Stepping back from the knife, Phil sat down suddenly on the platform, cracking the top of his head on the doorway, and then slowly drew in his legs and assumed the position of the Anxious Buddha. "You didn't have to rush me," he said with some dignity.
"I'm sending you to the first basement," she told him in clipped tones. "I'll give you five seconds to get out. I think the door'll be open there. If not, you'll have to come up again, and hope it's me that gets you and not some other floor. Now don't worry," she told him as she slid the door shut, "I've done this a dozen times myself—or at least thought of doing it."
In the darkness Phil's spine stiffened to condensed steel and his hands clutching the clamps became those of a gorilla. He had time to think that if only Lucky were with him, tucked inside his jacket....
The platform was jerked down from under him, dragging him along. His stomach rapidly scrambled over his heart and nestled just below his Adam's apple. A giant snake hissed and he was acutely conscious of being inches from death by friction on every side. Then, just as he figured he'd got a really firm grip on the clamps, he distinctly felt the platform through the hassock, his heels cut into his rump, his vertebrae cut into his intervertebral disks, and various things inside him jarred loose.
He was staring groggily into a dimly lit and empty room. Time was passing, it occurred to him. He dove out onto the floor, while behind him the platform took off with a hearty whish. By the time he had dragged himself to a sitting position and taken a few breaths there was a gust of air from the chute and a zing as the platform came to a stop. Miss Romadka sprang out nimbly and curtsied to an imaginary audience.
"You never did that before?" he asked her glumly.
"Of course I have, but I knew if I said I hadn't you'd take it more seriously." She tweaked him by the nearest ear. "Come on, you're not out of Father's clutches yet."
Almost to his disappointment, he found he could scramble to his feet and follow her. He almost felt calm. "How did you push the button from the inside, anyhow?"
"Just taped it down, jumped in and shut the door. The platform won't move if any of the upper-floor doors are open."
"What's your name, by the way?"