"The sealer!" cried Flick. "Come back here!"
But the man raced screaming straight on, tearing through the berthing apartments of the crew, still screaming!
PANDEMONIUM!
The crew began to yell. They were chasing the sealer, trying to get him to stop, shouting to head him off as he rounded turns.
Flick had vanished. Madison hastily climbed into his pants and raced toward the bedlam.
They had managed to cut the sealer off and herd him back and Madison was just in time to see two roustabouts jump on him.
The crew clustered wide-eyed.
The sealer continued to scream the word. He was writhing around, frothing with terror.
Madison yelled, "What's he saying?"
The horror-story writer, from the other side of the crowd, shouted at Madison through the tumult, "He's from the back country of Flisten, from his eye shape and long fingernails. They're like monkeys, those people."
"What's the word he's using?" shouted Madison.
"I don't speak Gnaop," the horror-story writer yelled back, "but I know that word. It means 'ghosts'!"
Madison imitated the syllables. They sounded like "slith-therg."He bent over and yelled it back at the sealer.
The small man repeated the word louder and pointed with a frantic hand toward the ceiling.
"Well, (bleep) him!" raged Flick. "He's gotten into the upper floors!"
"What does he mean, 'ghosts'?" shouted the director. He yelled down at the man on the floor, penetrating the din, "Where'd you see these ghosts?"
The Flisten man simply screamed louder and pointed harder upward.
The director promptly ran off down the hallway toward the first place the sealer had appeared.
The whole crowd went chasing after the director. Madison and Flick were left, trying to get the sealer to calm down and tell them more. He shortly began simply to sob and Madison and Flick looked up to see that the whole crew had run off. They could hear them clamoring down the hall and they sped in that direction.
They were just in time to see a woman on the tail end of the mob vanish up a ramp which led to the seventy-seventh floor.
"Come back!" screamed Flick. "You're cheating!"
He and Madison rushed up the ramp.
There was a clank right in front of their faces. They collided violently with what must be a sheet of bulletproof glass which had dropped as a barrier before them.
They could not get through.
From where they were hammering on the glass, they could see three corridors branching out. The crew was in there, split up into three mobs, racing along into the distance, looking into rooms and everywhere for ghosts!
Suddenly, the group in the right-hand corridor halted.
CHAOS!
They began to scream and retreat.
BLUEBOTTLES!
With raised stingers, a squad of police was charging straight at them!
"Oh, Gods, they were wise to us!" howled Flick. "Come back here. QUICK!"
The group in the middle hall suddenly blew apart and began to run.
SOLDIERS!
They were kneeling and firing at the criminals with deadly expressions! Flame slashed and roared in the hall.
The group in the left-hand hall heard the commotion. They turned around.
Too late!
ASSASSINS WITH ELECTRIC KNIVES WERE BEHIND THEM!
The group fled onward in total panic!
Madison and Flick looked anxiously back into the right-hand corridor.
IT WAS EMPTY!
They looked into the middle corridor.
NO SIGN OF THAT GROUP!
They looked into the left-hand corridor.
NOBODY THERE!
THE WHOLE CREW HAD VANISHED!
A wispy, filmy shape, a ghost indeed, drifted down toward the glass barricade and LAUGHED!
Oh, it was a horrible sound!
Madison and Flick fled.
In Flick's room, he and Madison looked at each other.
It was all quiet now.
They were scared stiff but that was not what dominated their thoughts.
THEY HAD LOST THEIR CREW!
Flick had managed to get his gasping under control. "Let me think. Where could they have gone? Ah, I have it! That watchman warned me there were traps. They've fallen into floor traps. I think the lights must have gone out or something because we didn't see anyone drop, but that is the only thing that it can be. The crew must be up there someplace in floor traps. We've got to go back up there."
"I haven't got a gun," said Madison.
"You got your bare hands," said Flick. "And they're deadly enough."
Madison knew he would have to think fast. He did. "What about that box the watchman had?" said Madison. "What did you do with it?"
"It's in the airbus."
"And where were all those directions they gave us, that big stack?"
"Yes," said Flick, coming out of it. "It should tell us where the traps are. Maybe the crew is locked in somewhere."
In short order they had the four-foot stack of directions and manuals and began to look through feverishly. They couldn't make too much out of them. But now, armed with the box, they went back up to the top of the ramp.
Flick found the right button. The glass was one of the barriers the watchman had mentioned. It rose.
Flick found another button on the box that said General Disarm. He pushed it and they walked into the first hall of the seventy-seventh floor.
They didn't find anything. The place was terribly quiet except for their own footfalls. Flick flashed a torch about.
No sign of the police.
They walked into the middle hall where that segment of the crew had vanished.
No soldiers. Nothing.
They walked into the left-hand hall and even though it seemed to stretch endlessly before them in the dark, they found no assassins.
Madison mourned. It was not only a haunted town-house, it was a hungry townhouse. It had eaten up all their crew. No wonder nobody had wanted to buy it!
"Maybe there are some other panels somewhere," said Flick. He led the way down a side corridor.
They seemed to be in a big room but it was terribly dark. Flick played his light through the place. It seemed to be a tavern. There were tables and chairs around on the floor and a natural wood bar, all polished.
Flick walked over to the counter and looked under it. "A panel!" He stabbed an eager finger in.
Abruptly the room was full of light.
It was also full of babbling sound.
AND AT EVERY TABLE SAT ARMY OFFICERS DRINKING TUP!
They were deep in conversations and laughing, very friendly to each other. One group at the far end was singing an army song. They all wore uniforms of long ago that were covered with mold!
A captain at a nearby table turned and seemed to look at them. "Come in, drink up!" he said.
Flick fled as though pursued by demons!
Then Flick found out those were Madison's running footfalls behind him.
Flick stopped and caught his breath. "Comets, but this is an awful place. The ghosts of all his brother officers, long since dead, carousing in that tavern. It makes your blood run like winter ice."
"Maybe the crew got into one of these side rooms," said Madison.
"Oh, I don't like this," said Flick. "There's nothing like this on Calabar. That's an orderly place. When people get killed, they have the decency to stay dead. It's more gravity than here, you know. It holds corpses in their graves better. (Bleeped) Voltar! You mind what I say, Chief. You murder any people on this planet, bury 'em with WEIGHTS!"
Madison went into a room and Flick followed him. The torch, flashing around, showed what seemed to be a bed and a chair and a table. There was a huge, black window with an easy chair over to the side, placed as though inviting one to sit in it and look through the window.
Madison saw a square box just inside the door and went back to it. Flick was examining the bed: it didn't seem to be a bed but just a block of stone.