Mercury Man by Tom Henighan Page A

flipped on the light. Sure enough, there was a small washbasin, a few mops, brooms, and pails, and the smell of soap and disinfectant.
    When he saw the rough bundled clothing hung on metal pegs in one corner, he sprang forward. He was in luck! Here he had a ready-made disguise that might just do the trick.
    Quickly, he pulled on the work overalls — they were a little small but he managed to get into them. There was even a cap, which he tore at to make it fit his head. He gawked at himself in the mirror, laughed, and grabbed a pail and mop.
    He took a deep breath, slowly opened the door, and stepped back into the corridor.
    He walked forward without much confidence. He knew that, above all, he had to look bored and casual. Workmen didn’t stalk around places holding mops like swords or lances. Deliberately, as he climbed the curvingstairway, he clattered the pail against the metal banister. The men in the lounge area turned at once, threw him a glance, then paid him no further attention.
    He took a deep breath. He had passed the first test. Up the stairs he climbed, until he emerged on the narrow walkway, high above the main hall. He stopped for a minute, pretending to work at a patch of floor. He had to move forward along the balcony to reach the auditorium.
    He went slowly and carefully, and his confidence built up a little. It looked like he just might make it. Then suddenly a door opened right behind him and voices sounded so close in his ear that he jumped and gasped. He had sense enough, though, not to spring around, to keep on mopping. His heart pounded wildly as a man and a woman stepped around him, negotiating the narrow space together.
    â€œEvening,” he mumbled in his deepest voice, without daring to look at them.
    â€œEvening,” the woman replied.
    They walked on past, engrossed in their conversation, and disappeared into another room. He picked up his mop and continued, as deliberately as he could, in the direction of the auditorium. A man walked out of a room just in front of him.
    Tom turned quickly, set the pail and mop aside, pulled a rag out of his pocket, and pretended to polish the tiled wall. The man walked past without a word.
    Despite its lofty spaces, the main Fabricon hall seemed claustrophobic. He resumed his march forward,but anxious thoughts assailed him. Suppose they caught him? He wanted to find out where his friends were, but what about the risks? He could be arrested for trespassing, or even worse. In which case his mother would be frantic.
    A few anxious moments later he had reached a point just opposite the robot figure that dominated the lofty hall. Close up he could see that it was really a comical sculpture, a jolly construction suspended from on high by invisible wires. It looked like a composite of all the robots he had seen in science fiction movies, and it had some kind of formula (or was it a secret language?) written across its metallic chest. Underneath it, far below, sat the two men he had spotted earlier, still busy with their coffee, magazines, and casual conversation.
    Tom hesitated a moment. The men, chatting together, seemed oblivious to his presence. A few steps farther, then, on the right, almost at his elbow, he saw large double doors fixed with a brass plate that bore the inscription “COPERNICUS.” Underneath this, a sheet of paper had been pinned up. It read: “Experiment in Progress. Absolutely no admittance.”
    He hesitated, hearing faint noises from within, but moved on toward where the walkway curved beneath an enormous skylight. Here he came upon another, much smaller, door, this one marked “CONTROL ROOM.”
    He peered through a tiny window and saw, inside a dimly lit booth, elaborate machinery and a man standing behind a complicated-looking projector. The man, engrossed in his task, didn’t see him, and Tom duckedback, thinking,
A movie, some kind of promo. Is this where they all are? But why the secrecy?
    There was