"No telling," said Frank. "And no telling how long this Ultrablack is for. At normal Ultrablack, I can count on a definite number of hours, but—" He hesitated, then clapped Lennick on the shoulder and said, "Come on, Bob! This may be the chance we were looking for!"
The producer followed him, bewildered, out of the office and down the corridor toward the set. Just inside the set, where the siren-alerted crew members were grabbing their gear together in preparation for swift flight, Frank pulled Bob aside and led him to a door flanking the corridor entrance. "This way," he said, shoving the other man inside and following.
"To the prop room?" Lennick said wonderingly, his mind a pastiche of envisioned secret panels, inter-level tunnels and the like. Frank kept moving down the short hall without replying, so Lennick could only tag impatiently after him, his curiosity at its ultimate. Then they were in the high, barn-like gloom of the prop room, a fantastic collage of canvas backdrops, teeter-piled furniture, swords, pistols, fake-currency stacks, ropes, saddles, bows, arrows, and other oddments of the trade.
Lennick found his bewilderment growing as Frank pushed aside a stack of dusty chairs and then slid aside a tall desert-sky backdrop on oiled rollers. For a horrible instant, Lennick recoiled, his flesh going icy with unthinking fright. Then he relaxed and gave a shiver of relief. "Damn those things!" he grunted. "I forgot we had them stored back here...." Then he looked up and met Frank's gaze, and comprehension dawned on him. "You mean—Them?!"
"There's a panel in the back, where the operator can slide in to run the controls," Frank said. "It'll hold two, if you don't mind crowding."
"Good grief!" Lennick gasped. "I should have guessed!"
"Never mind the self-recriminations," Frank said. "Help me roll this thing out so we can get inside it."
Lennick nodded, and took hold of the jointed metal arm on one side, as Frank did the same on the other. Together, they wheeled the massive torso of the prop-Goon toward the center of the room. As Frank located and opened the neatly disguised panel, Lennick shook his head in doubt.
"There's no force-field, Frank," he said uneasily, "and once Ultrablack sets in—"