HUNT THE MAN DOWN!
The carrier came first--a flimsy two-passenger craft, unsuited for
even the shortest of interplanetary jumps.
Swooping down too fast out of the eternal dust-clouds that shrouded the
Venusian sky, it crested a hillock by such a narrow margin as to spray
sand high into the never-ending wind, then veered right in a crazy arc.
Another hillock. The carrier struck it a glancing blow that churned
up new clouds of sand and dust as it skated diagonally down the slope
beyond.
Ahead, jutting from the endless waste of powdery grit that stretched as
far as eye could see, loomed low outcroppings of fantastically-eroded
rock.
The carrier plowed into them with a rending crash. Claw-like crags
gouged at the craft's thin metal skin. A hiss of escaping air played
sudden gusty counterpoint to the whistle of the wind. Line-welds
popped. Seams split. Bucking and shuddering, the carrier jolted to a
halt.
Before the echoes could even die, then, the cowling-seal flipped loose
from its seat. The warped entrance-bubble lifted jerkily, wrenched up
an inch or two at a time.
Barely half open, it halted. A man wearing a plastron breather-mask
squirmed through the slot and, falling, sprawled prostrate in the
shifting sands beside the tiny vessel.
But now a new sound echoed overhead--the heavy vibrance of a
spaceship's ramping-drone.
Sobbing for breath, the man beside the carrier moved convulsively,
then lurched to his knees. His chrysolite-green tunic was ripped wide
where it had caught on the cowling. A long gash above his left temple
stained dun-drab hair scarlet. His nose was bleeding, too, so that the
transparent breather-mask bubbled spreading ruby streaks every time he
sucked in air.
Now, clutching at the carrier's shattered hull, he dragged himself to
his feet, stood swaying there.
Simultaneously, the vibrance overhead echoed louder. A sleek-lined,
compact Grade IV short-range cruiser plummeted into view through the
dust-clouds and hovered momentarily in ramping position--base down,
tail fins parallel to the surface of the ground below.
The face of the man from the carrier contorted behind the
breather-mask. Turning sharply, he lurched away from the wrecked craft,
wading calf-deep through the powdery Venusian dust towards another,
larger outcropping of eroded rock.
But as he did so, the cruiser dropped with swift precision. The
balancing fins bit in atop a level dune near where the crippled carrier
lay. Gears ground. A hatch spun swiftly outward on its screw-locks.
The man on the ground broke into a stumbling run.
From the cruiser, an amplifier blared harsh male syllables: "Halt, you
chitza!" And then: "Pull up, rack you! Freeze! You know you can't get
away!"
The runner scrambled over a low ledge, then on again. He gave no sign
he'd even heard.
"You want a blast, huh, Thigpen? You want to go back with your legs
knotted up like old Pike Mawson's!"
The runner's stride broke. Flinging himself sidewise, he rolled bodily
down a short, sandy slope, then came up fast and plunged headlong into
the shelter of a grotesquely-shaped rock pillar.
Aboard the cruiser, someone cursed: the amplifier picked up the echo.
Voices rose angrily, only to cut off again as sharply as if slashed
with a knife.
And now, a new voice. A woman's voice, ragged and not quite steady:
"Don't worry, Thigpen. No one's going to hurt you. You've my word for
that."
* * * * *
A little eddy of dust drifted out from behind the rock pillar; that was
all.
Again, the woman's voice: "This is Veta Hall, Thigpen. You don't know
me, but you've probably heard of the man I'm speaking for: Pike Mawson,
the adjudicator on Japetus. He wants to make a deal with you."
From the rock pillar, silence only.
"You needn't play coy, Thigpen. Mawson knows all about that 'life
catalyst' you helped Tornelescu work out. That's why he sent us for
you. He's old and crippled; he needs that catalyst himself, so he can
find youth again. He'll give anything for it--anything you name. And he
doesn't care how many human guinea pigs you killed developing it, or
that you cut old Tornelescu's throat. He'll even help hide you from the
FedGov men, if that's worrying you."
The last eddy of dust from behind the rock faded away.
"Please, Thigpen!" the woman begged. "Please surrender! It's suicide if
you don't." A pause. "Look: you've heard of Igor Cheng, haven't you?
The slaver from the Belt? Well, that's who Mawson sent with me to help
bring you in--Cheng and three of his pet Belt killers. Only now that
the FedGov's put a price on your head...."
The woman's voice trailed off. Then, after a moment, it rose again,
with such violence the amplifier screamed protest.
"Don't you understand, you fool?" she cried hysterically. "If you come
in now, Igor's willing to live up to his bargain with Mawson. But if
you give him trouble, he'll kill you for the FedGov bounty. Only if
he does that, then he'll have to murder me too, so I can't give him
away to Mawson when he claims pushing you off was an accident, or
self-defense, or whatever other story he decides on!"
Again, silence, broken only by the whish of blowing sand and the
ululations of the wind.
The woman sighed audibly. "All right, Thigpen. Don't say I didn't try
to give you a chance." Emptiness, defeat, had replaced the desperation
in her voice.
The amplifier clicked off. A moment later a landing ladder
ratcheted into view below the cruiser's cylindrical hull. A man
with radiation-pocked skin and an ugly, livid scar down his right
cheek appeared in the open hatchway and, locking his legs about the
ladder's uprights, slid swiftly to the ground. Another man of the same
hard-faced cut followed, and then another.
For a moment, the cold-eyed trio paused beneath the ship, adjusting
breather-masks and checking short-barreled blasters. Then, spreading
out, they moved warily towards the rock pillar behind which their
quarry had disappeared.
Still there was no visible move from the man addressed as Thigpen.
Swinging wide down the slope in a crouch, the scar-faced member of the
searching party circled so as to approach the pillar from the rear.
A moment later his voice rasped through a hand-amp: "Rack the dirty
starbo! He isn't here!"
Instantly, the cruiser's speaker clicked on again. "What do you mean,
he's not there?" A note of repressed excitement echoed in Veta Hall's
words. "He's got to be there, Igor! There's no way he could have broken
clear!"
The scar-faced man laughed harshly. "That's right, lover-girl. There's
no way. So don't waste energy hoping we'll miss him."
Now the landing party's two other members came abreast the pillar. A
second hand-amp cut in: "There's a little cover over this way, Cheng.
Maybe our boy snaked on over to the next outcrop."
"How could he? We were watching!"
The third man: "Well, you can't find him, can you?"
And the second again: "If he played it right, he could have made it,
Cheng. After all, he had that column between him and us."
"All right, we'll go on to the next rocks, then. And when we find that
chitza--!"
The trio spread out once more--wading through swirling sand, clambering
over jagged ledges. Chill menace showed in their stance and movements.
They held their blasters at the ready.
Then, reaching the maze-like cluster of monoliths that was their goal,
they advanced warily between its towering, weird-etched columns till,
one by one, they disappeared from view.
Behind them, sand heaved at the base of the rock pillar that had been
their first goal. A figure pushed up out of the drifted grit.
It was the man from the carrier. Shooting quick glances to right and
left, he rose cat-like, then paused momentarily while he tapped sand
from his breather-mask's filter. He looked better now than he had
before his brief respite, and both his nose and the head-gash had
stopped bleeding. Close-knit, of medium height, and obviously under
thirty, he moved with lithe coordination. Cool intelligence glinted
in the grey eyes. His face, though hardly handsome, combined an
intriguingly paradoxical mixture of recklessness and control.
Now, as he tapped the filter, light flashed from his wrist. Stopping
short, he fumbled off a standard doloid identification bracelet.
But though the picture was his, the name engraved beneath it was
_Stewart Ross_, not Thigpen.
For the fraction of a second, the man hesitated, then dropped the
bracelet into the sand and scraped it under with his foot.
* * * * *
Next, pivoting, he struck out in the same general direction his
pursuers had taken, but at such an angle as would let the pillar screen
him from the cruiser.
A dozen yards farther on, a low, crumbling ledge crossed his path
slaunchwise. Dropping down into its shelter, the man wormed swiftly
along it till it played out in a wind-furrowed, trough-like hollow.
The hollow gave him cover to a dune, and the dune hid him till he
reached the first spur of the strata that formed the outcrop his
pursuers now were searching.
Staying low, out of view, Ross followed the spur till he reached the
upthrust columns and ledges themselves. Then, a fist-sized rock in each
hand, he rose and moved cautiously on into the maze.
Ahead, scar-faced Cheng came into view around a towering escarpment.
Instantly, Ross drew back. Tight-lipped, cold-eyed, he hefted the two
rocks.
Scowling under black, bushy brows as he peered this way and that,
blaster at the ready, Cheng shuffled closer ... closer....
Ross drew back a step. Then, through a slot between two great stone
slabs, he lobbed one of his rocks high into the air above Cheng's
head. Sailing in a swift arc, it struck the face of the escarpment and
rattled noisily down the steep slope behind the slaver.
Like lightning, Cheng whirled, finger already rigid on his weapon's
trigger.
It put his back to his stalker. Stepping clear of his sheltering slab,
Ross hurled the second rock.
It struck the base of Cheng's skull with a meaty _thunk_. The slaver
spilled forward.
Ross came in with a rush. Snatching up his downed foe's fallen blaster,
he whipped it round just in time to cover the other two members of the
landing party as they waded into view through the thick-drifted sand at
the cliff's base.
The pair stopped in their tracks, jaws dropping.
Ross' lips peeled back in the caricature of a grin. He didn't speak.
The two men from the cruiser hesitated, then exchanged quick,
raw-nerved glances.
Still not speaking, Ross flicked his blaster's muzzle ever so slightly;
triggered a bolt.
Sand spewed in a geyser bare inches from the feet of the man at the
left.
Like magic, the pair dropped their weapons.
Ross stripped off his torn, chrysolite-green tunic and tossed it down
beside black-browed, scar-faced Cheng, still lying limp and unconscious
in the sand. "Put this on him. And give me his outfit."
The slaver's two aides didn't even argue about it.
The switch finished and a cap donned to hide his gashed scalp, Ross
eyed his captives coldly. "How many aboard the cruiser?"
A moment of sullen hesitation. Then: "Just two--the girl, and one of us
to keep track of her."
"For your sake, I hope you're not lying." Ross' words held a flat,
deadly ring. "Now get this straight: you've finally captured me. But
you had to knock me out to do it, so you're carrying me back to the
ship." And then, to the nearest of the prisoners: "You! Put that on
your hand-amp. Tell the woman about it, strong enough for her to
believe it."
Eyes still on Ross' blaster, the man obeyed.
Ross smiled thinly. "Let's go."
Sullenly, his two prisoners heaved up their green-tunicked,
still-unconscious chief between them and, shuffling and stumbling,
carried him out of the outcrop's rocky maze to the dusty, windswept
spread of sandy waste beyond. Ross moved with them, but with face
averted. He maneuvered, too, to keep the others between him and the
cruiser.
Then, at last, they were climbing the dune on which the ship stood
ramped ... angling up the final slope and pausing beneath the shining
metal hull, out of view of the open hatchway above.
Ross said, "Lie down, you two!"
"Lie down--?" Panic flared in the eyes of the man nearest him. "So you
can blast us, you mean? No--"
He lunged as he spoke. But Ross was already moving, swinging up the
blaster's butt in a hard, fast blow to the other's head.
The man dropped. Hastily, his companion stretched out as ordered.
"Stay there," Ross clipped. Then, incredibly cool, he turned to the
ladder and, head tilted forward to hide his face, climbed swiftly
towards the hatchway.
Above him, Veta Hall spoke, her voice no longer marred by the
amplifier's distortion: "You really did get him, Igor? Alive, not
dead--?" But her tone told nothing of how she felt about it.
Ross mumbled incoherently, not slowing his climb.
"Will you need a sling to lift him, Igor?"--A male voice, this one.
Another guttural mumble. Ross' chin scraped his chest, he was holding
his head so far forward.
A hand touched his shoulder. "Speak up, Igor! I can't understand--"
Ross gripped the sill of the hatchway. His head came up--teeth bared,
eyes blazing. In one lunge, he slammed through the open port, bowling
Veta Hall aside.
The next instant he ricocheted into a gaping, goggle-eyed rowdy who
held a spanner in one hand, a vortane-tube in the other.
The man swung the spanner in a wild arc.
Ross ducked under it. Savagely, he drove an elbow into the other's
side, in the soft-fleshed belt between hip and ribs.
Goggle-eyes gave an anguished shallow-breathed gasp. Rising almost on
tiptoe, he tottered forward three or four uncertain steps, then slumped
in a heap on the floor.
When the woman tried to snatch up the fallen spanner, Ross kicked it
out of her hand with such violence that she cowered back against the
wall, moaning and clutching her bruised fingers.
Paying her no heed, Ross doubled back to the hatch and spun the
control-wheel. The vault-like door sang on its screw-locks. In seconds,
all entry was barred.
Bleakly, now, Ross glanced at his new prisoners--first the woman, then
the man, then back to the woman again.
"So Pike Mawson wants to make a deal with me, does he?" His curt laugh
held no mirth. "All right, I'll let him. Only the terms are going to be
mine, not his--and by the time I'm through, Stera help him, he'll wish
he'd never heard of me, or the catalyst, or old Tornelescu either!"