Less than thirty feet separated him from the para-guard. He covered
two-thirds of the distance without haste, moving stealthily, his
muscles tensing in preparation for a leap. Ten feet from the guard he
abandoned all caution, not caring if the man heard him and turned.
He preferred to grapple with a slightly alerted opponent. It was the
surest way of measuring an antagonist, of estimating the quickness of
his reflexes with hair-trigger accuracy. It was also the surest way of
getting just the right grip on him from the start.
A twig snapped beneath Teleman's no longer cautious tread and the
para-guard swung about with a hoarse cry. He was still turning when
Teleman flung himself upon him. Teleman's left arm whipped around the
guard's waist and tightened. He drew back his right arm and sent his
fist crashing against a meaty jaw. He swung the man around and went
staggering with him across the forest aisle, hitting him again and
again with all his strength, jabbing at his stomach, his nose, landing
solid blows on both sides of his face. He had the advantage of surprise
and refused to relinquish it, putting a savage fury into each blow,
giving the other no chance to regain his breath.
But it was far from a one-sided struggle. The guard was armed and that
knowledge alone can speed the recovery of a man caught off guard and
forced on the defensive. He also outweighed Teleman by thirty pounds,
had a longer reach, and a thick-muscled strength which no city-bred man
could hope to equal.
He got in a jarring right hand blow to Teleman's jaw before he broke
free, loosening the lighter man's grip by kneeing him in the stomach
and shattering it completely by twisting his torso sideways with a
violent lurch. Teleman went staggering backwards, blood bubbling from
his mouth and running down his chin. He wiped the blood away with the
back of his hand, shook his head to clear it and kept his distance for
an instant, his eyes on the para-guard's right hand.
The guard's bony-knuckled hand was darting toward the weapon at his
hip when Teleman moved in close again. He lashed out with both fists,
directing one blow at the guard's battered, bleeding nose and splaying
his fingers to spread the blood over the man's rage-inflamed eyes.
The other blow caught the guard on the wrist and was aimed with such
accuracy that the weapon remained where it was.
He gave the thick-muscled brute no time to absorb punishment and go
on the offensive again. He lashed him twice across the face with the
edge of his hand, stamped on his foot and, because more than his own
life was at stake, abandoned all scruples, and kneed him in the groin
with such vigor that he groaned, bent almost double and went reeling
backwards.
Teleman darted after him, whipped the hand-gun from its sheath on his
hip, reversed it, and brought the weapon down sharply on a very thick
skull. The guard slumped to his knees, shivered once convulsively and
fell forward on his face. He lay still.
Teleman stood staring down at him for an instant, breathing harshly,
black nausea clawing at his stomach. Then the wave of giddiness passed
and he bent, unbuttoned the slumped man's uniform at the throat and
slipped his hand down over the cold flesh directly over a heart that
still appeared to be beating steadily, with no break in its rhythm.
Teleman waited for a moment to make sure, swayed a little,
straightened, shook his head for the second time, and walked unsteadily
back to the log.
Alicia arose from the log, ran to him and locked her hands behind
his neck. She drew his head down and kissed him so passionately on
the mouth that it increased his unsteadiness and almost stopped his
breathing.
He was still clasping the hand-gun which he had taken from the guard
and he tapped her gently on the shoulder with it, and ran the long
steel muzzle gently up and down her spine, hoping that the firm,
bizarre caressment and the cold feel of it would calm her and enable
them both to recover a little from shock and strain and torment, and
decide what they still must do to save themselves.
"If I'd been armed I could have taken him completely by surprise and
knocked him unconscious without a struggle," he whispered. "I've
managed to knock him unconscious, all right, with his own weapon. But I
had to be as brutal as he was. It went against the grain somehow."
"But you had no choice," she breathed in vehement protest. "Darling,
you had no choice at all. It was your life or his. And he's not dead,
is he?"
Teleman shook his head. "I'm pretty sure he'll recover. But I couldn't
just give him a light, friendly little tap on the skull. I had to make
sure he wouldn't just blink his eyes and come at me again."
"You made sure. You did very well, darling. I'm proud of you."
Teleman sighed. "You've no reason to be," he said. "There must be a
better way of solving human problems than going at it tooth and claw
like beasts of the jungle. You'd have a right to feel proud of a man
who could think out a way. I'm afraid it's beyond me."
"But we have to resist tyranny," she said. "We have to fight with every
weapon we can seize hold of--with our naked fists when there's no other
weapon. That's simple common sense, human nature being what it is."
"I've heard that argument before," Teleman said. "I'm not sure that it
completely convinces me. But I haven't got what it takes to think out a
better answer. Someday a man will be born who will have such a great,
calm, wise mind that it won't even seem like a problem to him. He'll
_know_ the answer, and other answers as well, to other life-destroying
and beauty-destroying and peace-destroying problems. Answers must be
found or Man will go down into everlasting night and darkness."
"The man you speak of. He'd have to be ... a very great scientific
specialist."
"He will not turn his back on science. You can be sure of that. Without
science there can be no truly great and enlarged world view, no perfect
society, no Utopia worth building. But he will be more than a scientist
and more than a specialist. He will know how to create a completely new
kind of human being."
"And love? Will he leave that out?"
"No, I am sure that he will not. It will be the cornerstone and
the arch, and the gateway to all splendor. He will remove all the
blindfolds, free all the captives who are imprisoned now by a cruel,
needless hatred of beauty."
Teleman turned and stared at the slumped and unstirring para-guard,
his lips tightening in grim apprehension. "We're cutting down our
chances by standing here talking," he said. "I've never talked to a
woman before with such a complete baring of my inmost thoughts. It made
me forget for a moment where we are, and what has happened, and how
great the danger is. We may not be alive a week from now to talk again
in this way, with complete trust and understanding. It's a strange,
new, intoxicating kind of fulfillment. If we were not in love and you
were not so very beautiful--"
She nodded, her eyes shining. "I know," she said. "I forgot the danger
too. We'd better bind him before we go on. I could tear a strip of
cloth from my dress."
He shook his head, bent and quickly unlaced one of his medium-length
civilian boots. "There are no laces on his boots," he said. "They're
the kind you pull right on. But this will do to bind his wrists
together. I'll cut the other lace in half and make it do double
duty--half a lace for each of my boots. Seven or eight threaded eyelets
will keep a boot on securely enough."
Despite the grimness of their mood, a faint smile flickered across
Alicia's lips. "All right. But don't blame me if your boots fall off. A
girl can only offer. I could as easily--"
"You'd be just as beautiful if you were in tatters," Teleman said,
grateful for the way the banter in her voice had relieved his tension,
and matching it with a levity that wasn't entirely forced. "Just as
beautiful, give or take a few inches of added glamour. But I like you
the way you are."
"You'd see more of me!"
"If you'd said that when I first met you and there was a para-guard to
bind I'd have begged you to go ahead and rip your dress to shreds. I'd
tell you I needed eight or ten strips of cloth at least."
"You mean you're becoming jaded, lover?"
"Not exactly. But you can't improve on a snow-white lily in all of its
natural glory. Not when you've once seen the lily."
"That just goes to show how blind you still are in some respects. If
a woman's attire is unusual and exciting, it's more exciting when she
takes the dress off. Of course some women wear black to conceal all of
their charms because that's exciting too in a different way. I read
that in one of the old books. But it must be true, because all of our
experience confirms it."
Teleman reached out and took firm hold of her hand again. "We've got to
keep moving," he warned. "They'll be dropping another para-guard any
moment now."
"I know," she breathed. "They'll surround the forest. We'll be
completely at their mercy, with all escape cut off."
"This stretch of woodland extends for miles," Teleman said, his fingers
tightening on her hand. "If we can find an isolated dwelling we'll have
at least a fighting chance. There are certain ways of making scanner
readings come out wrong. There are neutralizing techniques. With all
of the household equipment of a dwelling to work with I may be able
to confuse them completely. They'll have to search every square foot
of the forest to get to us, and an exhaustive search takes time. With
fifteen or twenty hours of grace, I may be able to work out some plan
of escape that will get us to a crowded center undetected. We'll see!"
"But even if we lose ourselves in a crowded center they'll find us in
the end," Alicia protested. "I want desperately to believe we'll have
at least a fighting chance. But I'm too much of a realist--"
"Just don't think about it, darling," Teleman whispered. "Not right
now. Trust me and believe in miracles. Just enough, anyway, to stay
right where you are while I bind our friend."
The forest grew increasingly dense as they continued on, the
foliage-filtered sunlight suffusing the darker recesses with an eerie,
emerald glow. The droning of the flying machine had diminished and they
heard it only as a faint, far-off echo.
They moved swiftly but cautiously, picking their way between tumbled
masses of fallen foliage, huge, brightly-colored mushroom growths, and
boulders overgrown with moss. They were five or six miles from the
bound para-guard when they emerged quite suddenly into an acre-wide
clearing and saw a small, stone-walled dwelling glimmering in bright
sunlight.