He couldn't understand her actions. The chilling fear kept recurring that somehow she had been detected leaving the tunnel. But reason argued that in that event the museum guards would have made a careful search for her male companion.
Then why had she vanished? Looking back, trying to recall everything that had happened between them, every word that had been spoken, Hendley recognized evasiveness in some of her replies, duplicity in some of her actions. She had been trying to avoid him when she left the Research Center early that day. Moreover, she had suggested that they leave separately. She had planned to disappear.
Yet she had come to meet him—she had given herself to him joyously.
Tired and discouraged, Hendley stopped at a sidewalk vending unit. He hadn't eaten since breakfast. He selected a hot meal, pressed the appropriate buttons, and presented his identity disc. A red panel of light flashed on.
Startled, Hendley stared at the machine. He tried again. Once more his charge was rejected.
Someone was watching him curiously. Hendley quickly left the vender. Safely in the crowded street again, he found that he was trembling. Now it begins, he thought.
He tried to enter a theater. The ticket machine rejected his identity disc. He went down the escalator to a subway station. There was a line of people before the gate. By the time Hendley reached it, a number of other people had lined up behind him. His hand shook as he held his identity disc out to the ticket machine. Again a red light flashed.
The people behind him grew restless. "Come on, hurry up!" a man said. "What's the trouble?" another asked. "Look!" a woman cried. "Something's wrong! That red light is on!"
Hendley slipped out of the line, his face hot and his heart bumping wildly against his ribs. He heard a shout behind him as he reached the escalators. He plunged up the moving steps.
Back on the street, he was afraid to enter another crowded place to use his disc again. He waited until he found a small, old-fashioned coffee machine tucked away in a quiet corner of an arcade. No one was watching him.