Dan recovered his transceivers and made his way to one of the few windows in the room. This was about seven feet from the floor, heavily barred, with its glass panes broken out. Dan pulled himself up and looked out at a walk and a high wall a few feet away. He cut the sleeve of his shirt into strips and knotted the strips together with a transceiver tied onto either end, so that one transceiver hung on the outside and the other on the inside.
Then Dan was outside, in an underground part of the planet where no one was supposed to be without an official permit.
The air seemed as fresh as outdoors, while overhead there was the appearance of the sky on a heavily overcast day. There was light enough to see by, but it was apparently dimmed to provide an artificial night.
Dan saw no one, and said mentally, "Kielgaard?"
Kielgaard's voice had a hoarse sound. "Are you out of that place?"
"I'm out of it—thank heaven."
"Amen. But listen, things have taken a nasty turn."
"What's happened?"
"We've questioned that prisoner. The outfit behind this trouble is Trans-Space. But they don't have the control center. Instead, they've got the headquarters of the election committee that controls the referendum. Trans-Space is representing itself as the government of an interstellar league of planets. They have everything set up to falsify the vote tomorrow."
Dan frowned. "What of it? I can still plant the mataform transceivers and we can bring men down from above."