This time the collision took place, the doors being locked for the winter. There was a slight bump, a brief grinding noise as the hooks disengaged from the track, the water began to make small gurgling sounds as it swirled by the stopped raft, and Parker got to his feet and climbed out onto the narrow walk In-side the channel. He carried the satchel back to that last display and stuffed it down inside the pirates’ longboat. Several of the figures were movable, and Parker shifted one until he was hull-squatting over the satchel. Then he walked back to the raft, used it to get over to the other side of the channel, and walked down a narrow corridor to the control room he’d started from.
He opened the master switch and silence and darkness immediately fell. He cautiously pulled the outside door open, saw no one and went out.
He still had a lot more to do.
Five
TEN MINUTES to five. Parker opened a door and stepped into darkness. When he switched on the flashlight it reflected back a dozen times, it showed him himself over and over, from every angle, as though he’d just sown dragon’s teeth and grown himself an army. It was the hall of mirrors, on the second floor of the fun house.
In his other hand Parker carried a spray can of white paint he’d found in the storage closet downstairs. He began to move through the mirrors, spraying a round white circle about the size of a pancake about chest-high on every mirror.
It took almost ten minutes to work his way through to the other end, and then he went through the black door and up the metal ladder to the roof, where he looked over the fake-grass roof of the Desert Island snack bar to the main gates. They hadn’t come in yet. He went back down to familiarize himself with the rest of the fun house.
Quarter after five. Parker rode a rocket with wooden seats past suns and satellites to the end of the black-light Voyage Through the Galaxy. He got out of the rocket at the end of the trip, went into the control room, and turned off the electricity. Then he followed his flashlight beam back along the black-painted floor under the stars and moons.
They were all hung by wire from the ceiling, the wire thin enough to be invisible but strong enough to hold some fairly heavy models. Parker found metal rungs in one wall, went up them to a catwalk, and from the catwalk reeled in a Saturn, a communications satellite and some rockets and stars. He removed them from their wires and left them lying together on the catwalk, then undid the wires from the ceiling. He carried the wires back down to floor-level and tied them in new places.
When he was done, he went outside again. At the corner, he could look down past the Island Earth amusement rides section — a whip, a caterpillar, whirling pots — at the gates. Not yet.
The other way was Pleasure Island. Parker walked through Pleasure Island, past the carousel with its mournful ponies and on into Hawaii.
Five-thirty. The underwater ride was a vessel that rode almost completely submerged in water. Two streams ran across Fun Island from the moat that surrounded the place, and several rides and attractions were built on, or otherwise made use of, the water. Where the water was indoors, as in the Desert Island black-light ride, it had not yet frozen, but outdoors, as here, a thin crust of ice had formed.
There were four of the underwater vehicles, three of them enclosed in a small service area behind the main ride, and the fourth out by the entrance and the ticket booth. Parker opened the hatch of one and went down inside, where a long row of seats faced portholes in the side wall. He had to stoop to walk down to the far end, where a separate seat faced all the rest. This is where in summer the boy would sit who delivered the spiel during the ride.
What Parker was looking for was an underwater exit, even a small hatch, but there didn’t seem to be one, so he went back outside to look around. He walked back and forth, and in the service area he found a loose length of pipe with an elbow at one end. It was lying on the ground near one of the vehicles. He picked it up, carried it back to the first vehicle, and lowered it into the water. It would reach the portholes. Good. He put the pipe in the ticket booth and walked on down past the Polynesian restaurant to look down the main central blacktop path toward the gates.
Still not.
Twenty minutes to six. Parker took the ax from the executioner’s hand and squeezed the blade. It cracked in two, it was wax, like the masked executioner, like the kneeling victim, like the two priests looking on with hands clutched together at their breasts and fiendish smiles of joy on their faces.
The wax museum was useless. Parker left it and walked through the thin powder of snow to the Alcatraz Island shooting gallery. His tracks were spreading out all over the park now, they wouldn’t lead anybody directly either to him or to the money.
The shooting gallery was boarded up. When he broke in through the door at the side, Parker found that the rifles were not along the counter, the chains hung there empty. He looked around, and they were stowed in a wooden crate at the back of the gallery. They were air rifles, firing pellets of pressed cardboard. Parker fired one, and the pellet had no force at all. It would sting, no more. He threw the rifle back into the crate and went outside again.
What else did Alcatraz have to offer him? The wax museum had been no good, the shooting gallery was no good. There was left the roller coaster, an outdoor gunboat ride and a restaurant. Parker went to check them out.
Five minutes to six. Parker climbed to the bridge of the pirate ship. Far down at the other end of the park were the gates, livening was beginning to come on, the temperature was dropping, but the bunch outside still hadn’t made their move.
Were they really waiting for darkness? Didn’t they realize that would only cut their advantage over him? The more time they gave him and the more darkness they gave him, the better off he’d be, didn’t they know that?
Or maybe they were still waiting for their two cop friends to come back. It could be they’d decided not to come in after him without those two, and the cops hadn’t gotten off duty yet. With the manhunt still out for Parker, it might be quite a while before they came off duty.
In the meantime, Parker only had the one gun, and that one not the best for this kind of situation. A Smith & Western Terrier, it was a five-shot .32 revolver with a two-inch barrel. Not enough bullets, not enough punch to the shot, and not enough barrel for long-range accuracy. With luck, he could get five of them at close range, but there were going to be more than five coming in after him. Somewhere in Fun Island he had to find other weapons, other ways to defend himself and disable them.
