HE CLOSED the door after him, feeling fairly confident that they wouldn’t dare raise any alarm. There was the awkward problem of explaining how a patient had been able to secure a pistol, and the patient could talk.
He looked around the room, saw that it was larger than the other and equally well furnished. It was obvious that they formed an apartment. There were two other doors.
He went to the nearer one and listened. He heard the slight scuffing of a movement, and went to the other door. He waited for several minutes, heard nothing, then opened the door and started out.
He halted abruptly, hand tightening on the gun in his pocket, and faced a trimly uniformed guard. “Excellency!” said the guard, presenting arms.
Randall stared for a moment, then his fingers relaxed from his pistol. The guard thought he was the Air Chief! And why not? Hadn’t he been chosen because he could be made to resemble the Chief? And Brophy and Torvald had done good work.
“Allow no one to go through this doorway, Guard,” he ordered. “Neither in, nor out.”
“Yes, Excellency,” said the guard, remaining stiffly at attention.
Randall strode away, concealing his elation. The corridor joined a larger corridor and a few feet away he saw another guard stationed at a door. Randall strode up to him. The guard came to attention and waited.
Randall repeated his orders to the first guard, then started down the corridor, grinning as he thought of the time Pat and Torvald were going to have when they tried to get out of that room. Then his thoughts turned exultantly to escape. The masquerade had worked twice, so there was no reason why it shouldn’t work all the way to the roof and get him a rocketship—if he didn’t meet the real Air Chief.
He stepped into an elevator. “All the way up,” he ordered.
The operator closed the door, started up and stopped almost immediately.
“This is the fiftieth floor, Excellency,” the operator said, trying to keep his eyes off Randall. “Your private elevator is at the other end of the corridor.” He hesitated, then added, “I will show you the way, Excellency, if you wish.”
Randall faced the man quickly. “Why?” he demanded, afraid that the fellow suspected.
The fellow paled, was frightened. “A-As one of the Household Corps I was ordered to hold myself ready to assist Your Excellency in any way when it seemed that you—you might act as though you had forgotten.”
Randall remembered Dr. Brophy’s words—that the brain transplantation caused memory lapses. Evidently orders had been issued to take care of that matter. “Show me the way,” he said with relief.
The elevator man led him down the corridor to another shaft, summoned the elevator.
“His Excellency wishes to go to the roof,” he instructed the new man.
Randall was assisted into the elevator as though he were an invalid, and the ride upward was much slower than he knew to be possible.
“Shall I assist you, Your Excellency?” the man asked when they came to a stop.
“No,” said Randall. “I think I can make it.”
Feigning weakness, he left the elevator, then halted abruptly. Facing him was his mirror-image, the face he remembered seeing in the mirror that Pat had given him before he had escaped. Only this time he wasn’t looking into a mirror.
The image purpled with anger, opened his mouth.
“Guards!” he bawled.
Randall ducked back into the elevator and slammed the door before the operator could see.
The man looked at Randall uncomprehendingly.
“What—?” he started.
“Down!” snapped Randall. “It’s a revolt!”
That was a word the man understood. The elevator descended swiftly. Randall’s mind raced. He hadn’t seen any stairways—probably there were none; only elevators.
“Your apartments, Excellency,” said the operator as he brought the elevator to a stop and opened the door.
“Stop all elevators!” Randall ordered, getting out.
“The master switches are in your apartments, Excellency.”
“Then warn all the operators you can reach, not to answer calls to the roof. We must isolate them.”
He turned, not knowing which way to go, but a uniformed servant came and bowed submissively.
“My apartments,” said Randall. “Lead!” Then to impress the urgency for speed, added, “And hurry!”
RANDALL felt like a modern Paul Revere. But events were moving smoothly, so smoothly that he felt a bit suspicious. He followed the servant into a large room. Two men sat at complex control panels and a third, seemingly in command of the trio, sat a little distance from them. They leaped to their feet, saluting.
“Cut out the elevators!” snapped Randall with a silent prayer.
The two men leaped back to their control boards to obey, but the third came toward Randall. Then he came to attention.
“Revolt,” Randall explained tersely, and kept his features rigid to conceal his doubt.
“Dr. Brophy, Excellency?” asked the officer.
Randall nodded. “I think they are still on the roof,” he added. “They performed the operation, but didn’t destroy the other brain. Instead, they transferred it to my old body and revived it first, intending to seize control before I recovered. Have you any suggestions? I am at a disadvantage.”
The officer interpreted the last as Randall hoped he would, and suggested quickly, “We should order the Air Guards to prevent anyone taking off from this building, Excellency.”
“Do that.”
The officer turned and gave the order to the men. Then he faced Randall again. “Excellency, I also suggest that we communicate with the Household Guards, have them gather in force at every elevator. Then we could switch them in and they could attack.”
“Do that, also,” agreed Randall.
While the officer gave the necessary orders, Randall looked around. Now that he had placed the Air Chief’s defenses at his own defense, there was nothing more that he could do except chance revealing his true identity. Even though it seemed not, there must be limits to the credibility of the too thoroughly disciplined guards. He had to keep out of the way until the Air Chief was disposed of.
The officer halted in the middle of his instructions and looked questioningly at Randall.
“Shoot to kill,” said Randall, and the words must have been quite in character with the personality he had blindly assumed. The officer transmitted the order.
“Now, I must rest,” said Randall, waiting for the officer to help him. There were a number of doors leading from the room and it might be just too bad if he took the wrong one. A hint of suspicion would bring the whole edifice of cards down around his ears. The officer hesitated, then as Randall leaned heavily on his shoulder, started toward one of the doors.
Randall found himself in a luxuriously furnished but oddly decorated room. The most general color was a deep ruby shade. The whole effect was decidedly unrestful and reminded Randall forcefully of the effect of colors on emotions. He no longer wondered at the strange brilliance of the Air Chief; a brilliance that had made it possible for him to subdue the world and keep it enslaved. Any person who could find such a room restful must either be mad, or possess a mental balance entirely beyond the understanding of the normal man. Randall felt himself longing for just one touch of green, or blue.
He sat down on the deeply cushioned couch and motioned the officer to go back to his duties, watched the man leave, then gave free rein to his curiosity.
He saw a massive, ornately carved switch on the wall. He got up, went closer. He heard a sound behind him and turned quickly, but he was alone in the room.
A door in the wall attracted his attention. The bottom of the door was three feet from the floor, and it was four feet high by two feet wide. He went to it, grasped the knob, pulled. It opened easily.
HE STARED. Slowly his hand slipped from the knob and fell to his side. Before his eyes was a huge transparent flask containing some transparent liquid. And in the liquid floated a small body, about three feet in height. It was thin, with the huge joints of a rachitic child. The skin was a reddish bronze and hideously wrinkled. But the head was fully the size of a mature man’s.
Randall stepped back, disgust filling his soul. Was the Air Chief pitting his incomparable genius against the problem of creating life? Or, what was much more probable, was he trying to create a super-body for his own use? Randall smiled sickly. If that was the case, then he certainly hadn’t succeeded—providing this was the best he had been able to do. Nature was still a better craftsman.
Despite his situation, he chuckled.
And his chuckle was answered by another directly behind him. He wheeled, found himself facing the Air Chief. The Air Chief held a gun in a hand that didn’t tremble.
Hard blue eyes drilled into Randall’s, which were of a similar blue. There was the same high forehead, the same strong-willed mouth, the same well-fleshed face. The only difference was that the Air Chief was ten years older in body and looked thirty more, and was decades older mentally.
“My body amuses you?” the Air Chief asked gently, but the hardness of his face defied the gentleness.
Randall moved his hand closer to his pocket, and the pistol. The Air Chief’s hand tightened
suddenly, the weapon hummed and all the strength left Randall’s body. He fell loosely to the floor.
He lay motionless, but though he couldn’t move his body, his mind was clear. He could see and hear. The Air Chief came to his side, stooped carefully and took the pistol from Randall’s pocket, then stepped back and sat down.
“Like all your kind, you are a fool,” he said wearily. “Did you suppose I might never want to get secretly to the hangars? There are many things that only I know. This weapon is the refinement of the ‘sapper.’ My shriveled, preserved body that you laughed at—” Suddenly he halted, pressed one hand to his heart. His face grayed with pain; his lips became discolored.
Randall recognized the pain for what it was—a heart attack. He hoped that it might be fatal. He cursed his own helplessness and fought to get up. His heart leaped when he felt his strength returning.
But when he tried to get to his feet, the Air Chief leveled the strange weapon with a trembling hand. The weapon hummed and Randall collapsed. Finally the Air Chief got slowly to his feet. He crossed the room to the open locker containing the tiny body, and closed the door. Then he returned and pulled a cord.
A moment later the door opened and the officer came into the room. The Air Chief covered him with the pistol as the officer’s bewildered gaze went from one to the other.
“You have been a fool, Commander,” the Air Chief husked. “You obeyed this new body too soon. The operation has not yet been performed, and I doubt if even Dr. Brophy’s Gen-Ray will enable a patient to walk away from the table.
“Communicate with Dr. Torvald . . . Have Dr.
Brophy brought from his cell. The change must be made immediately.”
Randall listened to his own death sentence, but it was heard through a hazy horror which made everything seem unreal. The Air Chief had claimed that hideous body as his own. It had been preserved for years—those chemicals and pumps kept it alive. He treasured it! And Randall knew instinctively that nothing on earth had ever produced a body such as that one.