Bob Shaw: Orbitsville Departure

Dallen's real problem lay with strolling window-shoppers and sightseers. A couple walking hand-in-hand with two smalt children were likely to be flesh-and-blood tourists, but similar family groups had been included in the Street's cast of holomorphs to establish a homely atmosphere — and there was nothing to stop bombers adopting the same camouflage. By the time he reached the midpoint in the block Dallen's palms were sweating and his heart rate had climbed until there was a continuous fluttering agitation in the centre of his chest.

He paused, striving to appear relaxed, and shielded his eyes from the sun. Business-suited men carrying leather briefcases hurried by him, a mailman with a sackful of letters, a green-shirted youngster conversing earnestly with a blonde in a pink dress, two adolescents eating cotton candy, an elderly woman laden with shopping bags…

Tins is hopeless-, Dallen thought. And it's funny the way some people are making footprints and some aren't.

Narrowing his eyes he picked out an area, some twenty paces ahead, where rain from the recent shower had accumulated in a depression in the sidewalk. The sun had already dried the surrounding concrete, with the result that people who walked through the shallow pool were leaving footprints for some distance on each side of it.

Except for the holomorphs, of course — illusions don't get wet feet. Dallen frowned, wondering why his heartbeat had lapsed into powerful, measured anvil-blows. There was nothing surprising nor even particularly helpful about what he had noticed, and yet… and yet… Lips moving silently, Dallen turned and ran a few paces in the direction from which he had come, giving himself a second look at one batch of pedestrians. The crowd patterns had already changed, but he found the couple he wanted immediately. The man in the green shirt and the blonde woman were still engaged in what had seemed to be a serious conversation, but — Dallen saw the pair with new eyes — only the man was talking, and only the man was leaving fast-fading smears of moisture on the sidewalk.

Dallen slowed abruptly, desperate for time in which to devise tactics, but his erratic movements brought him into near-collision with three women tourists in holiday shorts. They made little sound, a barely audible gasp of surprise, but it was enough. The green-shirted man glanced back at Dallen and began to run, dragging something from his hip pocket as he went.

Dallen buried himself into pursuit, realised at once that another second was all the time the terrorist needed, and fired his sidearm through the material of his jacket. Several animated figures were caught in the cone of energy, but they were unaffected — holomorphs — and Dallen ran clean through them as he glimpsed the bomber angling forward, rigid and toppling.

The fuse! The voice in Dallen's head had the hysterical shrillness of a speeded-up recording. How much impact will it stand?

He overtook me falling man, damped an arm around him and used the momentum of his charge to carry them both into the narrow entrance of an electronics store. Antique television sets in the glazed display areas on each side glimmered with images of an earlier age. A middle-aged couple who had been inspecting the television sets backed off in alarm, the woman pressing a hand to her throat.

"There's nothing to worry about," Dallen said, smiling a reassurance as he moved his right hand down the dead weight in his arms and gripped the metal cylinder which had been partially withdrawn from the bomber's pocket.

"Say, what's going…?" The paunchy man broke off, looking doubtful, as the bomber made glottal clicking noises which indicated that his powers of speech would soon return. "Is that guy sick?"

Dallen weighed the alternatives open to him. The orthodox course would be to produce identification, send the couple on their way and call for assistance. But handling the situation that way, legally and properly, would have an inevitable consequence — a near-complete victory for the terrorist infiltrator. It was almost certain that the bomb's timing device was set to explode it within minutes, which left the authorities with the choice of evacuating the Street and allowing the destruction to take place, or of risking lives in an attempt to fly the bomb to open ground. Either way, the news would go out with tachyonic speed, the message that Madison City was no longer a safe place for visitors. Dallen looked down at the face of the young man he was cradling in spurious intimacy, saw the mute loathing in his eyes, and felt the bleak uncompromising side of his own nature respond in kind. He renewed his smile for the benefit of the watching people.

"Sick?" he said. "We should all afford to be so sick — young Joe here has just swallowed about a hundred monits' worth of happydust. He's got a habit of overdoing it."

The woman's powdery face registered concern mingled with distaste. "Will he be all right?"

"Right as rain, lady — it'll all come back up again any time now." Dallen eyed the couple ingenuously. "Can you lend me something to clean him up with? A handkerchief or a tissue or something." The sounds from the bomber's throat intensified, and Dallen patted his cheek with mock affection. "Sorry… we're late… our friends are…" The man took his wife's arm and walked her back out to the sidewalk where they promptly moved out of sight.

Relieved to find that the incident had attracted no other spectators, Dallen transferred the cylindrical bomb to the safety of his own pocket, then manhandled the inert figure of his captive to the store's inner door. It swung open as soon as he pressed his badge to the lock. He quickly dragged his burden inside, handling the large man with an ease which came from regular strength training. The interior of the store, apart from the window display area, was empty and mouldering, a long cavern hung with cobwebs. A dank toadstool-smell polluted the air. Heading for a doorway at the for end, Dallen used the special whisper which would be audible only at his headquarters.

"I’ve got him, Jim," he said. "We're in Cagle's television store in the one hundred block, and there was no fuss — so play everything quiet and cool. Send a car to the rear of the premises, but tell the crew to wait outside in the alley till I call for them."

Mellor spoke quickly. "What about the bomb?"

"It's going to be defused."

"Carry, you're not going to do something dumb, are you? There's no way to neutralise a TL37."

There's one way, Dallen thought. "Radio reception is pretty bad in here, Jim. Can you pick up my…?" He made the lateral movement of his jaw which switched off the implanted transceiver, and — gouging irregular channels in the silted dust of the floor — dragged his captive into what had once been a square office. There was a flurry of movement in one corner as a grey shape disappeared into a hole in the skirting. Dallen swung the young man into a sitting position against a watt, pulled a billfold from the pocket of the green shin and scanned its contents.

"Derek H. Beaumont," he announced. "You should have stayed at home in Cordele, young Derek."

"You… should…" Beaumont's mouth contorted with the effort of speaking. "You should… go and…"

"Don't say it," Dallen cut in. "That sort of talk is very uninspired — certainly not worth losing your front teeth over." He took his first considered look at his prisoner and was relieved to find himself reacting with an instinctive dislike which was going to make his task easier. Some of the raiders he had come up against in the past had been personable youngsters, physical models he could have chosen for his own son, but the impression he got from the man before him now was one of arrogance and stupidity. Dilute grey eyes regarded him from a pale oval face which lost rather man gained individuality from a down-curving moustache. The standard-issue Zapata moustache^ Dallen thought. Or maybe they've only got one, and they pass it around.