This was where Slick sprang a little surprise.
"You willing to bet your kid's life on that?" he asked, picking up the boy.
He took two steps toward the platform, watching Porter's reactions. If the father made a lunge toward the panel, Slick would know the setting was wrong. But Porter only stood stunned. The setting was safe, then, but Slick had only Porter's word that it couldn't be changed after contact. Maybe a change would be fatal to the passenger. So he would make sure there would be no changes.
"I always take out travel insurance. Doc," Slick said, and, stepping onto the platform, he put the boy gently into one of the chairs and reclined in the other himself.
"Dickie!" Dr. Porter cried.
It was the last thing Slick or the boy heard him say.
Slick came back to awareness of where he was and what he was doing. He was in one of the radial corridors, but at what compass point, at which level, and how many miles inside the outer walls of the city, he didn't know. He ran his fingers in a puzzled manner through his hair. He had never quite figured out the lettering system of the "circles" which weren't actually circles, but multagons.
