Logan's Run (18 page)

Logan released the spinning bola.

The Gun did not fire. It fell from the hand of the black-suited figure as the bola hit, wrapped and stunned the hunter. Arms pinioned to his body by the looped cable, he lost balance. The filtermask was dislodged. Not Francis.

Perhaps he screamed. In the cacaphony of cylinders and gears and pistons Logan could not tell.

The man cartwheeled down, legs wide, was deflected by a catwalk, continued his plunge into a bucket hoist, which caught his body, trundled it forward for a moment, over a pulley crest, then downward, into the chewing maw of the city.

He was gone.

Light was dying in the Florida Keys as Logan and Jess emerged at last from the maze. The western sky was a pale slate color, deepening into dusk; red streaks of cloud veined the horizon. It would be night soon.

Against this sky they saw the warehouses and storage sheds of Cape Steinbeck, spread over a flat expanse of concrete. The area was gray and lifeless.

"Sanctuary?" There was deep disappointment in Jessica's tone.

Logan swung in a slow, wary circle. No sound. A watching silence. He knew eyes were examining them, weighing them.

They began to walk toward the buildings.

An amplified voice broke the silence. It crackled over the concrete. "Halt! Identify yourselves.

The two paused. Logan sighed with exhaustion. In a dead voice he said, Logan 3–1639."

The girl said, "Jessica 6–2298"

"Password?"

"Sanctuary," said Logan.

"You are entering a minefield. Do not proceed further. A guide will take you through."

All of the energy had left Logan's wracked body. He was drugged with fatigue, sore in every muscle; his bones ached, and simple breathing was an effort. He could not move his legs with any precision. He shuffled, stumbled.

"Stand still!" cracked the amplified voice.

Logan stood by Jess, dazedly, as a figure detached itself from one of the shadow-draped buildings and approached them. The man slowed, walked in a weaving pattern across the flat ground.

He came up to them scowling. Hardness was stamped into his features. Hardness was in the line of his shoulders and the set of his head on his thick neck.

"Took you long enough. Now, do exactly what I tell you. There's less than seven minutes left and no time for talk. We're on the edge of the minefield. A wrong step will take your legs off. Understood?"

Logan nodded dully.

"Then follow me," said the man.

Logan's legs were weighted. They were unyielding things which did not wish to obey him. As he followed the guide he kept losing his balance, righting himself, then almost falling again. If he fell he would be blown to pieces. Walking was impossibly difficult, one of the hardest feats he had ever been called upon to perform. Jess, too, was staggering with exhaustion.

Finally they were clear of the mined area.

They entered a long storage building, passed between high, crated objects.

Logan tried to focus his eyes on the objects. Silvery. Silvery shapes in shimmering white webbing—no, fiber packing. Numerals and letters on the sides: TITAN . . . STARSCRAPER . . . FALCONER . . .

He knew what they were. Missiles. Crated and stacked and abandoned.

Again into the open.

Logan narrowed his eyes. Across an unbroken stretch of tarmac: a tall gantry, supporting a massive gleaming needle.

A passenger rocket!

Logan tried to weave a logical fabric from threads of confused thought. Cape Steinbeck, the space storage center at the tip of the Keys. A dead section. Like Cathedral. Like Molly. Like Washington. All stages on the Sanctuary line. Steinbeck, where the rockets and the missiles were mothballed when space flight was abandoned. Yet they were using a rocket which meant that Sanctuary must be in space. But how? Where? The planets in this solar system would not support life. The stars had never been reached. How?

"Keep moving," said the guide.

They started toward the waiting rocket. Steam wisped from its lower stage. Frost condensed and evaporated from liquid oxygen and hyrodgen stored inside, ready to be converted into raw power.

Logan felt a darkness sifting down. A darkness within himself; a darkness from the heavy sky above him; and a darkness from a man who wore it. Wore the darkness. Wore black. A tall man, coming. A hunter in the tunic of night. Angerman, the judge and jury . . .

At last, as Logan knew it had to be. At last—Francis.

A sense of doom and despair settled around him; the feeling was crashing, unsupportable. He had never experienced anything like it.

Jess saw the DS man, choked out a small cry.

Logan pushed her toward the guide. "Take her. Get her aboard. I'll try to stop him."

The hard-faced man did not hesitate. He gripped Jessica's arm, propelled her toward the racket. She fought to free herself. "No, Logan! No!"

He ignored the fright and the urgency and the entreaty and the pain in her voice and he screamed silently,
Hear me, Francis. Hear me. I want to TALK to you. There's so much I have to say to you.

A shudder rippled his body; the ground was sponge rubber; he kept sinking into it, tottering, pushing himself. He slipped to one knee, dragged his body up with clogging slowness. Dark was swimming in at him. He blinked it back.

The DS man was close now. Face set in rigid lines. Eyes cold, flat.

There was so much to say to Francis. That the world was coming apart, that it was dying, this system, this culture. That the Thinker was no longer able to hold it together. A new world would be formed. Living is better than dying, Francis. Dying young is a waste and a shame and a perversion. The young don't build. They use. The wonders of Man were achieved by the mature, the wise, who lived in this world before we did. There was an
Old
Lincoln after the young one . . .

Exhaustion hacked at Logan. His breath rattled in his throat.

Francis filled the sky. The Gun was in his hand.

Can I speak? Can I tell him? Will he listen?

Words. Sound. Logan spoke. Brokenly. In patches.

"World . . . dying . . . can't last . . . I saw . . . the dead places . . . heart of the system is . . . rotten . . . There'll be more . . . runners . . . more of them . . . You can't stop them . . . can't . . . We . . . We were wrong, Francis . . . death no answer . . . we must . . . build, not destroy . . . tired of killing . . . wrong . . . tired . . . I—I . . ."

A roaring. A great humming roar in Logan's head. The rocket leaving without him? Let it go, then. Let it find Sanctuary. The roaring pulsed, intensified. And with it, black. A wave of running black that took him, filled his mouth and eyes. Black sound. And Francis, black in black. And the Gun . . .

Someone was speaking. Someone was commanding him to open his eyes.

Francis stood above him. The DS man leaned over, pulled Logan up. The Gun was in its holster, the homer unfired.

Francis began to change. What was this?
Am I really conscious?
The skin, the very bones of Francis began to change; the face was being stripped away. The nose was altered, the jaw, the line of cheekbone. Francis was . . .

Francis was Ballard!

"I couldn't tell you back in Washington," the tall man said. "I didn't trust you then. Even when you failed to use the Gun I didn't trust you. Now I do."

The logic was suddenly there for Logan. Ballard would need to disguise himself among the young in order to move about in the world. Every few years he'd need a new face, a new disguise. And what better disguise than that of a Sandman?

"I haven't been able to help too many of you," Ballard was saying, "because the only runners I can help are those I can reach. My organization is still a small one."

"But Doyle . . . back in Cathedral?"

"I gave him a key, told him to go for Sanctuary, but you were too quick for us, and the cubs got him."

"Then—it was you, on the steps at Crazy Horse."

Ballard nodded. "I wanted to stop you then."

"But how . . . how do you . . ." Logan tried to frame questions, but his tongue would not function.

"I have only limited access to the Thinker. I control parts of the maze, the dark parts, but I'm learning more each day. The system
is
dying. The Thinker is dying. Someday you and Jess and the others will be able to come back—to a changed world. A good, strong one. I'm working for that, widening the cracks in the system, doing what I can. There are few I can trust. Mainly I have to work alone."

"And—Sanctuary?"

Ballard was helping Logan toward the rocket. "Argos," he said. "The abandoned space station near Mars. It's a small colony now, still crude, cold, hard to live on. But it's ours, Logan. Yours now. The jump for Argos is Darkside—on the Moon."

He drew Logan, stumbling, to the boarding ladder. Jess was there, waiting, tears in her eyes.

Jess . . . Jess, I love you!

Hands reached for him, gentled him aboard, fastened him into the launch seat. A crisp crackle of voices beginning the countdown. And in the final second, as the port closed, Logan saw Ballard giving last-minute instructions to the hard-faced guide who had led them through the minefield.

The port sealed itself.

A great shuddering noise possessed the rocket. Logan felt himself danced by energies and tremors; Jess was smiling at him; a weight pushed him down. He closed his eyes.

Ballard watched the tide of orange envelop the lower stage of the rocket. The needlecraft poised, rose ponderously, gaining speed as it left Earth. Faster now. A thunder—as it began its long run down the Atlantic Range, safe from the eyes of men.

Ballard turned, a tall, lonely figure blending with the night, and walked back over the cold ground.

W
ILLIAM
F. N
OLAN
is the author of thirty books, half of which are in the science fiction genre. He also writes mysteries, and was twice awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Special Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His work has appeared in over a hundred publications, ranging from
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
to
Playboy
, and he has also been a book and magazine editor. Mr. Nolan has written several television movies, including
The Norliss Tapes, Trilogy of Terror
and
Melvin Purvis, G-Man
, and his screenplays include
Burnt Offerings
and
The Legend of Machine-Gun Kelly
. One of his television films recently won the Golden Medallion, presented at the Fourth International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantasy Films in Paris. His work has been widely translated and selected for numerous “best” anthologies. In addition, Mr. Nolan was recently awarded an honorary doctorate for his lifelong contributions to the field of science fiction by the American River College in Sacramento, California. He lives with his wife, Kam, in Woodland Hills, California.

G
EORGE
C
LAYTON
J
OHNSON
has written for such television shows as
Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Route 66, The Law and Mr. Jones, Mr. Novak
and
Kentucky Jones
. With Ray Bradbury, he scripted
Icarus Montgolfier Wright
, an animated documentary which was nominated for an Academy Award. He also wrote the screenplay for the movie
Oceans 11
, which was based on one of his original stories. George Clayton Johnson has contributed stories and articles to
Playboy, Gamma, Rogue, Connoisseur’s World
and several underground newspapers, including
Open City
, which runs his offbeat column, “Iconoclast,” as a regular feature. In great demand as a speaker at science fiction conventions, Mr. Johnson is currently assembling two collections of his best teleplays for future publication. George Clayton Johnson lives in Pacioma, California.