Cities in Flight

“The trouble is,” Carrel reported, “that he didn’t realize what was flying until it was almost too late. He’s a peculiarly sane character and would never dream that anybody was ‘out to get him’ until the knife actually pricked him.”

Hazleton nodded. “It’s my bet that it was the court itself that finally alarmed him—they wouldn’t bother trying to sneak up on him.”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“Which means that we’ll have Bathless Hazca and his dandies here looking for him,” Amalfi growled. “I don’t suppose he bothered to cover his tracks. What are you going to do, Mark? We can’t count on their starting the anti-friction fields early enough to get us out of this.”

“No,” Hazleton agreed. “Carrel, does your man still have contact with the group that was going to punch Schloss’s ticket?”

“Sure.”

“Have him rub out the top man in that group, then. The time is past for delicate measures.”

“What do you propose to gain by that?” Amalfi asked.

“Time. Schloss has disappeared. Hazca may guess that he’s come here, but most of the cliques will think he’s been killed. This will look like a vengeance killing by some member of Schloss’s group— he has no real clique of his own, of course, but there must be several men who thought they stood to gain by keeping him alive. We’ll start a vendetta. Confusion is what counts in a fight like this.”

“Perhaps so,” Amalfi said. “In that case, I’d better tackle Graf Nandór right away with a fistful of accusations and complaints. The more confusion, the more delay—and it’s less than four hours to noon now. In the meantime, we’ll have to hide Schloss as best we can, before he’s spotted by one of Hazca’s guards here. That invisibility machine in the old West Side subway tunnel seems like the best place … do you remember the one? The Lyrans sold it to us, and it just whirled and blinked and buzzed and didn’t do a thing.”

“That was what my predecessor got shot for,” Hazleton said. “Or was it for that fiasco on Epoch? But I know where the machine is, yes. I’ll arrange to have the gadget do a little whirling and blinking—Hazca’s soldiery is afraid of machinery and would never think of looking inside one that’s working, even if they did suspect a fugitive inside it. Which they won’t, I’m sure. And … gods of all stars, what was that?”

The long, terrifying metallic roar died away into a mutter. Amalfi was grinning.

“Thunder,” he said. “Planets have a phenomenon called weather, Mark; a nasty habit of theirs. I think we’re due for a storm.”

Hazleton shuddered. “It makes me want to hide under the bed. Well, let’s get to work.”

He went out, with Dee trailing. Amalfi, reflecting on the merits of attack as a defensive measure, waved a cab up to the balcony and had himself ferried to the first setback of the mid-town RCA building. He would have liked to have landed at the top, where the penthouse was, but the cornices of the building now bristled with pompoms and mesotron rifles; Graf Nandór was taking no chances.

The elevator operator was not allowed to take Amalfi beyond the seventieth floor. Swearing, he climbed the last five flights of steps; the blue rage he was working up was not going to be counterfeit by the time he reached the penthouse. At every landing he was inspected with insolent suspicion by lounging groups of soldiers.

There was music in the penthouse, and it reelsed of the combination of perfume and unwashed bodies which was the personal trademark of Hruntan nobility. Nandór was sprawled in a chair, surrounded by women, listening to a harpist sing a ballad of unspeakable obscenity in a quavering, emotionless voice. In one jeweled hand he held a heavy goblet half full of fuming Rigellian wine—it must have come from the city’s stores, for the Hruntans had had no contact with Rigel for centuries—which he passed back and forth underneath his substantial nose, inhaling the vapors delicately.

He lifted his eyes over the rim of the goblet as Amalfi came in, but did not otherwise bother to acknowledge him. Amalfi felt his blood pressure mounting and his wrists growing cold and numb, and tried to control himself. It was all very well to be properly angry, but he needed some mastery over what he said and did.

“Well?” Nandór said at last.

“Are you aware of the fact that you’ve just escaped being blown into a rarefied gas?” Amalfi demanded.

“Oh, my dear fellow, don’t tell me you’ve just circumvented an assassination attempt on my behalf,” Nandór said. His English seemed to have been picked up from a Liverpudlian—only the men of that Okie city spoke through their adenoids in that strange fashion. “Really, that’s a bit thick.”

“There were twenty-five Hamiltonian ships over the city,” Amalfi said grimly. “We beat ’em off, but it was a close shave. Evidently the whole business didn’t even wake you or your bosses up. What good are we going to be to you if you can’t even protect us?”