Partly out of idle curiosity, partly because the half-noted fading away of the Institute’s busy daytime hum had made him restless, he decided to explore. He pressed his door switch. Nothing happened. He pressed the switch again, and yet a third time, holding it strongly closed for seconds. Still nothing; no movement of the door to open; not even the usual motor hum from overhead. A broken power circuit!
Still, that could be accidental. In the dimness—he had not yet switched on his room lights—he felt for the unobtrusive finger slots that made it possible to slide the panel if the power failed. His hand encountered only smooth and highly polished wood. Duke Harald turned the room lights on and let his eyes confirm the evidence of touch. His door had somehow seated too far home; the slots were now concealed within the jamb.
“Locked in,” Duke Harald said then, softly. “But it’s not official. I’ll wager if I called a porter now, I’d be let out, and with apologies for the accident!”
But it was clear he was not being urged to roam the Institute, on this initiation night.
No matter. According to all reports, the ceremony did not start till midnight. He had time; his lock-box had arrived intact; and, even lacking both, he deemed himself a good enough mechanic to restore emergency power to that door.
Thus, well in advance of the striking of the hour of vigil, Duke Harald slid the panel back and stepped boldly into the soft illumination of the corridor. A flat black cap wais on his head; a knee-length battle cloak swung loosely from his shoulders; and a brace of tiny pistolets was holstered at his sides.
Melton’s initiation would, according to old customs, take place within the private chambers of his adept-tutor, Master Elwyn. The never-varied usage was for each successful candidate, at a time when formal graduation was not too distant, to be “received” by his master in a secret midnight rite; and then to spend the remainder of that night in vigil. That, at least, was the publicly accepted story.
It was a clever touch, Duke Harald had thought when first he heard of it. It added prestige, a certain quasireligious sanctity to adepts who had kept the vigil. And it reminded him most strongly of the ceremonies on far Arkady, when a nobleman was first inducted into knighthood.
It was still a neat touch if—as he was now convinced—that ceremony hid the true creation of the telepath. And certainly, no other moment in an esper student’s life was so well fitted to the covert administration of an unknown drug.
The various, separate buildings of the Institute were linked below the surface at subbasement level by a dimly lighted maze of tunnels; which gave access also to computer vaults, library stacks, and miscellaneous storage spaces. Duke Harald knew them well. Even had he not had from the first some night’s adventure such as this in mind, his military instinct would have driven him to learn the details of the system. And learn them he did : by dint of personal exploration, and the long scrutiny of variously acquired maps and building plans. Thus he made his way with speed and secrecy to Master Elwyn’s building.