Hansen paused a half second after the elevator door purred open. The air was muggy—warmer than expected in the climate-controlled keep, and very humid.
He stepped into the corridor. It was empty, as usual.
"Wait," Third ordered.
Hansen's feet held in place as though tack-welded to the dull blue carpet. His mind was balanced on a glass spike, tilting at the weight of a thought and prepared to free-fall if the support shattered. Hansen's head continued to swivel as he absorbed sensory cues.
All the hard surfaces within Keep Starnes vibrated to a single frequency, as though they were parts of a living cell. The residents must grow used to it; Hansen, coming from outside with his senses stropped to a fine edge on adrenaline, was constantly aware of the greasy quiver.
Air moved up from the floor vents and down again through intakes offset in the ceiling. The ventilation system was working normally, so the raised humidity didn't result from a malfunction there.
Hansen wasn't about to believe in a normal glitch in the keep's infrastructure anyway. Not now.
There wasn't a soul walking the halls. A child's ball lay near the edge of the carpet, abandoned in the owner's haste to get under cover.
"She is raising the humidity to provide a proper ground," Third said with obvious satisfaction. "The door at the end of the corridor is connected to a high-amperage four-kilovolt line."
Hansen sauntered forward. The rotunda and the elevators that served the Citadel were on the other side of that door. "Suggestions?" he asked.
"She expects me to enter the control system through the switchplate at the end of the corridor," the artificial intelligence replied. "It is electrified also. Bring that toy ball close to me."
Hansen obeyed without comment. The ball was hollow plastic and the size of a grapefruit. Swirls of pale green and pale blue patterned its surface. The toy was the first sign of frivolity he had seen within the arid corridors of Keep Starnes.
"She?" he asked.
A crystalline blade, as narrow as a hair, extended from the jewel over Hansen's forehead. Its tip probed the ball. "Her name is Lena," Third said. The mental voice lacked any of the overtones which would have suggested interest. "She is a daughter of Count Starnes."
The helmet offered at the corner of Hansen's view the hologram image of a woman. Lena did not so much look fat as she appeared to be a sea creature, rolling on a self-shaping couch which supplied the support of a fluid medium.
The blade finished its operations. The ball was slit two-thirds of the way around its circumference. The halves flopped loosely, though they were still joined.
Hansen suddenly laughed. "Are you a weapon, Third?" he asked. "Did I cheat the terms Count Starnes set?"
"Is your brain a weapon, Commissioner Hansen?" the artificial intelligence responded tartly.
"On a good day, Third," Hansen said. "On a good day."
He bent down and added, "Help me get this floor vent loose. It's graphite. It'll conduct just fine."
Hansen tugged against the louvers to stress the patches of hardened adhesive which attached the vent to the ducting. The command helmet extended a probe to touch the composite material, then fed in pulses of high-amplitude ultrasound. As the harmonics reached critical frequency, the adhesive vibrated into dust motes. The tacks failed one after another.
Hansen lifted the grate. It was rectangular, a meter by twenty centimeters. Long enough to reach from the door to the switchplate, and massive enough to carry the current for at least a time.
Hansen shifted so that he held the grating with his right hand alone. He gripped the graphite composite between insulating layers of the sectioned ball.
With that much current connected to the switchplate, Third couldn't use it for access to the door controls. The AI hadn't explained its plan to Hansen; but as Hansen had said, on a good day, and this was a day that had waited too long.
Using the ball as an insulating mitt, Hansen extended one corner of the grating so that it touched the metal-faced blast door. The fat blue spark and pop! made Hansen jump even though he knew to expect it. He swung forward to bring the far corner of the meter-long plate in contact with the switchplate on the corridor wall.
Electricity roared like the sky tearing open.
Hansen stepped back. His hair stood on end.
The grating remained in place. Current had welded the ends into the structure of the door and wall. The remains of the plastic ball stuck to the louvers, melted there by resistance-generated heat in the first fraction of a second. The graphite fibers glowed white, and the epoxy which they stiffened sublimed off in the black curls.
There was a bang from inside the heavy door. A rectangle of foul-smelling smoke spurted from around the panel. It mushroomed upward.
The snarl of electricity died as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown—as, in a manner of speaking, one had. The enormous wattage had burned through its conductor in a fashion that neither Third nor Starnes' daughter could bridge.
A yellow-orange ball about the size of a man's head sprang from the switchplate. It rolled down the center of the corridor, hissing and emitting faint blue sparks. After a few seconds, the ball turned 90° and vanished through a closed door.
Hansen let his breath out. The circulation system was running at full capacity, but the hall was gray with bitter smoke.
"You'll have to slide the door open manually, Commissioner Hansen," Third said.
Hansen gripped the handle and braced himself. "Don't s'pose you've welded it shut, do you?" he muttered.
"I do not. Anyway, we could go around."
Hansen straightened the leg he had braced against the corridor wall. The blast door moved suddenly. Only inertia had held it in place. The grate, burned to ash and hairs of graphite, fell to the carpet when its corner broke free of the door.
A gush of air from the rotunda—scrubbed and textured by machines, but fresh as a sea breeze compared to the throbbing hallway behind—massaged Hansen's lungs. His legs felt suddenly weak.
"Have you had enough of this gaming, Commissioner?" Third asked coolly.
Hansen leaned against the wall of the rotunda. A stench of ozone and superheated polymers drifted from the corridor. He hadn't had enough ambition to slide the blast door shut behind him.
He walked toward the elevators in the center of the circular room. Every step away from the poisoned atmosphere brightened his mood and strengthened him.
"Yeah," Hansen said. "End it now."
He didn't have to be told the drill. He knelt with his head close to the elevator call-pad. His eyes roved around the empty room.
There was nothing to see. The carpet had been replaced in sections, leaving some patches brighter than others. The walls' luster had dimmed from ages of use and washing.
Above Hansen's eyes, limbs extended from the gray jewel and passed signals into the controls of Keep Starnes.
The elevator cage opened. "Time to go, Commissioner Hansen," the command helmet said.
Hansen got into the cage. "What did you do?" he asked as the elevator began its long drop to the Citadel.
"What you said to do, Kommissar," replied Third. "Precisely what you said."
The display above Lena's couch showed the ball lightning trundling away from the intruder before disappearing into a residential suite. Hansen entered the rotunda, paused for a moment, and then strolled toward the elevators.
"How did he make the fire go down the hallway?" Plaid asked, staring at his memory of the Kugelblitz.
"Shut up!" Lena snarled as she stabbed at the manual controls. "If anyone says another word, I'll kill him!"
Count Starnes opened his mouth, then closed it. He walked toward the tank that fitted his powerful body like a glove. With its mass between him and his daughter, Starnes said, "I'm going to get ready. Karring, see to it that you're ready also."
The chief engineer nodded without taking his eyes off the display before him.
The intruder's image bent down beside the elevators. "Fine, that's fine . . . ," Lena hissed. "I'll let him get halfway, and then we'll see how well he eats his way through—"
The display above her console went fluorescent white and vanished. A blue aura played over all the workstation's conductive surfaces. Lena and her two lovers froze in the postures they occupied when the current gripped them. The woman's mouth was open to scream, but her paralyzed diaphragm couldn't force the sound out.
Components within the console banged loudly as they failed one after the other. A panel blew open but stuck midway when its hinges welded. Rapid puffs of smoke poured out of the console's interior.
Plaid fell sideways onto the concrete floor of the rotunda. His legs from the knees down remained stuck to the console's metal floor. They had burned to matchsticks of carbon. Voightman's body twisted in on itself. No human features remained. He looked like an outcrop of coal.
Count Starnes and Karring watched with amazement that was too shocked for horror.
"APEX is protected . . . ," the chief engineer repeated to himself in a whisper.
The current roaring through Lena's workstation cut off abruptly, but smoke continued to stream through the seams and connectors.
The grease fire on Lena's couch continued to burn as well.