by Various
Newlin could not tear his eyes from that glaring plane of illusion. Something about the glare played havoc with nerves, and a faint hint of diabolical sound tortured his brain. No such world could exist in a sane universe. Not even with its terrible and heartbreakingly poignant beauty. It was a vision of Hell, bright with impossible octaves of light, splendid with raging infernos of blinding color, some of it beyond the visible range of human sight. And there was sound, pouring in maddening floods, sound in nerve-shattering symphonies like the tinkling clatter of many Chinese windbells of glass, all pouring out cascades of brittle, crystalline uproar.
Sound and light rose in storming crescendos, beyond sight and beyond hearing. They ranged into madness.
* * * * *
Newlin screamed, tried to cover eyes and ears at once. He tried to run, but nerve-agony paralyzed movement. He was chained to the spot.
Sound and color descended simultaneously into bearable range.
He stared at the man he had come to see. He stared and the man stared back.
"Genarion?" Newlin asked, his voice thin and vague among the tumultuous harmonies bursting from the screen.
"Who are you that calls me by that name?" cried Genarion. He spoke in the same curious manner as the girl. He showed amazement, mixed with an ugly kind of terror. "You're not one of them!"
"Them?" Newlin said, striving for sanity as sound and light swelled again. His brain reeled. "Songeen sent me--!"
Speech itself was a supreme effort.
Genarion was beyond speech. Tigerishly, he moved. He leaped upon Newlin and thrust him back. Newlin sprawled painfully, his back arched and twisted by invisible machinery.
Genarion stood with a gun in his hand. Aiming hastily, he pressed trigger. The beam flashed and licked charred cloth and smoking leather from Newlin's sleeve. There was an odd jangle from the invisible machinery which gouged so tangibly into Newlin's body.
Instinctively, Newlin fired. He did not bother to aim. For him, such a shot was point blank, impossible to miss.
Genarion staggered. Part of his body vaporized and hung in dazzling mist as the projected images of light played over it.
Dazed, Newlin scrambled to his feet. He was sick. But the screen held him. He stared, hypnotized. Images jigged and flowed in constant, eery rhythms. They moved and melted and rearranged themselves in altered patterns, without ever losing their identities or the illusion of solidity. The scene was not part of Venus, or of any world Newlin had seen. He had seen every planet or moon in the Solar system. But this was different, alien, frightening.
And the screen was not really a screen at all, for the body of Genarion, hideous in the distortion of death, lay halfway through its plane. And it was changing, subtly, as he watched. It was no longer even a man, totally unhuman, as alien as the world it lay partway in. The body flowed, molten, hideous.
The screen was a surrealist painting, come alive, solid and real. And the solid, physical body of Genarion was part of it. He was dead, but real. His alien form was a bridge between two worlds, and now dead, Genarion was alien to both of them.
It was madness. The madness of the screen communicated itself to Newlin. Before his shocked eyes, Genarion's body began to steam and rise in a cloud of vaporous, glittering crystals. Swiftly the haze dissipated. It was gone, gone invisibly into the alien world. Whatever Newlin had killed, it was not human, not a man.
Newlin turned and fled down the fairy stair-ladder.
He went through the still-open airlock doors and out into the screaming night. Behind him alarms were ringing frantically. Now they would be ringing in the stations of the Protection Police and call orders would go out to the radio-equipped prowl cars. Police would converge swiftly.
Sound shattered the night stillness. From far away, coming closer, was the shrill wail of a siren. Other sirens.
There was a harsh bleat of police whistles, near at hand. Newlin's imagination quivered with the possibility of blaster beams thrusting at his back. He fled.
The alarms had burst into sound too quickly. Had the girl set the police on him, waiting only long enough to make sure he would accomplish his mission?
Whatever he had been set to kill, had not been human. Not a man. Intuitively, Newlin realized that the girl had anticipated everything. She knew what would happen, he reflected bitterly. She had promised payment only on delivery of a corpse, when there could be no corpse.
Spud Newlin, Sucker No. 1.
Conscience did not trouble him. After all, the man--or the thing--had fired first, without warning, without waiting to hear him out. Without waiting for details like identity, or even asking to hear the message he brought. It was self-defense, in a peculiar way.
* * * * *
Newlin ran and tried to lose himself in the shadowy fastness of Monta Park. He was not surprised that the girl had not troubled to wait and meet him.
He was not even angry. It was part of the game.
The Protection Police radios were carrying the alarm. Soon the Security Police would take up the hunt. If the girl had turned him in, she would be able to give a detailed and accurate description. Newlin guessed that he would be lucky to last even the few hours till daylight--or what passes for daylight on cloud-shrouded Venus.
Long before then, his career might end suddenly in a wild network of blaster or heat beams. By dawn he would very likely be crumpled among the ashcans and refuse in any dark alley.
But still the city would be his best bet. No use beating his way to the spaceport landing stages. Space Patrol units must have been notified, and would already be searching all outgoing units.
For the moment, he had a brief interval of grace in which to think things over and try, if only for his own satisfaction, to figure out what had happened. It--whatever it was--had writhed hideously when the blaster beam drove home. Part of it vaporized instantly, and the organs revealed did not even look animal. Eery, geometric, but not the naked electronic symmetries of a mechanical robot. Not metal. But what? Collapsed like wet sacking, it had lain half-inside and half-outside the screen. He could not recall clearly its rapid mutations of form after that.
Did it matter? The alarms were out. Blaring metallic clangor, and the uncanny banshee wailing of the hunting sirens. Police care little who is murdered in the nameless dives of Venusport, but let one of the lordly rich men die, and all Hell is loosed on the killer.
If the girl had turned in the alarm, it was only a matter of time. They would have his name and number; his ident-card would be listed and reproduced, sent everywhere. They would probably have the robot trackers out, those hideous electronic bloodhounds which can unerringly sort out a man's trail from the infinity of other scents and markings, following not smell, but a curious tangle of electrical impulses left by his body like static electricity or intangible magnetism. No layman could even guess how such a robot worked, but fugitives had learned to dread its infallible tracking ability.
Newlin fled, and as he went, he cursed himself for getting involved in such a nightmare.
Figures moved and blundered about him in the darkness of the park, but none got in his way. None seemed to notice him. Since it was not a man he had killed, perhaps others hunted him; other remote, alien beings he could not see, or sense.
The girl would know, of course. If he could find her. But she had vanished before he ever issued from the strange tower, and it was highly unlikely that he would ever see her again.
Chance, and a sudden rush of blue-clad figures across a street ahead of him, turned Newlin back toward his own, familiar part of town. The scant shelter of shadows in deserted alleyways was a comfort, but little real protection. He had friends, of a peculiar sort, in the old native quarter, and the Spacebell lay just outside the fringe of the mutants' district, where the half-human natives laired up. These friends might hide him, for a while, although such refuge was of little use against the robot-trackers.
By daylight, he could be smuggled outside the domed city, and once into the wa
stelands, there was a chance. Not a good one; but there, even the robot-tracker could hardly come upon him without his knowledge. A lucky blaster shot would leave a blank trail and a shattered robot for his pursuers to follow. He wondered if they would risk another such expensive machine merely to hunt down a murderer in the wastelands. Scarcely, when the wastelands would kill the fugitive sooner or later anyhow.
His first task was to reach the Spacebell and collect his pay. Then to get protection-armor, against the peril of sandstorms and the radioactive sinks that spot the old sea-beds outside Venusport. After that, the native quarter, if he lived to reach it.
Shortly before daylight, he turned the last alley-corner and came in sight of the Spacebell.
A shadow stirred with movement. A lithe, loosely draped figure hurried to meet him. It was the girl--Songeen.
"Don't go in there," she said. "They know who you are, and the police are waiting for you."
Newlin felt numb all over. "How did they know? Did you tell them?" he snapped.
"Of course not. Don't be a fool. Would I inform, then wait to warn you? I did not know he had automatic alarms, and automatic cameras to make records of anyone who came into the--the place. It was the pictures. They were identified with your ident-card at the Central Police Bureau. And the robot-trackers are out."
* * * * *
Newlin and Songeen studied each other for a long moment of silence.
"I guess it doesn't matter now," Newlin said finally, "but I'm glad you didn't turn me in. I might almost as well give up and get the thing over with. There's no place to run. Not without money."
Songeen produced a small sack of platinum coins which jingled as she offered it.
"That's one reason I tried to find you. After the alarms, I knew I would only handicap your flight. I hid. Then I came here, because I thought you might come back. I'm sorry I have no more money, but the rest is all in credits. It would be no help to you in the wastelands."
"I see," muttered Newlin. "Why did you care? Were you afraid I'd talk if the Police caught me?"
Songeen shrugged coldly. "No, I hadn't thought of that. But I think I owe you something. Murderer's wages. I knew you couldn't fulfil your bargain when you made it. But, in a way, I am responsible for you."
"In a way," agreed Newlin bitterly. He snatched at the bag of coins. "This will do. Thanks for nothing."
"Don't blame me too much. I had no choice, and I did not know it would work out like this."
"Perhaps not, but next time do your own killing. It's rough on both your victims."
Songeen was crying, tearless wracking sobs that shook her frail body.
"I'm sorry," she moaned. "But I couldn't even get in to see him. He knew the exact vibration level of my body, and had set supersonic traps to kill me if I tried to enter. Even my bones would have shattered. I would have died painfully and horribly. I would rather have died myself than cause his death. Believe that. There is always a third victim. He was my husband, and I loved him. You can't understand, of course--"
"I understand less than ever now." Newlin knew that it was madness to remain so close to the Spacebell. But he could not force himself to leave Songeen. She seemed near collapse.
A thought struck him. "Say, is there anything there to tie you up with this business?"
Songeen gave a wry thrust of her thin shoulders. "Much--but does it matter? It was my--our home. Before he tricked me outside and would not let me return. They don't know what happened--yet. But there will be enough evidence against both of us. Part of what you saw was illusion. His body is still there. Changed--but the trackers can identify it. The charge is murder, and they will want both of us. Not just you."
"Come with me." Newlin spoke harshly--sharply.
The girl's eyes flickered. "Are you threatening me?"
"No. It's just that I've led them to you. We're in the same boat now. With the mechanical hounds on our heels. They will connect you through me, now that our trails have crossed. And they'll follow both of us. How will you manage?"
Songeen smiled wearily. "One always takes risks. I came here prepared for--anything."
"Don't be a fool! Protection Police don't stop to ask questions. They're hired Killers."
"I suppose not. What do you suggest?"
"Run and hide. Come with me, if you like. But suit yourself. I'm getting out of here. Out into the wastelands. It's almost dawn now. In the city, we're lost. Outside, there's a chance. A poor one, but--"
Light was that gray ugliness that precedes the smeary glare of dawn on Venus. The girl seemed very slight and young and helpless. Again, Newlin felt that impulse to save and protect her. He could see no details of feature, even her face was shadowed, and not quite human; but her body was beautiful, and trembling.
"Are you coming?" he asked, savagely.
"I'll go with you," she said. "You're kind. Perhaps I can help you. If they corner us, please kill me. I don't like--being hurt."
Newlin laughed grimly. "It's a promise. But I'll kill some of them first."
"Please," she begged. "No killing--not for me."
* * * * *
Ten hours later, far out in the wastelands, Spud Newlin called a halt. The girl had trudged wearily behind him, uncomplaining and with patient determination. They wasted no precious breath in words, and walking had been doubly difficult for her. The protection armor was twice too large, and very cumbersome for such a slight figure; but such garments never come in half-size. Children and women are forbidden to venture into the wastelands, except in special vehicles.
Actually they had started out by vehicle. But it was old, cranky and ready for the junkyard. In the first flurry of sandstorm, it had clogged, burned out and died. Nothing very reliable was available in the black market without more notice.
Newlin accepted the inevitable and proceeded on foot. Perhaps they could reach the Archaeological Station at Sansurra. He was not certain if it would be inhabited at the Sandstorm season, but there was a good chance of stored food and water. Turning back to Venusport was impossible. So they went on.
Now he was confused. Directions are difficult at best on Venus, and his radio-compass proved faulty. He had only the vaguest idea where they were, and none at all where they were headed. But if he stopped too long, the shifting dunes would cover them. And if they tried to go too fast, it would be fatally easy to blunder into one of the open sink-holes of molten, radioactive metal.
He stopped and motioned the girl to rest.
She sank down, exhausted.
Newlin adjusted the throat microphones and headsets in their plastic helmets to make for easier conversation. But for a while, neither could talk. They sat and gasped, yearning for a breath of fresh, unreclaimed air. Water supplies were low, and already Newlin had established iron rations. Drinking by tubes was difficult in the helmets and the water was warm and foul.
"You're lost?" Songeen asked at last.
Newlin nodded. He produced a wrinkled, battered map. "I can't even trust the compass. I don't know where we are."
The girl took the map in her gloved hands and peered intently through her face-mask. One finger traced a tiny circle in the film of dust.
"I know," she said. "We are somewhere about here. And over there--" she indicated a direction behind Newlin--"is the city from which my people came."
Newlin was startled. The directional instinct with which all Venusians are endowed was familiar enough, yet he would have sworn the girl was not from the enfeebled and mutant races of the veiled planet. She was, at once, more human--and more remote. Songeen guessed his doubt. Through the fused quartz faceplate, her angular features wore a curious, faint smile.
"No, not Venusian. This was an--an outpost. A colony and a quarantine station. The city was abandoned long ago. Long before the atomic holocaust my people fled. Eons have passed. Everything is now in ruins--if even ruins remain. See, it is not marked on the map. Not even as ruins. But we have unusual race-memory. I can see the fabulous towers and arsenals
, the terraced gardens and the palaces--as if they still stood today as they were in that vanished yesterday. And we have the homing instinct. It was my people who gave it to the Venusians. The one thing of value that still remains to them."
Newlin was still dubious. "Unless you're dreaming."
Her finger jabbed at the map. "We are here," she insisted. "And if you care to search and dig, the city is probably still there, as it was a million years ago."
"Would there be water in your ruined city?" Newlin asked.
"Who knows? The wells are probably all filled with sand now. Or gone dry, or become contaminated. There is always much radioactivity near the ruined cities. They were primary targets when the peoples of Venus destroyed themselves. Even this desert is mute evidence of the holocaust; if one needs evidence. My people fled before that madness, because they anticipated it."
Newlin snorted. The pre-holocaust Venusians were purely legendary. No written records could exist, amid such conditions as must have followed the ancient wars. Science knew that at least half a million years had passed since Venus was a fair green planet peopled with hearty, beautiful, ease-loving races. Half a million years since the surface people had even looked upon the sun.
"If you're right about where we are," Newlin growled, "I'm still interested in that city. We can never make Sansurra with the water we have. Ruined or not, there may be wells. Is there a chance?"
"Not a good one," Songeen replied. "But better than none."
"Whenever you're ready," Newlin said. "You lead."
Wearily, man and girl struck off across the seas of shifting sand. Great dunes blocked their way. Some they circled, others must be climbed laboriously.
* * * * *
From the top of a huge, wind-ribbed billow, Newlin stared at a pale flickering in the dust ahead. In all other directions stretched endless humps and hollows. But before him lay a great wind-scoured hollow of bare rock. Beyond that, crowning a series of low hills, which must have thrust above water line in this shallow part of the ancient, vanished sea, were ruins.
