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The doors were inching closer.

And then, to Swain's horror, Reese slid to a halt right in front of the elevator and started getting to her feet.

The doors kept closing. Reese was on her feet again. The doors were almost joined. Reese tensed herself to leap--

And the doors joined.

And the lift began to move upward.

Swain exhaled with relief.

And then with all her weight Reese hit the exterior doors.

Hard and loud. Denting the doors inward, tearing them apart at the centre, shaking the whole elevator and stopping it with a loud scraping lurch.

Two feet above the ground.

The lift rocked. Selexin clutched at Swain's leg for balance. Balthazar sat in the rear corner, head bent, body limp, swaying with the elevator's movement.

Swain regained his balance and saw the doors, pushed inward, creating a gap one foot wide at the centre.

Too narrow, he thought. She can't get in.

Reese rammed the doors again.

The elevator shook. The gap widened.

Swain pressed the up button on the panel, but the elevator still didn't move. The large inward dent in the doors was keeping them from closing, and the lift wouldn't move again until they were shut.

Reese now had her snout and antennae inside the elevator doors. She was snapping her jaws ferociously from side to side, flinging saliva everywhere, desperately trying to force the doors open -- her antennae slicing through the air like twin whips.

Swain tightened his grip on Hawkins' flashlight and stepped toward her.

Suddenly Reese surged forward, rocking the elevator. Swain fell, slipping on the wet floor, falling backwards, the flashlight flying from his hand into the corner of the lift. He looked up to see Reese lunging ferociously at his feet, snapping wildly, held back by the doors -- saw the frenzied, salivating jaws, the four sets of bared, jagged teeth only inches away from his feet. About to--

Swain turned his eyes clear, took a deep breath and in a flashing instant thought, I can't believe I am going to do this. Then he kicked hard, landing the sole of his shoe squarely on Reese's front teeth, breaking three instantly.

Reese recoiled, shrieking fiercely as she fell backwards onto the floor below.

Swain kicked again, this time at the doors, in a vain attempt to straighten the large inward dents. He gave them three hammering blows, but barely made an impression. The doors were double-strength, too strong.

And then suddenly -- whack! -- a giant leather boot came crashing down on the battered doors, and the dents straightened markedly.

It was Balthazar!

He had slid over to where Swain was lying and, despite his injuries, had unleashed a powerful kick of his own at the doors.

Whack! Whack!

Two more thunderous blows and the dents straightened fully and the doors eased shut and Balthazar fell to the floor in exhaustion and the elevator lifted and at last, there was silence.

----ooo0ooo------

'Grid two-twelve,' the assistant said, reading from his clipboard. 'The area bounded by 14th Street and Delancey on the north-south axis. Medium rise zone: standard commercial-residential area, couple of buildings on the National Register, a few parks. Nothing special.'

Robert K. Charlton sat back in his chair.

'Nothing special,' he said. 'Nothing special, except that in the last couple of hours, we've 'had over a hundred and eighty complaints from an area that hardly ever says boo.'

He handed a sheet of paper over his desk to his assistant.

'Take a look at that. It's from the switch. One girl down there has had -- what is it now? -- fifty-one, no, fifty-two probable 401s on her own. All from two-twelve.'

Slightly overweight, 54 years old, and a man who had spent way too much time in the same job, Bob Charlton was the evening watch supervisor for Consolidated Edison, the city's main electricity supplier. His office was situated one floor above Con Ed's switchboard and it was hardly ostentatious. It comprised a wraparound Ikea desk -- with a computer on it -- surrounded by that beige-coloured shelving common to middle- management offices the world over.

'And do you know what that means?' Charlton asked.

'What?' his assistant said. His name was Rudy.

'It means that somebody has got to the main,' Charlton said. 'Cut it off. Shut it down. Or maybe even overloaded it. Shit. Run down to Dispatch and see if any of our guys were down in that grid today. I'll give the cops a call, see if they've found any punks cutting cables.'

'Yes, sir.'

Rudy left the room.

Charlton swung around in his swivel chair to face a map of Manhattan Island he had pinned to the wall behind his desk.

To Charlton, Manhattan looked like a warped diamond -- three perfectly straight sides, with one side, the north-eastern, jagged and twisted. Electrical grids stretched across the island's breadth like lines on a football field.

He found the horizontal rectangle that displayed grid two-twelve. It was down near the southern end of the island, a few miles north of the World Trade Centre.

He thought about the report.

Medium rise zone. Standard commercial-residential area, couple of buildings on the National Register. A few parks.

The National Register.

The National Register of Historic Places.

He thought about that. Lately Con Ed had been bullied by the Mayor's Office into linking up some of the older buildings of the city to the new mains. Not surprisingly, there had been a truckload of problems. Some of the older buildings had circuitry dating back before the First World War, others didn't even have circuitry. Linking them up had been unusually difficult and it wasn't uncommon for one building's overload to screw up the networking for an entire city grid.

Charlton flicked on his computer and called up the file on the National Register. It wouldn't have all the historically protected buildings in the city, only the ones that Con Ed had worked on. That would be good enough.

He called up grid two-twelve. There were five hits. He pressed display.

The screen scrolled out a more detailed list of names and Charlton was leaning forward to read them when the phone rang.

'Charlton.'

'Sir, it's me.' It was Rudy.

'Yes?'

'I'm down in Dispatch, and they say that none of their guys has been in two-twelve for nearly three weeks.'

Charlton frowned. 'You sure?'

'They've got records on disk if you want them.'

'No, that will be fine. Well done, Rudy.'

'Thank you, si--'