'Yes, sir. Shall I recall technicians off watch?'
'No. This isn't an engineering failure. Take a look at your readings; that entire sector went out simultaneously. Somebody cut out those rotors by hand. Place off-watch technicians on standby status—but don't arm them, and don't send them down inside. Tell the commandant to rush all available senior-class cadets to Stockton Subsector Office No. 10 to report to me. I want them equipped with tumblebugs, pistols, and sleepgas bombs.'
'Yes, sir.' A clerk leaned over Davidson's shoulder and said something in his ear.
'The governor wants to talk to you, chief.'
'Can't do it—nor can you. Who's your relief? Have you sent for him?'
'Hubbard—he's just come in.'
'Have him talk to the governor, the mayor, the press—anybody that calls—even the White House. You stick to your watch. I'm cutting off. I'll be back in communication as quickly as I can locate a reconnaissance car.' He was out of the booth almost before the screen cleared.
Blekinsop did not venture to speak, but followed him out to the northbound twenty-mile strip. There Gaines stopped, short of the windbreak, turned, and kept his eyes on the wall beyond the stationary walkway. He picked out some landmark or sign—not apparent to his companion— and did an Eliza crossing the ice back to the walkway, so rapidly that Blekinsop was carried some hundred feet beyond him, and almost failed to follow when Gaines ducked into a doorway, and ran down a flight of stairs.
They came out on a narrow lower walkway, down inside. The pervading din claimed them, beat upon their bodies as well as their ears. Dimly, Blekinsop perceived their surroundings, as he struggled to face that wall of sound. Facing him, illuminated by the red monochrome of a neon arc, was one of the rotors that drove the five-mile strip, its great, drum-shaped armature revolving slowly around the stationary field coils in its core. The upper surface of the drum pressed against the under side of the moving way and imparted to it its stately progress.
To the left and right, a hundred yards each way, and beyond at similar intervals, farther than he could see, were other rotors. Bridging the gaps between the rotors were the slender rollers, crowded together like cigars in a box, in order that the strip might have a continuous rolling support. The rollers were supported by steel-girder arches through the gaps of which he saw row after row of rotors in staggered succession, the rotors in each succeeding row turning over more rapidly than the last.
Separated from the narrow walkway by a line of supporting steel pillars, and lying parallel to it on the side away from the rotors, ran a shallow paved causeway, joined to the walk at this point by a ramp. Gaines peered up and down this tunnel in evident annoyance. Blekinsop started to ask him what troubled him, but found his voice snuffed out by the sound. He could not cut through the roar of thousands of rotors and the whine of hundreds of thousands of rollers.
Gaines saw his lips move, and guessed at the question. He cupped his hands around Blekinsop's right ear, and shouted: 'No car—I expected to find a car here.'
The Australian, wishing to be helpful, grasped Gaines' arm and pointed back into the jungle of machinery. Gaines' eye followed the direction indicated and picked out something that he had missed in his preoccupation—a half dozen men working around a rotor several strips away. They had jacked down a rotor until it was no longer in contact with the road surface, and were preparing to replace it in toto. The replacement rotor was standing by on a low, heavy truck.
The chief engineer gave a quick smile of acknowledgment and thanks, and aimed his flashlight at the group, the beam focused down to a slender, intense needle of light. One of the technicians looked up, and Gaines snapped the light on and off in a repeated, irregular pattern. A figure detached itself from the group and ran toward them.
It was a slender young man, dressed in dungarees, and topped off with ear pads and an incongruous, pillbox cap, bright with gold braid and insignia. He recognized the chief engineer and saluted, his face falling into humorless, boyish intentness.
Gaines stuffed his torch into a pocket and commenced to gesticulate rapidly with both hands—clear, clean gestures, as involved and as meaningful as deaf-mute language. Blekinsop dug into his own dilettante knowledge of anthropology and decided that it was most like an American Indian sign language, with some of the finger movements of hula. But it was necessarily almost entirely strange, being adapted for a particular terminology.
The cadet answered him in kind, stepped to the edge of the causeway, and flashed his torch to the south. He picked out a car, still some distance away, but approaching at headlong speed. It braked, and came to a stop alongside them.
It was a small affair, ovoid in shape, and poised on two centerline wheels. The forward, upper surface swung up and disclosed the driver, another cadet. Gaines addressed him briefly in sign language, then hustled Blekinsop ahead of him into the cramped passenger compartment.
As the glassite hood was being swung back into place, a blast of wind smote them, and the Australian looked up in time to glimpse the last of three much larger vehicles hurtle past them. They were headed north, at a speed of not less than two hundred miles per hour. Blekinsop thought that he had made out the little hats of cadets through the windows of the last of the three, but he could not be sure.
He had no time to wonder, so violent was the driver's getaway. Gaines ignored the accelerating surge—he was already calling Davidson on the built-in communicator.
Comparative silence had settled down once the car was closed. The face of a female operator at the relay station showed on the screen.
'Get me Davidson—senior watch office!'
'Oh! It's Mr. Gaines! The Mayor wants to talk to you, Mr. Gaines.'
'Refer him—and get me Davidson. Move!'
'Yes, sir.'
'And see here—leave this circuit hooked in to Davidson's board until I tell you personally to cut it.'
'Right.' Her face gave way to the watch officer's.
'That you, chief? We're moving—progress O.K.—no change.'
'Very well. You'll be able to raise me on this circuit, or at Subsector 10 office.
Clearing now.' Davidson's face gave way to the relay operator.
'Your wife is calling, Mr. Gaines. Will you take it?'
Gaines muttered something not quite gallant, and answered: 'Yes.' Mrs. Gaines flashed into facsimile. He burst into speech before she could open her mouth.
'Darling I'm all right don't worry I'll be home when I get there I've got to go now.' It was all out in one breath, and he slapped the control that cleared the screen.
They slammed to a breath-taking stop alongside the stair leading to the watch office of Subsector 10, and piled out. Three big lorries were drawn up on the ramp, and three platoons of cadets were ranged in restless ranks alongside them.
Tumblebugs—small, open monocycles, used to patrol down inside—were ready nearby.
A cadet trotted up to Gaines and saluted. 'Lindsay, sir—cadet engineer of the watch. The engineer of the watch requests that you come at once to the control room.'
The engineer of the watch looked up as they came in. 'Chief—Van Kleeck is calling you.'
'Put him on.'
When Van Kleeck appeared in the big visor, Gaines greeted him with: 'Hello, Van. Where are you?'
'Sacramento office. Now listen—'
'Sacramento? That's good! Report.'
Van Kleeck looked disgruntled. 'Report, hell! I'm not your deputy any more, Gaines. Now, you—'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'Listen, and don't interrupt me, and you'll find out. You're through, Gaines. I've been picked as Director of the Provisional Control Committee for the New Order.'
'Van, have you gone off your rocker? What do you mean—the 'New Order'?'
'You'll find out. This is it—the Functionalist revolution. We're in; you're out. We stopped Strip 20 just to give you a little taste of what we can do.'
Concerning Function: A Treatise on the Natural Order in Society, the Bible of the Functionalist movement, was first published in 1930. It claimed to be a scientifically accurate theory of social relations. The author, Paul
