I tried to stand and was put down again—quick and hard. Everyone else had cleared the area, leaving Kerchecker and me to give them a show from a safe distance. I watched him as he came forward again. There was no emotion in his eyes—no anger, no hate, no enjoyment—maybe boredom. Well, I thought, everyone has to make a living.
I was bleeding, bruised and battered worse than any football game had ever left me. I couldn’t stand, my eyes wouldn’t focus, and I’d already thrown up and been rolled through my own dinner twice. It wasn’t enough. I could tell Kerchecker had finished the warm up and was about to move on to the main show. I was thinking how perfect it was: Kerchecker would leave me on the floor, Wyck would go home happy and never miss the credits he’d thumbed up for both my wrecking and for his freedom from having his sister being seen with a “commoner.”
No one would turn Kerchecker in—people don’t commit suicide for acquaintances. And, of course, I wouldn’t say a word because I would be dead. I’d known Wyck hated me. I just hadn’t known how much. I did then. Of course, then was too late.
I was prepared for the breaking to start when suddenly a noise across the room turned everyone’s head. Another fight had started and, like any competent criminal, Kerchecker had turned along with everyone else to assess the situation. It would’ve been a great time for a comicbook escape, but I wasn’t Captain America so I simply lay where I was, trying to see what had interrupted my execution. It was Bill.
He had tackled Wyck and had him on the floor, yelling orders in his ear while everyone else just stared, not sure what they should do.
“You heard me, Cummings,” he screamed. “Call off your bone-eater or I’ll rip out your shoulder. Think I can do it?”
Wyck bleated like a trapped pig. Bill had his hand dug into the slimeball’s shoulder, his fingers tripping some nerve deep inside. Wyck was in enough pain to forget how he was incriminating himself. He screamed to Kerchecker like a monkey with an arrow through its eye. Kerchecker grunted, shrugged his shoulder, and ambled out the door. Bill had already gotten off Wyck’s back and come to my side.
“Com’on, Gene,” he said, dragging me up off the floor. “We gotta get you back to the DoubleF.”
I staggered out with Bill half-carrying me to the car. Wyck came stumbling up just as we reached it, screaming for his sister. I really didn’t care.
“I’ll be waiting for you, McGill,” he threatened. “I’ll be waiting on 87—in the Burner Stretch. Let’s see if you got the guts to show.” Froth specking over the edges of his mouth, he bellowed,
“I told you to stay away from Freida. The Cummings don’t breed with gutter-splash. I want you dead, McGill! I want your ass dead! You meet me, scud-sniffer. You meet me!”
He was still screaming when we pulled out. Bill was in the front seat next to me. Freida was on the other side. She was mad at me, but pretended to be concerned over my bruised lips and mismatched eyes. It made me sick. She got out at her house, asking me when I was going to call. Her brother marks me and she wants to know when we’re going dancing.
“When I heal,” I muttered. Bill laughed and I smiled, but not too broadly because it hurt. Once Bill realized I wasn’t headed in the direction of home, he asked me where we were going.
“87,” I told him. “Did you expect anything else?”
“No, not really,” he admitted. “But use your head, Gene. We gotta stop first. You need a shower, something to eat. Greenpockets will have a whole crowd of clowngloat hanging off him. Let him get his belt tight. When his ego is on over-swell, then we’ll show up. What kind of comics fan are you, anyway?” With a grin, he added,
“You know we have to let him outline his evil plot to the readers before we can make out dramatic entrance. Right?”
“Right,” I agree.
“Okay. Your house, Mr. Kent?”
“My house, Mr. Olsen.”
I drove off, figuring that Bill had probably just saved my life for the second time that night. How was I supposed to know he wasn’t finished.
* * * *
We headed for the Murket 7 entrance to the Freeway. I had showered, put on some fresh clothes, gulped a soda, a malt, two ham-on-ryes and a chemo-pear. Bill and I both popped a trip-dose of benders before we left. We hit the ’phalt with energy and nerve we never knew existed. Things would have been great if we’d had the brains to go with it.
It didn’t dawn on me until we were just a few miles out from the Burner that we had no idea what we were looking for. Sure, Wyck usually drove his SpiderTeeth 295…but he was Wyck Cummings. He could have gone out and bought a fleet trasher from the city if he wanted. Suddenly we started taking things seriously. We knew Wyck was waiting for us somewhere in the Burner and we were closing on it fast. Bill fingered his good luck charm as we crossed the divide to go in and look for him.
Four kiloms in, we found him. We rolled past an overpass pylon and a burst of heavy shell pained our right-rear fender. I kicked it up to 80kph—looking for distance but not wanting to lose sight of Wyck. I didn’t have to worry.
He pulled out from behind the pylon piloting a black-and-gray Mack Chromewolf. Once I saw that I keyed the DoubleF up to 120 and pressed her for more. He started with a mortar attack, twin shells bursting up over his back seat and splattering the road ahead of us. I needed space and time. Lots of both. Knowing he could only have six volleys tops, I punched it to out-distance the pavement shock, figuring to drop back as soon as he shot his stack.
Bill counted off the volleys. The second it was our turn I ran down the gears—five to one in nothing. Wyck came shooting up the road, his front guns shattering my tail section, but only for the moment. He couldn’t judge my speed in the dark. Without my brake lights showing, he didn’t realize I was slowing until it was too late. Swerving at the last second, he avoided a crash, but he had to put himself in my sights to do it.
“Thanks, Wyck,” I sneered, tabbing up the weapons assembly, “here’s one I owe you!”
I opened with my .45s, smashing away at his tail and back glass. Every time he slowed, I did, too. If he sped up, so did I. If he tried a dodge, ran for the side, spun a loop…anything at all…I hung on his tail and didn’t let go.
I heard the first barrel clips empty and ‘chunk’ out. The auto-replace dropped in new ones and in four seconds lead was raining across Wyck’s back again. At first, it didn’t look as if he was very worried. Wyck just let his superior armor and lead-wired glass make up for his lack of skill. But, finally he began to realize he was in the sweatdog seat.
Gearing down, he took the road with a splash, belching back smoke to cover his escape. It was a 150+ blast and it left us behind. Bill and I caught him for a moment, but he shrugged our grip by spitting out with his rear flamers. Two searing bursts of gelatinous fire roared against the night, leaving burning patches up and down the ’phalt and across our hood. If he’d scored a topglass hit the self-generating napalm would have eaten through to us. But he’d missed, and now his rear defenses were shot.
Desperate, he must have geared down and jumped the brake at the same time. He dime-stopped—fishtailing at the same time—forcing us to hit around to his side. He blazed up after us. We clawed forward for room trying to escape his piercemetal front gun. His hood devil was in full operation, sweeping back and forth on its 90 degree turret. I knew it could blast a decker into us every ten seconds so I kept swerving, hoping to dodge out of its radar’s vector. Two hits in the same spot was the end of us. Period.
We ran the terror line for two, maybe even three more minutes. I’ll admit to being scared, but I was hoping Wyck thought I was really scared—white-knuckled, socks down, teeth-powdered scared. I wanted him smug, thinking of nothing but finishing us off. Hoping he was up there, I dropped my load of dusters.
They dug into the ’phalt and held, going off a moment later. They went off in front of the Chromewolf, to her left, behind and under her. The massive Mack was thrown into the right embankment but it didn’t stay there. Careening
off the hillside only made her meaner-looking and harder to hit. I only had one choice left: the trunkers.
My first thought was that I couldn’t use them—Freida had given them to me. It would be like her beating Wyck, not me. That notion fizzled when my eye hit the rear-view again and I wondered who I thought I was kidding. A Mack Chromewolf was eating up the road, getting ready to bite my ass off at the neck. Across from me, Bill had already opened the controls and thumbed in the relative distance. At least one of us was awake. All I had to do was lock the aim and fire. I did it fast.
A moment later the road behind us blew apart. The Chromewolf was against the bank to stay this time. Its right side and tail assembly were gone—powdered, burned and scattered across three lanes. We were in no shape to enjoy the view, however. A split before impact, Wyck’s hood devil had blown our front sausage and spun us around, slamming us tail first into the rightside embankment.
The hood devil was still firing, shattering the calm rippling sound of the flames tearing up from the back of Wyck’s cruiser. Every ten seconds another shell whizzed past or over us, tearing apart another half-dozen square yards of scenery.
I fumbled weakly, not quite knowing what I was doing. I had bounced off the dash, the seat, and then the dash again so hard I’d split my helmet. My forehead was torn open, bits of my visor stuck in it. Through the drizzle of blood flowing over my face, I could see Wyck crawling out of his smashed windshield, a grenade in his left hand. I knew he was up to something, but my dazed brain simply couldn’t put the pieces together to tell me what. It was beginning to dawn on me what that something might be, but I was too dazed to react. Luckily, Bill wasn’t.
His hand pressed against my chest as he reached across me. His fingers dipped into the driver’s door pocket, coming out with the .357 I had forgotten. His head was going up through the sunroof when I heard the hood devil fire again. In another shot, Bill would be on the target line. I pawed at his leg, trying to drag him back inside, but all I did was distract him.
Wyck was inching closer. The devil blasted again. I knew the next shot had Bill’s name on it. He was just taking aim when suddenly he ducked. The shot went over the roof. Zipping back up then, he clipped off three shots, plastering Wyck against the Chromewolf’s hood with two of them. I started to cry in relief. Then, it happened.
Wyck’s coat jammed the hood devil’s track. Instead of sliding along, it blasted again on the same setting as it had the last time. Bill’s body smashed back against the rear of the sunroof and then just hung there, broken almost in half. The magnum was gone. Blood dripped down out of his shattered frame, covering me.
I had hold of myself until I found Bill’s good luck charm in my shirt pocket. When I realized he had put it there as he had gone for the magnum, something inside me snapped. My tears suddenly dry, I opened my door and stumbled down the road to where Wyck lie waiting. He had been hit in the upper chest and leg. He had lost a lot of blood, but somehow he was still alive.
Seeing that as a mistake that needed rectifying, I dragged him off his hood and smashed his face with my fist until his shirt ripped and he flopped out of my grasp. Too tired to bend down to crank him back up to my level, I merely kicked him—stomped him—groin, head, knees, throat…whatever target presented itself—wherever I could connect.
I fell several times, but I just dragged myself up again, continuing to pound on Wyck’s body, to mash it, break it, mutilate it anyway I could. By the time I was jumping up and down on his chest, he’d been dead a half an hour. Other cars drove by. Some gave me the thumbs up, others stopped to applaud. I stopped beating the dead body beneath me when I passed out.
* * * *
Later, when the sunrise woke me up, I was surprised to find I was unbroken. I sat on the shattered roadway staring at the still smoking Chromewolf. The Firefox remained trapped in the soft dirt of the right bank. Wyck’s body was stretched out next to me. What I’d done to it turned my stomach, racking me with violent, dry spasms. When I finished, I dragged myself back to the DoubleF.
Pulling Bill’s body aright, I fixed it behind the steering wheel. I had messed up big time, but he had pulled me out of it. It had been his victory—his win—and that was the way I was going to tell it. He deserved it.
He was also dead, and the Cummings would soon want their pound of flesh. So, shortly they would know the truth. How, since I was in no shape to drive after Wyck had paid to have me killed, Bill had piloted the Firefox, battled their son, and the two of them had killed each other. I know it was a rotten thing to do, but the choices I had were non-existent.
The Cummings would ruin Bill’s family, drive them down and grind them up. Even Freida couldn’t have protected me from that…even if she might still want to. No, sacrificing Bill’s name and his family was the only way to save myself and mine. It made me feel like scum, but I knew Bill would have understood.
After all, like I said, he was the best friend I ever had.
STARMAN’S QUEST, by Robert Silverberg (Part 1)
FOR BILL EDGERTON
1933-1956
Prologue
The Lexman Spacedrive was only the second most important theoretical accomplishment of the exciting years at the dawn of the Space Age, yet it changed all human history and forever altered the pattern of sociocultural development on Earth.
Yet it was only the second most important discovery.
The Cavour Hyperdrive unquestionably would have held first rank in any historical assessment, had the Cavour Hyperdrive ever reached practical use. The Lexman Spacedrive allows mankind to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star with habitable planets, in approximately four and a half years. The Cavour Hyperdrive—if it ever really existed—would have brought Alpha C within virtual instantaneous access.
But James Hudson Cavour had been one of those tragic men whose personalities negate the value of their work. A solitary, cantankerous, opinionated individual—a crank, in short—he withdrew from humanity to develop the hyperspace drive, announcing at periodic intervals that he was approaching success.
A final enigmatic bulletin in the year 2570 indicated to some that Cavour had achieved his goal or was on the verge of achieving it; others, less sympathetic, interpreted his last message as a madman’s wild boast. It made little difference which interpretation was accepted. James Hudson Cavour was never heard from again.
A hard core of passionate believers insisted that he had developed a faster-than-light drive, that he had succeeded in giving mankind an instantaneous approach to the stars. But they, like Cavour himself, were laughed down, and the stars remained distant.
Distant—but not unreachable. The Lexman Spacedrive saw to that.
Lexman and his associates had developed their ionic drive in 2337, after decades of research. It permitted man to approach, but not to exceed, the theoretical limiting velocity of the universe: the speed of light.
Ships powered by the Lexman Spacedrive could travel at speeds just slightly less than the top velocity of 186,000 miles per second. For the first time, the stars were within man’s grasp.
The trip was slow. Even at such fantastic velocities as the Lexman Spacedrive allowed, it took nine years for a ship to reach even the nearest of stars, stop, and return; a distant star such as Bellatrix required a journey lasting two hundred fifteen years each way. But even this was an improvement over the relatively crude spacedrives then in use, which made a journey from Earth to Pluto last for many months and one to the stars almost unthinkable.
The Lexman Spacedrive worked many changes. It gave man the stars. It brought strange creatures to Earth, strange products, strange languages.
But one necessary factor was involved in slower-than-light interstellar travel, one which the Cavour drive would have averted: the Fitzgerald Contraction. Time aboard the great starships that lanced through the void was contracted; the nine-year trip to Alpha Centauri and back seemed to last only six weeks to the men on the ship, thanks to the strange mathematical effects of interstel
lar travel at high—but not infinite—speeds.
The results were curious, and in some cases tragic. A crew that had aged only six weeks would return to find that Earth had grown nine years older. Customs had changed; new slang words made language unintelligible.
The inevitable development was the rise of a guild of Spacers, men who spent their lives flashing between the suns of the universe and who had little or nothing to do with the planet-bound Earthers left behind. Spacer and Earther, held apart forever by the inexorable mathematics of the Fitzgerald Contraction, came to regard each other with a bitter sort of distaste.
The centuries passed—and the changes worked by the coming of the Lexman Spacedrive became more pronounced. Only a faster-than-light spacedrive could break down the ever-widening gulf between Earther and Spacer—and the faster-than-light drive remained as unattainable a dream as it had been in the days of James Hudson Cavour.
—Sociocultural Dynamics
Leonid Hallman
London, 3876
Chapter One
The sound of the morning alarm rang out, four loud hard clear gong-clangs, and all over the great starship Valhalla the men of the Crew rolled out of their bunks to begin another day. The great ship had travelled silently through the endless night of space while they slept, bringing them closer and closer to the mother world, Earth. The Valhalla was on the return leg of a journey to Alpha Centauri.
But one man aboard the starship had not waited for the morning alarm. For Alan Donnell the day had begun several hours before. Restless, unable to sleep, he had quietly slipped from his cabin in the fore section, where the unmarried Crewmen lived, and had headed forward to the main viewscreen, in order to stare at the green planet growing steadily larger just ahead.
He stood with his arms folded, a tall red-headed figure, long-legged, a little on the thin side. Today was his seventeenth birthday.
The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack Page 73
