Free Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer by The invaders are Coming Page B

the heated sponge mattress, stinking and acrid. Choking, Alexander
threw the door into the hall open and peered out as smoke began to billow out.
    As
he had expected, there was a tumoff at the end of the
corridor, with a civilian guard just settling back to his magazine after the
buzz for the blown fuse. Alexander waited until the smoke in the corridor grew
thick enough to haze out the nearest TV scanner. Then he screamed, "Fire!" and began running toward the guard, with the
pillow-case blackjack held out of sight.
    The
guard jerked up in surprise, staring incredulously at the man running at him
stark naked down the corridor. Instead of blasting at him with the stunner he
was wearing, the guard stood open-mouthed, as Alexander had anticipated,
expecting that the last thing a naked man fleeing a fire would do would be to
slug him. On the dead run, Alexander swung the pillow case, and the three metal
rollers slammed into the guard's head.
    As
soon as the guard hit the floor Alexander unzipped the front of his light blue
duty coveralls. Then he hoisted the limp form to his shoulder and hurried back
to the room. Smoke was billowing out the door, and in the distance he heard the
fire gong clanging. He held the coveralls and let the guard slide out of them
like an egg yolk. Once into the coveralls, he shoved the guard's body into the
smoke-filled room.
    At the end of the corridor there was a sudden
burst of noise . . . undoubtedly the fire squad. Alexander took a deep breath,
and plunged into the smoke. He seized the guard's ankle and began to back out
slowly, coughing noticeably as the first of the emergency crew arrived.
    Eager
hands assisted him to get the guard, face down, out of the room. Someone
started artificial respiration, and Alexander coughed into his hands and
backed away as more people and equipment began to arrive. An extinguisher began
to spray the smoldering mattress, which threw up great clouds of acrid black
smoke. In twenty seconds Alexander was walking slowly away, past several
interns who were hurrying toward the noise, and into the main-wing corridor of
the George Kelley Hospital.
    With the first step behind him, Alexander
moved swiftly toward the service elevator which had brought up the
fire-fighting equipment. It was only a matter of time before somebody noticed
that the victim in the smoke-filled room was a guard and not a patient; he had
to get beyond the hospital walls before the security alarm went off.
    He
had long since discarded the idea of posing as a dischargee ,
impossible because discharge hours were over for the day; or as a guard or even
a doctor, impossible because the fingerprint-check would stop him cold at the
gate. He knew the hospital used plastic sheets and gowns which were sterilized
and remolded after use, so no laundry trucks ever left the compound. Food
cartons and supplies came in from outside on standard conveyor strips, X-ray
checked as they entered. Garbage and trash were similarly conveyed out in
sealed drums.
    But
in Buenos Aires, Alexander had noticed a curiosity in that hospital's security
procedure which he thought should be present in the Kelley's system as well.
    He
found the morgue in the basement, adjacent to a loading platform in the rear
of the main part of the building. He reached it through an employee's stairwell
and a concrete tunnel leading past the power pile.
    Chicago,
like all major cities, had a central autopsy room; and the Kelley, like other
hospitals in the city, shipped all its cadavers there on a day-to-day basis.
The transit was usually made at night to avoid traffic on Wahanakee Drive. Now Alexander saw that the truck was still waiting, backed up to the
loading platform while the drivers were in the cafeteria for coffee. There were
four wheeled stretchers, with sheets covering the bodies, loaded into the back
of the refrigerated truck.
    Alexander
scrambled up the tailgate, peering into the truck. Back of the stretchers the undomed gyro was spinning, an