The Long Run

by The Long Run (new ed) (mobi)

  And through it.

  The moment hung there.

  And hung.

  Trent was gone.

  Vance stood numb with shock, looking at the place where Trent the Uncatchable had walked through the wall. He was aware of the Peaceforcers around him crossing themselves. One of the Elite had fainted dead away. Melissa du Bois stared at the empty expanse of the wall, maser hanging straight down in her hand, pointing at the floor. Her lips moved, shaped words silently. She looked at Vance for an instant, shaking her head slowly, and then back again at the wall.

  Vance could not think. He stared at the wall, and stared at the wall, and later, being questioned by his superiors, could not say exactly where the thought had come from. The instant it struck him he turned, bulled his way through the stunned crowd of Peaceforcers, and ran for the north airlock.

  Trent staggered down the long, empty corridors. The north airlock was a hundred and forty-six meters away from the briefing room. There would be guards at the airlock, Vance would not have ignored such an obvious precaution.

  He was closer than he had thought; he stumbled when he rounded the last corner before the airlock. He flinched in anticipation; he had bounced right out into the middle of the corridor, and whoever was stationed at the airlock was about to shoot him with a laser or a maser or autoshot or something.

  An instant later he was still unharmed and Trent realized why.

  There was nobody there. The corridor dead-ended, fed into in a widened area, a changing room where pressure suits hung on hooks and weapons of many sorts were racked against the walls. The airlock was at the other end of the changing room, inner airlock door open. For a moment Trent stared--it was just not possible that there would be no guard at the airlocks. It was a degree of stupidity that Vance flatly would not have been guilty of. Trent took an unbelieving step forward, into the changing room, wondering wildly if it were some absurd ambush, and then it came to him and he laughed aloud despite himself.

  That loud bellow, the shout: "We've got him!" The Elite at the airlock had heard it; why, after all, guard an airlock when the person whom you are guarding it against has been caught?

  Why not go see the fun?

  "Eenie meeni minie moe, take a suit and awaaaay we go." There were nearly twenty to choose from, softsuits and scalesuits. Trent ignored the softsuits; it left six scalesuits. Of the six only three were tall enough for him, and one of those was too tall, loonie size. He took down one of the scalesuits from the hook it hung on and glanced at the readout on the lifeplant; it had not been recharged since the last time it had been used, and was good for only four to four and a half hours of air. He was about to put the suit back when he heard the distant echo of boots slamming into the hard tile surface of the corridor. Trent pivoted to his right, looking back the way he had come.

  Vance. Of course it was Vance. Vance the vampire. He moved toward Trent at a staggering trot; Trent guessed he had five seconds.

  Trent stepped to the right, pulled an autoshot modified for vacuum use from the rack of weapons. He hoped it was loaded; no time to find out. He took three steps backward, into the airlock, holding the scalesuit in one hand and the autoshot in the other.

  Vance had reached the entrance to the changing room, the place where the corridor widened out.

  Trent braced the autoshot against his hip and fired without aiming, saw the shots strike Vance and knock him backward. At that distance their impact did little more than slow the cyborg, but that little was enough; Trent propped the autoshot at the side of the airlock and slapped the pressure pad to close the inner airlock door. There was another pressure pad immediately beneath that one marked Lock, and yet another marked Depressurize.

  The airlock door was a solid sheet of metal with a glassite panel in the center, rather than the more versatile but somewhat flimsier memory plastic that was in use elsewhere in the base. Through the moving glassite Trent could see Vance regain his feet, rage stamped impossibly vivid on the stiff cyborg features. The autoshot blasts Trent had sent at him had penetrated the tough Elite skin; blood dripped down Vance's face, made dark damp places on his combat fatigues.

  The inner airlock door finished closing; Trent touched the pressure pad marked Lock. Trent ran his finger down the seal on the scalesuit's front and the scalesuit opened for him, split down the seam. Trent did not expect to need the boots again, and it would save him time getting into the scalesuit; he kicked them off, one after the other.

  Vance's features appeared for a moment in the glassite, vanished.

  The airlock door began to slide open again.

  Trent stared at the door without comprehension. He touched the pressure pad marked Lock once more; the door continued to slide open, and then Trent saw Vance's fingers, his incredibly strong hands, clutching at the edge of the opening door. Trent heard himself screaming suddenly, a raw violent sound without words or meaning. The autoshot had found its way into his hands again and Trent aimed it and pumped one round at the spot where Mohammed Vance's fingers protruded beyond the edge of the door. There was a deep bellow of anger and pain, and the door slid shut once more.

  Trent pivoted 180 degrees, took a deep breath and held it, opened the magazine on the autoshot and did it without giving himself time to think about all the truly excellent reasons to do anything but what he was going to.

  He wasted the magazine in a single booming roll of thunder against the outer airlock door.

  The airlock door exploded out of its track. Ricocheting pellets struck Trent everywhere, from his ankles to the top of his skull--one pellet struck him just below the brow over his right eye, missing the eye but tearing the skin above it badly. His ears popped as the wind shrieked by him; death pressure was almost instantaneous. Trent turned, aware of the bizarre pain in his eyes and ears, in time to see the emergency airlock doors slam themselves shut and locked. Not even Vance would be able to open them while the huge pressure differential existed between the changing room and the interior of the airlock.

  Incredible amounts of blood fogged his vision. His eyes stung. Trent found the scalesuit by touch, pulled it on quickly. The suit sealed itself automatically all the way up to his neck; Trent blinked blood away from the surface of his eyes repeatedly, found his helmet and pulled it on. The airplant kicked in immediately once the helmet ring had sealed; Trent let go of the breath he had been holding in one explosive exhalation. There was a sudden flare of amazing pain in his right ear. A burst eardrum, probably; the pain did not subside, did not lessen, but after several seconds had passed and it got no worse Trent knew that he would be able to stand it.

  There was barely space to squeeze by the shattered remains of the outer airlock door. For a moment Trent thought he was stuck, and then he popped free, out into the bright sunshine.

  The catapult at Jules Verne was in a small crater nestled inside the larger Verne crater, two kilometers from the base's north airlock.

  Trent pushed himself into a fast walk, then into a trot.

  He thought about the fact that there were other airlocks servicing the base, and that Vance was probably suiting up at one right now.

  He ran.

  He had covered, by his best guess, perhaps a kilometer. His breath came short; for the first time in his life that Trent could remember he was seriously out of breath, unable to draw as much oxygen into his lungs as his body required. The airplant hummed loudly in his ears, but even so it was too hot inside the scalesuit and he felt his sweat making the scalesuit slippery around him.

  Vance's voice came to Trent over Channel 8, the PKF emergency band.

  "Trent?"

  Trent loped in long, steady strides. "Yes?"

  "Look behind you."

  "I know that trick, Vance."

  "I'm not far behind you, Trent. Wait for me. I'll be there in a bit."

  The regolith flowed by beneath Trent. He kept his eyes down, on the terrain, looking out for rocks, rough spots. It was as much as his life was worth to trip.

 
Vance's voice was smooth, deep and even. Trent hated him for not breathing heavily. "We've locked down the launch mechanism, Trent. Physically locked it down and removed the capsules from the queue servicing it. There are two Elite guarding the rail; even if you are still controlling the LINK transputers you will never get one of the capsules up onto the rail to launch it."

  Trent did not dare look back. He wondered how close Vance actually was. "I know what I'm doing."

  "And what is that?"

  Trent spared the energy to laugh, made the laugh loud enough that Vance was sure to hear it. "Magic."

  Silence from Vance.

  The edge of the crater came into view, and Trent slowed, came to a complete stop five meters from the edge. He looked down over a fifty meter drop, into the crater where the catapult began. It ran away from him in a series of superconductor rings, ran ten kilometers out toward the horizon.

  Vance's voice came again in Trent's ears. "There's no way down, Trent."

  "Really." There was a trail leading down the side of the crater, off four hundred meters or more to Trent's right. He turned at last, looked behind him. A single pressure suited figure was two hundred and fifty or three hundred meters away from him, moving with the improbably long and fast bouncing strides that only a PKF Elite could attain. There were other figures behind him, only tiny specks in the distance.

  Trent turned back, looked out over the edge of the crater. There was no way he could possibly reach the trail before Vance caught up with him, and even if he'd been able to do that it would have been impossible to reach the mass driver.

  He walked a few meters along the edge of the crater, over the fifty meter drop. He walked without hurry, trying to see if there was any place where an enterprising young man might try to climb down.

  There was not.

  Trent turned again to face Mohammed Vance. Sixty meters away. "I used this one on Emile, Vance. It was magic last time--want to see it?" Vance was not thirty meters away, slowing now so that he would not overshoot and run out over the lip of the crater, out over the long drop. He slowed still more, moving toward Trent with an autoshot clutched in the right hand of his scalesuit.

  Twenty meters now.

  Trent turned back to the crater, to the edge.

  The thought threw itself through the back of his mind in a bright quick flicker:

  Fifty meters. Half the length of a football field. In one sixth gee, though, only a little over eight meters on Earth.

  By Harry. Not even three stories.

  He took a step forward and jumped.

  The ground took a very long time to come up and touch him.

  * * *

  30.

  He could not have been unconscious for any great length of time.

  In the darkness Vance's voice was the gentle caress of a lover. "I'm coming to kill you, Trent."

  Trent screamed at the sound of Vance's voice.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was lying flat on his back at the bottom of the cliff. There was the familiar bright, sharp pain in his right knee, and he was having more difficulty seeing. For a moment he wondered if he'd given himself a concussion; then he blinked again and a film of blood came away from the surface of his eyes.

  He rolled slowly to his hands and knees, pushed his way to his feet using a small boulder at the side of the crater wall for support. He sagged back and sat on the boulder for a while, looking at the world around him.

  Half a kilometer away, Mohammed Vance was an ant moving down the trail that led down into the crater. The sight of him brought a last desperate rush of adrenaline out of nowhere. Trent lurched to his feet. His legs shook and he could not feel anything below his knees. He tried to run but could not, could not even trot. He walked, staggering at times, depending more on the scalesuit's servos than on his own muscles to keep the heavy metal suit moving across the regolith. Once he fell and got up again, walking like a drunken SpaceFarer toward the first ring of the mass driver. The scene was dreamy and unreal. He looked off to his right, and saw that Vance had reached the foot of the crater wall and was bounding toward him with an autoshot in one hand. Vance tripped and fell, a long slow-motion fall, tumbling across the crater floor. It was very funny and Trent laughed and laughed. He stood motionless, laughing hysterically at the sight of Commissionaire Mohammed Vance of the PKF Elite, scrabbling in the dirt for the autoshot he planned to kill Trent with.

  "Stop that!" Trent shouted at himself. "That's not funny." He wanted to slap himself in the face, like Curly in an old Three Stooges movie, but the helmet prevented it.

  He lurched on toward the mass driver.

  Put one foot forward. Very good. Now the other. Faster. Yes, that's it. Faster. What was the old Speedfreak slogan--yes. Faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.

  A two hundred meter stretch separated the two PKF Elite guarding the swatter from the first of the mass driver's rings. The two Elite could see Trent clearly, must have been able to, but they made no motion toward him. They were Elite; they had been assigned to prevent Trent from reaching the launch mechanism, and that they would do.

  There was a low platform, only two meters high, that the rings of the mass driver were set up on. Trent found himself staring at the side of the platform, and looked up to see the huge, twenty-five meter ring staring down at him. He reached up over his head and grasped the edge of the platform.

  He stood without moving, simply breathing, trying to catch his breath. He considered surrendering; for the first time it seemed like a truly good idea. They'd shoot him, put him before a Peaceforcer firing squad, and then he wouldn't be tired any longer, wouldn't be feeling the impossible pain ...

  Trent heaved, pulled himself up onto the platform in a single desperate spasm. He lay flat on his back on the platform, looking up at the bright stars, struggling to hang onto his awareness, to remain conscious. After what seemed an eternity he struggled to his knees, held himself on his hands and knees for a moment, and then pushed his way up to his feet. He wavered back and forth, swaying, and turned slowly in a 360 degree circle, looking at the world. Vance was on the platform with him, but at the far end, with the two Elite who had watched Trent stagger across the crater floor.

  Vance started toward Trent, walking down the length of the long platform with the autoshot clutched in his right hand. He did not hurry, merely walked, slowly, carefully. "Trent?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you ready to surrender yet?"

  "No."

  "Ah." A football field's length separated them. Vance shifted the autoshot up to the shoulder of his pressure suit. The image that struck Trent was straight out of a Western sensable, the marshal striding down Main Street, trusty Winchester in hand, to kick some serious Bad Guy butt.

  Trent took two steps backward. If he turned his head backward, to the left, he could see the first of the superconductor-wrapped catapult rings.

  Vance was simply walking, autoshot pointed at interstellar space, watching Trent. "The other Elite will be here shortly, Trent."

  Trent stepped backward again, until he was just about five meters in front of the overarching loop of the first magnet.

  "There are no capsules ready for launch. Any SpaceFarer craft foolish enough to attempt a landing will be destroyed by Space Force. Surrender yourself now; if you wait until my Elite have surrounded you I cannot guarantee you will survive your capture." Vance paused, stood motionless twenty meters away from Trent. "They are--understandably unnerved by the events of the last half hour."

  "I'm not surrendering, Vance."

  Vance's voice was weary, sounded as tired as Trent felt. "Very well. I'll kill you then."

  "No, you won't. You're missing the point, Vance. I'm smart."

  Through the softsuit Vance wore Trent saw Vance's posture change, saw Vance get it; suddenly the man stood very straight, quiveringly alert, the autoshot dropping slowly toward Trent. Trent could almost see the thoughts clicking away inside the man, not
twenty meters away in the bright Lunar sunlight. Vance finally spoke, in the thickest French accent Trent had ever heard from him. "You must be out of your mind."

  "I did the math, Vance. It works." Fifteen, twenty--more Elite than Trent could count were pouring over the edge of the crater wall, bounding down in huge leaps toward the launch platform.

  Vance leveled the autoshot. The muzzle did not waver. The huge cyborg's voice echoed in Trent's ears. "This is a mistake, Trent. If I do not kill you you'll kill yourself."

  Standing in front of the mass driver, all by himself in his mostly-metal scalesuit, Trent whispered, "Let's find out."

  For his life and his freedom, with the last energy he had in him, he leapt straight up.

  Into the space before the open catapult ring.

  Through his inskin he said, Launch.

  The barrel of the autoshot erupted into light, hammered round after round into the armored chest of Trent's rising scalesuit--

  --and then God's Own Sledgehammer struck him at ten gees over every square centimeter of his body.

  * * *

  31.

  The calm, distant voice said, "He's actually alive?"

  The nearer voice, female, irritated, did not let the comment interrupt her diagnosis. "--fractured tibia, two cracked ribs, badly dislocated knee, punctured lung, death pressure damage to both lungs, both ears, both eyes--"

  With an amazing effort, Trent pried his eyes open.

  He was certain that he was alive; death could not possibly be this painful. He was in some small craft--not the Vatsayama, the ship was not nearly large enough.

  A red-haired woman was bent over him, doing things to him that merged into the general wash of the pain.

  The distant voice came again. "That was the craziest thing I ever saw."

  Trent tried to focus on the person who had made the comment. The croak of his voice was barely audible even to himself. "You too? You really never saw one of those guys who ties up balloons into the shapes of animals?"