Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

to the Chief of Police and place him under your orders. Tell the Commandant to arm all cadets available and await orders. Move!”
    “Yes, sir. Shall I recall technicians off watch?”
    “No. This isn’t an engineering failure. Take a look at your readings; that entire sector went out simultaneously—Somebody cut out those rotors by hand. Place off-watch technicians on standby status—but don’t arm them, and don’t send them down inside. Tell the Commandant to rush all available senior-class cadets to Stockton Subsector Office number ten to report to me. I want them equipped with tumblebugs, pistols, and sleepy bombs.”
    “Yes, sir.” A clerk leaned over Davidson’s shoulder and said something in his ear. “The Governor wants to talk to you, Chief.”
    “Can’t do it—nor can you. Who’s your relief? Have you sent for him?”
    “Hubbard—he’s just come in.”
    “Have him talk to the Governor, the Mayor, the press—anybody that calls—even the White House. You stick to your watch. I’m cutting off. I’ll be back in communication as quickly as I can locate a reconnaissance car.” He was out of the booth almost before the screen cleared.
    Blekinsop did not venture to speak, but followed him out to the northbound twenty-mile strip. There Gaines stopped, short of the wind break, turned, and kept his eyes on the wall beyond the stationary walkway. He picked out some landmark, or sign—not apparent to his companion—and did an Eliza-crossing-the-ice back to the walkway, so rapidly that Blekinsop was carried some hundred feet beyond him, and almost failed to follow when Gaines ducked into a doorway and ran down a flight of stairs.
    They came out on a narrow lower walkway, ‘down inside.’ The pervading din claimed them, beat upon their bodies as well as their ears. Dimly, Blekinsop perceived their surroundings, as he struggled to face that wall of sound. Facing him, illuminated by the yellow monochrome of a sodium arc, was one of the rotors that drove the five-mile strip, its great, drum-shaped armature revolving slowly around the stationary field coils in its core. The upper surface of the drum pressed against the underside of the moving way and imparted to it its stately progress.
    To the left and right, a hundred yards each way, and beyond at similar intervals, farther than he could see, were other rotors. Bridging the gaps between the rotors were the slender rollers, crowded together like cigars in a box, in order that the strip might have a continuous rolling support. The rollers were supported by steel girder arches through the gaps of which he saw row after row of rotors in staggered succession, the rotors in each succeeding row turning over more rapidly than the last.
    Separated from the narrow walkway by a line of supporting steel pillars, and lying parallel to it on the side away from the rotors, ran a shallow paved causeway, joined to the walk at this point by a ramp. Gaines peered up and down this tunnel in evident annoyance. Blekinsop started to ask him what troubled him, but found his voice muffled out by the sound. He could not cut through the roar of thousands of rotors and the whine of hundreds of thousands of rollers.
    Gaines saw his lips move and guessed at the question. He cupped his hands around Blekinsop’s right ear, and shouted, “No car—I expected to find a car here.”
    The Australian, wishing to be helpful, grasped Gaines’s arm and pointed back into the jungle of machinery. Gaines’s eye followed the direction indicated and picked out something that he had missed in his preoccupation—a half-dozen men working around a rotor several strips away. They had jacked down a rotor until it was no longer in contact with the road surface and were preparing to replace it in toto . The replacement rotor was standing by on a low, heavy truck.
    The Chief Engineer gave a quick smile of acknowledgement and thanks and aimed his flashlight at the group, the beam focused down to a