Time of the Great Freeze Read Free

and squeezing until he heard Ted grunt.
    "Don't do anything," Jim murmured.
    Callison subsided, grumbling under his breath.
    Dr. Barnes said, "We're entitled to know the nature of the charges against us, aren't we?"
    The first policeman nodded somberly. "The charge is treason, Dr. Barnes."

2
ENEMIES OF THE CITY
    Down, down, down!
    Down through the coiling intestines of the underground city, down through level after level, down past the last residential level to the industrial levels, and then still down, down to Level M in the depths of the city, the administrative level where no one went except on official business.
    Here, the great computer that co-ordinated the life of the city ticked and throbbed. Here, the master controls of the city were housed: the water-recycling factory and the air plant and the food-processing laboratories and the hydroponics sheds. Here, too, was City Hall, where the Mayor and his nine Councilors ran the city.
    Jim had been here once, when he was twelve, on a school trip. Every civics class came here once to be shown the heart and core of New York. He had seen, and he had been awed. Now he was here again-a prisoner.
    The gleaming shell of the elevator came to a halt.
    "Out," the police ordered.
    Out, and down a shining ramp, and into a waiting roller car that ran along a track down a wide corridor, through looping curves of hallway. Dimly visible to left and to right were bulky power plants and mysterious installations, flat against the low ceiling. A faint humming sound, ominous and persistent, assailed Jim's ears. The deep booming thum- thum thum- thum thum -thum of the generators set a rhythm for his own thumping heart. Every narrow corridor intersecting the main one bore a glowing sign:
    AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
    Some of the signs carried an extra symbol, the atom-symbol, warning that this was the approach to the nuclear reactor that powered the entire city. Anyone caught going beyond a sign that bore the atom-symbol was a dead man if a guard saw him. No citizen could approach the reactor for any reason whatever, without express permission of the City Council. To cross into the forbidden zone was to invite a fatal full-intensity blast from a stun gun, no questions asked.
    There was silence in the roller car. Dr. Barnes sat in the front seat, bolt upright between two of the policemen. Jim, Ted Callison, and Dave Ellis were crowded together with a third policeman in the rear seat, while the remaining officer was hunched behind them, his stun gun drawn, its blunt snout tickling their backbones warningly. Jim saw Callison's powerful fists clenching and unclenching in cold, silent fury.
    City Hall loomed up before them, squat and somehow sinister. The roller car halted. More police were waiting there, at least a dozen of them, although by now it was quite late at night.
    "Out," came the crisp order.
    The four prisoners left the roller car, hands held high. The new escort moved in, surrounding them, and the original police drove off. The prisoners were marched into City Hall, and down the brightly lit hallway that Jim had seen five years before.
    He had met Mayor Hawkes then, and had been terrified of the seam-faced, wizened old man who had governed New York for what seemed like all eternity. Then, the Mayor had beamed, had smiled at the class of edgy twelve-year-olds, and had welcomed them all to the city's administrative level.
    Mayor Hawkes would not beam tonight, Jim thought.
    "In here," a frog-voiced policeman said crisply.
    Here turned out to be a square, forbidding little room whose unnaturally bright illumination stung the eyes. There was a raised dais along the far wall, and a low table with a bench behind it. No other furniture broke the starkness of the room. There were three other prisoners there already-Roy Veeder, Dom Hannon, Chet Farrington. The whole group, then-all seven who had gathered around the little radio to hear the squeaky voice from London only a short while