d'Alembert 05 Appointment at Bloodstar by E.E. "Doc" Smith

Author:E.E. "Doc" Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780425058213
Publisher: New York : Berkley Publishing Corp., 1983, 1978.
Published: 1983-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Trapped

The morning after the fight in the hotel room, Jules reported to the address he’d been given by Howard. The building turned out to be a gymnasium in a less respectable part of the city. Its fake bricks were weathered, its facade grimy, the lettering on its sign barely readable. It was a hangout for punks on their way up,, athletes on their way down, and a good many nonentities who were going nowhere at all and were in no rush to get there.

As Jules walked in, the smell of stale sweat filled his nostrils. There were the repeated thumping sounds of fists hitting punching bags and the moans of men in less than perfect condition overtaxing their muscles in an effort to look in shape. Jules thought briefly on how little change there had actually been in gymnasia since the days of the ancient Greeks. The equipment the men used for their training grew ever more sophis-

ticated with the passing years, but the basic activities remained the same, because the human body remained the same.

Jules looked the place over quickly, then walked over to the man at the equipment window. “A man named Howard told me to report here this morning,” he said, showing the card he’d been given.

The equipment manager took the card and stared at it as though it were something entirely new in his life. Jules could see his lips move as he read it, could almost see the thought processes seeping slowly through the man’s dim brain. “Yeah,” the fellow said at last. “Meeting’s upstairs, room D-5.” He handed the card back to Jules.

Jules found the stairs and went up to the indicated room. Inside he found about a dozen other men seated in chairs that were arranged in rows, classroom style. There was no sign of Howard, so Jules took a seat to wait. None of the other men paid him much attention after their initial once-over.

More men arrived and took their seats, until the room was filled. Five minutes later, Abel Howard entered. He was dressed casually, but there was a tough look about his face that told Jules this man was anything but casual.

“Let’s get one thing straight first off,” Howard began. “If any of you think working for me is going to be easy, you can leave now. You’re all here because the people I had before are dead. There’s a chance you’ll end up that way yourself. If that scares you, you don’t belong here.”

No one made a move toward the door, but a few did shift around nervously in their seats. “What the hell,” one man at the back commented. “We’re all going to die sometime, right? Why not get paid for it?”

His joke drew a nervous laugh from the other men. Howard waited for the laughter to subside, then continued. “The second thing I want to get across here is that I’m the boss. You’re getting paid to do what I tell you-not to think, not to ask the guy next to you what he thinks, but to do what I say.

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