Dwight V. Swain by The Transposed Man

Author:The Transposed Man
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-08-25T00:59:40+00:00

CHAPTER VII

I LOOKED out of the window of Fred Caudel's apartment, down into the street. There was the usual traffic. Over to the right, a Security man lounged in a doorway and cleaned his fingernails.

I swung round and peered left. Another loiterer with "Security" written all over him leaned against a thil-shop window and scanned the news-reader inside. Fred Caudel's time was running out.

I took a light-bath and changed clothes, then went into the kitchen and scrambled together a quick lunch of sliced canna and gesk-meat sandwiches, washed down with a tube of foamy purple Venusian yar-beer. By the time I'd finished, a third Security man was standing talking to the first.

Leaving the apartment, I went downstairs and peeked out the building's rear entrance. Security had it covered, too.

I went on down another flight of stairs to the base level and hunted up the climatizer room.

A young husky looked up as I came in. He had a big brindle cat on his lap. The spray of blue pockmarks along one side of his face said he wouldn't make any more space trips; probably that was why he was here now, looking after a second-rate apartment building for a living.

He said, "Hi, Mr. Caudel."

"Hi," I grinned back. "Look, a friend of mine with Security asked me to check up on something. Where's the trap door down here?"

"The trap door?" The husky looked blank.

"Yes. All these old buildings have shafts that go down to refuge tunnels. They dug 'em back during the Chaos, when they were afraid the atomic wars on Earth might spread to Luna."

"Oh." The caretaker scratched the back of the cat's head absently. "Yeah, I guess I know what you mean."

He got up, sliding the cat to the floor, and led me back to the stairway. "Here. Is this what you're talking about?"

It was a manhole, set in the floor behind the stairs.

I scraped the rim clean with my foot. "Let's see if we can get the cover off."

"Sure. There's a ring, see?" He bent, heaved. The lid came free.

I looked down into the black shaft. There was a metal ladder set into the wall. "That's it, all right." "That's all you wanted?"

"That's all," I nodded. "Come on up to my place and have a drink. You can put the lid back later." "Gee, thanks, Mr. Caudel."

He followed me up the stairs. I brought out my pulsator under cover of my tab-card. When he stepped through the doorway ahead of me, I touched him with it.

Five minutes later I was back at the manhole, a young husky with a blue-pocked face. Fred Caudel lay snoring on his own bed upstairs.

I lowered myself into the shaft and slid the manhole cover shut above me, then descended the metal ladder. It went down a long way—fifty feet or more, as nearly as I could figure. At the bottom I felt my way around the shaft wall till I found the thick, lead-sheathed door.

It had a lever handle instead of a lock. I opened it and stepped out into the cold, greenish glow of a radiation lamp set in a wall bracket.

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