by EMMETT McDOWELL
Branded an outlaw by the ISP, hated and
feared as a mutant, Clyde Vickers stalked
his quarry in impotent rage. His kind, it
seemed, was always wanted for the dirty work....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Clyde Vickers shuffled awkwardly down the gangplank. After two years on
Jupiter he felt buoyant as a toy balloon in the mild gravity of Earth's
satellite. Every step he expected to go sailing over the heads of the
other passengers--up, up into the vast booming reaches of Luna City's
airlock.
The line jammed, came to a fuming stop. Vickers found himself wedged
between a woman who had boarded the liner at Mars and a bearded
Plutonian explorer. He craned his neck, peering over their heads to see
what had caused the bottleneck.
An officer of the ISP, in a blue uniform, was standing at the foot of
the gangplank, examining passports. Vickers cursed under his breath.
"Damn them," he thought, "damn them."
Behind him, the black spaceliner made sudden pistol-like reports as
it expanded in the warm air. It had brought some of the cold of outer
space along with it, and hoar frost stood out on its sides a foot
thick. It was rapidly exhausting the heat in the airlock. Vickers
shivered as the cold struck through his ill-fitting gray suit.
"Papers," the ISP man said and held out his hand.
With a start Vickers realized that he had reached the end of the
gangplank. The ISP man took one look at Vickers' little green book and
his face hardened.
"Parolee!" he said.
There were whispers from the crowd. A little boy said: "What's he done,
momma? What's he done?"
"Hush!" she bade him.
Vickers gave no sign that he'd heard.
"Two-time loser, eh?" the ISP man went on and ran his eyes over
Vickers. He saw a tall man with huge shoulders, the muscle bulging the
cheap gray cloth--muscle that could be acquired only in the killing
gravity of Jupiter's penal mines. Then he saw Vickers' eyes, and he
looked startled.
Vickers had his nictitating lids lowered; his eyes seemed almost
normal. Almost but not quite!
"What the devil!" the ISP man wet his lips. "Vickers! By God, I should
have recognized the name. Vickers, eh?" He seemed about to say more,
then changed his mind. "Move along. You're holding up the line."
"My passport."
"Pick it up at the parole board. If you don't report there in
twenty-four hours, you'll be picked up yourself and shipped back to
Jupiter. You're a two-time loser, Vickers; you can't afford to get into
trouble again."
Vickers regarded him with open dislike, then turned on his heel,
started across the spaceport at a cautious shuffle.
Freedom!
He couldn't leave the moon. He had to accept whatever work the parole
board secured for him--more than likely some stinking job deep in the
moon pits. He must report for a check-up and a psycho-therapeutic
treatment every four weeks. He couldn't marry or hold property or
change jobs.
And if he fell from grace again, it meant sterilization and a life
sentence on Jupiter.
Freedom. What the hell had he to look forward to?
* * * * *
All his life Vickers had been lonely. His parents, horrified at having
produced a monstrosity, had placed him in a home and washed their hands
of him.
Not that Vickers' abnormality was disfiguring or particularly
noticeable even--you had to look closely at his eyes to recognize the
nictitating lids--but he was a freak, a mutant, and the sight of him
had been a constant reminder of their shame.
At the home, Vickers' playmates had quickly discovered his queerness
and had taunted him about it with the cruelty of children. His attempts
at friendship were met with rebuffs. He might have been able to adjust
but he was never allowed to forget that he was different.
Later when the peculiar power of his eyes became known, he was feared
a little, resented and cordially hated. Vickers was forced in on
himself. He built a shell, a hard flippant armor against the senseless
antagonism he met everywhere.
In spite of hysterical predictions and a flood of stories in the
science-fiction magazines, the Atomic Age had not ushered in a wave of
mutants--at least not radical mutants. Vickers was practically unique.
And alone.
Nevertheless Vickers experienced an odd tingling excitement as he
emerged from the lock into Luna City. Beneath his thick layers of
protective indifference, he was eager as a boy, friendly, sensitive. A
starved gregariousness looked out of his eyes in unguarded moments.
He stood with his back to the wall of an export firm, breathing deeply
of the warm, artificially earth-scented air. Through the soles of his
feet he could feel the pavement vibrating faintly, as deep inside the
bowels of the moon, the mechanical mining worms gnawed out the ore,
chewed it, digested it, spat it out as metal ingots.
The voice of the city rolled over him, deafened him. His eyes were
bewildered at the crowds jamming the pavement. His pulse leaped. He was
like a blind man who has just had his sight restored.
Someone said: "Hello, Vickers," and struck him on the shoulder. "Glad
to see you out."
Vickers brought his eyes down. He stared at the man who had addressed
him. The look of exaltation slowly faded from his face to be replaced
by a puzzled frown.
"I don't know you."
"Oh, come now, surely you recognize me." The man was as big as Vickers,
exactly, and the same build. He was clad in a shabby gray suit. There
was something tantalizingly familiar about him. Vickers wrinkled his
forehead in concentration.
"I must remember that," said the man, and wrinkled his forehead exactly
like Vickers.
They were standing in a doorway out of the stream of pedestrians.
Suddenly Vickers' mouth fell open. He stared at the man in startled
disbelief.
It was himself!
The resemblance was too perfect. The same close-cropped black hair
and Jupiter-enlarged muscles. The same short, straight nose, wide,
thin-lipped mouth, square jaw. Even the same transparent inner lids
lowered over pale gray eyes. It was like looking into a mirror.
Vickers felt his mouth go dry.
"Who are you?" he demanded harshly.
"You recognize me? Good."
The man grinned, began to edge away.
Vickers lunged for him. But the fellow eluded his grasp, slipped into
the stream of traffic like an eel. He was rapidly being swallowed up by
the crowd. Vickers ploughed after him.
There was something afoot--something dangerous to himself, he felt.
He was determined not to lose sight of his double and opened his
nictitating lids....
Instantly, the scene about the busy spaceport changed. It took on a
vaporous unreality like an x-ray photograph. The people, the buildings,
even the pavement underfoot became tenuous as smoke. He could see right
through them.
It always frightened Vickers a little to use his full vision, taking
him a second to adjust. Then he located his double about ten steps
ahead.
He could make out the misty outlines of elevators in the man's flashing
heels. So that was how he'd given himself the necessary height. Pads
filled out his frame reproducing Vickers' Jupiter-trained muscles. The
nictitating lids had been cleverly simulated by contact lenses.
But why?
Why should anyone go to all that trouble to disguise himself exactly
like Vickers--even to the ill-fitting gray suit? There was something
sinister about the whole affair.
Just then Vickers tripped, lost his precarious balance and fell
sprawling.
He scrambled to his feet in time to see the stranger leap into an air
taxi.
"Look at his eyes!" a woman cried out at his elbow. "Look at his eyes!"
* * * * *
Vickers hastily lowered his inner lids, cursing under his breath. There
wasn't another cab in sight. He'd better clear out before he was the
focal point of a riot. Normal humans weren't fond of mutants.
Already a crowd was collecting. Vickers heard angry mutterings. He
forced his way through the press bull-like. Suddenly he found his path
blocked by two determined-looking men.
"Hold on," said the man on the outside and put his hand on Vickers'
chest. He was blond with cold, pale blue eyes. "What's your hurry?"
Vickers started to thrust them aside when he felt the second man jam a
gun into his ribs.
"Vickers, aren't you?" asked the blond man.
"What of it?"
"Come along." He jerked his chin toward an air taxi. "Don't make a
fuss."
"Where?"
"Headquarters." The man produced an ISP card. "We tried to catch you at
the ship, but you'd left."
Vickers hesitated. Despite the pistol in his ribs, he thought he could
take the two plainclothesmen. It would be a futile move, though. The
ISP would throw out the net for him, and this time he would be sent
back to Jupiter for life.
He sighed, "All right," and climbed into the cab.
He wondered if there could be any connection between the incident
outside the spaceport and this visit to ISP headquarters, but he knew
it would be useless to ask. He stared silently out the cab window at
the polyglot crowd, drawn from three worlds.
The moon was international. It was governed by a board of seven
delegates, one each from the seven great nations of Earth. They were
known simply as "The Seven" with headquarters in the moon-tower near
the center of Luna City. The ISP offices were located there too as well
as all government bureaus.
All at once Vickers realized that the cab was headed in the wrong
direction.
"Where are we going?" he demanded, jarred out of his stoical calm.
The ISP agents had taken seats one on each side of him. He could feel
their guns prodding his ribs, sleek automatics with built-in silencers.
Wicked things that could tear half his guts out.
"Shut up," the blond man said.
Vickers lapsed into silence again. He was more bewildered and angry
than alarmed. Try as he would, he couldn't guess who'd want him badly
enough to snatch him.
There had been no rivals in Vickers' line of work. Samuels and Rebkia,
his partners, had both been killed in the ISP trap two years ago. There
was no one left who had any interest in him. Unless--