It was five minutes before Colt's deadline when Kinsman arrived at the water factory entrance.
As he stepped off the power ladder he saw that the entrance—an open space that had once been a natural cave—was now guarded by two unarmed men. Guns were carefully locked away in Selene. Only a few were available at any time, and Kinsman had control of most of them.
He recognized one of the men: a middle-aged accountant who worked in the procurement group. He was an asthmatic, and this excitement was not helping his heaving chest. The other was younger, a newcomer, one of the ninety-day shavetails. Kinsman had seen him before, but could not recall his name. He wore ordinary gray fatigues without insignia or color code.
Wordlessly they walked him through the rough-hewn 419 chamber. The overhead fluorescents glowed, the rock walls felt cold. Forcing himself to smile. Kinsman murmured to them, "Relax. Nobody's going to get hurt."
They did not answer. At the end of the chamber, the redhead from -Fill's party was standing tensely in front of the doors that opened onto the factory's office area. She looked angry.
"I didn't expect to see you here," Kinsman said. She was not wearing a party dress now; Just a pair of green fatigues that marked her as a member of the life- support group. But they could not conceal the ripeness of her figure.
"Follow me," she said.
She pushed open the door and led him down the curving corridor, in silence. Kinsman could not help noticing the way her butt moved inside the fatigues. They passed the computer area and he stared hard through the long windows as they walked by. The computer's lights were flashing away as usual even though no one was sitting at the desk stations. They haven't shut anything down, Kinsman realized. Then he added, Yet.
"I never did get your name straight at the party," he said to the redhead.
"Doesn't matter."
He pulled alongside her. "Come on now. Politics is one thing, but you don't have to be inhuman about it."
In coldly clipped tones she said, "What happened at the party was strictly business."
"Business?" Even as he said it. Kinsman realized, Kee- rist! Internal Security Agency! No wonder she's sore. She took all the trouble of going to bed with me and didn't learn a thing. Probably looks bad on her file.
Soon they were out of the corridor and into the factory area itself. She led Kinsman through a maze of piping, up onto catwalks that threaded through the electric arcs and main pumps. He could feel the machinery throbbing like a giant mechanical heart, making the metal grillwork of the catwalk vibrate. Off in the distance the muted thunder of the rock crushers went on without slack.
Pat Kelly was standing on a platform on the next level 420 above the catwalk. Under the harsh lights, Kinsman could see that Kelly was fidgeting nervously, his rabbit's face a picture of anxiety. He wore a gun in a holster buckled to his hip.
The redhead stopped at the base of the ladder that led up to the platform. "Major Kelly will take over from here," she said.
"Tell me one thing," said Kinsman.
She looked at him warily.
"Still think I'm cute?"
She flushed angrily and spun away from him so fast that her shoulder-length hair swung over her face momentarily. Kinsman watched her stamp back down the catwalk for a few seconds, admiringly, then reluctantly turned to the ladder and started climbing.
