Disaster

  I plunged the few feet down the bank. I landed in agony at the bottom.

  The sound of motors!

  I turned around, raised myself and peered through the shrubs.

  That wreck was awfully near. I thought I had gone much further!

  Too late. The first vehicles were arriving. Dozens of them! Lights were playing everywhere!

  Hysterically I glanced up and down the gully. I saw a large, flat stone. It lay close to a slit in the bank. I dived for it. I lay in the depression and pulled the flat stone over me. I balled up in the smallest ball I could.

  A roaring voice came from the wreck. “Spread out and FIND HIM!”

  The thud of running feet.

  They were coming closer!

  I could hear the snap and slap of guns and equipment as men ran.

  More engines.

  Somebody was racing around in a small ground tank. The clank of treads made the stone vibrate!

  More vehicles were arriving.

  I expected any moment somebody would lift the rock and I would come crawling out to be stamped upon.

  Boot beats were everywhere. They almost shook the ground.

  To still my terror, I tried to think of something optimistic—like I would suddenly sizzle to a crisp and vanish. And then I did think of something: in their very numbers, they were obliterating all the tracks I might have made.

  Hope trembled on the brink of my death from heart failure.

  Would they miss me?

  Minutes ticked away, each one an eternity.

  A squad came by within feet of me. “He’d be a fool to come this way,” an officer said. “Nobody can cross this desert on foot. He must have doubled back for Spiteos and we passed him in the cars.”

  Shouted commands and some vehicles took off in the direction of Spiteos, traveling slowly.

  There was nobody in my area now. At least I heard no feet.

  They were having trouble at the wreck. Some officer yelled, “This cable is wrapped around him twice. There’s nothing here to cut it. Speed back to the repair shops and get the biggest pair of conduit slicers they have!”

  A car roared off.

  The din had diminished.

  Curled in a ball, I knew I could not hold the position forever. I was far too tense. I wanted to stretch and let my nerve ends jangle. Cautiously, I wriggled my arms out from underneath the stone. Nothing shot them off. Silently, I pushed the stone aside. The gully was deserted.

  I wriggled up the bank and peered through the bushes.

  There must be a hundred vehicles scattered around, some close to, some far from the wreck by at least a hundred feet.

  Men were idling about, waiting.

  A staff car arrived.

  “Cutters?”

  “No, they’re coming.”

  It was a general of the Apparatus troops. He was looking into the wreck, probably at Lombar. “Sir, while we’re waiting for equipment to cut you out, is there anything you would like me to do?”

  “YES!” came Lombar’s bellow from the twisted wreck. “Issue an immediate warrant for the arrest of Jettero Heller for attempting to murder me! Issue it to the Army, the Domestic Police! Otherwise we won’t be able to get our hands on him!”

  “Yes, sir. At once, sir. Get that going, Captain Bodkins. Anything else, sir?”

  “Blito-P3! There must be plenty wrong there,” roared Lombar. “Send a Death Battalion to that base with orders to search out any traitors that were confederates of Heller’s or took his orders and exterminate them!”

  “Yes, sir. Attend to that, Lieutenant Wipe. Now, is there anything else I can do, sir?”

  “YES! Soltan Gris! Issue an Apparatus hunt-and-find order on him! Don’t kill him! Bring him in alive! That traitor will be tortured for a month before he dies!”

  PART SIXTY-SIX

  Chapter 6

  The last thin glimmer of hope within me died. Up to that moment, even against reason, I had clung to the despairing possibility that Lombar Hisst, once the shock of impact had worn off, might shake the hold that paranoid schizophrenia had on him and realize that I had acted to save him if I could.

  But no, that was gone now.

  Impassable desert lay all around me. To return to Spiteos and its torture chambers was a decision only to be made in the last throes of masochism.

  I gazed forlornly at the scene which spread in the green moonlight before my eyes. Literally hundreds of troops were there. I could not begin to count the ground vehicles.

  I felt there was no escape. I could not even walk!

  WAIT!

  If I could not walk . . .

  Over to my left, not fifty feet away, stood an airbus, one of the last to come in!

  Its drivers were over by the wreck.

  I said a prayer.

  I began to wriggle along under the cover of the gully. I glanced up from time to time, certain someone would see my head and let out a cry to the rest.

  At length, I got opposite the airbus. There was twenty feet of bare ground to cover.

  The light was bad. The place was thick with men.

  I felt like a man must feel as he walks the last few paces to his firing squad. But I stood up.

  Sauntering with great casualness, I approached the vehicle.

  I reached for the door.

  I opened it.

  I slid under the controls.

  Another airbus was coming, probably with the cutters.

  I waited.

  Just when it arrived, I started up.

  I flew casually and slowly upward.

  I headed in the direction of Spiteos.

  Sudden yells below!

  A fusillade of shots!

  The driver of this thing must have seen his vehicle leave!

  They were after me!

  I slammed the throttles home.

  With every inch of speed I could beat out of it, I sent the vehicle hurtling.

  To where?

  The Blike Mountains?

  No. The game wardens would be alerted and would round me up very fast.

  To Spiteos?

  That was insane!

  And then suddenly I knew I had a choice. Trial and a quick execution. Or capture by the Apparatus and a month of untold agony. There wasn’t much choice to it!

  I fled for Government City, pursued by shots, speeding air vehicles on my tail, the air alive with explosions all around.

  I extinguished every light I had. I went down close to the desert floor.

  My hands were killing me. The bucking turbulence of air caused by such low passage at five hundred miles an hour almost broke my wrists!

  I was counting on the fact that those behind me would get my screen image messed up with the rocks and bushes and whirlwinds of this place.

  The near shots were less frequent now. And then I knew why. They were counting on my interception at the other end!

  The air must be alive with orders to the Government City police!

  I flipped the radio to general band. There it was—the number of my airbus! A call to all bluebottles to stop that car! I flinched under the torrent of sound.

  The thought of thirty days of drawn-out torture unflinched me quick. Head low, blanking out the possibility this machine might explode from the overdrive of it, I hurtled at the massive bulks of the mountains that intervened between me and my goal.

  A canyon yawned in the moonlight ahead. I shot into it and raced along, inches from its walls and floor.

  I shot out at the top. I was between two mountain crests.

  Another canyon yawned below, narrow but descending. I flashed down it.

  I could feel my raw hands bleeding now. I was certain one wrist was broken. But I held on.

  At better than five hundred miles an hour, I glimpsed the town pouring up at me.

  There was the Royal prison on a hill, a stern and ghastly fortress, ominous in the green moonlight. But it looked like refuge to me.

  Lombar could not get me out of it if I got
in.

  It was suddenly getting bigger. Too fast!

  I put my drives in reverse. I heard the machinery break.

  I crashed before the very gates of the Royal prison!

  PART SIXTY-SIX

  Chapter 7

  Looking up at the stone arches before the clearing smoke, I did not even take time to marvel that I could move!

  Something was trapping me. The bag around my neck was caught under a control stick.

  I freed it.

  I leaped out of the finished airbus.

  Reeling as I ran, I got to the gates.

  The guard!

  They had their pikes lowered!

  “Hold up! You can’t come in here!”

  “Oh, please, dear Gods!” I screamed. I glanced, terrified, over my shoulder at the sky. I faced around. I shouted at him, five feet away, “I must see a justiciary of Voltar and see him fast!”

  “What is that?” a guard said, pointing at my bag. “A bomb?”

  “Get out of here!” cried the other guard.

  Oh, Gods, it was my last refuge anywhere!

  “PLEASE!” I shrieked.

  A querulous voice from a courtyard balcony.

  “What’s the disturbance out there?”

  “Somebody wants in, Your Lordship. And that ain’t never happened before!”

  “What’s the fellow want?”

  “EVIDENCE!” I shouted. “I’VE GOT THE EVIDENCE HERE!” And I held up my bag.

  The querulous voice said, “Bring him to the audience chamber. I’ll get a robe on and come down. Oddest thing I ever heard, fellow wanting to get in!”

  I heard the balcony door slam.

  I glanced in terror at the sky.

  They were pushing me forward across the courtyard stones. They gave a signal and another guard, inside, opened a groaning door.

  I was propelled forward across tiled floors and under swinging chandeliers of extinguished glowplates. The shadows of the guards were huge from nightlights on the walls.

  I was thrust into a big chamber with benches all around. There was an alcove, very dark, just ahead. A door behind it opened.

  Somebody turned on a light. The judge was just sitting down on a huge chair on the raised platform of the alcove.

  “Seedy-looking character,” said the justiciary. He was very old, very gray; the robe was crimson like blood. “Push him over here. Now, what’s this about evidence?”

  I raised my bag. “It’s all here. Everything.”

  “But evidence of what?” said the justiciary. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m Officer Soltan Gris of the Apparatus,” I said. I tremblingly offered my identoplate.

  “Apparatus? Well, fellow, you don’t belong here. The Apparatus has its own courts, if they ever use them. I think you’ve come to the wrong place.”

  I was terrified that they would put me out that door. By now the Domestic Police would have heard of that crash, and even though they might not know of the Apparatus alert, they would, the second they saw the identifying numbers.

  “Your Lordship,” I quaked. “The crimes are against the state. I’m the criminal. I am turning myself in.”

  “Oh, see here, now, this is very irregular,” said the justiciary. A man had come through a side door, getting into his coat. His Lordship called to him. “Do we have any Royal warrant for a Soltan Gris?”

  “No, Your Lordship. The only outstanding Royal warrants unserved are against Prince Mortiiy and some of his associates. I know all the names and Soltan Gris is not one of them.”

  The justiciary started to lift his hand to the guards.

  “Oh, please, dear Gods,” I cried. “Don’t put me out that door. I swear to you that I am a criminal. For the love of heavens, arrest me!”

  The justiciary frowned. “I could turn you over to the Domestic Police for creating a disturbance. Would that do?”

  The bluebottles would turn me over to Lombar in a second! “Oh, Your Lordship, no! My crimes are Royal, I swear it!”

  “Fellow,” said His Lordship, “without a warrant and without even a stated crime, there’s nothing for you here. Take him away.”

  “No, no!” INSPIRATION! “A Royal officer was bringing me in to you.”

  “Really?” said the justiciary. “Well, where is he?”

  I was about to say that I had escaped. That would be bad. I was really sweating now. The servants of Hisst could be right outside that door!

  “He stopped off somewhere,” I cried. “I promised I would report in to you!”

  “Oh, come now,” said the justiciary. “I think you’re just making all this up. Whoever heard of a prisoner reporting in like that?”

  INSPIRATION! “Your Lordship,” I cried, “I have a witness. Commander Crup at the Emergency Fleet Reserve knows I was under arrest and being brought here.”

  The justiciary started to shake his head. My knees were shaking. I fell on them. I cupped my hands pleadingly. “Call him—oh, dear Gods, for your hopes of heavens, please call Commander Crup.”

  The justiciary was shaking his head in puzzlement at me. But he motioned to the clerk and that worthy picked up a communications instrument, and after some button punching and questions, handed it to the justiciary.

  “Commander Crup? This is Lord Turn at the Royal Courts and Prison. Sorry to trouble you at such an hour but we have a rather strange situation here. A man identifying himself as Soltan Gris claims he was being brought here by a Royal officer and that you’re a witness to the fact.” His Lordship listened. “Well, you don’t say. Who? . . . Jettero Heller? Oh, yes, the bullet ball champion. . . . Oh, yes. I won five credits on him once. Oh, yes, a splendid athlete. . . . Well, I’m glad that straightens that out. Thank you for your courtesy. Goodbye.”

  Lord Turn gave back the instrument and looked at me. “Jettero Heller. Fine man. So he was bringing you here, was he?”

  “Oh, yes!” I said.

  “Well, Commander Crup did not know what the crime was, but I’m sure if Jettero Heller was bringing you here it would have been against the state.”

  “You can hold me?” I cried with joy.

  “Oh, yes. We can put you in a cell. But we need something for the charge sheet. What was the crime?”

  “Oh, everything!” I said. “Just everything!”

  “That’s pretty general,” said Lord Turn. “Can’t you tell me something more specific?”

  “Oh, that would take hours!” I said, anxious to get actually on their books.

  “Well, supposing you just write it all down and then we’ll know what this is all about.”

  “All of it?” I said. A new inspiration hit me. A new hope dawned. “If I tell you everything, then can I expect leniency?”

  Lord Turn said, “The Royal Court is always ready to be fully just. If you omit nothing and tell the truth, I will give you a very fair hearing. Clerk, have them charge him with ‘Conduct against the State in contravention of Royal statutes and decrees.’ Order him some medical treatment so he can write, and provide him with pens, papers and a vocoscriber, that sort of thing. Oh, yes, and put him in the tower where there is some light.”

  I could breathe again.

  The justiciary was rising, so I stood. “By the way,” he said, “did you know Jettero Heller personally?”

  “Oh, yes!” I said.

  “You’re fortunate,” said Lord Turn. “I’d like to meet him sometime myself. A great bullet ball player. Good night.”

  They took me away and put me in a big cell in the tower that had tables and chairs and through the barred windows of which the lights of Government City glittered. They locked the massive door on me.

  I stood staring at the sky. There were Domestic Police cars in quite close. Two Apparatus vessels hovered in the sky.

  I laughed shakily. They couldn’t get me here. I was a prisoner of the State, beyond even Lombar’s call!