local custom, I wondered? Or a protection against something?
I heard low whispering coming from them as they stowed their spacesuits in dull-green lockers ranged along the side of the airlock, and headed back toward their trucks. They were all looking at me, and obviously they were commenting on the fact that I didn’t have any collar. They seemed shocked at that, and very worried.
“What’s this collar business?” I asked the driver of my truck, as we moved through the inner lock and into the city proper.
“You’ll find out, chum. Just make sure you can run fast when they spot you, though.”
“When who spots me?”
“The guards, dope. The Tax Agents. You don’t think you can breathe for free on Callisto, do you?”
“You mean they tax your breathing?” I asked, incredulously, and before I could get an answer I saw a cordon of guards forming around our truck.
There were half a dozen of them, burly men in blue uniforms, all of them wearing the ubiquitous metal collar. They had halted our truck, which had been last in the procession. I saw the other trucks in the convoy rolling on toward their destination somewhere in the city.
“Don’t make trouble for me,” my driver said pleadingly. “I’ll be docked if I don’t get my cargo back on time.”
One of the men in uniform reached up and opened the cab of the truck. “Come on out of there, you.”
“Who, me?” I asked innocently. “What for?”
“Don’t play games,” he snapped. “Get out of that truck.” He waved a lethal-looking blaster at me, and I decided not to argue with it. I leaped lightly to the ground, and as I did so the uniformed man signalled to my driver that he could go ahead.
The six men ringed threateningly around me. “Who are you?” the leader demanded. “Where’d you come from?”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said belligerently. He put his hand on my arm, and I jerked away. “I’m a tourist. Want to see my landing permit?”
“Landing permits don’t mean a thing here,” he said. “Where’s your respirometer?”
“My what?”
“According to statute 1106A, Book Eleven, Civil Code of the Principality of Callisto City,” he reeled off, “all inhabitants of the Principality of Callisto City are required by law to wear respirometers at all times, whether they are transients or permanent inhabitants.” He finished his spiel and gestured boredly to one of his assistants. “Give him the collar, Mack.”
The man named Mack opened a wooden box and revealed one of those metal collars, the kind that seemed to be all the rage in Callisto just then. He held it out invitingly.
“Here you are, dear. The finest model in the house.”
I drew back. “I don’t want your goddam collar,” I snapped hotly.
“You’ve heard the regulation,” the head man said. “Either you put the collar on or you turn around and walk out the way you came.”
I turned and looked through the translucent airlock out at the barren wastes of frozen ammonia. “I’m staying here, for the time being. And I don’t plan on wearing any collars.”
He frowned. I was being particularly troublesome, and he didn’t like it. He waved his blaster in an offhand gesture. “Put the collar on him, boys.”
Mack and one of the others advanced toward me, holding the gleaming metal circlet. I took one look at it, smiled, and said, “Okay. I know when I’m licked. I can’t fight all of you.”
They relaxed visibly. “Good to see you cooperate. Put it on him.”
I let them come close, and Mack was starting to lower the thing over my head when I went into action. I batted the collar out of his hands and heard it go clanging across the floor, and at the same time I lashed out with my foot and nipped the boss’ blaster right out of his amazed hand. The gun went flying thirty feet or more.
Then they were all on me at once. I pounded back savagely, feeling solid flesh beneath my knuckles and occasionally the unyielding coldness of someone’s collar as I drove a fist past it into his jaw.
Some picnic, I thought, as I waded gleefully in, flattening Mack with a poke in the stomach and sending another one reeling to the ground with a swift kick. Luckily for me, the head man had been the only one wearing sidearms—and apparently some street urchin had made off with the blaster before he could find it again, because I wasn’t getting cooked.
I crashed two of them together, pushed the remaining two aside, and dashed away toward the entrance to the city. I heard them pounding after me in hot pursuit.
It was about a hundred yards to the edge of the city. I made the dash in a dozen seconds and found myself in a crowded thoroughfare, with a number of people watching my fight with evident interest.
I broke into the crowd and kept on running, pushing people aside as I went. Behind me, I could see the six policemen jostling their way along. One of them had found another blaster somewhere, but he didn’t dare use it in such a crowd.
I rounded a corner, nearly slipped, and then doubled back and headed for the main thoroughfare again. The cops weren’t taken in by my maneuver, though, and as I looked back I saw them following grimly, shouting something at me. There were more of them now.
Suddenly I felt a hand slide into mine, soft and warm, and a gentle voice at my side said, “Come with me.”
I didn’t argue. I saw the crowd close up into a solid mass behind us, and heard the roaring of my frustrated pursuers, as my unknown rescuer led me away to safety.
As we ran, I glanced down and saw a girl at my side, with her hand grasping mine. She was about twenty- two, wearing a clinging blue tunic that cut off above her knees. She had copper-red hair, and around her neck was that curious collar.
After running a block and a half, we came to a small tenement-house of the kind common in Callisto City. “In here,” she whispered, and we ducked inside.
Then up a flight of stairs, around a corridor, down a dimly-lit hallway. We stood for an anxious moment outside her door, while she fumbled nervously in an attempt to touch her thumb to the doorplate, and then finally she managed to impress her print on the sensitive photoelectronic plate and the door slid noiselessly open.
We stepped inside, and with a feeling of relief I watched the heavy door roll back. I was safe—for now.
I turned to the girl. “Who are you? Why’d you bring me here?”
The run had tired her. Her breasts rose and fell as she gasped for breath, and she smiled and held up a hand for time as she struggled to talk. Finally, panting, she managed to say, “I’m June Knight. I saw the whole scene with the guards. You’re safe here, for a while. But tell me—why have you come to Callisto?”
“Why does everyone wear these collars?” I countered, ignoring her question.
Her pretty face grew sad. “They make us—the Three, that is. Come on inside, and I’ll get together something for you to eat. You must be starved, and we can talk later.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’m not hungry. I’m more anxious to find out what’s been happening here.”
“Well, even if you’re not hungry, I am,” she said. “Come into the kitchen and I’ll tell you the whole story—the story of how this whole city’s been enslaved.”
She went into the adjoining room of the little flat, and I followed her. She punched keys on the robocook, dialing a small but nutritious meal, and when the food was placed before her on the table she turned to me.
“First,” she said, “when’s the last time any news came from Callisto to the outside world?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t been keeping up with the news. I’ve been on Mars the last two years, hunting rhuud in the lowlands. The papers don’t get there often.”
“Oh. You’ve been out of touch. Well, you haven’t missed any news from Callisto, because we’ve had an efficient news blanket in operation for almost a year and a half. And for a while it was a voluntary one—just about two years ago, when the air started going bad. We didn’t want outsiders to know.”
I blinked. “The air?” In a dome-city like this, the air supply was, of course, wholly artificial, and its proper maintenance was of vital importance to the entire community. “What happened to the air?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “None of us are. Suddenly it became impure. People began sickening by the
