From the underworld, Jisbella had inherited a mass of information about Gouffre Martel. No one had ever jaunted out of the cavern hospitals, but for decades the underworld had been collecting and collating information about them. It was from this data that Jisbella had formed her quick recognition of the Whisper Line that joined them. It was on the basis of this information that she began to discuss escape.
«We can pull it off, Gully. Never doubt that for a minute. There must be dozens of loopholes in their security system.»
«No one's ever found them before.»
«No one's ever worked with a partner before. We'll pool our information and we'll make it.»
He no longer shambled to Sanitation and back. He felt the corridor walls, noted doors, noted their texture, counted, listened, deduced, and reported. He made a note of every separate step in the Sanitation pens and reported them to Jiz. The questions he whispered to the men around him in the shower and scrub rooms had purpose. Together, Foyle and Jisbella built up a picture of the routine of Gouffre Martel and its security system.
One morning, on the return from Sanitation, he was stopped as he was about to step back into his cell.
«Stay in line, Foyle.»
«This is North-ui i. I know where to get off by now.»
«Keep moving.»
«But…” He was terrified. «You're changing me?»
«Visitor to see you.»
He was marched up to the end of the north corridor where it met the three other main corridors that formed the huge cross of the hospital. In the center of the cross were the administration offices, maintenance workshops, clinics, and plants. Foyle was thrust into a room, as dark as his cell. The door was shut behind him. He became aware of a faint shimmering outline in the blackness. It was no more than the ghost of an image with a blurred body and a death's head. Two black discs on the skull face were either eye sockets or infrared goggles.
«Good morning,» said Saul Dagenham.
«You?» Foyle exclaimed.
«Me. I've got five minutes. Sit down. Chair behind you.»
Foyle felt for the chair and sat down slowly.
«Enjoying yourself?» Dagenham inquired.
«What do you want, Dagenham?»
«There's been a change,» Dagenham said dryly. «Last time we talked your dialogue consisted entirely of 'Go to hell.'»
«Go to hell, Dagenham, if it'll make you feel any better.»
«Your repartee's improved; your speech, too. You've changed,» Dagenham said. «Changed a damned sight too much and a damned sight too fast. I don't like it. What's happened to you?»
«I've been going to night school.»
«You've had ten months in this night school.»
«Ten months!» Foyle echoed in amazement. «That long?»
«Ten months without sight and without sound. Ten months in solitary. You ought to be broke.»
«Oh, I'm broke, all right.»
«You ought to be whining. I was right. You're unusual. At this rate it's going to take too long. We can't wait. I'd like to make a new offer.»
«Make it.»
«Ten per cent of 'Nomad's' bullion. Two million.»
«Two million!» Foyle exclaimed. «Why didn't you offer that in the first I place?»
«Because I didn't know your caliber. Is it a deal?»
«Almost. Not yet.»
«What else?»
«I get out of Gouffre Martel.»
«Naturally.»
«And someone else, too.»
«It can be arranged.» Dagenham's voice sharpened. «Anything else?»
«I get access to Presteign's files.»
«Out of the question. Are you insane? Be reasonable.»
«His shipping files.»
«What for?»
«A list of personnel aboard one of his ships.»
«Oh.» Dagenham's eagerness revived. «That, I can arrange. Anything else?»
«Then it's a deal.» Dagenham was delighted. The ghostly blur of light arose from its chair. «We'll have you out in six hours. We'll start arrangements for your friend at once. It's a pity we wasted this time, but no one can figure you, Foyle.»
«Why didn't you send in a telepath to work me over?»
«A telepath? Be reasonable, Foyle. There aren't ten full telepaths in all the Inner Planets. Their time is earmarked for the next ten years. We couldn't persuade one to interrupt his schedule for love or money.»
«I apologize, Dagenham. I thought you didn't know your business.»
«You very nearly hurt my feelings.»
«Now I know you're just lying.»
«You're flattering me.»
«You could have hired a telepath. For a cut in twenty million you could:
have hired one easy.»
«The government would never…”
«They don't all work for the government. No. You've got something too» hot to let a telepath get near.»
The blur of light leaped across the room and seized Foyle. «How much~ do you know, Foyle? What are you covering? Who are you working for?'~ Dagenham's hands shook. «Christ! What a fool I've been. Of course you’re unusual. You're no common spaceman. I asked you: who are you workin for?»
Foyle tore Dagenham's hands away from him. «No one,» he said. «N~ one, except myself.»
«No one, eh? Including your friend in Gouffre Martel you're so eager t rescue? By God, you almost swindled me, Foyle. Tell Captain Y'ang-Yeovil I congratulate him. He's got a better staff than I thought.»
«I never heard of any Y'ang-Yeovil.»
«You and your colleague are going to rot here. It's no deal. You'll fester here. I'll have you moved to the worst cell in the hospital. I'll sink you to the bottom of Gouffre Martel. I'll…Guard, here! C…”
Foyle grasped Dagenham's throat, dragged him down to the floor and hammered his head on the flagstones. Dagenham squirmed once and then was still. Foyle ripped the goggles off his face and put them on. Sight returned in soft red and rose lights and shadows.
He was in a small reception room with a table and two chairs. Foyle stripped Dagenham's jacket off and put it on with two quick jerks that split the shoulders. Dagenham's cocked highwayman's hat lay on the table. Foyle clapped it over his head and pulled the brim down before his face.
On opposite walls were two doors. Foyle opened one a crack. It led out to the north corridor. He closed it, leaped across the room and tried the other. It opened onto a jaunte-proof maze. Foyle slipped through the door and entered the maze. Without a guide to lead him through the labyrinth, he was immediately lost. He began to run around the twists and turns and found himself back at the reception room. Dagenham was struggling to his knees.
Foyle turned back into the maze again. He ran. He came to a closed door and thrust it open. It revealed a large workshop illuminated by normal light. Two technicians working at a machine bench looked up in surprise.
Foyle snatched up a sledge hammer, leaped on them like a caveman, and felled them. Behind him he heard Dagenham shouting in the distance. He looked around wildly, dreading the discovery that he was trapped in a culde-sac. The workshop was L-shaped. Foyle tore around the corner, burst through the entrance of another jaunte-proof maze and was lost again. The Gouffre Martel alarm system began clattering. Foyle battered at the walls of the labyrinth with the sledge, shattered the thin plastic masking, and found himself in the infrared-lit south corridor of the women's quadrant.
Two women guards came up the corridor, running hard. Foyle swung the sledge and dropped them. He was near the head of the corridor. Before him stretched a long perspective of cell doors, each bearing a glowing red number. Overhead the corridor was lit by glowing red globes. Foyle stood on tiptoe and clubbed the globe above him. He hammered through the socket and smashed the current cable. The entire corridor went dark . . . even to goggles.
«Evens us up; all in the dark now,» Foyle gasped and tore down the corridor feeling the wall as he ran and counting cell doors. Jisbella had given him an accurate word picture of the South Quadrant. He was counting his way toward South-9oo. He blundered into a figure, another guard. Foyle hacked at her once with his sledge. She shrieked and fell. The women patients began shrieking. Foyle lost count, ran on, stopped.