Suddenly I heard an indistinct, angry voice bellowing somewhere near at hand. I was just about to glide quietly towards the nearest piece of cover when I made the shocking discovery that the voice was issuing from the clouds directly over my head.
After a moment of rigid panic I slammed the emergency brake, the skimmer dropped like a stone and I saw something wing down out of the mists in the general direction of the farmhouse. Just before it disappeared from view a rifle shot sounded. The flying object veered sharply to one side, emitted black smoke, then exploded. As the mist closed in, reducing visibility to a couple of hundred yards, I saw a descending billow of whiteness as though someone had burst a flour bag over the treetops.
After three deep drags on a cigarette I left the skimmer and went forward on foot. The white stuff was still drifting down when I reached the general area of the explosion—incredibly, it turned out to be feathers. I picked one up. It was a cheaply made plastic imitation, with a badly trimmed flash all round the edges….
“You one of Hardin’s men?” The voice behind me was cold and flat, just like a Top Gun’s voice ought to be.
“No! No, I’m not,” I said hastily turning round. “As a matter of fact I’m a neighbour of yours. Jack Tilton is the name.” I recognised Cordner at once. He was a tall man in his mid-forties, with straight black hair and grey eyes which had very clear, almost fluorescent, whites to them. His belly bulged slightly over the single gun belt he wore, but Clint Cordner made it look good, like a badge of experience.
“If you’re not one of Hardin’s men, what do you want?”
“I’ve got a complaint,” I said miserably, remembering the sixty or so hardened opponents the man before me had dropped in gun battles. “My grandfather has a flying model duck which he took months to build. Somebody on this farm shot it yesterday and it’s not hard to guess …’
A look of relief washed over Cordner’s face. “So that’s what I shot—a robot duck! I don’t mind telling you, man, when I saw that puff of smoke come out I wondered what the poor crittur had been eating. Yes:, sir, I was real worried about that bird.” He began to laugh.
“It isn’t funny.”
“I guess not,” he finally got out. “I’m real sorry about shooting the duck. I’ve been blasting away at Hardin’s torpedoes for days, man, and when the duck skimmed over me I fired by instinct.”
I decided to get down to the real business of my visit. “Perhaps I should tell you that, as well as being your neighbour, I’m a reporter.”
“A reporter, huh.” Cordner picked up his rifle and scraped some mud off it. “Isher II News Service?”
I nodded, wondering how Cordner had guessed, then decided to keep at him while he was in the mood to talk. “Naturally I’m curious about why you’re on Isher II at all, Mr. Cordner.”
“Call me Clint. Have you a cigarette? Herb Talmus—that’s my manager—doesn’t allow me to smoke while I’m training.” Cordner accepted the cigarette gratefully and puffed it into life.
“Now, about your reasons for …’
Cordner began to walk and I went with him. His legs were a lot longer than mine and I had to churn mud to keep up with him. Suddenly he seemed to reach a decision, slowed down and began to talk. “Herb told me not to say a word until he had worked the story out, but I’m going to get it all off my chest because I don’t like the plan. See?”
I made little circular movements with my head, to be taken as nodding or shaking according to his preference.
“I don’t know what story Herb is cooking up,” Cordner continued, ‘but the real reason I am here is that I’m being chased by a man who’s faster than I am, and I’m scared of him. You’ve heard of Luther Hardin?”
“Isn’t he the Number Three Gun?”
Cordner shook his head. “Number Two now—he got rid of Cal Mason, the old Number Two, last week. I heard it on the radio. Shot him stone dead. There ought to be a law against that sort of thing.”
“What?” I yelped. “What about all the poor guys you’ve shot?”
Cordner looked indignant. “Me! Me! I never … Oh, I get it. Say, you’re really out of touch here, aren’t you?”
“Well, I don’t take much interest in … blood sports,” I said primly, ‘but I’ve seen …’
“I’ve never killed anybody in my whole life,” Cordner interrupted. “I know you’ve seen newscasts of me shooting a lot of men, but they were real professionals—they had medics there to patch them up afterwards. None of them was ever clinically dead for more than a minute or two.”
“I didn’t know they did that.” I was genuinely surprised. “It never shows anything like that on the …’
“Of course not,” Cordner snapped. “The people who watch you in a gun fight want to see you go down and when you’re down they like to think you stay that way. It would spoil everything if they saw you get up again. That’s why you’ve got to drop out of the game altogether if you really stop one—all those armchair gunslingers would be annoyed if you showed you were still alive after they had drilled you with their pipes or hotdogs the week before.”
‘But you said Hardin had killed Cal Mason. Is he really dead?”
Cordner nodded. “Hardin’s psychotic. A throwback to the original gunfighters—refuses to have medics and challenges men to fight without their medics. A lot of men won’t do it and they get out—that’s why Hardin came up so fast. But Cal wouldn’t back down because he was too well known. It would have dishonoured The Game. Now there’s only me between Hardin and the top.”
“This is where your plan comes in,” I guessed. “What is it?”
“It isn’t my plan,” Cordner said quickly. “Herb Talmus thought it up, though I must admit it’s pretty smart—even if it is a bit sneaky and low. The Game will be better off without a character like Hardin going round killing folk. There ought to be a law….”
“You seem pretty sure the idea will work,” I prompted.
“It’s bound to! Hardin’s ship had been orbiting up there for days now. He has called me out every couple of hours but he can’t do anything until I accept the challenge—that’s why he keeps sending down torpedoes full of yellow paint and white feathers and amplified recordings of his voice. He’s trying to needle me, but he doesn’t realise that he’s the one who’s being needled. Right now he’s so mad he can’t think straight, so Herb is going to radio my acceptance for a fight this afternoon. Get it?”
I shook my head although I was, in fact, beginning to get the general drift. I found it hard to believe that two experienced operators like Cordner and Talmus could be so dumb. Admittedly the idea of the electro-neuro safety catch was new to them, but their brains couldn’t be completely paralysed. Or could they?
“Well,” Cordner continued, “Hardin will get down here in a hurry but we’ll explain that: the fight would be illegal and would carry a murder charge for the winner unless we use the local trick guns. Hardin will be so blood crazy by that time he won’t even stop to think that …’
“That,” I cut in, ‘if a gun won’t fire except in self-defence only the slower man’s will work because he’ll be the only one who’s defending himself.”
Cordner looked surprised. “You’ve been talking to Herb already, huh?”
“It’s the craziest idea I ever heard, Clint.” I began to laugh but choked it off because Cordner’s face was going hard.