Logan's Run Read Online Free Page A

history. Of the runners who never came out. Of the muggings. Of the unchecked violence. Even the police avoided Cathedral. With good reason. They’d sent in a cleanup squad the previous summer to tame the cubs. Logan had known some of the men in that squad: Sanson and Bradley and Wilson 9, all good officers. They’d walked into the jaws of the crocodile and the jaws had closed. None of the squad survived.
    You didn’t take chances in Cathedral.
    The express belt broke down at River Level, and Logan was forced to take a walkway to Sutton and use the out ramp. These transit breaks had been occuring more and more frequently of late. And since the Thinker was self-repairing, or supposed to be, there was nothing anyone could do about the situation.
    When Logan reached the east side of the long stone bridge which fed into Cathedral he found Francis slumped against the spillwall.
    “Chopped me from behind,” he said, rubbing his head. “Your runner’s tough.”
    Logan scanned the area. The scope indicated that Doyle was very near. A shadow on the bridge. Logan raised his Gun for a shot, but couldn’t get a clear view of the man.
    Doyle kept under the stone parapet, scuttling crab like across the span, keeping the thick masonry between himself and the Gun.
    “He’s over,” said Francis.
    The runner had cleared the end of the bridge and ducked behind the tumbled ruins of a warehouse. But within seconds he reappeared, retreating from a tide of moving colors, quick shapes.
    “Cubs!” breathed Logan.
    He studied the cubscouts. There was something odd and fragmented about their movements as they converged on Doyle. Then he realized what he was seeing. He heard Francis swear softly. “They’re on Muscle.”
    The small figures moved in a continual blur of motion, daring and flitting like earthbound dragonflies.
    Where do they get the stuff? Logan wondered. Muscle had been outlawed since the Little War. Originally developed for armed combat, the drug was designed to speed up reactions. It increased a man’s strength tenfold, giving him ample time to deal with an enemy. But its action was too violent to control; it forced the heart to do a day’s work in minutes. A man lived impossibly fast with Muscle in his bloodstream. Only the very young could use it.
    Logan felt the flesh on his scalp tighten as he watched the incredibly swift boy-shapes attack the runner. Under Muscle a stick in a fist becomes a steel hammer—and the swarming cubs were cutting Doyle to pieces. He was on the ground, hands outstretched to ward off the cubs, but they were killing him. They were all around him in a rippling, weaving circle; and each wet, bone-shattering blow brought Doyle closer to death.
    Logan and Francis were crouched behind a wall of rubble facing the action in the clearing ahead of them.
    “We’ll try vapor,” said Francis. “Plug up.”
    They inserted nose filters. Francis flipped the Gun to V, braced the weapon against the top of the wall, fired.
    The gas charge took immediate effect, driving the cubs back in a broken wave. Doyle lay huddled and unmoving in the center of the clearing. “Let’s check him,” said Logan. “I can handle it. You cover me.”
    Before Francis could reach the runner the cubs regrouped to cut him off. They backed the DS man into a shallow pocket of stone to one side of the open ground. A second wave came for Logan.
    He fired a nitro into the group, and three of the cubs were torn about by the blast. This stopped them long enough for Logan to reach Doyle.
    The man’s face was a mosaic of blood and bone-ends; his mouth moved convulsively. A word. The runner was repeating a word.
    Logan leaned closer to catch the broken whisper: “Sanctuary.”
    Logan tensed. The runner’s head fell back loosely; his fingers uncurled. A small glittering object fell from his left hand. A punchkey. Logan pocketed it.
    The flat, dry crack of a ripper. Francis was effectively dealing with his attackers. He came into the