Page 17 (2/2)
"We soon high &039;nough, Phil," she said "Hold on hands, stick feet under bar"
He obeyed her instructions, taking hold of two handles and thrusting his legs under a large padded bar A an to be pulled away froht He deduced that they were decelerating After a bit this stopped too and he was once " Meanwhile, the picture in the screen had become one of the whole city - a checkerboard of tiny squares not unlike a map
Dytie produced and unfolded an ordinary street map and flattened it out beside the screen
"You say you knohere find out pussycat is You say in city Show Dytie"
Phil forced his mind to tackle this problem His first realization was just how flimsy the hope was on which he&039;d based his statereen cat It depended on Billig having the green cat, on Jack Jones knohere Billig had hidden fro himself at the Akeleys&039; Still, it was the only way he knew of getting a line on Lucky
And then it occurred to him that he didn&039;t knohere the Akeley house was located But a suddenmannequins came to his rescue The Akeley house was next to Monstro Multi-Products, and everybody knew the address of that vast department store He located it for Dytie on the streetdoard, so that he had to cling to the handles again, while the squares on the screen were growing larger, with the large square that was Monstro Multi-Productstoward the center
He started to ask Dytie to answer the questions he&039;d put to her in his roo story No time now First find pussycat Very &039;portant"
The rectangle representing the roof of Monstro Multi-Products now filled quite a bit of the screen, and the streets beside it were broad ribbons Their descent slowed Dytie hy around the depart next to it, the tiny slot indicating the cubical pocket of space in which the Akeley house stood, robbed of its air rights
As they dropped slowly into the canyon of the street past ed and less walls, Phil felt a witchery in the violet version of the city He could s - cars and people
Soon they were hovering only ten feet above the violet sidewalk and the unsuspecting pedestrians
Then Dytie slipped the dinghy between the rail of the sidewalk and the "floor" of the tall building over the Akeley house The violet picture grew quite dark They descended a little farther, past the top-level street and the one next below it until they were a couple of feet above the pile of bricks from the fallen chimney Dytie hts went out, and with breath-taking suddenness Phil&039;s body crunched into the soft lining as norhy to stand on," Dytie told him "Quiet now, Phil"
A slit of lesser darkness appeared beyond Dytie and widened to a rectangle through which, after a bit, he could le was obstructed as Dytie cli thes, and carefully cliritty front yard Then he looked up As far as he could see there was absolutely nothing above him except the two upper-level streets and the dull black "ceiling" above the house Not only did light "go around" the dinghy, but it did so without getting shuffled
"All safe," Dytie assured his This place, Phil?"
The Akeley house looked erously dilapidated than ever, canted forward at least a foot after the chi wound had been left in the two upper stories and nothing had been done to bandage it However, a little light glowed through the shutters of the living-rooerly, with an eye cocked on the o wall, Phil led Dytie up onto the porch and around the corner of it He hesitated for a moment in front of the old door with the tiny cat door cut in the bottom of it, then lifted his hand to the cat-headed knocker and banged it twice After a while there were footsteps, the old style peephole was opened, and this tiray eye as Sacheverell&039;s
"Greetings, Phil," the latter said "Who&039;s that with you?"
"A young lady naht in Fate must be at work Her brother&039;s here"