
As an afterthought, he touched the disconnect stud, so that the gyro would not fight the props. He did
not expect to use this car again soon, if ever; someone else could align the gyro properly when the time
came. Tonight it would rotate with the motion of the planet, unconnected to the chassis.
He got the girl's feet covered and walked her down the street—more properly, hallway. One parking lot
connected to the next, under the city buildings, so that it was possible to travel quite a distance without
coming up for air. If one cared to keep under the twelve mph limit, at any rate. The timing machines
reacted in a hurry against speeders.
She was coming out of it, but her responses were those of an automaton; her mind was still under. He
kept a good hold on her arm, in case she was pretending. Susceptibility differed.
His hotel presented no problem. It catered largely to Vicinc habituees, and would not pry into the affairs
of clients. Vicinc:Vice, Incorporated, now legitimate business. Once industry had gained the right to
police itself, vice had not been far behind. (That wasn't quite the way his schooltexts had put it, however.)
Anything at all was legal, so long as all parties concerned were willing and of age. Willing, anyway. Since
the victims were generally presumed to beun willing in cases of robbery and murder and, rarely, rape,
crime as a legal concept still existed; but Vicinc had mushroomed into the world's most prosperous
enterprise.
A Vicinc contact had provided Jeff with the devices he required to neutralize the McKissic estate
defenses, as well as the map and house layout. The merchandise had been good—excellent, in fact. He
had not been cheated there. Now he wondered: had Vicinc also sold its services to the other party? That
would have been good business—and a timely warning for McKissic. Yes, that must have been the way
of it; it explained everything. The warning to Jeff Font was even more timely. He would work alone
henceforth.
The girl was coming alert. Sleepnol usually freed the physical resources before the mental ones—a fact
every man knew well and most women purported not to know. He had to get her to his private cell
before she made a scene.
He marched her into the archaic elevator and punched for the tenth floor. The battered doors closed; the
intermittent light came on, and the lift shuddered tediously upward.
Jeff studied the girl closely for the first time. Her blue eyes flickered at him, not coquettishly, and her
close-cropped blonde head nodded. Now, given time to grasp the whole of it, he was appalled.
He had planned to kidnap Pamela McKissic—but not to harm her. He had hoped to persuade her of the
justice of his cause, so that she would remain with him willingly—and thus technically exonerate him of
any crime. Without her he had nothing. McKissic was too powerful to be brought down by ordinary
means.
Instead, he had a stranger. She had worn a black wig, and in the haste and dark he had never seen it fall
away. Probably the house defenses had been turned off, because there was nothing for him to steal. No
wonder it had seemed so easy!
He scrutinized her face. Yes, she was older than Pamela would be. This woman was pretty, and more
than pretty; she could have done well enough at Vicinc—as perhaps she had. Perhaps she had been
supplied, a physical double to Pamela, to bait the trap....
The elevator jerked to a halt. He led her out, hoping that no one would see them. It was not that there
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