Warren Murphy - Target of Opportunity

"This is cornball city," she had muttered for all the world to hear. "I can't believe I'm sitting next to a giant mouse and people are taking it seriously. Puhleeze!"

Under his mouse head, Godfrey Grant had gone white. He knew how image sensitive the Mouseschwitz High Command was. So he gave the figure skater a gentle nudge in the ribs.

A harmless nudge. That's all it was supposed to be. A nudge and a whispered suggestion to cool it while you're a guest of Sam Beasley World.

Trouble was, the Mongo Mouse head didn't afford much peripheral vision. Grant couldn't see as clearly as he should. And the gentle nudge in the ribs became a hard elbow to the temple.

With a yelp the figure skater dropped right off the back of the Mousemobile, where a team of Clydesdale horses clopped all over the ungrateful bitch, mashing fingers, breaking teeth and most unfortunately shattering the very same kneecap the moron with the collapsible steel baton had failed to even dent.

The figure skater's career was over.

Godfrey Grant's career with Beasley would have been over, too.

Except for the fact that they had miked the Mousemobile.

When he was summoned before the Beasley overseer, Grant expected they'd want his head. The rodent head. And his resignation.

They took the head, all right. But instead of firing him, they consigned Grant to Utiliduck duty, the lowest niche in the the Beasley food chain.

"You're not firing me?" he had asked.

"Normally you'd have been out on your curly tail in a flat minute," the overseer had barked. "But you lucked out. The networks picked up the bitch's whinings and broadcast them clear to Tokyo."

"That's why I tried to nudge her," Grant had protested. "To keep her quiet. I knew the company wouldn't want people to hear. It would spoil the moment."

"The moment," the overseer had shot back, "is not only spoiled, but the bitch is suing us. The cameras caught it all, so she'll probably triple her fee for that one stupid ride."

"I don't get it."

"The big cheese saw and heard it all. He thought she deserved to have her kneecap broken for mouthing off like that. In fact, he was distinctly heard to say that it was too bad the horses didn't bust both of them and put her in a wheelchair."

"That's why I'm not fired?"

"That's why you're not fired," the overseer had said, handing Godfrey Grant a long-handled push broom and saying, "Now get to sweeping."

So Godfrey Grant got to sweeping. A year of sweeping had not endeared him to the job or Utiliduck or mouthy ingrate figure skaters, but in these hard times a job was a job and the truth was that between the heat and the bratty kids, being a greeter could be murder.

At least down in Utiliduck, it was cool and quiet and not much happened to spoil a man's workday.

So Grant was surprised when the white ceiling lights suddenly turned yellow. He had never seen that before. A moment later they shaded to orange, and section control doors began slamming shut.

The lights then became red, and a Klaxon started hooting.

"What's going on?" he asked a squad of security men as they pounded his way.

"Intruder alert."

"Someone trying to sneak in for free?"

The team leader stopped. "Can you handle a gun?"

"Gun?"

And he handed Grant a machine pistol with a mouse-head silhouette stamped on the buttstock.

"Be on the lookout for a guy in a T-shirt with thick wrists. If he comes this way, shoot on sight."

"Shoot?" muttered Godfrey Grant. "Who'd try to sneak into Utiliduck that would need shooting?"

The security team leader didn't reply. They kept running as if they were on a deck of an aircraft carrier during a strafing attack.

So Godfrey Grant tucked his machine pistol into his belt and went back to sweeping the trash that periodically dropped from the nest of ceiling pneumatic terminals.

It was his job to push the incoming trash into the waiting valve of a floor trash compactor. It would have been just as simple to have the stuff go directly into the compactor, but that was Beasley World up above. Anything could come dropping down with the trash. Wristwatches. Wallets. Guns. Medicine. Even cranky baby sisters who kept their older brothers from the Buccaneers of the Bahamas ride.

So Godfrey Grant maneuvered his push broom through the trash, keeping an eye peeled for valuables and inconvenient children.

When a pair of loafers dropped from above, bringing with them a tall skinny guy with thick wrists and the deadest eyes Godfrey Grant had ever seen, he dropped his broom and stammered, "You're the guy."

"What guy?"

"The guy with the thick wrists everybody's looking for."

The man seemed unperturbed. "That's me."

"I'm supposed to shoot you," said Grant.

"Go ahead."

"But I don't want to," Grant admitted.

"Suit yourself," the guy with the thick wrists said in a bored voice. He looked around, saw he was in a white room with slick walls and asked, "Where's Uncle Sam?"

Grant hesitated. "Beasley?"

"Yeah."

"He's been dead longer than I've been alive."

"They don't tell the custodial staff very much around here, do they?"

Grant looked blank.

"Where's the warmest room down here?" asked the man.

Grant frowned. "Warmest?"

"You heard me," said the guy with the thick wrists, drifting up to Grant. Grant backed off, thought he succeeded, but then his machine pistol was suddenly in the guy's right hand. He brought his other hand up, and the machined steel began complaining. It squeaked. It barked. It began coming to pieces as if it were made out of stale sugar cone.

"There's a room two lefts down that corridor, that no one's allowed to go into," Grant offered. "When people come out, they're usually sweating like pigs."

"Sounds about right."

"They're going to make me pay for that broken gun."

"Between you and me and the wall, I don't think anyone's going to be counting guns after I'm through."

And when the thick wristed guy was gone, Grant looked up. He could have sworn the tube he'd come out of was too narrow for a full-grown man. Although the guy was on the skinny side.

Shrugging, Godfrey Grant reached down to retrieve his long-handled push broom and resumed sweeping. After all, he was paid to push a broom, not deal with security problems.

Not to mention the skinny guy with the wrists had treated him better than his bosses ever did.

"FIRE that fuck, Maus."

"At once, Director."

"No, not at once, you idiot. That lumber-wristed meddler is running around loose. Swat him first. Then fire that fuck."

In the perpetually steamy Utiliduck control room, Captain Ernest Maus strode to the console and punched up the ceiling camera in the corridor approach.

The man with the thick wrists was walking purposefully along the corridor.

He hit a key and barked, "Intruder in Corridor G. Repeat, intruder in Corridor G. Approach and neutralize."

"This ought to be good," chuckled the voice from the high-backed console chair.

Maus nodded. "They'll get him in a cross fire and chip his skeleton to pieces."

"Serve the bastard right. Lock me in a damn rubber room for two years, will he?"

The main monitor on the other side of the room covered Corridor G. Satellite monitors showed Utiliduck security teams regrouping to take up positions of attack at turns of the branch corridors.

"They're in position, Director. The intruder seems oblivious to them."

"What's that he's doing to the wall?"

"Touching it with his fingertips," Captain Maus reported.

"After he takes that next turn, he'll be touching the face of God."

REMO WILLIAMS felt along the wall. It was of sheet steel. Rock solid. An excellent conductor of vibrations. His ears caught the padding of feet made heavy by the weight of awkward weapons. He counted seven in ambush at three separate points just ahead and four more trying to pace him a turn in the corridor behind.