American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 Read Online Free Page B

are counting on no one ever suspecting. So let’s get out of here. We’ve got to gain almost twelve minutes somehow. Come on!”
    I was beyond asking where or why. “All right. Let’s fix your boots.”
    He shook his head. “It would slow me up. Right now speed is more essential than not being recognized.”
    “I am in your hands.” I followed him to the door; he stopped and said, “There may be others around. If so, shoot first— there’s nothing else you can do.” He had the life wand in his hand, with his cloak drawn over it.
    “Martians?”
    “Or men. Or both.”
    “Dak? Was Rrringriil one of those four at the Mañana bar?”
    “Certainly. Why do you think I went around Robinson’s barn to get you out of there and over here? They either tailed you, as we did, or they tailed me. Didn’t you recognize him?”
    “Heavens, no! Those monsters all look alike to me.”
    “And they say we all look alike. The four were Rrringriil, his conjugate-brother Rrringlath, and two others from his nest, of divergent lines. But shut up. If you see a Martian, shoot. You have the other gun?”
    “Uh, yes. Look, Dak, I don’t know what this is all about. But as long as those beasts are against you, I’m with you. I despise Martians.”
    He looked shocked. “You don’t know what you are saying. We’re not fighting Martians; those four are renegades.”
    “Huh?”
    “There are lots of good Martians—almost all of them. Shucks, even Rrringriil wasn’t a bad sort in most ways—I’ve had many a fine chess game with him.”
    “What? In that case, I’m——”
    “Stow it. You’re in too deep to back out. Now quick-march, straight to the bounce tube. I’ll cover our rear.”
    I shut up. I was in much too deep—that was unarguable.
    We hit the sub-basement and went at once to the express tubes. A two-passenger capsule was just emptying; Dak shoved me in so quickly that I did not see him set the control combination. But I was hardly surprised when the pressure let up from my chest and I saw the sign blinking JEFFERSON SKYPORT — All Out.
    Nor did I care what station it was as long as it was as far as possible from Hotel Eisenhower. The few minutes we had been crammed in the vactube had been long enough for me to devise a plan—sketchy, tentative, and subject to change without notice, as the fine print always says, but a plan. It could be stated in two words: Get lost!
    Only that morning I would have found the plan very difficult to execute; in our culture a man with no money at all is babyhelpless. But with a hundred slugs in my pocket I could go far and fast. I felt no obligation to Dak Broadbent. For reasons of his own—not my reasons!—he had almost got me killed, then had crowded me into covering up a crime, made me a fugitive from justice. But we had evaded the police, temporarily at least, and now, simply by shaking off Broadbent, I could forget the whole thing, shelve it as a bad dream. It seemed most unlikely that I could be connected with the affair even if it were discovered—fortunately a gentleman always wears gloves, and I had had mine off only to put on make-up and later during that ghastly house cleaning.
    Aside from the warm burst of adolescent heroics I had felt when I thought Dak was fighting Martians I had no interest in his schemes—and even that sympathy had shut off when I found that he liked Martians in general. His impersonation job I would not now touch with the proverbial eleven-foot pole. To hell with Broadbent! All I wanted out of life was money enough to keep body and soul together and a chance to practice my art; cops-and-robbers nonsense did not interest me— poor theater at best.
    Jefferson Port seemed handmade to carry out my scheme. Crowded and confused, with express tubes spiderwebbing from it, in it, if Dak took his eyes off me for half a second I would be halfway to Omaha. I would lie low a few weeks, then get in touch with my agent and find out if any inquiries had been