The Missing Man (v4.1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

lousy, so
ignore it.”
    “You mean the air is under pressure here,
as bad as all the way down at the bottom of the ocean?”
    “Yes, lunk. That’s what makes sense to
them, so that’s the way they have it set up.”
    “That’s why the wall is so thick then, so
it won’t burst and let the pressure out,” George said, feeling as if the
thickness of the’ wall were a coffin, keeping him from escaping. He looked out
through the thick glass wall and down through the glass roof of the observation
room that was the next step down. He saw chairs and magazines, a waiting room,
and the crowd of people that had come on the elevator with him lined up at a
glass door, with the r first one in line tugging at the handle of the door. The
door was not opening. “What are they doing?”
    “They are waiting for the air pressure in
the room to go down and equalize with the air pressure in the stairwell and the
next room. Right now the pressure in the room presses the door shut. It opens
inward as soon as the pressure goes down.” Ahmed looked bored.
    “We have to go out.” George strode
over to the inside door that shut off a stair leading down to the next room. He
tugged. The, glass door did not open. “Air pressure?”
    “Yes; wait, the elevator is rising. It
seems to be compressing the air, forcing it upward.” Thick air made
Ahmed’s voice high-pitched and distant.
    George tugged on the handle, feeling the air
growing thicker and press on his eardrums. “We have enough pressure here
already. We don’t need any more fake air. Just some real air. I want to be out
of here.”
    The elevator door opened and a group of people,
some carrying. suitcases, some carrying fishing gear, pressed out and milled
and lined up at the door behind George, pushing each other and murmuring
complaints about pushing in tones that were much less subdued than the civil
service culture usually considered to be polite.
    The elevator closed its doors and sank out of
sight, and air pressure began to drop as if the air followed the piston of the
elevator in pumping up and down. George swallowed and his eardrums clicked and
rang. He yanked hard on the handle of the stairwell door. It swung wide with a
hiss and he held it open. The crowd hurried down the stairs, giving him polite
thanks as they passed. With each thanks received he felt the fear of the person
passing. He stared into the faces of a woman, a teener, a young woman, a
handsome middle-aged man, looking for something beside fear, and finding only
fear and a mouse like instinctive urge to escape a trap, and a fear of fear
that kept them quiet, afraid to express the sense of disaster that filled their
imaginations.
    “Argh,” said George as the last one
went down the stairs. “Hurry up, Ahmed, maybe they are right.” He
gestured his friend through the door and ran down after him onto the lower step
of a big glass viewing room with tables and magazines to make waiting easy.
Behind him he heard the door lock shut and the whirr of the elevator returning
to the top with more people.
    George leaned his forehead against the thick
glass walls and looked out at a scene of little docks and a buzz of small
electric boats circling the platform, bouncing in a gray choppy sea, under
thick gray clouds.
    “What’s out there?” Ahmed asked.
    “Escape.”
    “What about the saboteur?” Ahmed asked
with an edge of impatience. “What is he thinking, or feeling? Are you
picking anything up?”
    “One of those boats is it,” George
answered, lying to avoid Ahmed’s duty to return to the undersea city. “Or
a small submarine, right out there. The top’s going to be blasted off the
observation platform. Get rescue boats in here. Use your radio, hurry, and get
me a helicopter. I want to be in the air to spot which boat.”
    It wasn’t all lies; some of it felt like the
truth. He still leaned his forehead against the wall and looked out, knowing he
would say anything to get out. Or do anything. He tried