"Sshh!" she hissed and punched a door button.
The wall kept blank. "So it's on code," she said. "I might have known." And she punched the button in a rapid rhythm. The wall kept on blank. "Oh, oh, the special code, the one I'm not supposed to know." She looked round at Phil. "You must be important," she sniffed. She punched the button in another rhythm. This time, rather to Phil's surprise, the wall parted obediently. He followed her into a gleaming kitchen, complete with glassed in shelves of gamma-sterilized steaks and vegetables, freezer, radionic oven, shadowed mushroom bed and small microbe tank for home-cultured appetizers. Phil's eyes bugged at the latter two luxuries, but it did occur to him to say, "What about that mirror you left open? Mightn't your father come in upstairs and see I'm gone?"
"Not tonight after what I gave him. Now stop making old maidish remarks." She was standing in front of a vertical cylinder that half protruded from the wall, and was busy once more with her button punching. A tiny green light flashed up a tall column of studs like a skyrocket. "Get the hassock from the library. Quick!"
When Phil hurried back lugging the foot-high cylinder of foam rubber, a doorway about as big as a midget was open in the cylinder. "Put it inside on the platform," she directed, "on top of all the straps and stuff. They're just for packages. That's right. Now get inside and squat on it. Reach down your hands on either side of the hassock and take hold of the clamps. Keep a firm grip, because it drops a bit faster than free-fall and you wouldn't want to be left behind squatting on nothing. And squat up straight or you'll get your head rubbed off!"
"Wait a minute," said Phil, withdrawing a foot he had gingerly inserted in the doorway, "Do you—"
"I have to go last, because I know how to work the button when I'm inside. Hurry up."
"But this is the service chute, isn't it?" he asked.
"Did you expect Nubian slaves to carry you down a spiral ramp? Later on you can persuade Father to buy me a copter if you want to."
"You mean," he quavered, "that you think I'm going to fall down that chute on a little platform without sides?"
She jerked the knife from her skirt. "I think you're going to do that or else you're going to let me lock you back in the library."