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entrance, and there asked for a wand to guide him to Member Braight's offices.
The girl he spoke to behind the information desk gave him the wand and showed
him how to set it a simple matter of turning the rotating handle until the
words Member Braight's Offices showed up through a slot in the handle cover.
She passed it into his grasp and it turned in his hand, pointing at the
elevator tubes across the lobby. He followed the direction in which it pointed
and stepped into one of the elevator tubes. He stepped onto one of the
ascending discs in the tube, and the wand hummed a single note. The platform
lifted him upward for perhaps thirty or so stories, and then stopped. The
transparent wall of the tube slipped back, and Cully, following the indication
of the wand, stepped from the platform into a hallway, wide, green carpeted
and luxuriously alive with soft light and shifting murals.
The wand led him on down this corridor and around two corners into branching
corridors until it stopped before another, smaller bank of elevator tubes. One
of these lifted him a goodly number more of stories, and let him out into a
circular lobby from which several short corridors branched off. Clearly, he
was high in one of the towers of the Tri-Worlds Council Headquarters. The
lobby was busy with the movement of men and women, half of them in the
bellhoplike uniform of Council messengers, passing in and out of the shorter
corridors. The wand indicated one of these corridors, but Cully did not enter
it. Instead, he turned the handle of the wand until it was shut off, and then
hesitantly approached one of the uniformed messengers who was on his way out.
"Excuse me " said Cully. The messenger stopped. "My wand seems to have stopped
working. Could you tell me if this is the floor that has the staff restaurant
on it?"
"No, it isn't," answered the messenger brusquely. He was a round-faced young
man whose air of personal importance hinted an acquaintance with the important
messages he carried. "It's eight floors down. What's wrong with your wand? Let
me see it."
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He took it from Cully's hand, rather than accepting it as Cully offered it,
and looked at the handle.
"No wonder," he said. "It's turned off. You see this handle?"
"Yes," answered Cully.
"Well, that handle has to be turned to Restaurant. Like this " The messenger
turned the handle until the word Restaurant appeared in the slot, then handed
it back to Cully. "Just be careful how you hold it. If you turn that handle
without noticing it, you can end up anywhere in the building, even in places
where you might find yourself in deep trouble."
"I'll watch it," said Cully.
"That's the best thing you can do," said the messenger and went off.
Cully followed the wand with its new setting, and let it lead him back into
the elevator tubes. Once in the down tube, drifting downward on a descending
disc, he turned the handle once more until he discovered the words Basement
Power Room. The wand hummed a single, different note from the one that it
uttered when he had first stepped into the tube, and the disc this time
carried him down a long distance.
When it finally let him out, he found himself in a wide but bare walled marble
corridor, pierced with metal doors at intervals. He walked down this corridor
for some distance until it branched, then tried one of the doors at random. It
was locked. He gave it up and moved about the various corridors at a brisk
enough pace to convince the occasional people he passed that he was on some
definite errand in this area. The people he passed were not as many as formed
on the upper floors, but there were a good number of them down here. Evidently
in addition to the power rooms supplying the Headquarters, a good deal of the
back records and other materials were stored down here. He encountered a good
many clerks, both male and female, and not a few of the uniformed messengers.
He checked his watch. It was nearly twenty minutes to one, twenty minutes
until the hour that had been set, according to Braight's receptionist, for the
Council meeting.
He chose one of the smaller corridors, and strolled up and down it until he
saw one of the messengers who was about his own size coming down it. Except
for the two of them, the corridor was deserted. The messenger came on, Cully
strolled toward him. Then, as Cully stepped past the other, he wheeled and
brought the heel of his hand down on the messenger's neck. The messenger
slumped.
Cully bent swiftly over the unconscious body, knelt and got it up over his own
neck and shoulders in a fireman's lift. Then he went hastily down the
corridor, trying doors as he went. The first door that proved unlocked had
several clerks inside bending over a micrograph machine. They looked up with
annoyed expressions at the sight of his face, seen through a narrow crack in
the barely open door.
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