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, one chance in a million, but he felt he had better than that now. At least so far as getting to the city was concerned. Beyond that…
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 soul in the small department and the affection was reciprocated with interest—though no one would have dreamed of admitting it, on either side.
She said now, “Well, don’t stand there. If his high mucky-muck summoned you, scamper.” She added, “Tell him he can have up to fifteen minutes with you. Then he’s got to see Lee Chang about the Han rebellion.”
“Got it,” Ronny told her, making for the inner door.
She looked after him for a split second, deciding that of all the top field agents in Section G, Ronny Bronston least looked the part, which was possibly to be one of his most valuable assets. Irene loved them all, these spearhead men of the conquest of space, but there was a particular something about Ronny Bronston. She snorted inwardly—first thing she knew she’d be letting him catch onto the fact, and then where would things be?
Ronny went through the entry and turned left to the door inconspicuously lettered, ROSS METAXA, COMMISSIONER, SECTION G.
Section G, Ronny thought, all over again. What an innocuous name for Department of Trouble-shooting, Department of Cloak and Dagger, Department of Secret Treasury Department devoted, he reminded himself bitterly, to the principle that the end justifies the means. Ronny had yet to forget he had been raised in an atmosphere of high ethic and ideals.
Ronny knocked and the door slid open.
Ross Metaxa, bleary eyed as always, looked up, as always affecting the acid surliness which fooled everybody—sometimes even himself.
He pushed some reports away from that part of his desk immediately before him and fished the brown bottle from a drawer as he said, “Sit down, Ronny. Drink?”
“Not from that bottle,” Ronny said.
“How’s the wound?” Metaxa growled, pouring himself a slug. “Doctor got you off booze?”
“I’m okay now. I’ve got myself off that Denebian tequila of yours,” Ronny said, sinking into a chair. “I know when I’m well off. I’ll stick to kerosene.”
“Very funny,” Metaxa grumbled, knocking the liquor back over his tonsils, impervious to the other’s shudder. He put the top back on the bottle, began to return it to the drawer, changed his mind and shoved it to one side of the desk. “What do you know about Palermo?” he said.