Ordeal by Terror. Lloyd Biggle jr.

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СКАЧАТЬ platitude?” Mondor persisted.

      “Never,” Adelle said. “I spoke to all of them—with conversational platitudes, of course. And I’d wave at them when I saw them at work. Sometimes they looked at me as though they were trying to smile but couldn’t remember how, and once in a while one of them did something that almost looked like a nod.”

      “I never noticed anything like that, and I certainly never exchanged any words with them,” Dolan said. “Is this important?”

      “It might help us understand the situation better if we knew why they didn’t talk,” Mondor said. “What were they looking for when they watched us, and why wouldn’t they respond to a harmless conversational platitude? A maze, no matter what animal it’s intended for, screams ‘experiment’. So I think we’re caught in some kind of experiment. Whether Madam is a mad scientist, or whether she just works for one, I have no idea, but I think there must be one. And I think every move we make is being observed and charted and studied.”

      “Then the situation can be summed up something like this,” Dolan said. “We haven’t got a chance, but we’re going to do our damndest because the only alternative is to sit down and rot. We’re completely on our own. No one knows where we are, so no one is going to rescue us. And because kidnapping is a very bad crime, Madam and her goons will take pains to make certain we don’t get out of here. If the police sooner or later start looking for us, which we can’t count on, and if for some irrational reason they suspect Z-R Publications, which isn’t likely, it certainly won’t occur to them to search for a secret sub-basement. All we can do is go down fighting and hope for an unexpected piece of luck—but fighting is what makes unexpected pieces of luck happen. Madam may have absent-mindedly left us a loophole. At the very least, we can act as unpredictably as possible and try to screw up their experiment if that’s what this is. So that’s what I’m going to do. You two can decide for yourselves.”

      “I thought we already did,” Adelle said.

      “We can split up and go in different directions if either of you prefer that,” Dolan pointed out.

      Mondor shook his head. “This isn’t going to be like a Sunday stroll in the park. For one thing, we’re without food and water. For another, the word ‘experiment’ has connotations I don’t like. Arranging this setup and suckering us into it was enormous trouble and expense. It wasn’t done to watch us wisecrack our way up and down alleys. There’ll be plenty of surprises for us, and the last one may be a trap door that drops us into a vat of acid. We’ll be better able to meet danger if we stick together, and surely all three of us would rather have company in our misery, even if we decide later to sit and rot.” He got to his feet.

      “One moment,” Dolan said. He stooped and carefully gouged their names under the arrow he had just carved. “There. I’ll do that throughout the whole damned maze. Even repainting won’t obliterate it completely—they’ll have to sandblast the metal first. In the meantime, we’ll have left our names all over the place, and names are evidence. That’s one in the eye for your mad scientist. Okay—let’s go.”

      * * * *

      It was five o’clock in the evening and long hours later when Adelle slumped wearily to the floor and announced, “If a fairy godmother had given me the option of shortening my life by one day, this is the day I would have skipped.”

      They had enlarged their knowledge of mazes enormously in the interim, but their newly acquired experience helped them not a jot. They continued to stumble into blind alleys, retrace their steps, march the length of long alleys that had no exit, and pass up apparent cul-de-sacs only to have to return to them later. An hour after they set out, their senses of direction were totally obliterated. Dolan stopped carving arrows because he had no notion of where to point them, but he stubbornly continued to vandalize the walls with their names and the date and time.

      As he commenced his latest assault on the smooth gray paint, Dolan asked Mondor, “Is this scientist really mad, or is he merely stupid. Translation: What’s the point of our wandering around in a maze like this and not getting anywhere?”

      “Some scientists believe rats have the ability to acquire a cognitive map of a maze,” Mondor said. “Once they’ve done so, they can think their way through it.”

      “Good idea,” Dolan told him. “Go ahead and demonstrate.”

      “The mazes they use for rats are designed for scientific tests. God knows what this one was designed for.”

      Dolan got to his feet and shouldered the bed rails. “I can tell you what it wasn’t designed for. Aesthetic purposes. This battleship gray is getting on my nerves. ‘Water, water everything, and all the boards did shrink.’ Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned water. Gray, gray everywhere—” He kicked a wall viciously. “I wonder if they chose gray because it’s psychologically depressing.” He started off.

      “Hold it!” Mondor snapped.

      Dolan turned, scowling.

      “Don’t forget—they can bring a wall out of the floor wherever a black strip crosses the alley. If one of us gets too far ahead or lags behind, they can separate us.”

      “Right,” Dolan agreed. “We’ll stick together and make them work for whatever they think they’re trying to prove. Now if you don’t mind—we aren’t likely to acquire that cognitive map by transcendental meditation.”

      Mondor and Adelle picked up the remainder of the bed and hurried after him.

      Shortly before six o’clock, they turned into a new alley and suddenly came upon a test room that seemed identical to the room or rooms all of them had arrived in. They made no move to enter it. Dolan exclaimed, “Ah!” and began to assemble the bed.

      This time they wedged the bed’s feet against the wall. Dolan, with Mondor’s clasped hands providing a step, hopped onto the bed, lifted a ceiling panel, and peered through. He jumped for a better look. Then he announced disgustedly, “Nothing.”

      “I suppose there could be more than three test rooms, though I don’t know why they’d need so many,” Mondor mused. “One should be sufficient. Maybe there are doors on all four sides, and we entered the same room on chutes coming from different directions.”

      “That’s possible, but I see no sign of a trap door from here,” Dolan said. He stood on tiptoe, and then he jumped again for a better look. “Nothing. Of course I can only see this one side. The test room’s walls go all the way up to the plywood.”

      “Aren’t there any seams?” Mondor asked.

      “Sure. The plywood panels are four by eight feet, and their edges make seams, but they’re very thoroughly nailed.”

      “Can you reach the edge of a panel?”

      “Yes. And I’ve broken two fingernails on it already.”

      Mondor thought for a moment. “In that case, we might as well go through the test room and try again where we come out.”

      “Just a moment,” Adelle said as Dolan swung down. “Those chutes were long. At least, mine was. It gave me quite a ride. Maybe we’re too close to the room.”

      “Point,” Dolan agreed. “We’ll back up and try again.”

      They moved the bed twice, but every panel СКАЧАТЬ