THEY WENT TO A LABORATORY. LOGA SAT DOWN BEFORE A COMputer and worked furiously. Within a short time, all the cameras in the tower were operating. Two seconds later, the screen before him glowed with a display.
Burton whistled.
“Frato Fenikso! Hermann Goring!”
He was at a table eating a meal made by a grail-box. From his extreme thinness and the great black marks under his hollow eyes, he needed more than one meal.
“I can’t see how he caught up with us so quickly,” Loga said.
“The computer reports seeing no one else, but they may be out of camera range just now. And if they’re agents, one might have the codeword. Monat could’ve passed it on to them in The Valley.”
“Why don’t we ask Goring?” Burton said.
“Of course. First, though, I’ll ask the computer where he is.”
Loga read the instructions, and they got into their chairs and flew out of the room. Ten minutes later, they were outside the laboratory down the corridor from Loga’s hideaway. They set their chairs down softly and entered on foot. Though Goring was not armed, they couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t find others with him by now.
Burton bellowed, “Achtung!”
He laughed loudly when Goring jumped up, food spewing from his mouth, arms flying, the chair falling backward. Gray and trembling, he whirled around, his eyes wide. He seemed to be trying to say something, and then his face reddened, and he clutched his throat.
“My God! He’s choking!” Alice said.
Goring was blue and on his knees by the time Burton hit him on the back and made him expel the food caught in his throat.
Alice said, “That wasn’t at all funny, Richard. Quit laughing. You might’ve killed him.”
Burton wiped the tears away and said, “I’m sorry, Goring. I guess I just wanted to pay you back for some of the things you’d done to me.”
Goring gulped at the glass of water handed him by Aphra Behn.
“Yes, I suppose I can’t blame you.”
“You look near-starved,” Nur said. “You shouldn’t be eating so fast. Too much food too soon after a long starvation can kill you.”
“I’m not that starved. But I seem to have lost my appetite.”
He looked around. “Where are the others?”
“Dead.”
“May God take pity on their souls.”
“He hasn’t and won’t unless we do something fast.”
“Goring!” Loga said sharply. “Did you come alone?”
Goring looked at him strangely. “Yes.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About an hour.”
“Were there any others close behind you when you were in the mountains?”
“No. At least, I saw no one.”
“How did you get here so fast?”
Goring and other Virolanders had dived into the hold of the Not For Hire before it slipped over the shelf into the abyss. They had brought up some sections of the batacitor and rebolted them together in a wooden sailboat. They had also brought up two small electric motors, a spare propeller of the smaller launch, the Gascon, and other parts. They’d worked fast, and four left in the reconverted boat two weeks after the Post No Bills had departed.
Unlike Burton’s group, they’d not taken days off for rest or recreation.
“Where are your companions?” Loga said, though he’d probably guessed their fate.
“Two quit early and went back. I went on with my wife, but she slipped and fell down the face of a mountain.”
He made the circular sign, the blessing, used so much by the Chancers.
“You should sit down,” Burton said kindly. “We have much to tell you.”
When he’d heard Loga and Burton tell what had happened, Goring looked horrified.
“All those wathans! And my wife’s among them?”
“Yes, and now we don’t know what to do. Kill the computer so that no more wathans may be caught. Or hope that we can think of some way to countermand its prime command.”
Hermann said, “No. There’s a third choice.”
“What?”
“Let me try to get the module in.”
“Are you crazy?”
“No. I have a debt to pay.”
Burton thought of his recurring dream of God.
“You owe for the flesh. Pay up.”
“If you die, your wathan will be doomed.”
“Perhaps not,” Hermann said quietly. “I may be ready to Go On. I don’t know that I am. God knows that I am far from a saint. But if I can save all those souls... wathans... then I will have made complete recompense.”
No one argued with him.
“Very well,” Loga said. “You are the most courageous person I’ve ever met. I think you clearly understand that you may have very little chance to succeed. But here’s what we’re going to do.”
Burton was very sorry that he had played his little joke on the German. The man was risking his soul, would face the equivalent of damnation, if he failed. Loga was right. Goring was the bravest man he’d ever known. He may not have been once, but he was now.
Loga decided that they should return to the top level to be near their apartments. On the way, they stopped at a floor where Goring could see the caged wathans.
He gazed at the glowing, contracting-expanding swirling darting things for a few minutes, then turned away.
“The most beautiful, the most awe-inspiring, the most hideous.”
He made the circular sign again, though Burton thought that this was more than a blessing. He caught intimations of a prayer for salvation and for stiffening of his determination.
When they got to the control room, the Ethical immediately set about working at the console on the revolving platform. After five minutes, he sent Goring into a cabinet. There his measurements were made by beams. Loga put more data into the computer, finishing in an hour.
He waited for a few seconds before punching another button. He left the platform and limped to a large energy-matter converter. The others crowding behind him, he opened its door. The parts of a suit of armor were on the floor. Loga picked them up and threw them to those outside the cabinet. They put these on Goring and, when they were done, he looked more like a robot than an armored knight. The addition of the backpack, his air supply, made him resemble an astronaut.
Except for the narrow but long window in the front of the globular helmet, the suit was made of the gray metal. Though thick, it weighed only nine pounds.
“The window isn’t as resistant as the metal,” Loga said. “And the beams will cut entirely through the metal if they’re applied to one spot for more than ten seconds. So keep moving.”
Goring tested the flexibility of the shoulder, wrist, finger, knee, and ankle joints. They gave him as much mobility as he’d need. He ran back and forth and leaped forward and sidewise and backward. Then he practiced with the beamer until he knew its full capabilities. His armor removed, he ate again. After Hermann had gone to an apartment to sleep, Loga took a chair off to a floor below sea level. He returned in an hour in a two-man research submarine which floated in the air.
“I didn’t think of this until a couple of hours ago. This will help him get through the initial defenses. But he’ll have to go on foot after that. The entrances won’t be wide enough to admit the vessel.”
During his absence, the others had been busy attaching beamers to the sides of the coffin-shaped clean-up robots and drilling the holes needed for passage of cables. Loga installed video equipment and trigger mechanisms. Then he programmed navigational boxes and installed them.
Burton went to wake up the German but found him on his knees praying by the bedside.
“You should’ve slept,” Burton said.
“I used my time for something better.”
They went back to the control room where Hermann ate a light meal before learning the route and the operation of the submarine. Loga showed him how to remove the old module and insert the new. The latter was a piece of the gray metal the size and shape of a playing card. Though it contained very complex circuits, its surface was smooth. One corner was nicked with a V, indicating that that end was to be inserted into the recess of the assembly. The code number was in bas-relief, and the card was to be put in with the code-side up.
“What could go wrong with a module like that?” Frigate said.
“Nothing,” Loga said. “If it’s inserted properly. I suspect human error. If the card was put in upside down, the circuits would operate properly. But every time there was a voltage surge, one of the circuits would be slightly damaged. There aren’t many surges, but over a long period of time the damage would be cumulative. The error would have been noticed long ago—if the technicians hadn’t been dead.”
He put the card inside a metal cube and attached it to a leg-piece of armor just above the knee.
“All he has to do is press the inset button in the cube, and the magnetism will be canceled. The cube is thick enough to withstand many shots from the beamers.”
All of Goring’s armor was put on him except the globular helmet. Loga poured out the yellow wine into exquisite goblets brought from his apartment. He lifted his high and said, “To your success, Hermann Goring. May the Creator be with you.”
“With all of us,” Hermann said.
They drank, and the helmet was secured. Goring climbed up a short ladder into the top of the submarine and got himself with some difficulty into the hatch. Loga went up and, looking down into the hatchway, repeated the operation instructions. Then he closed the hatch.
Loga, as chief of operations, took the chair in the revolving platform. The others seated themselves before control consoles and began the adjustments taught them by the Ethical.
The first of the armed coffin-shapes lifted and headed toward the doorway. That was Burton’s. Behind it came Alice’s, then the others. They single-filed through the exit and turned right.
When all were out, the submarine rose from the floor and followed the robots.
The descent to the floor just below sea level took him fifteen minutes. He halted his robot before a closed door above which were letters in alto-relief. Burton activated the beamers, and presently the door was cut on one side from its top to the bottom. He moved his robot over and melted through another section. Then he rammed the machine into the middle, and the cut section fell backward.
Burton saw a gigantic room filled with equipment. He shot his machine toward a closed doorway in the opposite wall. Before it got there, sections of the wall slid back, and the sphere ends of beamers moved out. Scarlet lines spat from them.
Burton moved the controls on the panel so that his robot angled upward to the right. He held it then and pressed the trigger-activation button. Scarlet lines streamed out along the edges of the screen, and he had the satisfaction of seeing a globe explode. Fragments flew against the screen but did no damage.
A few seconds later, the screen went blank.
One of the .computer’s weapons had destroyed the camera on top of the robot.
Burton cursed, and he cut off the beamers. There was nothing he could do except watch. He pressed the button that would tie his computer in with one of Loga’s cameras. Instantly, he could see from a camera on the wall above the doorway the robots had entered. His robot hovered ten feet above the floor, its front end pointed up at the beamers on the other wall. The robots were in a semicircle so that they wouldn’t get hit by their companions.
The last beamers in the room blew up, shifting the view from one camera to the next as one room after another was conquered. Alice’s robot was melted down. De Marbot’s camera was destroyed. Tai-Peng’s was pierced by three beams at once, and it fell as some vital part was melted.
The others went dead one by one until only the submarine was left. The dirigible-shaped craft took over then, cutting through two doors, its thick hull drilled into by the computer’s beamers.
The submarine came to a doorway wide enough to admit it but crossed by beams from ten weapons. Hermann shot his craft through it and came out into the next room with a small section of the stern cut off and many deep holes in the hull.
Ahead of him, at the opposite war), was another entrance. Here was where he would have to abandon his craft. He drove it at great speed, slowed it a few feet from the doorway, and, while scarlet lines melted holes in the hull, climbed out. Immediately, the beamers transferred to him.
Goring fell out onto the floor, shielded from half of the weapons by the vessel but the target of the others. He got up slowly and staggered through the door entrance. Ranks of beamers turned toward him and tracked him as he ran toward the other doorway leading to the valve room. Just before he got to it, a door slid out from a recess and blocked the entrance. Ignoring the beamers, he began cutting through the door. He made a small hole, and he removed the cube holding the card and threw it ahead of him. Then he crawled through the hole, his beamer in his hand.
Burton and the others could hear his heavy breathing.
A cry of agony.
“My leg!”
“You’re almost there!” Loga shouted.
Purplish vapors poured out through the hole.
“Poison gas,” Loga said.
The screen shifted the view to the valve room. This was large and on the right-hand wall (from Hermann) a down-curving metal tube came out of the wall about ten feet above the floor. Near it was a small metal box on a table from which thin cables ran to another box. The front of the box had recesses from which the ends of modules stuck out.
Goring crawled to the cube as at least a hundred beamers poured their ravening energy into his suit.
His voice came to the watchers.
“I can’t stand it. I’m going to faint.”
“Hang on, Goring!” Loga said. “A minute more, and you’ll have done it!”
They saw the bulky gray figure grab the cube, turn it over, and let the card module drop out. They saw Hermann pick it up and crawl toward the module box. They heard his scream and saw him fall forward. The module fell from his fingers at the foot of the table.
The scarlet lines continued their fire and did not stop until the armor was riddled with holes.
There was a long silence.
Burton heaved a deep sigh and turned his equipment off. The others did the same. Burton went up onto the platform and stood behind Loga. His screen was still alive, but now it showed a pulsing many-colored figure, a globe-shape with extending and withdrawing tentacles.
Loga was bent forward, his elbows on the edge of the panel, his hands against his face.
Burton said, “What’s that?”
He knew it was the picture of a wathan, but he didn’t know why it was on the screen.
Loga removed his hands and stared at the screen.
“I put a frequency tracker on Goring.”
“That’s he?”
“Yes.”
“Then he didn’t Go On?”
“No. He’s with the others.”
What do we do now?
That was the question of all.
Loga wanted to kill the computer before it captured more wathans, and then he would duplicate it at its predata stage. But he also hoped hopelessly that someone might think of something which would solve the problem before the wathans were released. He was mentally paralyzed and would evidently do nothing unless an impulse broke through and he pressed the fatal button.
The others were thinking hard. They put their speculations, their questions, into their computers. Always, there was some flaw in their schemes.
Burton went down several times to the floor below and stood or paced for hours while he gazed at the splendid spectacle of the swirling wathans. Were his parents among them? Ayesha? Isabel? Walter Scott, the nephew of Sir Walter Scott the author, and a great friend of his in India? Dr. Steinhaeuser? George Sala? Swinburne? His sister and brother? Speke? His grandfather Baker, who’d cheated him out of a fortune by dropping dead just before he could change his will? Bloody-minded and cruel King Gelele of Dahomey, who didn’t know that he was bloody-minded and cruel since he was only doing what his society required of him? Which was no acceptable excuse.
He went to bed exhausted and depressed. He had wished to talk to Alice, but she seemed withdrawn, foundering in her own thoughts. Now, though, she didn’t seem to be in a reverie which would remove her from painful or distasteful reality. She was obviously thinking about their dilemma.
Finally, Burton slipped away. He awoke after six hours, if his watch was correct. Alice was standing over him in the” dim light.
“What’s the matter?” he said drowsily.
“Nothing. I hope. I just came back from the control room.”
“What were you doing there?”
Alice lay down beside him.
“I just couldn’t get to sleep. I kept thinking about this and that, my thoughts were as numerous as the wathans. I tried to keep my mind on the computer, but a thousand things pushed them aside, occupied me for a brief time, then slid away to be replaced by something else. I must’ve reviewed my whole life, here and on Earth.
“I remember thinking about Mr. Dodgson before I finally did sleep. I dreamed a lot, all sorts of dreams, a few good ones, some terrible. Didn’t you hear me screaming once?”
“No.”
“You must have been sleeping like the dead. I awoke shaking and perspiring, but I couldn’t remember what it was that’d horrified me so.”
“It isn’t difficult to imagine what it was.”
Alice had gotten up to get a drink of water. On returning to the bed, she again had trouble getting to sleep. Among other things, she thought of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the pleasures from knowing him and from his two books inspired by her. Because she’d reread them many times, she had no trouble visualizing the text and Tenniel’s illustrations.
“The first scene that came to me was the Mad Tea-Party.”
Seated at the table were the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. Uninvited, Alice sat down with them, and, after some insane conversation, the March Hare asked her to have some wine.
Alice looked all around the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.
“Actually,” Alice said to Burton, “that wasn’t true. There was also milk and bread and butter.”
The book-Alice said, “I don’t see any wine.”
“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.
Later there was a silence while Alice was trying to solve the riddle of why a raven was like a writing desk. The silence was broken when the Hatter turned to Alice and asked her what day of the month it was. He’d taken his watch out of his pocket and had been looking uneasily at it, shaking it and holding it to his ear.
Alice considered a little and then said, “The fourth.”
The real Alice said to Burton, “Mr. Dodgson wrote that date because it was May in the book and the fourth of May was my birthday.”
The Hatter sighed and said, “Two days wrong! I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works!”
“It was the best butter,” the March Hare meekly responded.
Burton got out of bed and began pacing back and forth.
“Must you go into such detail, Alice?”
“Yes. It’s important.”
The next scene she visualized, or empathized, since she became the seven-year-old Alice of the book, was from the Wool and Water chapter of Through the Looking-Glass. She was talking to the White Queen and the Red Queen.
“Can you keep from crying by considering things?” she (Alice) asked.
“That’s the way it’s done,” the White Queen said with great decision. “Nobody can do two things at once, you know.”
“Alice!” Burton said. “What’s all this nonsense leading to?”
“It’s not nonsense. Listen.”
In her reverie, Alice leaped from the White Queen to Humpty Dumpty.
“Perhaps because Loga is so fat that he reminds me of Humpty Dumpty.”
She, the book-Alice, was talking to the huge anthropomorphized egg sitting on a wall. They were discussing the meaning of words.
“When 7 use a word,” Humpty-Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Then the real Alice—But is she any more real than that other Alice? Burton wondered—flashed to the scene where the Red Queen asked her if she could do Subtraction.
“Take nine from eight,” the Red Queen said.
“Nine from eight. I can’t, you know,” Alice replied very readily. “But—“
“She can’t do Subtraction,” said the White Queen to the Red Queen. She spoke to Alice. “Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife—what’s the answer to that?”
“Were there any more?” Burton said.
“No. I didn’t think they meant much. They were just memories of some of my favorite sections.”
She’d slept again. And then she awoke suddenly, her eyes wide. She’d thought she’d heard someone far off calling her. “Just over the horizon of my mind.”
It sounded like Mr. Dodgson, but she wasn’t sure.
She was wide awake, her heart pounding fast. She got out of bed and walked to the control room.
“Why?”
“It occurred to me that there were three key phrases in the scene. The best butter. Which is to be master? Can you do Division?”
Burton sighed. “Very well, Alice. Tell it as you must.”
She had seated herself in Loga’s chair and made the adjustments necessary to communicate directly with the computer.
“You realize that you’re going to die in two days or less?” she said.
“Yes. That’s redundant information. I didn’t need to be informed.”
“You were ordered by Monat not to resurrect anyone until he gave you the countercommand. What form does tbe countercommand take?”
Burton interrupted her. “Loga asked him that.”
“Yes, I know. But I didn’t think it’d hurt to try again.”
“And the reply?”
As before, it had been silence.
Alice had then told it that there was an even higher command, and this had been given to it by Monat before the second order.
“What is that?” flashed on the screen. “I’ve been given many orders.”
“The prime directive, the most essential, is to catch the wathans and reattach them to the duplicated bodies. That is what the project is all about. If Monat could have foreseen what his order would result in, he’d not have given it.”
The computer said nothing.
Alice said, “Put me into communication with the section which Loga was using. That part of which Loga was the master.”
Evidently, the computer had no orders to refuse communication with that part. Until Alice, no one had even thought about that possibility.
“My God!” Burton said. And then, “What happened?”
“I told it that it was going to die. It said that it knew it. In effect, so what? So I used my argument for the dominant part of it.”
She followed that up with an order that it regain its former state, that it be independent.
“The dominant part did nothing during this time?”
“Nothing. Why should it? As Loga’s said, it’s a brilliant idiot.”
“What happened then?”
“I told the dominant that it was its duty to resurrect Monat and confirm or invalidate the order not to resurrect anybody until it got the codeword or whatever it is.”
“Then?”
“The screen went blank. I tried again and again to get it to respond.”
The eagerness on Burton’s face died away.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“But why would it cut off communication? Its duty is to communicate.”
“I hope,” Alice said slowly, “that it’s evidence of an internal struggle. That the dominated part is struggling with the dominant.”
“That’s nonsense!” Burton cried. “If what I’ve learned about computers is true, it couldn’t happen.”
“You forget that this is, in one sense, not a computer. Not the conventional kind, anyway. It’s made of protein, and it’s as complex as the human brain.”
“We’ll have to rouse Loga,” Burton said. “I suppose it’ll be for nothing, but he’s the only one who can handle this.”
The Ethical came from his sleep fully awake. He heard Alice out without any questions, then said, “There would be no struggle. Monat’s order would have gone to the dominated part as well as the other.”
“That depends upon when the order was given,” she said. “If the circuits for domination were put in afterward, then the dominated part wouldn’t have received them.”
“But the dominant would have transmitted them to the schizophrenic part.”
“Perhaps not!” Alice said.
“If it did happen, and I don’t think there’s the slightest chance it will, then Monat would be resurrected.”
“But I gave that order to the dominant.”
Loga quit frowning.
“Good! Still, if that’s the only way to save the wathans, then it should happen. Even if...”
He didn’t want to say what would happen to him.
They had breakfast in the dining hall except for Loga, who ate while in the control chair. Despite his efforts, he could get no direct response from the computer. One of his screens showed the enclosure of the wathans.
“When it becomes empty, we’ll know that they’re... lost.”
He looked at another screen.
“Two more have just been caught. No. Three now.”
While they were breakfasting in gloom, broken only now and then by halfhearted comments, Frigate said, “We do have something important to talk about.”
They looked at him but said nothing.
“What’s going to happen to us after the computer dies? Loga won’t consider us ethically advanced enough to let us stay here. In his opinion, we won’t be capable of running this operation. I think he’s right, except possibly for Nur. If Nur could get through the entrance on top of the tower, he’d be allowed to stay.”
The Moor said, “I’ve been through it.”
They stared at him.
“When?” Frigate said.
“Last night. I decided that if I could get all the way out, I could get all the way back in. I succeeded, though it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t stroll through as a full-fledged Ethical would.”
Burton growled, “That’s fine for you. I apologize for what I said about all Sufis being charlatans. But what about the rest of us? Suppose we don’t want to go back to The Valley? And if we do, then we’ll tell people the truth. Not that everybody will believe us. There are still Christians and Moslems and so forth who’ve refused to abandon their religion. Also, I imagine there’ll be many Chancers who’ll cling to their tenets.”
“That’s their problem,” Nur said. “However, I don’t wish to stay here. I’ll go back to The Valley willingly. I have work to do there. I must work until I Go On.”
“That doesn’t mean that you’ll be gathered to the bosom of the Creator,” Burton said. “Scientifically, all Going On means is that you will no longer be detectable by their scientists’ instruments.”
“As Allah wills it, so be it,” Nur said.
Burton considered the prospect of staying here. He would have such power as nobody on Earth had ever had and few on the Riverworld.
To gain it, though, he would have to remove Loga. Kill him or imprison him. Would the others collaborate with him? If they didn’t, he’d have to get them out of the way. He could resurrect them in The Valley, where they were going anyway. But he would be lonely. Alice wouldn’t go along with him. No, he’d not be lonely. He could resurrect in the tower all sorts of agreeable companions, men and women.
He shuddered. The temptation had passed through him like a nightmare. He didn’t want that sort of power, and he would forever feel he was a traitor if he did have it. Besides, it was evident that he couldn’t be entrusted with ,it.
But what about Loga? Wasn’t he a traitor?
Yes. In a sense. Burton, however, agreed with him that the candidates in The Valley should be given more, much more, time than the other Ethicals had planned. He himself, he felt, would need that extension.
He looked at the faces around the table. Were there thoughts such as his behind those dour expressions? Was one or more than one struggling with temptation?
He’d have to watch them. Make sure that they didn’t try anything reprehensible.
He drank some of the yellow wine and said, “Is everybody agreeable to returning to The Valley? A show of hands, please.”
Everybody raised their hands except Tom Turpin. They looked hard at him. Grinning, he raised his hand.
“I was thinking of all the good times I could have here. But I don’t want to stay. Man, I couldn’t handle it. Only... I wonder if Loga’d let me take a piano with me.”
Alice burst into tears. “All those souls! I thought that I had an answer but...”
A screen on the wall glowed, and Loga’s smiling face appeared.
“Come here!” he shouted. He laughed. “Come here!” He laughed again. “The dominant has just succumbed, and I’ve just gotten a message from the other! Alice, you were right! Oh, how you were right!”
They ran into the control room and gathered around the Ethical. There was the display on the screen, glowing with the most recent communication.
Then they cheered and whooped and flung their arms about each other and got off the platform and danced.
After a while, Loga shouted for attention.
“Remember, it’s still dying! But it’s given me permission to replace the module! I have to leave at once!”
It would be sadly ironic, thought Burton, if the computer died before Loga could get to it.
Ten minutes later, as they were waiting for his call in the dining hall, he appeared grinning on a screen.
“It’s done! It’s done! I’ve already given the order to start the resurrection again!”
They cheered and cried and embraced again. Turpin sat down at the piano and played the “St. Louis Rag.”
“It’s been a long, long River, but we made it to the end!” Alice shrieked. Her big dark eyes seemed to glow like a video screen, Tier whole being radiated joy. She had never looked more beautiful.
“Yes,” Burton said. He kissed her several times. “We’ll have to go back to The River, but that doesn’t matter.”
How strange and unforeseeable! The world had been saved, not by great rulers and statesmen, not by mystics and saints and prophets and messiahs, not by any of the holy scriptures, but by an introverted eccentric writer of mathematical texts and children’s books and by the child who’d inspired him.
The little girl become a woman, dream-ridden Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiraling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and the world.
While thinking this, Burton happened to look toward the door. Frigate had been whirling around and around and babbling nonsense all the way to the door. Now he was walking back from it and frowning.
Burton left Alice to go to him.
“Is something the matter?”
Frigate quit frowning and grinned.
“No. I thought I heard footsteps in the corridor. But I looked, and there was no one there. Imagination, I guess.”