3
That night, Hradzka slept under a bridge across a fairly wide stream;the next morning, he followed the road until he came to a town. It wasnot a large place; there were perhaps four or five hundred houses andother buildings in it. Most of these were dwellings like the farmhousewhere he had been staying, but some were much larger, and seemed to beplaces of business. One of these latter was a concrete structure withwide doors at the front; inside, he could see men working on theinternal-combustion vehicles which seemed to be in almost universal use.Hradzka decided to obtain employment here.
It would be best, he decided, to continue his pretense of being adeaf-mute. He did not know whether a world-language were in use at thistime or not, and even if not, the pretense of being a foreigner unableto speak the local dialect might be dangerous. So he entered thevehicle-repair shop and accosted a man in a clean shirt who seemed to beissuing instructions to the workers, going into his pantomime of thehomeless mute seeking employment.
The master of the repair-shop merely laughed at him, however. Hradzkabecame more insistent in his manner, making signs to indicate his hungerand willingness to work. The other men in the shop left their tasks andgathered around; there was much laughter and unmistakably ribald andderogatory remarks. Hradzka was beginning to give up hope of gettingemployment here when one of the workmen approached the master andwhispered something to him.
The two of them walked away, conversing in low voices. Hradzka thoughthe understood the situation; no doubt the workman, thinking to lightenhis own labor, was urging that the vagrant be employed, for no other paythan food and lodging. At length, the master assented to his employee'surgings; he returned, showed Hradzka a hose and a bucket and sponges andcloths, and set him to work cleaning the mud from one of the vehicles.Then, after seeing that the work was being done properly, he went away,entering a room at one side of the shop.
About twenty minutes later, another man entered the shop. He was notdressed like any of the other people whom Hradzka had seen; he wore agray tunic and breeches, polished black boots, and a cap with a visorand a metal insignia on it; on a belt, he carried a holstered weaponlike a blaster.
After speaking to one of the workers, who pointed Hradzka out to him, heapproached the fugitive and said something. Hradzka made gestures at hismouth and ears and made gargling sounds; the newcomer shrugged andmotioned him to come with him, at the same time producing a pair ofhandcuffs from his belt and jingling them suggestively.
In a few seconds, Hradzka tried to analyze the situation and estimateits possibilities. The newcomer was a soldier, or, more likely, apoliceman, since manacles were a part of his equipment. Evidently, sincethe evening before, a warning had been made public by means ofcommunicating devices such as he had seen at the farm, advising peoplethat a man of his description, pretending to be a deaf-mute, should bedetained and the police notified; it had been for that reason that theworkman had persuaded his master to employ Hradzka. No doubt he would beaccused of causing the conditions at the farm by sorcery.
* * * * *
Hradzka shrugged and nodded, then went to the water-tap to turn off thehose he had been using. He disconnected it, coiled it and hung it up,and then picked up the water-bucket. Then, without warning, he hurledthe water into the policeman's face, sprang forward, swinging the bucketby the bale, and hit the man on the head. Releasing his grip on thebucket, he tore the blaster or whatever it was from the holster.
One of the workers swung a hammer, as though to throw it. Hradzka aimedthe weapon at him and pulled the trigger; the thing belched fire andkicked back painfully in his hand, and the man fell. He used it again todrop the policeman, then thrust it into the waistband of his trousersand ran outside. The thing was not a blaster at all, he realized--only amissile-projector like the big weapons at the farm, utilizing the forceof some chemical explosive.
The policeman's vehicle was standing outside. It was a small,single-seat, two wheeled affair. Having become familiar with theprinciples of these hydro-carbon engines from examination of the vehicleof the farm, and accustomed as he was to far more complex mechanismsthan this crude affair, Hradzka could see at a glance how to operate it.Springing onto the saddle, he kicked away the folding support andstarted the engine. Just as he did, the master of the repair-shop ranoutside, one of the small hand-weapons in his hand, and fired severalshots. They all missed, but Hradzka heard the whining sound of themissiles passing uncomfortably close to him.
It was imperative that he recover the blaster he had hidden in thehollow tree at the head of the valley. By this time, there would be aconcerted search under way for him, and he needed a better weapon thanthe solid-missile projector he had taken from the policeman. He did notknow how many shots the thing contained, but if it propelled solidmissiles by chemical explosion, there could not have been more than fiveor six such charges in the cylindrical part of the weapon which he hadassumed to be the charge-holder. On the other hand, his blaster, aweapon of much greater power, contained enough energy for five hundredblasts, and with it were eight extra energy-capsules, giving him a totalof four thousand five hundred blasts.
Handling the two-wheeled vehicle was no particular problem; although hehad never ridden on anything of the sort before, it was child's playcompared to controlling a Hundredth Century strato-rocket, and Hradzkawas a skilled rocket-pilot.
Several times he passed vehicles on the road--the passenger vehicleswith enclosed cabins, and cargo-vehicles piled high with farm produce.Once he encountered a large number of children, gathered in front of abig red building with a flagstaff in front, from which a queer flag,with horizontal red and white stripes and a white-spotted blue device inthe corner, flew. They scattered off the road in terror at his approach;fortunately, he hit none of them, for at the speed at which he wastraveling, such a collision would have wrecked his light vehicle.
* * * * *
As he approached the farm where he had spent the past few days, he sawtwo passenger-vehicles standing by the road. One was a black one,similar to the one in which the physician had come to the farm, and theother was white with black trimmings and bore the same device he hadseen on the cap of the policeman. A policeman was sitting in thedriver's seat of this vehicle, and another policeman was standing besideit, breathing smoke with one of the white paper cylinders these peopleused. In the farm-yard, two men were going about with a square blackbox; to this box, a tube was connected by a wire, and they were passingthe tube about over the ground.
The policeman who was standing beside the vehicle saw him approach, andblew his whistle, then drew the weapon from his belt. Hradzka, who hadbeen expecting some attempt to halt him, had let go the right-handsteering handle and drawn his own weapon; as the policeman drew, hefired at him. Without observing the effect of the shot, he sped on;before he had rounded the bend above the farm, several shots were firedafter him.
A mile beyond, he came to the place where he had hidden the blaster. Hestopped the vehicle and jumped off, plunging into the brush and racingtoward the hollow tree. Just as he reached it, he heard a vehicleapproach and stop, and the door of the police vehicle slam. Hradzka'sfingers found the belt of his blaster; he dragged it out and buckled iton, tossing away the missile weapon he had been carrying.
Then, crouching behind the tree, he waited. A few moments later, hecaught a movement in the brush toward the road. He brought up theblaster, aimed and squeezed the trigger. There was a faint bluish glowat the muzzle, and a blast of energy tore through the brush, smashingthe molecular structure of everything that stood in the way. There wasan involuntary shout of alarm from the direction of the road; at leastone of the policemen had escaped the blast. Hradzka holstered his weaponand crept away for some distance, keeping under cover, then turned andwaited for some sign of the presence of his enemies. For some timenothing happened; he decided to turn hunter against the men who werehunting him. He started back in the direction of the road, making a widecircle, flittin
g silently from rock to bush and from bush to tree,stopping often to look and listen.
This finally brought him upon one of the policemen, and almostterminated his flight at the same time. He must have grownover-confident and careless; suddenly a weapon roared, and a missilesmashed through the brush inches from his face. The shot had come fromhis left and a little to the rear. Whirling, he blasted four times, inrapid succession, then turned and fled for a few yards, dropping andcrawling behind a rock. When he looked back, he could see wisps of smokerising from the shattered trees and bushes which had absorbed theenergy-output of his weapon, and he caught a faint odor of burned flesh.One of his pursuers, at least, would pursue him no longer.
He slipped away, down into the tangle of ravines and hollows in which hehad wandered the day before his arrival at the farm. For the time being,he felt safe, and finally confident that he was not being pursued, hestopped to rest. The place where he stopped seemed familiar, and helooked about. In a moment, he recognized the