himself when it comes to that. We start at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder in a condition of savagery, clan communism in government, simple animism in religion, and slowly we progress through barbarism to civilization, through paganism to the higher ethical codes, through chattel slavery and then feudalism and beyond. What is the final end, the Ultima Thule?”
Metaxa was shaking his head again. He poured himself another drink, offered the bottle this time to the others. “We don’t know,” he said wearily. “Perhaps there is none. Perhaps there is always another rung on this evolutionary ladder,” He punched at his order box and said, “Irene, have them do up a silver badge for Ronny.”
Ronny Bronston took a deep breath and reached for the brown bottle. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I’m ready to ask for my first assignment.”
It was Sid Jakes who looked at him glumly. “You’re not going to like it, you know.”
Ronny poured the drink. “How do you mean?” But in a way, he knew what the other meant.
Sid said, “We’re all the same in Section G, Ronny. We come in all Gung Ho. We’re burning with romantic enthusiasm. No other types are encouraged in this agency—can’t be. And what do we find? We find ourselves in the Department of Dirty Tricks. Half our work comes under the head of Machiavellianism. Oh, sure, your first assignment might be above-board routine. And maybe even your second. But sooner or later you’ll run into one of the jobs for which we
Metaxa growled, “What’re you trying to do, run him away?”
Sid grunted a caricature of his usual humor. “There’s no running him away. Ronny’s slated to be as dedicated a Section G operative as we’ve ever had. I was just wondering how we’re going to feel when he pulls off his first
Then he too reached for the tequila bottle.
PART TWO
XV
Billy Antrim was riding hard. He had little sure knowledge of just how far behind him the sheriff’s men might be—nor, for that matter, of how many they were.
He was keeping off the roads as much as he could, but that was becoming increasingly difficult since the area was far from sparsely populated now that he was approaching the city. His only chance, he figured, was to get to the city and go to ground.
He twisted and turned over the open fields, trying to keep to such cover as was offered by clumps of trees, by gullies, by lines of fence. And from time to time he cast a glance over his shoulder.
Not that Billy was particularly afraid. Scared, he would have called it. In his profession, you couldn’t afford that emotion. A pistolero in action is cool—he either keeps that way, under stress, or he doesn’t long survive. And thus far Billy Antrim had survived—in spades.
He rode hard and he rode deviously, and from time to time unconsciously he loosened the gun wedged into his belt. For in spite of manufacturers of quick-draw holsters to the contrary, the fastest draw is from the belt.
He could see the lights of the city ahead. In fact, he had been able to see them for some time. He became more optimistic. His favorite slogan was,
It was then that he picked up the sound behind him. His ears were good, with the sensitiveness of the organs of youth, since Billy Antrim was nineteen years of age. There was no doubt in his mind. At this time of night, others would have been sticking to the roads, not riding madly over fields, crossing streams, thundering up and down hillocks.
He darted a look back. Spotted them. Shot a calculating glance toward the city ahead. He would never make it. They were coming up fast. How many of them, he still didn’t know.
“One chance in a million,” Billy muttered. He sneered his own brand of amusement.
He was a slight youth, just past the pimply age, with a sallow face, dirty blond hair and baby-blue eyes—the traditional eyes of the man killer. His teeth were buckteeth enough usually to show through his lips. In spite of youth, he could never have been called good looking. He was five foot eight, weighed slightly less than one fifty, and he moved with the grace of a girl—no, not a girl; with the grace of a panther on the hunt.
There was an outcropping of rocks immediately before him, out of place in this vicinity of gentle fields. He quickly swung around it and came to a halt. His hope was that their eyes were as keen as his own and that they had already spotted him and knew that they were closing in. The other man’s reflexes weren’t usually as fast as those of Billy Antrim’s and now that was all he had left to depend upon.
When they came slewing around the rock outcropping, slowed a bit in view of the fact that they couldn’t be sure exactly where he had gone beyond, Billy was standing there, at comfortable ease, the short barreled gun in his hand and already half aimed.
There were two of them. Only two.
He had flicked the selector switch to full blast, automatic. Now he gently squeezed the trigger and the windshield of the pursuing floater shattered into slivers and dust and the vehicle, suddenly driverless, banked to the left, crashing into the rock pile in a grinding, collapsing, shrieking complaint of agonized machinery, framework and glass.
He stood for a moment, the gun still at the ready, though there was small chance that any life could have survived his attack. He watched expressionlessly, poker-faced, feeling nothing whatsoever in the way of regret or compassion. They had played the game of pursuit and lost. What was there to regret, so far as he was concerned? He had won, in his one chance in a million gamble.
He tucked the gun back into his belt and scrambled to the top of the rocks, marveling as he went that there should be comparatively open countryside this near to Greater Washington. It was deliberate, undoubtedly. Evidently the largest city on Earth had some desperate need of a bit of countryside surrounding it. What amounted to a national park, where there were air, trees, and even an occasional stream. A memory of what the world had been in yesteryear.
From the top he surveyed back over the route he had just covered. So far as he could see, there were no further pursuers. They had evidently sent no more than two men, confident that with radar, sensi-screens and their other ultramodern police equipment and armament, one man posed no problems. There was the faintest of smiles on his usually poker-face.
He returned to his floater, lifted it and headed toward the city. He would have to plan carefully now. Undoubtedly his two pursuers had been in continual communications with their headquarters. Suddenly their reports would have been cut off. Headquarters would undoubtedly send out more men, but, what was more pressing, would call ahead for the city’s police to be on the watch for him.
Billy Antrim’s problems were far from over.
Ronald Bronston said to Irene, “What’s roiling the Old Man?”
She paused long enough from her switches, her order-box, her buttons and phones to say snappishly, “How would I know? He never tells me what’s going on around here. I’m supposed to be clairvoyant, telepathic, and omniscient to boot. I tell you, there’s a lot of jetsam around this office.”
Ronny grinned at her. “Sid Jakes called and said Ross wanted to see me immediately.”
Irene Kasansky was as important a cog in the wheels of Section G, of the Bureau of Investigation, of the Department of Justice, of the Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs, of United Planets, as was Ross Metaxa himself. Or so, at least, everybody said, including the Old Man when he was slightly in his cups. She loved every
