Ordeal by Terror. Lloyd Biggle jr.

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СКАЧАТЬ one experiment, and it isn’t brand new. There’s a scorch mark on the counter top, and the sink is yellow where someone left a faucet dripping. Probably there’s other evidence around. If we aren’t the first, why didn’t the others go to the police? If just one person did, this place would become public knowledge, Madam and her goons would face very public criminal charges, and their scientific project would be ruined. So we can assume they’ve taken every precaution to make certain no one gets out.”

      “Which probably means there isn’t any way out,” Dolan put in. “If there were one, and we found it, they’d stop us. They’ll be watching us all the time. Mondor is reluctant to come right out and say it, so I will. No matter what they intend to do with us, when they’re finished, we’re finished. They mean for us to stay here.”

      Adelle kept her voice steady. “You mean—murder us?”

      “One way or another,” Mondor said. “The only alternative would be for Madam and her goons to disappear. Disposing of us is a far simpler solution.”

      “You’re just performing a silly exercise in logic,” Adelle protested. “You can’t know anything like that for certain.”

      “No, I can’t,” Mondor agreed. “I can only reason from the available facts. So I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely inevitable. I’d rate it about ninety-nine and a fraction per cent inevitable.”

      CHAPTER 5

      Adelle awoke to the sound and smell of bacon frying.

      She glanced at her watch. Because of the continuous glow from the ceiling, she had slept with the blanket over her head. Now it was eight o’clock on Saturday morning.

      They had sat up until after midnight in quiet, spasmodic talk except when Mondor and Dolan broke into one of their silly arguments. They talked quietly because they knew Madam and her goons were listening, and they talked spasmodically because all too frequently they could think of nothing to say. They were trapped, they didn’t know how to go about finding a way out, and the odds seemed very long that there wasn’t any.

      Adelle sat up, swung her feet to the floor, and slipped her shoes on. She had slept in her clothing because of an uneasy feeling that anything could happen, at any moment. She wanted to be fully dressed and ready for it. She even had qualms about removing her shoes.

      She took a mirror from her purse—there was none in the bathless bathroom—and ran a comb through her hair. Then she pushed aside the curtain that served as a door and looked out.

      Craig Dolan sat at the diminutive table with his back to Adelle, contentedly munching bacon and fried eggs. Kevin Mondor, in shirt sleeves and minus his tie and glasses, was grimacing distastefully as he transferred strips of bacon to a plate. Mondor had assumed the role of a rational fanatic—the dedicated vegetarian who would eat meat if he had to but was grimly determined not to enjoy it. The absence of his glasses added a squint to his grimace, and his hair hung down over his eyes and partially screened them from the spattering bacon. With wrinkled clothing and a face flushed and perspiring from heat and frustration, he bore no resemblance to the well-turned-out, calmly deliberative mathematician she had known. He looked like an overdressed vagrant with a hangover.

      The hangover could have been genuine. Dolan had enticed him into consuming several cans of beer the night before, and Mondor wasn’t accustomed to alcohol in any form.

      He looked up and saw Adelle. “The next time I go expeditioning with a female,” he announced, “she’ll be the domestic type.”

      Dolan seemed oblivious to the turmoil surrounding Mondor’s cooking. He gave Adelle a nod and continued to eat. “How are you on survival techniques?” he asked, speaking over his shoulder. “Like getting the cork out of a wine bottle without a corkscrew, and broiling steaks over a metal wastebasket, and breaking into bottles and cans without an opener.”

      “I’d flunk,” Adelle said. “My survival has never depended on things like that.”

      “Even an undomestic female ought to have a few practical survival skills. You’ve led a sheltered life.”

      “It’s been unsheltered enough to keep me from having money to buy steaks for broiling over wastebaskets,” Adelle said.

      “Point,” Dolan conceded. “What time is it?”

      “A little after eight. It seems odd that an expert steak broiler and master of survival techniques has to keep asking what time it is.”

      “I got my expertise broiling other people’s steaks,” Dolan said. “I learned to open cans and bottles because any time I had the price of a watch, I bought beer instead.”

      “You couldn’t have bought much beer for the price of this watch. It was the simplest, cheapest one I could find. It’s hand-wound and non-digital, with no calendar, no calculator, and no phases of the moon. It doesn’t even have a second hand.”

      “Its price would have bought some beer,” Dolan said. “And when there’s beer, who cares what time it is?”

      Adelle paid her morning visit to the bathless bathroom, where she took time to sponge off her face and hands with cold water. There was no hot water faucet. Neither was there one in the kitchen. They had to heat water on the stove for their ablutions as well as for coffee and for doing the dishes, and she hesitated to disrupt Mondor’s cooking just to get hot water to splash her face and hands with.

      When she rejoined the men, Mondor had her breakfast waiting. She looked at it with dismay. The bacon lay rigidly in charred strips, and the three eggs were scorched, rubbery circles.

      “I told you you’d regret it,” Mondor said sourly.

      Adelle sat down resignedly and asked, “Did you two hear anything during the night?”

      Mondor turned with the package of bacon in his hand. Dolan paused with fork halfway to his mouth. “What was there to hear?” Dolan demanded.

      “A kind of thud. Not very loud. I wasn’t wide awake until after I heard it. Then I listened, but I didn’t hear it again.”

      Dolan’s fork moved. Mondor returned his attention to the stove.

      “No,” Dolan said, chewing thoughtfully. “I didn’t hear anything.”

      Adelle went to the stove for the pan of hot water, filled her cup, and added instant coffee. She sat down again and stirred it absently, thinking about her planned trip to Greenfield Village. She would have been starting just about now. Instead—

      She looked about her at the narrow kitchen, at the bearded Dolan still contentedly eating, at the disarrayed and disgusted Mondor awkwardly separating strips of bacon and transferring them to a frying pan. The scene was so totally unreal that she wondered if she should pinch herself.

      Dolan laid down his fork and carefully cleaned his beard at the corners of his mouth with a paper towel. “How would you characterize that thud?” he asked. “Metallic, or just thudish?”

      Adelle reflected. “Thudish. But I was at least half asleep, so I may not be a reliable witness.”

      “I don’t suppose it would be fraught with significance either way. We know we’re not alone down here. When we’ve finished eating, we’ll consider what we’re going to do.”

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