Patron of the Arts

The light swung away and was scanning the area where I had targeted my shots, but I didn’t wait to see what damage I had caused. I ran.

The fused sand field beneath my feet gave way suddenly to the soft sand of the desert and I slogged on through the transporter tracks and the churned-up parking areas. I ran blindly and sought darkness as safety.

When I fell at last with gasping exhaustion behind the time-melted lip of a small crater I was without thought. I was grateful to be alive, and very weary. After some time I began to pull myself together. The laser was still hot, but the warning light had gone off. I couldn’t check the charge in the dark, but it had to be low.

Slowly, I began to think.

They were watching the port here. Would they be watching it as Ares Center, or Burroughs? How many were there? It seemed as if a faceless army was out to get me. Anyone I met on any street could be one of them!

Finally I got to my feet and faced back toward the port. I could see lights and both shuttles were lit up. I could see someone standing up in the hatch of one, and several others against the light. There were two sandcats approaching and one had a flashing red light atop it. Should I go back and tell the local authorities the problem? How could I be certain some of them had not been bought? My frustration turned again to anger, and I started off to the left, circling the field and coming up on several sandcats parked near Kochima’s Star Palace. The second one was unlocked, provisioned, and ready. I climbed in and took off with a roar, heading out.

I didn’t even know what direction I was going in, I was just going fast. I had to think and not be looking over my shoulder at the same time. After a fast hour of thump-and-jerk, I stopped to consult the automap.

I was here. The Sunstrum complex was there. Star Palace was about here. Bradbury was behind me. I was afraid now to go to the Sunstrums. The killers must know about my relationship with Nova and they might try for another kill when I was there. I didn’t want to endanger the Sunstrums needlessly, so I headed toward the Star palace. Maybe I could get enough time to think it out and find a solution. I spun the wheel and took off.

It was bright morning when I crested a dune and saw the Star Palace far ahead, looking like the dropped crown of a rich king. I scanned it with everything in the cat, then prepared myself. I programmed the autopilot and got out on the side-strip. Reaching through the open hatch, I steered as close as I could to the edge of the base.

As the sand cat clanked by, pluming sand behind, I punched in the autopilot and jumped for the dark opening of one of the base’s curious garage-like rooms. The sandcat shifted to the right, the hatch slammed shut, and it was off, covering me with sand as it shifted gears. I watched it head straight across the desert, programmed to miss Burroughs, skirt along the John Carter Range and come in somewhere along Northaxe. Unless they got to it first.

I had radioed the Sunstrums where I would be, and they would come and pick me up at the time I estimated things might have cooled down. “Be careful,” Nova had said on the microwave. “We’ll have some counterfeit papers ready for you in a day or two.” There was a pause and I heard only the hum and crackle of the transmission wave, then she spoke again. “I love you, Brian. Goodbye.”

I got up, dusted myself off, and tossed the provision sack over my shoulder. Stepping carefully, I went right up the side of the Palace, a little less worried now about breaking off any of the crystals. I climbed over a balcony of rippled green and blue and went inside to find a quiet place to sit and think.

I rejected the gold and red splendor of a hollow sphere of inward-pointing pyramids and the purple mystery of a low-ceilinged cavern next to it. I chose the tranquility of an emerald green hemisphere floored with smooth clear crystal in rounded lumps. Beneath the water-clear floor was a sea of frozen life, intricate crystalline complexes and strange growths that seemed to wave and move with the reflections of sun and self.

I stretched out on a smooth, flat surface, as if I were floating on an alien sea, and rested my head on a pillow of satin-smooth crystal with a flowerlike red-red growth within.

Slowly I ran through the disciplines of relaxation and at last I slept. In my dreams faceless menaces pursued me through blood-red crystal corridors with sandy floors, endlessly running, endlessly fleeing. Noises invaded my dreams and there were mechanical men, tireless, deadly robots chasing me. Then suddenly, in the crystalline trap, they froze. The noises stopped.

I awoke instantly, my gun in my hand and my eyes wildly searching. What had happened?

I crept across the crystal lake, through bands of amber and brown light, and out onto a tiny cuplike balcony. It was late afternoon, almost evening, and there was no sound but the soft sighing of the wind. Just beyond the nearest dune there was the faint haze of dust and as I peered narrowly at this I saw the tiniest flash of light. It was a dull red reflection from the distant sun. I saw one, then two tiny spots appear and I ducked low as the flash of lens came at me.

They were scanning the Palace, and their sandcat was parked out beyond the dunes.