Nolan was in motion before the incandescent gases had died. The
half-dozen men who had been in the corridor were either down on the
floor or blindly reeling about. Even without a proton-reflector behind
it to focus its fierce energies, a pyro charge exploded on unarmored
men can do a lot of damage.
Nolan blessed the hunch that had warned of trouble, the remembrance
of an old spacer's trick that had led him to hide a pyro charge in
his shoe, back there in the stateroom. Still it had been luck, pure
and simple, that gave him the chance to open the signal light socket,
take out the lume and put the pyro pellet between the contacts. When
he'd got out of range and the automatic warning as the lock opened had
touched it off--
Catastrophe. He'd known when to close his eyes, where to stand for
safety. The others hadn't. And so the others were blind.
He grabbed a pyro from a writhing wretch on the floor--there was
horror in him as he saw the seared face that had once been that of the
Venusian second. He picked a heat suit out of the cubby, and was into
it and in the lock before the blinded men who had escaped the full
flare could recover themselves.
The lock doors took an eternity to work, but at last he was out in the
cold, black open. A hasty glance at the landscape told him nothing.
Uranus or Pluto--it had to be one of them. That was all.
A man was just coming out of the skid, perhaps twenty feet away. Nolan
clicked on his radio, waited for the inevitable question--but it didn't
come. The man's transparent faceplate merely turned incuriously to
Nolan for a second, then bent to examination of the fastenings of the
skid's lock. Nolan turned calmly and strode off along the side of the
ship. When he rounded the stern he broke into a run, heading straight
out across charred earth to a chain of hummocks that promised shelter.
How long would pursuit be delayed? Late or soon, it would come. Nolan
realized that he had no plan. But he had life, and freedom.
He topped the first of the hummocks, scrambled down into the trough
behind it. He was relatively safe there, as he cautiously elevated his
head to examine the ship and what lay behind it.
Already--it had been scant minutes since the carnage in the lock
corridor--the search for him had begun. He saw a perfectly round spot
of brilliance fall on the side of the ship, then dance away. Through
the ice-clear Plutonian night he could make out the figure of a man
with a hand light scanning the belly of the ship, looking to see if
Nolan had hidden himself there. They would quickly learn the answer to
that--and know what he had done.
Beyond the ship were a few dim lights, distorted by a crystal dome. It
was another city--or not quite a city, but a domed settlement out here
in the wilderness.
Without warning a sun blossomed on the side of the ship. Nolan stood
frozen for a split second, then dropped, cursing. They'd seen him,
somehow, had turned the ship's powerful landing beam on him. But how?
A soundless bolt of lightning that splashed against a higher hill
behind him drove speculation out of his mind. Nolan frowned. The
ship was armed--he hadn't known that. Installation of pyros in
interplanetary craft was the most forbidden thing of the starways. But
there was no time for wonder.
As another blast sheared off the crest of a hill, Nolan, keeping low,
scuttled away behind the shelter of the hummocks. His only safety was
in flight. Armor he had none. The frozen gases that comprised the
hummocks would never stop the dread thrust of a properly-aimed pyro.
He fled a hundred yards, then waited. Silence. He risked a quick look,
saw nothing, retired behind the shelter of the hill to consider. They'd
suspended fire--did they think him dead? Did they know he had escaped?
Or was there a hidden danger in this? It might be a ruse. They could be
waiting for him to move, to show himself....
Nolan shivered, and absently turned up the heat control of his suit. He
felt suddenly hopeless. One man against--what? His thoughts, unbidden,
reverted to the girl he had left in Avalon, and to the sordid fear that
she might be what she seemed. Nolan's cheek muscles drew tight, and his
face hardened. Woller, partly protected by his heat suit, undoubtedly
had lived through the instant inferno when the pyro charge went off.
That was one more thing against him--the girl. Nolan sighed.
And a faint reverberation on the soles of his feet brought him stark
upright, staring frantically over the sheltering mound of ice. A skid
was racing down on him.
Before he could move its light flared out, spotted him.
And a tiny voice within his helmet said, "Don't move, Nolan. You can't
get away now. You'll die if you try. Next time you play hide-and-seek
with me, Nolan--don't leave your helmet radio on!"
* * * * *
If Woller had burned with rage before, now he was frozen. He was a
blind man there before Nolan, his eyes swathed in thick white bandages.
But the hulking Earthman with the pyro who stood by his side, and lean
black Captain Vincennes at the controls, were eyes enough for him.
"But I wish I could see you myself," Woller said softly, his
fingers drumming idly against the wide fabric arm of his cushioned
passenger's chair. "The ship's surgeon says it may be weeks before I
see again. If I could afford to keep you alive that long--" He sighed
regretfully. "No, I can't afford it," he concluded. "There are more
important things, though nothing--" his voice shook but kept its chill
calm--"that would give me more pleasure than to see you die."
"We could save him, Woller," Vincennes said. "Pickle him in a sleep-box
like--"
"Be still, Vincennes!" Woller's voice was sharp. "I'll ask for advice
when I want it!"
A sleep-box--Nolan remembered suddenly what they were. Small coffins,
large enough for a man, equipped with an atomic-powered generator that
kept the occupant in a sort of half-death, not breathing or able to
move, but capable of existing almost indefinitely without food.
Nolan wondered absently what they were doing with sleep-boxes, then
gave it up. It didn't matter. He cursed the carelessness that had led
him to leave the radio on in his suit. It had been simple for the
_Dragonfly's_ radio-man to tune in on its carrier wave, get a radio
fix on his position.
The skid swerved abruptly in a sloppy turn, and the surly earth man at
the controls halted it and looked around. "Okay," he grunted. "Here we
are."