Cities of Wonder by Damon Knight

Author:Damon Knight [Knight, Damon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MacFadden Books
Published: 1967-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

Someone was shaking him. He wanted very badly to awaken, but his sleep was as deep as death, and it seemed that no possible struggle could bring him to the rim of the pit. Shapes and faces whirled about him, and in the blackness he felt the approach of great steel teeth.

“Amalfi! Wake up, man! Amalfi, it’s Mark—wake up—”

The steel jaws came together with a terrible snapping report and the wheeling faces vanished. Bluish light spilled into his eyes.

“Who? What is it?”

“It’s me,” Hazleton said. Amalfi blinked up at him uncomprehendingly. “Quick, quick. There’s only a little time.”

Amalfi sat up slowly and looked at the city manager. He was too stunned to know whether he was pleased or not, and the oppression of his nightmare was still with him, a persistent emotion lingering after dreamed events he could no longer remember.

“I’m glad to see you,” he said. Oddly, the statement seemed untrue: he could only hope it would become true later. “How’d you get through the police cordon? I’d have said it couldn’t be clone.”

“By force and fraud, the old combination. I’ll explain later. But—”

“You nearly didn’t make it,” Amalfi said, feeling a sudden influx of energy. “Is it still night here? Yes. The big blowup isn’t due much before noon, otherwise I wouldn’t have been asleep. After that, you’d have found no city here.”

“Before noon? That isn’t according to the timetable. But that can wait. Get up, boss, there’s work waiting.”

The door to Amalfi’s rooms slid aside suddenly, and the Utopian girl stood at the sill, her face pinched with anxiety. Amalfi reached hastily for his jacket.

“Mark, we must hurry. Captain Savage says he won’t wait but fifteen minutes more. And he won’t—he hates you underneath, I can tell, he’d love to leave us here with the barbarians!”

“Right away, Dee.”

The girl disappeared. Amalfi stared at the prodigal city manager. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What’s all this, anyhow? Mark, you haven’t sold yourself on some idiotic personal rescue mission?”

“Personal? No.” Hazleton grinned. “We’re getting the whole city out of here. I wanted to get word to you that we were following through as planned, but the Utopians have no Diracs and I didn’t want to tip off the cops. Get dressed, that’s a good fellow, and I’ll explain as we go. These Hamiltonians have been working like demons, installing spindizzies in every available ship. They’d about decided to surrender to the cops—after all, they’ve more in common with Earth than with the Hruntans—but when I told them what we planned, and showed them how the spindizzy works, it was like giving them all new hearts.”

“They believed you as quickly as that?”

Hazleton shrugged. “No, of course not. To be on the safe side, they made up an escape fleet of twenty-five ships—reconverted light cruisers—and sent them out on this mission. They’re upstairs now.”

“Over the city?”

“Yes. I heard the hijacking of the city—I gather you had the radio on for the benefit of the cops, but it came through pretty clearly on Utopia, too.

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