clothing, then punched a code that dispatched it to thetransportation terminal. In return, he received a small plastic stripwith the same code on it. The bag could be traced, but not withouttrouble, and he should be able to pick it up before then. At this stagehe didn't want to be encumbered.
He took a last look around and stepped into the hall. He leaped backagain.
A heavy caliber slug crashed into the door.
* * * * *
That had been meant to kill. He was lucky it hadn't.
Who was it? Not the police. By law they were restricted to tangle guns,though they sometimes forgot. In this case, their memory should begood--they'd have difficulty explaining away the holes in his body. Notthat they'd have to, really; if they wanted, they could toss him into analley and claim they had found his body later.
Still, there was no particular reason why they should want to kill himoutright when they could do it by degrees scientifically and with fulllegal protection. They didn't call it killing. There was another term:converting.
The converting process was not new; the principles had existed forcenturies. The newness lay in the proper combination of old discoveries.Electric shock was one ingredient, a prolonged drastic application of itduring the recreation of a situation that the victim had a weakness for.In the case of an adulterer, say, the scene was hypnotically arrangedwith the cooperation of a special robot that wouldn't beshort-circuited. At the proper moment, electric shock was applied,repeatedly. Rigorous and somewhat rough on the criminal's wife, but theadulterer would be saddled all his life with an unconditional reflex.
That was only one ingredient. There were others, among them apseudo-religious brotherhood, membership in which was compulsory.C. C.--Confirmed Converters. _They_ kept tab on one another withapocalyptic fervor. Transgressions were rare. Death came sooner.
Jadiver stood there thinking. It wasn't the police, because they hadconverting with which to threaten him. It wasn't Cobber, either. Hecould have killed Jadiver earlier and hadn't.
Cobber might have talked, though. There were enough people who nowregretted that Jadiver had once given them new faces. As far as theywere concerned Jadiver was in the hands of the police.
The identity of the man outside didn't matter. He was not from thepolice, but he did want Jadiver dead.
Jadiver stood back and pushed the door open. Another slug crashed intoit, tiny, but with incredible velocity.
He knelt, thrust his hand outside the door near the bottom and fired arandom fusillade down the corridor. Then he took his finger off thetrigger and listened. There wasn't a sound. The man had decided to besensible.
Jadiver stepped out. The man was crouched in an inconspicuous corner andhe was going to stay in that position for a long time. He couldn't helpbreathing, though, and his chest was a tangle of wires. There were someon his face, too, where his eyelids flickered and his mouth twitched.
The gun was in his hand and it was aimed nearly right. There was nothingto prevent his squeezing the trigger--except the tangle extruded looselyover his hand. And he could move faster than it could. Once, at anyrate.
"I wouldn't," said Jadiver. "You're going to have a hard time explainingthat illegal firearm. And it'll look worse if I'm here with my headwrapped around a hole that just fits the slug."
The man reaffirmed his original decision to be sensible about it byremaining motionless. Jadiver didn't recognize him. Probably a hiredassassin.
The man paled with the effort not to move. He teetered and the tanglestuff coiled fractionally tighter.
"Take care of yourself," Jadiver said, and left him there.
* * * * *
Jadiver headed toward the transportation terminal. The police couldtrace him that far. Let them; he intended that they should. It wouldconfuse them more when he walked right off their instruments.
Once inside the underground structure, he lost himself in the traffic.That was just in case he had been followed physically as well as byradiation. People coming from Earth, fewer going back. They arrived inswarms from the surface, overhead from the concrete plain where rocketsroared out on takeoff or hissed in for landing. Transportation shuntedthe mob in one direction for interplanetary travel, in another for localair routes.
Jadiver reclaimed his bag, boarded the moving belts and hopped on andoff several times, again just in case. The last time off, he had coinsready. He slipped around a corner and walked down a long quiet corridor.There were doors on either side, a double deck with a narrow balcony onthe second story. At intervals, stairs led to the balcony.
He walked a third of the way down the corridor, inserted coins in theslot, and a door opened. He went inside the sleep locker and the doorclosed behind, locking automatically.
It was miserable accommodation if he intended to sleep, but he didn't.It was also a trap if the police were trailing him. He didn't think theywere--they were too certain of him. Nevertheless, the sleep locker hadone advantage: it was all metal. Considering the low power that probablywent into the circuit, it should be a satisfactory temporary shield.
He changed into clothes that looked ordinary--out of style, in fact,though that was not noteworthy in a solarwide economy--but the material,following a local terrestrial fad of a few years back, contained a highproportion of metallic fiber. That solved only part of the problem, ofcourse. His hands and his head were uncovered.
The pseudo-flesh that he had used on Emily was not for him. In a way, itwas the best disguise, but he was playing this one to live, as much ashe could, all the way. A standard semi-durable cosmetic would do; thatis, it would when he finished altering it to suit his purpose.
The chief addition was a flaky metallic powder, lead. However the signalworked, radar or not, that should be effective in dampening the signal.He squeezed the mixture into a tube and attached the tube to a small gunwhich he plugged into a wall socket. Standing in front of the tinymirror, with everything else cramped in the sleep locker, he went overhis face and hands. He had trouble getting it on his scalp and under hishair, but it went on.
He looked himself over. He now appeared older, respectable, but notsuccessful, which fitted neatly into the greatest category on Venus--oranywhere, for that matter. He stuffed the clothing he'd worn back intothe bag and walked out. He'd been in the sleep locker half an hour.
He was operating blind, but it was all he could do. He had to assumethat the metallic fiber in his clothing and the lead flakes in thecosmetic would scramble the circuit signal. If they didn't, then he wascompletely without protection.
He'd soon know how correctly he had analyzed the problem.
* * * * *
He walked out of the transportation terminal and hailed an air cab whichtook him over the city and left him at the edge of a less reputablesection.
It was not an old slum--Venicity hadn't endured long enough to haveinherited slums; it built them quickly out of shoddy material and thentore them down again as the need for living space expanded outward.
He checked in at a hotel neither more nor less disreputable than therest. The structure made up in number of rooms what it lacked in sizeand appearance.
This was the test period and he had to wait it out. If he passed, he wason an equal footing with any other person wanted by the police. He'dtake his chances on that, his wits against their organization; he coulddisappear if he didn't carry a beacon around with him. This was the bestplace to spend the interim period, crowded together with people comingand going to and from the wild lands of Venus.
But if he didn't pass the test--
He refused to think about it.
He walked aimlessly in the grayness of the Venusian day. Differentpeople from those in the bright new sections of Venicity, quieter,grimmer, more bewildered. Tough, but not the hardness of the criminalelement. These people had no interest in either making or breaking thelaw.
After nightfall, he loitered on the streets for a few hours, watchingfaces.
When policemen began appearing in greater numbers, he checkedinto his room.
It was a grimy, unpleasant place. Considering the comfort it offered,the rate was exorbitant. Safety, however, if it did afford, and that wasbeyond price. He lay down, but couldn't sleep. The room, apparently, wasdesigned on the acoustical principle of an echo chamber or a drum.
The adjacent room on one side was occupied by a man and woman. Thewoman, though, was not a woman. There was a certain pitch to thelaughter that could come only from a robot. The management obviouslyoffered attractions other than sleep.
The room on the other side was quieter. Somebody coughed twice, somebodysniffled once. Two of them, decided Jadiver, a man and a woman, bothhuman. They weren't talking loud or much. He couldn't hear the words,but the sounds weren't gay.
In the hall, other voices intruded. Jadiver lay still. He couldrecognize the way of walking, the tone of voice. Cops. His test periodwasn't lasting as long as