i e4a5a8edf2d8eda0 by Unknown Page A

to the open
    door and the emergency hatch, the readjusting weight made the elevator groan ominously
    again.
    Showing no sign of fear, Gray accepted Jommy’s assistance to climb out, leaving the young
    man trapped in the elevator with the slan hunter. Anxious not to be last, Petty lurched toward
    the door. He was sure they meant to abandon him—and with good reason. Petty could shield
    his thoughts well enough, but even so Jommy sensed the building panic in the secret police
    chief.
    As Petty stepped across the floor, the elevator gave a sickening lurch and dropped eighteen
    inches. The man froze, terrified, refusing to take another step.
    Jommy stared at him. “Are we going to just look at each other until the elevator falls to the
    bottom, or do you intend to move and get out of here?”
    Petty didn’t need to be encouraged again. When Jommy offered him a hand, the other man
    refused. “I don’t need help from one of your kind.” He reached up for the bottom of the
    emergency hatch in the shaft wall, which was now more difficult to reach. From the safety of
    the hall, Kier Gray looked down at the man who had overthrown him. A simple slip, a nudge
    at just the right moment, and the slan hunter would fall to his death.
    Nevertheless, Gray grabbed his rival’s arm and hauled him up.
    Now mostly empty, the elevator creaked, began to work itself loose from the tracks.
    “Jommy, hurry!” Kathleen reached down beside her father, both of them trying to grab him,
    stretching out their hands.
    The binding metal began to slip, grinding away the twisted track. With only a second left,
    Jommy tensed and sprang upward. His leap carried him at least two feet higher than a normal
    man could have jumped, and he hooked his elbows inside the emergency hatch. Gray and
    Kathleen seized his shoulders, his shirt, and pulled him into the hall. Jommy squirmed out of
    the shaft and pulled himself into the corridor just as the elevator jarred loose. When the last
    obstruction broke away, the elevator plummeted in a wail of sparks and grinding gears, falling
    down into the depths.
    Panting, Jommy recovered and got to his feet. He glanced up. Petty was just standing there,
    arms crossed, watching, then the slan hunter turned around and began marching down the
    hall, as if nothing unusual had happened. “Well, now where do we go?”
    Jommy studied a numbered plate on the wall to determine where they were. “We still have
    to go down seven levels.” The President again used his ID to provide access to a restricted
    stairwell, and they hurried down the metal steps, one flight after another.
    Petty continued to find reasons to question. “If you’re an outsider, Cross, how is it that you
    found a secure passage to get into the palace? Even my secret police weren’t aware of hidden
    tunnels down here.”
    “The slans built them long ago. I received information, partly from old records, partly from
    certain telepathic broadcasts in the palace specifically attuned for someone able to hear them.
    Someone with tendrils, I mean.”
    He opened the door at the appropriate level. The hall looked like any other, but inside his
    head he could detect the thin, dull tone, a guiding beacon his slan senses could pick up.
    Kathleen looked at him, amazed. “I can hear it.”
    Gray nodded. “I was aware of these, but I didn’t investigate because I feared being
    observed. I couldn’t let anyone—especially Petty—know what was down here.”
    “Just like you kept a full space navy secret from me?” Petty snorted. “I still should have
    kept a better eye on you, and on Jem Lorry.”
    “Lorry isn’t one of us,” Gray insisted.
    “Seems like he did a good job sabotaging the Earth space ships, from what we saw on the
    battle screens.”
    Not knowing what trials they might face once they worked their way into the besieged city
    itself, Jommy wished he still had his father’s disintegrator weapon. That invention would
    provide options they wouldn’t