As he felt his way along the hall, he passed the cage of a lift, a
private transit between the house and the cartel offices on the city
levels below. He noted it subconsciously, as a possible means of
escape. But he was through running. He could make a deal with Von
Rausch. After that the police wouldn't matter.
At the end of the corridor he came upon a paneled door. Behind it he
could hear the hum of a motor, and knew that he had found Werner's
shop, and the source of the noise that had disturbed Heinrich's
research.
Hunter flung open the door. The light was bright and gay. On the
floor, a fat old man sat hunched over the remote control console of a
toy monorail system. Toy space liners and fighting ships buzzed in the
air.
"Werner von Rausch?" Hunter whispered.
"You've come to play with me!" The fat, old man flashed the cherubic
smile of a child. "And you brought me a blaster. Oh, let me see it!
Let me see it!"
He clapped his hands eagerly.
Hunter turned and fled. The scream of the sirens still seemed no
closer, but without assessing his chances Hunter sprang into the
private lift. It dropped downward toward its unknown destination. What
that was, Hunter didn't care. Anything to escape from so hideous a
madhouse.
The Von Rausch clan: an old lady who lived with ghosts; a scholar of
demonology; a patriarch lost in an eternal childhood. All of them
running away into their own private fantasies.
But this Was the family which ruled a cartel and directed the conquest
of half the galaxy; these were the most powerful human beings who had
ever lived. And they were escaping into insanity. Escaping what?
Responsibility? The jungle of the cartels?
"Two alternatives," Dawn had said. "Pull down the world or run away
from it." The Von Rausches had made this mess and then fled in horror
from their own brutal and destructive creation.
The lift cage jerked to a stop. The door opened on a warmly lighted
executive office where a white-haired man sat at a desk which had been
cut from a single slab of Venusian crystal. A much enlarged projection
of the United Researchers' emblem glowed from the Wall. Hunter raised
his weapon.
The old man gestured imperiously. "Don't be a fool, Captain. I
wouldn't be here unless I had adequate protection. There are blasters
in the wall, which I can trigger with a single spoken word."
"You want to finish the job your men bungled this afternoon?"
"Not our men, Captain. We got in on this deal a little late. We knew
nothing about this psychiatric patent until the strikes started
today."
"But Ann Saymer--"
"Unfortunately, we do not have her. It's Consolidated. We sent our men
out to bring you in, Captain. We wanted your help. When you got away,
it didn't occur to me that you would go to the top level. Not until we
heard the report of the destruction of the power distributor. It was
easy enough to anticipate your moves after that.
"If you hadn't used the private Von Rausch lift, you would have gone
out again through the gate, where my men were waiting. Naturally we
couldn't send them inside. You can understand why, of course."
Hunter heard only vaguely what the man was saying, for abruptly the
pattern fell into place. Neither Consolidated nor United had Ann or
the Exorciser. Each cartel suspected the other because they hadn't yet
adjusted to the idea that a third cartel existed: Eric Young's union.
Ann's micropic had told the literal truth. She had taken her
commission-job with the biggest private clinic, operated by the
U.F.W. It was a dead giveaway when Young struck both cartels
simultaneously, if Hunter had read the data correctly.
Hunter moved toward the crystal desk. "I know where Ann is, sir," he
said. "I can--"
"You can stay where you are," the old man interrupted. "One hour ago,
my friend, I was ready to offer you a deal. Since then you've seen--"
He raised his eyes toward the ceiling. "You've seen what's up there.
Only four of us know that secret. We don't relish sharing it with a
fifth."
"Unless you destroy Ann's patent, you're finished anyway."
"Destroy, Captain?" The senile voice turned silky. "No, we want that
machine intact."
"If you'll guarantee Ann's safety and mine--"
"You have an exaggerated idea of your own importance. You would have
been useful to us, particularly since you have been a Consolidated
employee. But this thing you blundered into up there destroys your
value entirely. It makes you potentially as dangerous as the Saymer
patent. That's my opinion.
"The other three who share the Von Rausch secret have an equal vote in
deciding the issue. They may reverse my decision. I've asked them to
come here, and I'm waiting for them now."
The old man was so intent upon making a logical explanation of the
death sentence he pronounced--without putting it into words--that he
didn't notice Hunter edging closer to the desk. Captain Hunter saw no
chance for a reprieve when the other three arrived. Why wait? Having
fought on the frontier, Hunter was aware of a property of the Venusian
crystal which possibly the old man did not know. It was impervious to
blaster fire.
Hunter acted with the split-second timing of an experienced spaceman.
He swung his body in a flying tackle against the old man's chair and
in the same swift motion pushed himself into the leg cubicle carved in
the crystal.
As the chair toppled and before he realized his own danger, the old
man cried the code word that triggered the wall blasters. He was
instantly caught in the deadly cross-fire.
As the weapons slid back into the wall slots, Hunter leaped for the
door, and passed quickly through it. The outer hall was empty. He
sprinted for the walk-way, the echoes of the blast still ringing in
his ears.
A destination marker glowed above a nearby metro-entry. It told him he
was on the Twenty-eighth level of center-city. On a large, public
Tri-D screen Hunter saw a picture of the strike mob in the industrial
area. That was all the data he needed. If the mob was still in the
streets, Eric Young was still manipulating the transmitter.
Hunter took an unchartered autojet and dialed as his destination the
U.F.W. clinic. It was the largest structure in the industrial area,
made from luminous, pink, Martian stone, which had been imported at
great cost--and with a blaze of publicity.
Completed only three years before, the U.F.W. clinic had been given a
continuous flood of publicity. Numerous Tri-D public service programs
had explored its wards, its laboratories, and its service centers, and
even in a distant spaceship Hunter had not remained in ignorance of
the build-up. The knowledge served to his advantage now, for he knew
just where Young's personal penthouse was located and exactly how to
reach it.
There were no armed guards or automatic probes in the clinic. Such an
outward display of force wouldn't have jibed with Young's public
personality. He was the much-loved official head of a union whose
membership totaled millions.
Any protective device would have distorted the illusion and destroyed
the legend completely.
Young's penthouse, thirty floors above street level, was the modest
garden cottage which had been so widely publicized and that, too, was
a part of his illusion. When Hunter saw the tiny house he was able to
appreciate Young's showmanship, his insight into the mental processes
of the credulous.
Hunter moved toward the door. Light glowed inside the cottage, but
through the broad, front window he could see no one. He felt a
momentary doubt. Had he guessed wrong? Was Young holding Ann somewhere
else?
But Hunter was sure Young had not taken that precaution. It would have
involved risks he would not have to contend with at the clinic, unless
he had been reasonably certain he would be found out. And Young had
expected to prevent that by keeping Consolidated and United at each
other's throats.
Hunter kicked open the door. The three small rooms in the cottage were
empty--until a man wearing a union smock emerged from the narrow
galley. He hadn't been there a moment before when Hunter examined the
cubicle, and there was no rear entry to the cottage.
"Mr. Young isn't here, sir." The man said, gliding swiftly toward him.
"If you wish to leave a message--"
Hunter saw the telltale grid wire in the stranger's forehead. He
ducked aside instinctively as the knife gleamed in the man's hand.
With an odd, sighing sound, the blade arched through the air, smashing
the picture window. Hunter's fist shot out, and the man dropped
unconscious.
Hunter went into the galley and found what he had missed before--the
false bank of food slots which masked a narrow stairway. He ran
quickly down the steps, and found the opulent living quarters Eric
Young had concealed on the clinic floor beneath the innocent garden
cottage. Here in gaudy splendor, in the tasteless clutter of objects
assembled from every quarter of the cartel empire, was the true index
to the infinite ambition of the U.F.W. boss.
A dozen men and women lurched at Hunter from an open hall. They wore
white hospital robes and their foreheads were still bandaged.
Obviously they were patients with recently grafted slave grids.
Obedient to the transmission, they fought with a desperate, savage
fury--and a clumsy lack of co-ordination which caricatured normal
human behavior.
Hunter repulsed their attack without difficulty. Yet he felt an inner
disgust and loathing as if he were using his strength to defeat
helpless children. In two minutes it was over. One of the men was
dead, his head bandage torn loose, and the grid ripped out of his
skull. Three more lay sprawled out on the floor, bleeding badly from
freshly opened incisions.
Hunter drew his blaster and entered the thickly-carpeted hall, glowing
with the soft, pink light of the luminous, Martian stone. He cried
Ann's name. His voice fell hollowly in the silence, but there was no
response. He moved to the end of the hall and pushed open a narrow
door.
He saw the white-tiled laboratory, Ann's transmitter standing on a
long table with new platinum grids piled by the dozen beside it, and
the barrack rows of hospital beds. From the angle of the room which
was hidden by the half-open door, Ann Saymer ran toward him with
outstretched hands, crying his name. He took a step toward her. And
something struck the back of his head.