by Various
Hunter stopped at the snack bar and wolfed a plate of cold cuts, the first food he had eaten since morning. Then he moved indirectly across the pillared gambling pavilion, pausing at two tables to place bets. His objective was to find a vantage point in the upper floor of the casino where he could observe the geographic layout of the top level.
He slipped quickly into the dark well of an emergency stairway, feeling reasonably sure that no one had seen him leave the game room. More than half an hour had passed since he had fled Mrs. Ames' rooming house and he was convinced that very shortly--if they had not done so already--the police would put out a general alarm.
As a matter of course, there would be inquiries at the top level, but at first they would be made by police mercenaries. No one in the casino had any reason to identify Hunter as the fugitive. Later on, of course, when the police used electronic trackers, he wouldn't stand a chance. But before that happened he intended to make a deal with Werner von Rausch.
At the top of the stairs he found a tower window which afforded a crow's nest view of the top level. The twelve casinos, bright with lights, occupied more than half the area. Beyond the resort parkland was the small, white government building, dignified by its simplicity among so much ostentation. Beside it was the transparent semi-sphere housing the top landing of the center-city lifts. A third structure--a grotesque mechanical monster trapped in the heart of a spider-web of converging wires--was the power distribution center for the top level.
In back of the government building a high, metal-faced fence knifed across the level. That fence guarded the forbidden home-ground of the titans. Hunter could see the silhouette of the cartel castles rising against the sky, two gigantic masses of stone. The one on the west was Farren's; the eastern one, Von Rausch's. That much and no more was common knowledge.
Were the two families, who had fought for so long to control the empire beyond the stars, on speaking terms here? Did they observe the social amenities in the same spirit that their companies enforced the sham peace on earth? In their lonely, lofty isolation, what amusements did they enjoy? What contributed to the enrichment of the lives of those fragile beings who possessed the wealth of the galaxy?
Hunter was sure no armed guards patrolled the forbidden paradise. There was no need for them, for scanners formed a protective grid over the area. An autojet, attempting a landing from any direction, would break a beam and instantly become the target for the autoblasters erected at intervals along the fence. A man attempting to scale the wall would meet the same lethal charge.
Hunter saw one small gate with an identification screen mounted in front of it. Obviously the gate would open to the handprint of a Von Rausch or a Farren. But a stranger would find himself standing in the line of fire of two blasters, conspicuous over the gate.
The scanners, the blasters, the identification screen--all the complex, electronic watchdogs--depended solely upon power. Countless other people, Hunter knew, had realized that. Only mechanically produced power made the area invulnerable. Anyone could break through the fence. It hadn't been done before, perhaps, because no other man had ever had Hunter's motivation. None had been a fugitive on the run.
Hunter made his way out of the casino and crossed the park in the direction of the government building. Sheltered by the trees from the blaze of light, he was able to see the stars, bright in the velvet sky. The endless universe! Somewhere he could find a haven for himself and Ann, a pinprick of light in the high-arching firmament which the cartels had overlooked.
Dawn had said that running away was madness. But what alternative did he have? To stay, and attempt to make the cartel rat-race over, sweetly and rationally so that no one would be hurt? Hunter laughed bitterly. Von Rausch had the Exorciser, and he could keep it. It would be part of the bargain the captain thought he could make to save Ann. With that weapon, Von Rausch would sooner or later tear his own world to shreds. No man in his right mind would want to stay around to pick up the pieces--if any. He drew his blaster and took careful aim at the power distribution center.
The machine exploded. Burning wires sang in the air. In the casinos the lights winked out, and the entertainment machines went dark. Hunter heard the shrill screaming of the trapped crowd. He knew that it would bring the police running, but he also knew they would have arrived shortly in any case. The important thing was that the electronic watchdogs on the wall were now lifeless.
Hunter blasted open the gate, and took the path that led east.
The Von Rausch castle--and the word was scarcely a metaphor--was something lifted bodily out of a Tri-D historical romance, complete with porticos, battlements, stone-walled towers and an imitation moat where mechanical swans floated on the dark water.
He crossed the moat on a rustic footbridge of plastic cleverly fabricated to seem like crudely hewn wood. Through a high, narrow window he saw a pale flicker of light. The pane was thick with grime.
Hunter could distinguish nothing in the room except a thin, elderly woman who seemed to be moving around a table where six candles burned in a silver candelabrum.
He kicked open the window. The woman looked at him, neither frightened nor alarmed. She was wearing an odd black dress, long-sleeved, high-necked, with a hemline that touched the floor. Her face was pale and wrinkled, unrelieved by any sort of cosmetic.
She held out her fragile hands. "You did come, Karl! I knew you wouldn't disappoint Auntie."
Hunter cried through clenched teeth, "I want Werner von Rausch. Where is he?"
"Goodness, dear, how should I know? Werner never comes to my parties."
Hunter noticed the table, then, set for eight, its gleaming silver and gold-rimmed china glowing in the soft candle light.
"Your Cousin Charlotte's already here, Karl." The woman gestured gracefully toward the table. "And little Helmig. They know how important it is to come on time."
He felt horror--and unconscious pity--as he realized the truth. Yet he tried once more to get from her the information he wanted.
"Oh, bother with Werner," she answered, pouting. "If you must know, I didn't even invite him. He's such a bore among young people."
She saw the blaster in Hunter's hand and pushed it aside gently, with a grimace of disapproval. "I don't like you to have these toys, Karl. Next thing, you'll be wanting to join the army."
Hunter flung himself out of that room, into a dark and musty hall. Behind him he heard the woman still talking, as if he had never left her. He blundered from one bleak room to another, rooms that were like tombs smelling of dust and decay.
On the second floor he came upon a small, balding man who sat reading at a desk in a room crammed with tottering stacks of old books. The light came from an antiquated electric lamp. Obviously the house had its own generating plant, independent of the power center Hunter had destroyed.
Hunter jerked up his blaster again. "Werner von Rausch?"
"One moment," the man said. Ignoring Hunter, the man quietly finished what he was reading, slipped a leather placemark into the book, and put it on top of a stack beside the desk. The pile promptly collapsed in a cloud of dust at Hunter's feet.
Max saw some of the title pages. The books were extraordinarily old, some of them with a printing date a thousand years in the past. The man pinched a pair of eye-glasses on his nose and studied Hunter carefully.
"You're from the police, I presume?" he asked.
"If you are Werner von Rausch--"
"I'm Heinrich. I sent in the report. Though, I must say, you couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time. I'm collating the spells tonight. I have them all, right here at my fingertips. And when I'm finished--" He seized the captain's jacket and his voice was suddenly shrill. "--I'll have the power to summon up any demon from hell. Think what that means! I'll be greater than Faust. I'll have more power than--"
"Where can I find Werner von Rausch?"
"Yes, Werner. Poor boy." Heinrich was calm again. "You'll have to do your duty, officer. He's been annoying me al
l afternoon. So much noise--a man can't think. He's in his shop at the end of the hall. But don't be too severe with him. Perhaps this time just a warning will make him see reason."
Hunter went back to the corridor, feeling again the shadow of horror at this sick distortion of reality. In the distance, beyond the metal fence, he heard the scream of sirens, and realized he had at best another three minutes before the police would be there. Three minutes to make a deal with Werner and save Ann.
Hunter pushed back the nightmare that welled up from the depths of his mind. It wasn't true; it couldn't be true. If it were, nothing in the jungle made sense.
VIII
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.