Chapter VI

Hunter slid into the car, punched out a destination blindly, and engaged the flight gear. With the customary roar of power, the car shot up from the flat. Hunter leaped free. His feet struck the cement. The lingering trace of paralysis, destroying his normal co-ordination, made the fall very painful.

Hunter flung himself flat in the shadow of the ornamental shrubs along the edge of the parking flat. The four police mercenaries sprinted out of the house and leaped into the police jet. With sirens screaming, it soared up in pursuit of the empty autojet.

Hunter estimated that he had perhaps thirty minutes before they sent out a general alarm. A painfully small margin of safety. Where could he hide that the machines of detection--the skilled, emotionless, one-track, electronic brains--would not eventually find him? And what of Ann Saymer? What could he do as a fugitive to save her?

United had planned it all down to the smallest detail. But that was the way the cartels operated. It was the system Hunter was accustomed to. He felt neither anger not resentment, simply a determination to out-plan and out-play the enemy.

If he accepted defeat he would admit frustration, and for Captain Max Hunter that was impossible. Hadn’t he survived a decade of frontier conflict with an adjustment index of zero-zero? Instead of hopelessly weighing the odds stacked against him, he counted the advantage which a single man held in maneuverability and rapid change of pace.

He walked along the museum street, the blaster in his hand. A block away rose the bulk of a factory building and behind it towered the monster of center-city, transformed into a fairyland by the glow of lights on the many levels. Hunter’s eye followed the pattern up toward the top, hidden above the blanket of haze.

The top! Luxury casinos and the castles of the cartels. Werner von Rausch and his empire of United Researchers. Werner von Rausch, who gave orders and Ann Saymer disappeared. Werner von Rausch, who gave new orders and Mrs. Ames lay murdered in her living room.

But behind the façade of his spacefleet and his private army, behind his police mercenaries, Werner von Rausch was one man--an old man, Hunter had been told--and a vulnerable target. Hunter weighed his changes, and the margin of success seemed to be balanced in his favor.

It was not what they would expect him to do. They had framed him for murder and he should now be running for his life. The hunted turned hunter. Hunter grinned savagely, enjoying his pun.

He slipped the blaster under his belt, leaving the scarlet jacket open to his navel so that the loose folds would conceal the outline of the weapon. He would have no trouble reaching the top level.

The resort casinos, like the mid-city amusement area, were open to any citizen. Special autojets, with destinations pre-set for the casino flat, were available in every monorail terminal. Hunter could by-pass a probe inspection at a regular metro-entry. The nearest terminal, from the north-coast line, was less than a quarter of a mile away.

As Hunter entered the industrial district he heard the turmoil of an angry crowd. He came upon them suddenly, swarming at the gates of a factory close to the terminal.

Eric Young’s trouble-makers, he thought with a worried frown, jumping obediently when the big boss spoke the word. In less than five years Eric Young had turned the union into a third cartel, more powerful than Consolidated or United because the commodity Young controlled--human labor--was essential to the other two.

A third cartel! Suddenly Max Hunter understood why the cartels had to have Ann’s patent at any cost. The absolute control of the human mind! It was the only weapon which Consolidated or United could use to break Young’s power.

Hunter shouldered his way through the strikers toward the terminal. Though he wore no U.F.W. disc, he felt no alarm. Eric Young’s strike riots were always well-managed. None of the violence was real and no one was ever seriously hurt.

But these trouble-makers seemed absurdly well-disciplined. They stood in drill-team ranks, moving and shouting abuse in perfect unison. Then Hunter saw their faces, as blank as death masks--and in all their skulls the still unhealed scalpel wound, as well as an occasional projecting platinum strand which sometimes caught the reflected light.

Max Hunter felt a chill of terror. He was walking in a human graveyard of living automatons, responding to the transmission from Ann’s machine. United had lost no time in putting the thing to work. This was no ordinary strike, but the opening skirmish in the conflict that would wreck both Consolidated and the Union of Free Workers.

Hunter entered the monorail terminal. It was deserted except for a woman who stood by the window looking out at the crowd. She was wearing a demure, pink dress. Her face was plain, and she had used no cosmetic plasti-skin to make it more striking. Her brown hair, streaked with a gray which she took no trouble to hide, was pulled into a bun at the back of her neck.

Surprisingly, Hunter thought she was pretty, perhaps because she was so different from the eternal, baby-faced adolescent who thronged the city in a million identical duplications.

Hunter knew he had seen her before. He couldn’t remember where. She shifted her position slightly and the light cast a sharp, angular shadow on her face. Then he knew.

“Dawn!” he cried.

Startled, she turned to face him with a strange look in her eyes.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t recognize me, Captain Hunter,” she said.

“What are you doing here--dressed like some dowdy just in from a farm sector?” he asked, his gaze incredulous.

“We’re all of us a mixture of different personalities,” she replied. “I work for an entertainment house, yes. But I also have some of the qualities of your Ann Saymer. Don’t take offense, please. Ann and I are both interested in the maladjusted. She wants a quick cure. I’m looking for the cause.”