Nobody moved. Then the girl came at me; the few jewels, which was all
she wore, flashed as red as her eyes and her clawing nails. "You killed
him!" she screamed. I pushed in her face with my flat hand, and sent
her sprawling beside the dead guy she was so nuts about.
The _krin-krin_ went out of me. The place was hot and somebody said the
cops were coming. There was no time for talking or thinking or feeling
sorry; I measured my chances and ran for the door. I knocked two guys
out of the way and went through the blue stone doors into the street.
Up the red stone street like it was swimming in blood, a black jetcar
was coming fast under the shine of the Deimos.
Cops. I'd never had any trouble with them before. Now it was just Ray
Berton and the cops--and nothing in between but the cold Martian night.
So I turned and ran the other way. A knot of men came out of the tavern
and came at me. I stopped. Another jetcar curved into the street from
the other end of the block. _All right._ I turned, backed into the side
of the triangle of stone, stood waiting and my fists were hard. I'd
never had any parents, not much. My mother died when I was born, and
twelve years later, my dad died from over-exposure to above ten point
cos-rays. It isn't anything to remember, seeing an old man die like
that.
So I'd been a space bum, and ended up a drunken brawling killer in
a North Canal scum sieve! _All right, so maybe you could have done
better. Come on and get it, you guys who think you could have done any
better. Come on, come on...._
And then it hit me. _Thought._ A big hot fist of it, punching into my
head. A big exploding fire of thought--_but not my own_.
"_Step over here into the shadows, Ray Berton._"
* * * * *
I didn't think of telepathy then, though I thought plenty about it
afterwards. I stumbled back, wanting to get away, but scared. I started
to sweat; somebody could get inside me, and stay there and do things
to me. Things worse than a Martian cop could do with his coercoats and
neuron twisters.
My head hurt and I yelled something. Everything around me started to
melt and run together, and the stone under my boots got soft. I got a
fading look at them, two of them, standing like purple shadows. A girl
with black black eyes. And a man, a big Earthman, aristocratic and
distinguished-looking, with eyes like polished Venusian fog crystals.
I heard the fading thunder from the spaceport outside Sanskran, and
that was all, for a while. The next thing I knew I was coming into
Earth, a place I'd never been, and wasn't supposed to be able to go to
because I'd never been 'purified'. I had no Solar visa, I thought, and
didn't want to go through the psyche treatment necessary to get one.
But a lot of things changed for me that night when they took me off
that street. Teleportation, that's what it was--whatever _that_ is.
They had machines all right. Their minds and nervous systems, which
they had perfected, were machines. Mind-energy, the basic energy.