"So now you go back to being engineer at a thousand or so, and I'm still a rock hog." Rusche shrugged. "Less headaches anyhow."
They stepped off the lift at the 10th Level and took the high speed strip toward the business section. Duggan had it in his mind to see Janith and tell her she had failed—that he was his own man again. She would be at the office. He would tell her off, and leave. And then he'd show Rusche some of the high spots of the low-number levels of Appalachia.
The darkness came about them swiftly. To Duggan it was like a return to the nightmare of sightlessness. Under their feet the racing strip faltered and stalled. They were thrown off their feet and sprawled on the fiber-ribbed squares of the checkerboarded way's surface.
"What is it?" demanded Rusche.
He fought back the panic. This was not true blindness.
"Criminals. They set off a few dozen 'midnight' bombs and try to rob banks or stores. We get these attacks quite often."
"Last long?"
"Emergency ventilation will clear it out in a couple of minutes. And the Squads will have them in half an hour. They never get very far."
They sat close together, to wait. From the walkways and stalled strips shrieks and frightened cries sounded. The sounds seemed to increase from behind them.
"This's my first time above the Twentieth Level," Rusche confided. "Thirty-five years and I never saw the Outside. I don't think I like it up this high."