Calhoun swerved behind a government building and out of the parking area beyond. Obviously, he couldn't leave Government Center by the way he'd entered it. If Lett hadn't ordered him stopped, he'd be ordering it now. And Murgatroyd was an absolute identification.
Again he turned a corner, thrusting Murgatroyd down out of sight. He turned again, and again.... Then he began concentratedly to remember where the sunset-line had been upon the planet when he was waiting to be landed by the grid. He could guess at an hour and a half, perhaps two, since he touched ground. On the combined data, he made a guess at the local time. It would be mid-afternoon. So shadows would lie to the northeast of the objects casting them. Then—
He did not remain on any straight roadway for more than seconds. But now when he had a choice of turnings, he had a reason for each choice. He twisted and dodged about—once he almost ran into children playing a ritual game—but the sum total of his movements was steadily southward. Paras were turned out of the south gate. That gate, alone, would be the one where someone could go out with a chance of being unchallenged.
He found the gate. The usual tall buildings bordered it to left and right. The actual exit was bare concrete walls slanting together to an exit to the outer world; no more than a house-door wide. Well back from the gate, there were four high-side trucks with armed police in the truck-bodies. They were there to make sure that paras turned out, or who went out of their own accord when they knew their state, would not come back.
He stopped the ground car and tucked Murgatroyd under his coat. He walked grimly toward the narrow exit. It was the most desperate of gambles, but it was the only one he could make. He could be killed, of course, if anybody suspected him of attempting exit at any gate.
He got out, unchallenged. The concrete walls rose higher and higher as he walked away from the trucks and the police who would surely have blasted him had they guessed. The way he could walk became narrowed. It became a roofed-over passageway, with a turn in it so it could not be looked through end to end. Then—he reached open air once more.
Nothing could be less dramatic than his actual escape. He simply walked out. Nothing could be less remarkable than his arrival in the city outside of Government Center. He found himself in a city street, rather narrow, with buildings as usual all about him, whose windows were either bricked shut, or smashed. There were benches against the base of one of those buildings, and four or five men, quite unarmed, lounged upon them. When Calhoun appeared one of them looked up and then arose. A second man turned to busy himself with something behind him. They were not grim. They showed no sign of being mad. But Calhoun had already realized that the appetite which was madness came only occasionally, only at intervals which could probably be known in advance. Between one monstrous hunger-spell and another, a para might look and act and actually be as sane as anybody else. Certainly Dr. Lett and the President and the Cabinet members who were paras acted convincingly as if they were not.
One of the men on the benches beckoned.
"This way," he said casually.