Humphry came out of his office and looked over Scott’s shoulder at the monitors. “Keep looking for them. Check each sector, one at a time, until they turn up. Start with the infirmary and isolation if you want, but let me know.” He went away again.

After a few minutes, Scott came to Humphry’s office. “I’ve been looking, but I haven’t found them. And now I’m getting these intermittent outages. I’ll check on a place and it all seems fine. Then I’ll come back to it and there’s no visual. I’ll go off it and look somewhere else, and then the visual is on again, and there doesn’t seem to be anything out of place, but the seven men never show up.”

Humphry said, “Is there anything off right now?”

“One of the hallways. And the infirmary.”

“Not the front gate or the yard?”

“Not so far. It’s all random places.”

“Great. That means nobody’s trying to get out. The only serious problem is that the trouble squad hasn’t come back yet. How do you propose we could solve that?”

“I tried calling them again and the talk button didn’t get me an override.” He knew what Humphry wanted and he was reluctant, but Humphry was staring at him, waiting. He gave in. “Do you think I should go out and look for them?”

Humphry shrugged. “That might do it.”

“Would you mind holding down the office by yourself while I go, Captain?” It was his only way of retaliating. He knew Humphry hated being alone in the office running from phone to phone and watching the monitors.

Humphry said, “I don’t expect you to answer the phones when you’re not here. When you find them, tell Pelletier to come see me.”

“Yes, sir.” Scott turned and left Humphry’s office. By the time he passed his work station at the monitors, the outage at the infirmary had been restored. A glance showed him the reception desk and the secure area where the sick or faking inmates waited to be examined, and the dimly lit ward with sleeping inmates on narrow beds. He reached for the handheld radio. Maybe everything was working again. It wasn’t. The continuous chatter of guard voices was loud, if not clear. He set the radio down and hurried out.