he'd hoped.
"What good is it?" grumbled one, down the hall, but Jadiver could heardistinctly. "We had him dead center and now we've lost him. If I had myway, we'd have taken him sooner."
* * * * *
Jadiver's reasoning was not so good if the police were this close. Hegot up and crept noiselessly toward the door, fully dressed, as he hadto be at all times if he expected to scramble the circuit signal.
The companion of the first policeman was more cheerful. "He's not lost.We've just mislaid him. We know the direction he's in. Follow the lineand there he is at the end of it."
"Sounds good, but have we got him?"
"We will."
That was the fallacy. He'd scrambled the signal, but he hadn'teliminated it. He still showed up on the police instrument as adirection. He could imagine a technician sitting in front of a crazilywavering screen. The instrument could no longer pick up what he sawthrough his eyes, but it hadn't lost him altogether.
Jadiver clutched the tangle gun.
"Better check where we are," said the first officer.
"Going to," answered the second. Jadiver couldn't see, but he couldvisualize the pocket instrument. "This is Lieutenant Parder. How closeare we?"
The voice came back, almost inaudible. What he could hear, though, wasdisturbing. It sounded like someone he knew, but not Doumya Filone."You're off a hundred yards to your left," said the voice. "Also, he's amile farther out. Either that or a hundred and fifty miles."
"He's really moving," said the lieutenant. "A hundred and fifty miles isin the middle of the swamp."
"I know that," said the tantalizing familiar voice. "I can't choosebetween outside and inside the city. If he's inside, I want him to move.That motion, extended a hundred and fifty miles, by simple mathematicswill indicate a distance he couldn't possibly travel in the jungle." Thevoice paused. "We'll send a party to check the swamp. You go to thepoint a mile farther on. We want him tonight. If we don't get him, we'llprobably have to wait until tomorrow night."
"I'll find him," said the lieutenant. "Report when I get there."
Jadiver could hear footsteps receding down the hall.
He breathed in relief. The makeshift shield hadn't been a total failure.They knew the direction, but not the distance from some centrallocation. The scramble had affected the strength of the signal and theycouldn't be sure.
The impromptu visit told him this as well: there was only one instrumenton him. With two, they could work a triangulation, regardless of thesignal strength.
He could hazard a guess as to why they had to get him at night. Duringthe day, there were radiological disturbances originating in theatmosphere that made reception of the signals difficult. That meant thatthe day was safest for him.
* * * * *
He went back to the bed and lay down, to puzzle over the familiar voice,to sleep if he could. Sleep didn't come easily. The man and the femalerobot had left, but the quiet couple on the other side had been awakenedby the noise in the hall.
The woman sniffled. "I don't care, Henry. We're going back to Earth."
It was not an old voice, though he couldn't be sure, not seeing her.Thirty-five, say. Jadiver resented the intrusion at a time like this. Hewas trying to sleep, or think, he wasn't sure which.
"Now, hon, we can't," Henry whispered back. "We've bought the land andnobody's going to buy it back."
"We bought it when they told us there would be roses," said the woman,loud and bitter. "Great big roses, so big that most of the plant grewbelow ground, only the flower showing. So big, no stem could supportthem."
"Well, hon--"
"Don't hon me. There _are_ roses, ten feet across, all over our land,just like they said." Her voice rose higher. "Mud roses, that's whatthey are. Stinking mud roses that collapse into a slimy hole in theground."
She sniffled again. "Did you notice the pictures they showed us? Peoplestanding by the roses with their heads turned away. And you know why thepictures were like that? Because they didn't dare show us theexpressions on those people's faces, that's why."
"It's not so bad," said the man soothingly. "Maybe we can do somethingabout it."
"What can we do? The roses poison cattle and dogs run away from thesmell. And we're humans. We're stronger, we're supposed to take it."
"I've been thinking," said Henry quietly. "I could take a long pipe andrun it at an angle to the roots. I could force concrete through the pipeand seal it off below ground. When it collapsed, the rose wouldn't growback."
The woman asked doubtfully, "Could you?"
"I think so. Of course I'd have to experiment to get the right kind ofconcrete."
"But what would we do with the hole it left?" There was a faint tremorof hope.
"We could haul away the slime," he said. "It would stop smelling after awhile. We might even be able to use it for fertilizer."
"But there's still the hole."
"It would fill with water after the next rain. We could raise ducks init."
"White ducks?"
"If you like."
The woman was silent. "If you think we can do it, then we'll try," shesaid. "We'll go back to our farm and forget about Earth."
Henry was silent, too. "They're kind of pretty, even if they do smellbad," he said after a long interval. "Maybe I could pump a differentkind of cement, real thin, directly into the stem. It might travel upinto the flower instead of down."
"And make them into stone roses," enthused the woman. "Mud roses intostone. I'd like that--a few of them--to remind us of what our farm waslike when we came to it." She wasn't sniffling.
They had their own problems, decided Jadiver, and their own solution,which, in their ignorance, might actually work. He'd been like that whenhe first came to Venus, expecting great things. With him it had beendifferent. He was an engineer, not a farmer, and he didn't want to be afarmer. There was nothing on Venus for him.
He couldn't stay much longer on Venus in any capacity. Earth was out ofthe question. Mars? If he could escape capture in the months thatfollowed and then manage to get passage on a ship. It wasn't hopeless,but his chances weren't high.
The puzzling thing was why the police wanted him so badly. He was anaccessory to a crime--several of them, in fact. But even if theyregarded him as a criminal, they couldn't consider him an important one.
And yet they were staging a manhunt. He hated to think of the number ofpolicemen looking for him. There must be a reason for it.
He had a few days left, possibly less. In that time, he would have toget off the planet or shed the circuit. Without drastic extensivesurgery, there was not much hope he could peel off the circuit.
Unless--
He had received a message from someone self-identified as a friend. Andthat friend knew about the circuit and claimed to be willing to help.
He kept seeing gray eyes and a strong, sad, indifferent face, even inhis sleep.
* * * * *
He awakened later than he intended. Since daylight was safest for him,that was a serious error. He wasted no time in regret, but wentimmediately to the mirror. Under the makeup, his face was dirty andsweating. He didn't dare to remove the disguise for an instant, since todo so would be to expose himself to the instrument. He sprayed on a newface, altering the facial characteristics as best he could. Hisclothing, too, had to stay on. He roughed it up a bit, adding a year'swear to it.
For what it was worth, he didn't look quite the same as yesterday.Seedier and older. It was a process he couldn't keep extendingindefinitely. He would not have to, of course. One way or the other, itwould be decided soon.
He shredded the bag and his extra clothing, tossing them into thedisposal chute. No use giving the police something to paw over, todeduce from it what they could. The tiny spray gun he kept, and the tubeof makeup. He might need them once more.
It was close to noon when he left the room. There were lots of people onthe streets and
only a few policemen. Again he had an advantage.
He found a pay screen and began the search. Doctor Doumya Filone wasn'tlisted with the police and that seemed strange. A moment's reflectionshowed that it wasn't. If she were officially connected, she might notshow the sympathy she had.
Neither was she listed on the staff of the emergency hospital in whichhe'd been a patient. He had a number through which he could reach her,but he resisted an impulse to use it. It was certain the police wouldn'tconfine their