I landed with a soft thud that jolted my knees. Rubbing my sore palms, I crouched behind one of the high work tables, waiting until I was sure the noise of my arrival hadn’t roused anyone.
The assembly room door had a simple latch lock, open on the inside. I pushed back the catch on my way out: if I needed a quick escape route I didn’t want to have to pick even a simple lock. No one was in the hall. I stood by the door for a long moment, straining to pick up breathing or some restless twitch on the cement floor. The width of the factory lay between me and the trucks. In the stillness of the building I could hear their engines faintly vibrating. Other than that all was calm.
Fire lights placed at wide intervals gave the place a faint green glow, as though it were underwater. The murkiness upset my sense of place; I couldn’t remember how the assembly room connected to the plant manager’s office. I took a wrong turn down a connecting hall. Suddenly the diesels sounded very loud: I was coming to the corridor that led to the loading bay.
, I pulled up abruptly and tiptoed to the corner. I was looking at the cement cavern that opened directly onto the bays. Again the only light came from two green fire blocks. I couldn’t see clearly, but I didn’t think anyone was there.
Although the corrugated doors still covered the bays, diesel fumes were seeping around them. My nose wrinkled as I tried to fight back a sneeze. It came out as a muffled explosion.
Just at that moment another explosion sounded above my head. My heart hammered against my ribs and my calves felt wobbly. I forced myself to stand still, not to give away my presence by jumping or fleeing back up the hall. And in another second I felt like a fool: the motor operating a huge gantry had sprung to life, its gears clanging like a foundry under full steam.
The gantry’s tracks crisscrossed the room’s high ceiling. They ran parallel between a wide concrete shelf built about two-thirds of the way up the wall and the doors to the bays. Two perpendicular tracks, each with a gigantic crane hanging from it, connected the two. Presumably the concrete shelf led to a storage area.
When I’d been here before I’d noticed iron stairs at the main entrance leading to a second story, probably the same area fed by the gantry. It didn’t seem very efficient to me, keeping heavy materiel on the second floor when your work was all down below. Still, that might be the best they could do with the constraints on their space; the construction around the canal was so tightly packed that they couldn’t expand sideways.
As I squinted in the dim light to follow the crane’s route I noticed movement above me. Someone had emerged from the gloom of the upper deck and was climbing down a steel ladder built into the wall. He didn’t look around but headed straight for the bays and began unlocking the doors.
I began to feel uncomfortably exposed and started a backward retreat up the hall. Just as I moved from the doorway the loading cavern was flooded with light.
I looked nervously over my shoulder. No one was behind me. I turned and sprinted up the corridor, hugging the south wall to stay as far from the sightlines in there as possible.
When I got back to the main hall I stopped to catch my breath and reorient myself. A right turn would lead me to a T crossing; a couple of turns there and I’d find myself back in the administrative offices. Or I could go left, which would bring me to the front entrance with the iron stairs leading upward.
The trouble was that I wanted to see both places. People loading trucks in the middle of the night at what appeared to be a deserted factory deserved a closer scrutiny. If I chose the office first they might finish whatever they were doing with the trucks before I got back to them. On the other hand, if someone saw me watching the trucks I’d have to flee without seeing Chamfers’s files. Choices, choices. I turned left.
The floors were so thick that not much noise came through them. I couldn’t hear voices above me, but every few minutes there’d be a dull thud as someone dropped a heavy object. I moved quickly, not worrying that anyone above me would notice my sounds. I even sneezed again without trying to choke it back.
I grew cautious at the door separating me from the main entrance. Solid metal, fitting flush to the floor, it didn’t even have a keyhole I could peer through. Its dead bolt locked from the outside but could be pushed back by hand on my side. Moving with infinite care, I slid the bolt open… waited a count often. No one hollered or came charging at me.