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The boom cage on its long arm swung down to the studio floor with all of the
silent grace of a mantis reaching for its prey. Hellstrom stepped into the
cage and it wafted him upward, swung in a wide arc, and deposited him at the
edge of the loft floor. As he stepped out of the cage, Hellstrom reflected on
how admirably this device served the needs of both security and cover. No one
could get up to the loft without the help of a trusted boom operator, yet it
was the most natural thing to think of a boom as an elevator and to use that
as an excuse for leaving no other access into the security section.
The loft had been set up with a central well running for half the length of
the barn. The other half concealed the outlets for ventilators, with a bypass
for visual examination of the valley's upper reaches. Slide ropes had been
coiled neatly at even spacings along the edge of the loft floor, each rope
secured to one of the stanchions of the guardrail. The ropes, which the
Hive's workers had practiced on, but had never been forced to use, offered
emergency access to the studio floor.
Neither the ropes, nor the inner wall behind the walkway, nor the doors into
the various security stations were visible from the studio floor.
Hellstrom walked along the open area, noting a slight smell of dust that
alerted him to remind the cleaning crews that the studio must be kept free of
dust. The catwalk, with its view of the multiple activities in the studio
below, led him along the soundproofed wall to an end door with both sound and
light baffles.
He let himself into Old Harvey's station through the dark passage of the
baffle. It was gloomy inside and filled with the smells of Outside that came
in through open louvers at the end. An arc of green-glowing repeater screens
had been installed along the inner wall against a thermite-bomb destruction
system that could burn out the entire barn right down to the noninflammable
mucilaginous quickplugs that could be triggered to seal off the Hive head.
The present emergency made Hellstrom acutely conscious of all these
preparations which had been a part of Hive awareness for so many years.
Old Harvey looked up from the console as Hellstrom entered. The old man was
gray haired, with a big, forward-thrust face like a Saint Bernard. He even
had dewlaps at the edges of his jawline to accent the likeness. His eyes were
widely spaced, brown and deceptively mild. Hellstrom had once seen Old Harvey
behead a hysterical worker with one sweep of a meat cleaver -- but that had
been long ago in his own childhood and that hysterical line had been weeded
out of the Hive's breeding stock.
"Where's our Outsider?" Hellstrom asked.
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"He had something to eat a while back, then crawled off the hilltop," Old
Harvey said. "He's working his way toward the upper end of the valley now.
If he stations himself where I think he will, we'll be able to look out the
louvers at the other end and watch him directly with binoculars.
We're keeping all the lights off inside, of course, to reduce the chance that
he'll notice activity up here."
Good, cautious thinking. "Have you reviewed the Porter material? I noticed
earlier that you --"
"I've reviewed it."
"What's your opinion?" Hellstrom asked.
"Same sort of approach, clothing designed to give him concealment in the
grass. Want to bet his cover is he's a bird watcher?"
"I think you'd win."
"Too much professionalism about him, though." He studied one of the console
screens over an observer's shoulder, pointed, and said, "There he is, just as
I expected."
The screen showed the intruder crawling under a stand of bushes to get a view
down the length of the valley.
"Is he carrying a weapon?" Hellstrom asked.
"Our sensors indicate not. I think he has a flashlight and a pocketknife in
addition to those binoculars. Look at that: there are ants up there on the
ledge and he doesn't like them. See how he's brushing them off his arm."
"Ants? How long since we've swept that area?"
"A month or so. Do you want it checked?"
"No. Just have it noted that it may be time for another sweep there by a
small crew. We need several nests in the newer hydroponics sections."
"Right." Old Harvey nodded and turned to relay instructions by hand signal to
one of his assistants.
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