Emerging on the roof, Phil felt for a moment a big sense of freedom. The sodium mirror had not quite set, and everything around was bright although the lower part of the sky was dark and many stars showed in it.
Then he saw the half dozen copters swinging in low toward them like june bugs.
Dytie was hustling him along, but only toward an empty corner of the roof. He resented her pointless display of energy. A mighty voice from the sky commanded them to stop.
Dytie halted almost at the edge of the roof, felt around in the air, climbed a couple of feet up into it and felt around again.
There was the sound of a copter scraping, bouncing and grounding behind them.
Dytie opened in the air a small doorway that was black as ink, and climbed inside. She turned around, her face a pale mask in an inky rectangle, urged, "Come on, Phil," and stretched a white arm out of the rectangle down toward him.
Phil stared at this weird air-framed portrait. Beneath it he could clearly see the sheer walls of the building opposite and the dizzying ribbon of street fifty floors below.
Behind him men shouted and there was another shattering command from the sky.
Phil grabbed Dytie's wrist. His other hand, fumbling blindly, found an invisible rung in the air. So did his foot. He scrambled up the air and pitched over the sill of the inky doorway, into an inky sack and found a curving floor under him. Rolling over, he saw behind him a rectangle of the sky with three stars in it. The rectangle narrowed and vanished, and there was no light at all.
Then he started to fall.