Part 2

On the street level, all was bustle and confusion. A polyglot crowd composed of every human and near human species in the universe jammed the streets. Stares followed the I.P.S. uniform as Heydrick pushed out of the elevator. A few people gave nods of respect, but in most faces burned a sullen hatred and resentment.

Ria followed him in stolid silence as the handcuffs tugged at her. The knots of angry people came suddenly in focus and she had a moment's desperate inspiration.

She jerked back heavily on the cuffs and began to scream.

Heydrick was caught off guard and spun sharply about.

"Help me, somebody," Ria cried wildly. "The cops are taking me in. I haven't done anything."

The mob clotted around the pair, snarling angrily.

Heydrick reached for his gun, just as somebody threw a spanner. He dodged, heard Ria's voice shout a welcome, "Thorsan," and that was all. A sharp jab in his cheek as the paralysis needle went home was the last he knew. Darkness rushed over him in a smothering cloud.

* * * * *

Someone kept slapping him. He felt as if he were trying to swim in thick syrup. The light on the desk shone blindingly in his eyes. He got his hand up to shield his eyes, then they struck it down. He blinked sharply awake.

Behind the desk sat a handsome man. Pale blue eyes that probed deeply, plump cheeks, thick blonde eyebrows, muscular shoulders. Heydrick had seen him before. Where? Oh, yes--the pieces clicked together. The Feyjak investigation. The man had testified against Ria Tarsen, reluctantly, the Visiphone News had commented. He had been Feyjak's assistant, Ria's friend.

Thorsan drummed the desk with his fingers. "Heydrick, you've given us a lot of trouble. You probably want to know where you are. You're in the underground galleries below Level 1. We have our headquarters here. I am the head man of the Wildings."

Heydrick's brain spun. He fought back the whirl and tried to think calmly.

Below the lowest inhabited level of Canal City 4 were endless mazes of caverns, galleries and abandoned mine-shafts.

Rumor said that bands of outlaws roamed among the savages, second and third generations of the outcast rebels who long-ago had been driven to the refuge of the city's ratholes. Banded together by their common hatreds, these outlaws had built up a strong organization known as the Wildings. There was some talk that numbers of them had infiltrated the City's government; men of dangerous ability, infinite cunning, and vicious philosophy, whose sole aim was the overthrow of the Government of Scientists.

Heydrick's heart turned suddenly to ashes as he realized that Ria Tarsen must have been a Wilding. Surely no group would have gone to the trouble of instigating riots merely to rescue an outsider, however innocent. It was all clear now, painfully clear.

Thorsan must have divined the nature of Heydrick's thoughts. He laughed harshly, then turned to a subordinate.

"They're no use to us, either of them. The girl didn't know as much as I thought she did. Now they both know too much. We'll have to get rid of them. Put him in the cell with her while I figure out what to do with them."

Hands reached out of the darkness and dragged Heydrick roughly to his feet. He was thrust along a winding gallery that he realized must be part of an old mine. They must have given him a full dose with the paralysis needle. He kept stumbling, and his legs moved stiffly.

The group came to a halt before an old wooden-plank door. The room inside was damp, and smelled mouldy. It was evidently a chamber cut in the rock for storage of explosives. His captors thrust him inside. He bounced off a wall and fell heavily. The door bumped shut and a sound like a bar dropping in place came muffled through the planks.

"Well, tough guy, how do _you_ like being pushed around?" A familiar voice came out of darkness.

"Who is it?" he asked needlessly.

"It's not your Aunt Sophie," the voice said acidly. "_You_ should kick. You have better company than I have."

The two sat in moody silence for a while. "Are you all right?" the girl asked finally.

"Still stiff," he answered. "You should know what that's like."

"I do. You and your toy handcuffs. They only wanted me; Thorsan thought I knew he killed Feyjak. He was afraid I might give him away. They had to drag you along on account of your silly handcuffs. If you hadn't split my lip, I could laugh at you. They're going to kill us, you know."

"Yes, I heard him say that."

"What are we going to do? Any ideas?"

"Not so far. How about you?"

"Nothing definite. I still have the benzedrine tablets I swiped. They didn't find 'em when they searched me. I'll split with you. If we take it before they come for us, we may get a chance to make a break. It'll counteract the paralysis drug if they're counting on that to make us dead pigeons while they haul us around."

Her hand found his in the dark and thrust six pellets into his open palm. Her fingers were wet and sticky.

"You're bleeding."

"It's nothing serious. That bracelet of yours cut my arm when they chiselled it off."

"I'm sorry about everything, Ria--"

"Skip it," she said harshly. "Of course you're sorry. Now shut up. I hate post-mortems. Besides, I think they're coming. Better get your benzedrine down."

* * * * *

There was sound of the bar being withdrawn. A heavy foot kicked the door open. A man with a twisted face held the light and the gun while two others approached warily and jabbed needles into the captives. Coarse hands jerked them to their feet, and the two were dragged outside, feigning limpness.

"Now," said Ria. She thrust out her foot. The man with the gun tripped and went sprawling on the floor. Heydrick swung with all he had at the darkness where he remembered a chin and felt bone shatter beneath his fist. Then he was tangled in a savage knot with the third man, rolling and threshing about in deadly fury.

Ria was not idle. She salvaged the light, switched the radilume back on, and hunted for the dropped gun. In a matter of seconds, she brought the butt down on an exposed skull. The thug let go and sank to the floor.

Heydrick dusted himself off.

"I ought to let you have it, too," Ria mumbled, "but I always was a softy. Come on, sucker."

"Which way?"

"I think they brought me that way," the girl said slowly. "Let's try the other. Heaven knows where it leads."

Heydrick took the gun from her and thrust it through his belt. They struck off down the tunnel, taking forks at random, but going as cautiously as they could.

Luck was against them. They came suddenly round a turn and into a chamber full of Wildings. It was the room where Heydrick had been questioned by Thorsan. The man still sat at the desk. Heydrick drew the gun and pressed its trigger as Thorsan dived for a doorway. The desk glowed, then exploded. The room was choked with dust.

Heydrick remembered a nightmarish pursuit, running down a series of criss-cross galleries with endless side passages. The gallery ended abruptly. An open mine-shaft barred their way.

It was a double shaft, with space for two elevators, but neither lift was on their level. Sounds of pursuit came from the gallery behind them.

Heydrick leaned over and looked down the shaft. A floor below was the open-platform lift.

"Jump for the cable," he ordered. "Try to slide down it."

"You first," she said. "I'm a sissy." Heydrick jumped and his stomach wrenched with nausea. Then the cable was burning through his hands. His feet stung as they came down solidly on the metal flooring. The girl was right behind him. He found the control lever and jammed it all the way over.

The car dropped under them with sickening speed.

A blaster beam flamed briefly above them, and the discharge set a chorus of echoes bouncing back and forth in the old mine-shaft.

"Hang tight," he shouted. "I don't know how far down this shaft goes. If we hit bottom at this speed, we'll flatten out like saucers."

A mushroom of brilliant light expanded above them. The car jerked and grated on the rock walls, then went down in a free fall, the cable trailing slack above them.

Down the shaft hurtled the old lift, air whistling eerily round its edges.

"They've blasted the cable!" Heydrick cried. "Now we are in for it." He leaped to the brake lever and tugged at it. The bar was rusted fast. Ria tried to help. With their combined weight and effort, the bar gave a little. Inch by inch, it moved. The clamps started taking hold of the side walls and a shriek of protest came from rock and metal. The elevator slowed slightly. Too late.

With a grinding rasp of smashed metal, it struck. Ria was hurled clear, but Heydrick was trapped.

The metal cable came down, coiling and snapping like a whip. A stiff spiral of it covered Heydrick, pinning him fast to the floor. He wiped a smear of blood from his face and tried vainly to lift the heavy strands. They refused to budge.

Ria knelt beside him and tried to shift the coils, but it was no use.

"You'd better go," he said roughly. "They'll be down as soon as they can get to the other elevator ... to make sure of us."

Ria glared at him. "It's my maternal instinct," she said. "I can't leave you."

"You wanted a chance to escape. This is it."

Ria seized the broken brake lever and pried up part of the strands. Heydrick worked himself part way out, but the weight was too much for her strength. The bar twisted out of her hands. Down came the full weight again. Heydrick cried out in agony. She moved the bar and lifted again. This time, he crawled free.

* * * * *

Leaning on her, he was able to stand and walk along the old gallery, but it was a slow business. Deadly slow.

Behind them, they could hear the whine of a descending lift. "They're coming," he said. Crouching against an angle of the tunnel, they waited. It was useless to run. Heydrick cut the switch of his radilume and braced the blaster against cold stone. He felt better with the trigger nestling against his trembling finger.

The Wildings came cautiously, but they needed light to move at all.

Light splashed off the rock around the corner. Shadowy figures moved behind the light. Heydrick pressed the trigger, and a pale beam flicked the darkness. In the close confinement of the tunnel, the shattering blast stunned their brains.

The explosion stopped some of the pursuit, but a scuff of boots on rough rock warned Heydrick. Needles from paralysis guns snicked nastily from the naked rocks beside them. He and the girl turned and fled headlong through the darkness. Pain forgotten, he thrust Ria ahead of him, and pried up part of the strands. Heydrick followed, stumbling and swearing.

In the darkness ahead, he heard Ria cry out. Unable to stop, he too collided with what seemed to be a solid wall of metal. Heydrick flicked the radilume switch. Light flooded an ore depot, with rusting electric cars.

"Ore cars," he gasped. "Get in." He boosted the girl up and scrambled after her. Heydrick fumbled for the switch, found it. The car leaped ahead as a blaster beam licked the rails behind them. With shaking hands, Heydrick re-primed his blaster and fired wildly at the darkness behind them. Shadows danced. It seemed seconds before the blasts went off. Two in rapid succession.

Another car leaped from the dust cloud behind. It was pursuing them on the parallel tracks.

A blaster beam grazed the back wall of the ore-car. It was gone with a flash and a roar. The shock flattened Heydrick and the girl against the front wall. Heydrick re-primed his gun, but it was impossible to aim. The tracks went into a black maw and went up in a steeply climbing spiral. Flanges screamed wildly as the wheels bit into the curves. Up. Up. Up. The miles raced backward in a dizzy flow of darkness lit by faint reflections from the radilume.

Suddenly the track levelled off on a straightaway. Heydrick peered ahead. Heaven alone knew where the tunnel led or how far the tracks were good. The car was going like a runaway rocket.

Then they were out in the open, in daylight. The tracks came out of a tunnel-mouth on the banks of the dry canal.

The hurtling ore-car was half way across the bridge before Heydrick knew they were heading for the city.

Out of the tunnel-mouth across the canal shot the other ore-car. Both cars raced toward the city.

Ten miles. Five. Three. One.

Weird lights flickered on the tremendous dome ahead, as if some infernal carnival was being held within the city.

Up a steep ramp to the airlock shot the cars. Seconds now. The airlock was closed.

A gate of metal and plastic loomed close. Glass, plastic, metal and quartz vanished in a thunderous melee of sound. The first lock. The city's automatic wall-magnets clawed at the racing car. It slowed rapidly. The deceleration pinned both of them flat against the front wall of the car. It went through the second gate like a knife through dough. The jar was agony.

The car rolled up to a dock and stopped.

Heydrick was out of the car and racing for a visiphone as a wobbling wheel came loose and romped down the track, smashing sheds to metal splinters.

"Get Tyko," he bellowed.

"Sorry," a robot said tonelessly. "No calls are going through till the end of the emergency."

Heydrick swore wildly. He and Ria ran through the building and out onto the huge terrace in front. The vast bowl of the city was in tumult. Fires were raging on all the lower levels, and several of the towers of the 7th level had crashed down in ruins. Mobs roared through the streets, killing, burning, and looting. It was revolution. Security police, trying to stem the outbreak, were caught in the maelstroms, overwhelmed, and submerged. The lower levels had gone mad with hate. Wildings were everywhere, organizing, leading, destroying.

Heydrick commandeered an empty flier, got Ria aboard and set the automatic pilot for Tyko's tower in West 21.

* * * * *

In Tyko's tower, the old man stood watching the end of the grim spectacle in the streets below. Walls of white fire moved out in ever-widening circles from the experimental domes, moved through the city, quieting the mobs, herding them back to their homes. Dead lay in windrows.

A bell rang behind him. He turned. "Oh, come in," he said. It was Thorsan, Feyjak's assistant.

"It's almost over," Tyko told him. "Order is being restored now. After this, we'll keep the Blues in power and give the people a government they can like. It's a sad thing, to govern people. Herding them about like animals. Men should be free. I'm an anarchist myself ... out of hours."

"How about my people?" Thorsan asked, an odd expression on his face.

"Your people? Oh, the Red Scientists. Don't worry. We knew this revolt was coming, even if you Reds didn't. We've had our eye on the Wildings for some time. You Reds are safe enough. When order is restored, perhaps a joint government...."

Tyko stopped. He was looking into the muzzle of a blaster.

"I don't understand," he quavered.

"My people are the Wildings. We don't want any of your kind of governments," Thorsan said slowly. "With you out of the way, nothing can stop the revolution. I regret the necessity."

From the open doorway, Heydrick fired. The paralysis needle bit deep in Thorsan's neck. He crumpled silently.

Heydrick and Ria stood before Tyko.

"I see you've completed your mission," the old man said. He frowned as Heydrick put his arm around Ria.

Heydrick laughed. "When Thorsan comes out of it, give him scopolamine. He'll tell you who did kill Feyjak."

"I suppose you want my blessing? You have it."

"How's your war coming?"

"It's over by now. Nasty business, government. What are you going to do?"

Heydrick and Ria looked at each other.

"I think we'll find an empty asteroid and camp out for a while. The universe is getting too crowded. I'm glad she was innocent, Tyko. I could never have brought her in ... for any reason."

"I wish I were young enough to go with you," Tyko sighed. "Not on your honeymoon, of course. I guess you won't be coming back. This is goodbye, then? Is there anything I can do for you?"

Heydrick started to reply but Ria cut in. "Yes, there is. I want another pair of those magnetic handcuffs."

Heydrick shrugged. "She has the maternal instincts of a buzz-saw."