The Government Spaceport was emptied and darkened by the evening. Steve Podalski and his brethren had gone to their homes, Tweety had gone sailing up into the stratosphere to sleep, and the only living creature was Sergeant Atoms who lay twitching his paws in a dream-chase.
From the floor of Bed 52 Rhiannon watched Karrin labor up the motionless 'scalator, saw the lights flicker on, saw his employer move about shoving things into a carrycase.
Rhiannon's affliction may be said to have been "stroboscopic" in character. That is, his brain functioned with an irregular alternation of clarity and fuddle. At this moment the lights were on in that great skull and his brain cells were skittering about, playing with a Thought.
It had been a Patrol boat. He had seen the Nova. It had been a Patrol boat. He'd seen that Nova.
He shifted uneasily in his wrappings of tubemonkey suit and reflections. He looked up again at Karrin's office. The man had moved back from the window; only his head was visible, seeming to roll like Tweety back and forth on the broad sill as he crossed from safe to desk, desk to safe. That distant face was sculptured in pure anxiety. Karrin was obviously, was definitely, not reporting to President Naro. He wasn't doing anything of the kind.
Rhiannon put these observations one under the other, added them, and got the right answer. He'd been taken. Just as his fellow workers could play incredible jokes on him—when Stevie wasn't around—and have them pan out because of his braincut, so had Spy Karrin pulled a whopper.
Having worked this out, the busy cells slowed down, the lights began to dim behind the giant's dulling eyes. He stood there in the darkness, having one grim determination, and not knowing quite why he had it.
Karrin came out of his office and grunted down the 'scalator, unused to the knee action of climbing and descending. His shadowy figure came across the floor, gradually giving its details. His face was red, his eyes were feathered with red; he hugged the carrycase like a mourning Apache mother.
"Ready?" he asked.
Rhiannon blocked the door; his voice came puzzledly: "I ain't going."