither turned nor raised his head. His free hand had gone out and across the girl's face. But if he had struck her on the face, she gave no sign. She did not recoil as if from a blow and there was something strange about the movement. It was as if the man had reached out to tear something from the girl's face--a veil or a mask.
His hand whipped back empty but his fingers were oddly twisted, as if he had clawed at something that had failed to come free.
Corriston pulled back his shoulders and his posture on the ladder grew more erect. He knew that his exertions might send the ladder toppling but it was a risk he had to take.
The grate was freely movable now. He could move it backwards and forwards, six or eight inches each way; but he still could not rip it completely free.
He kept on tugging, his neck cords bulging, the ladder swaying dangerously. The grate could be moved upward now, just a little. No, it was finally coming completely loose. He could move it in all directions and even push it outward at right angles to its base.
Twice he heard Helen Ramsey cry out again, and her screams became a goad that turned his wrists to steel. With a sudden, convulsive wrench he twisted the grate sideways. It came loose in his hands. It was so surprisingly light that an incongruous rage surged up in him. It was cruelly perverse, intolerable, that he should have been so long delayed by a thin sheet of metal that hardly seemed to have any weight at all.
He swung about on the ladder and let the grate drop. It struck the floor a few feet from the Selector and rebounded with a clang loud enough to wake the dead. The ladder swayed again, and he had to grab the edge of the aperture quickly and with both hands to keep himself from toppling.
He pulled himself forward through the aperture on his stomach, taking care not to dislodge the ladder. His temples were pounding and his palms sticky with sweat. He did not look down until he was completely through, dreading what he might see.
He passed a hand over his eyes. It was unbelievable, but he had to believe it. The man was gone and the girl was now alone in the compartment.
Had the man fled in sudden fear, knowing that Corriston would be consumed with a killing rage that would make him a more than dangerous adversary? Corriston didn't think so. The man had looked quite capable of putting up a furious struggle. More likely he had disappeared to keep himself from being recognized, or because he had accomplished his purpose.
Blind, embittered anger again boiled up in Corriston. Had the man waited, he would have rejoiced and been less angry. He would have taken a calm, deep breath and slowly set about the almost pleasant task of killing him.
He felt cheated, outraged. Then his concern for Helen Ramsey made him forget his rage. Had she been felled with a blow, or had she simply fainted? He started down, then hesitated.
The ladder first. Before he descended it was necessary to make sure that the ladder would be in the same compartment with him, set firmly against the wall, directly under the aperture. If he were prevented from leaving the compartment by the corridor door, he might find himself needing the ladder. Without it he might be descending into a trap that could close with a clang and abruptly imprison him.
Getting down into the compartment was the worst part, just putting the ladder into place and not knowing how badly hurt she was.
What if she's dead? he thought. What if he killed her with a single blow? He looked strong enough. He could have killed her. God, don't let me think of that. I mustn't think it.
His feet touched the floor. He let out his breath slowly, turned and crossed the floor to where she was lying. He went down on his knees and lifted her into his arms. She lay relaxed in his arms, face up, quiet, her lips slightly parted.
He looked down into her face, and for a moment his mind went numb, became still, so that there was no longer a whirling inside his head--only a chilling horror.
She seemed to have two faces. One was shrunken and almost torn away, a shredded fragment of a face. But enough of it remained for him to see the shriveled flesh of the cheeks, the puckered mouth, the white hair clinging to the temples. It was the face of an old woman but so fragmentary that it could not even have been called a half-face. And even though it had been almost ripped away, it seemed still to adhere firmly to the face to which it had been attached, and to blend with it, so that the features of both faces intermingled in a quite unnatural way.
Not quite, though; Helen Ramsey's face was sharper, more distinct--all of the features stood out more clearly. And when Corriston's stunned mind began to function normally again, he realized that the old woman's face was--had to be--a plastic mask.
It took him only an instant to remove the ghastly thing from features which he could not bear to see defaced.
He had to pry it loose, but he did so very gently, exactly as a sculptor might have pried loose a life mask from the face of a recumbent model.
He held it in his hand and looked at it, and a little of the horror crept back into his mind.
It was the merest fragment, as he had thought. Thin, flexible, a tissue-structure of incomplete, aged features, and with an inner surface that was very rough and uneven, as if something had been torn from it.
He could have crumpled it up in his hand, but he did not do so. With a lack of foresight which he was later to regret--a lack which was to prove tragic--he simply flung it from him, as though its ugliness had unnerved him so that he could no longer endure the sight of it.
Helen Ramsey was a dead weight in his arms, and for a moment he feared that she had stopped breathing. So great was his fear, so paralyzing, that his hand on her pulse became rigid, and for a moment he could neither move nor think.
Then he felt the slow beat of her pulse and a great thankfulness came upon him.
He knew then that he must get help as quickly as possible. He eased her gently to the floor, walked to the door and locked it securely. Then he returned to her and took her into his arms again. He spent several minutes trying to revive her. But when she did not open her eyes, did not even stir in his arms, he knew that he could not wait any longer.
