Kenneth Bulmer by The Million Year Hunt

Author:The Million Year Hunt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-08-27T12:55:28+00:00

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JUST WHO the man was, his name, his occupation, if he had a wife, children, his state of health—all these things became dramatically unimportant the moment he snatched a woman's handbag at the spaceport and started to run.

The woman screamed as her auto alarm pricked her arm. Loungers and waiting passengers stared after the running man, a dark figure of purpose among the brilliant idlers. Under Shyrane's hot sunshine and in the perfumed decadent air of the pleasure planet this incident whetted jaded appetites.

What happened then surprised the most blase of pleasure seekers.

The running snatch-purse's body glowed. His arms and legs—skinny like twigs from undernourishment—twitched. Spreadeagled, he jerked and convulsed, held like a fly in amber in the merciless stasis beam. This stasis beam was a cruel one, a searcher out of tender nerves, a flayer of souls, a torturing imprisonment, a rough and ungentle gaoler.

In seconds a solid wall of bodies formed around the transfixed, shivering thief. The yellow and gray of the Shyrane Security police and the magnificent scarlet of the Galactic Guard swamped him in color.

"The police are really on the jump today." A paunchy man wearing too many jewels spoke with avid interest to Arthur Ross Carson. Carson stood just inside the three-storyhigh entrance doors flanked in steel and glass. He took in the scene at a glance.

"It's their job," he said with studied casualness, trying to ape the bored hedonist. "We have to be protected against the lower classes."

"You're so right." The fat man, breathing heavily, did not tear his eyes away from that pitiful scene. The thief lay on the floor now, and two colonels bent over him.

The picture did not have to be colored in, the story did not have to be spelled out for Carson. The snatch-thief had been unlucky. The poor devil was a thin bag of bones, and a vicious feeling of hatred for the fat rich blood-suckers of Shyrane—like this wheezing toad next to him now—almost, almost but not quite, engulfed Carson. The picture waited for him to walk in and complete the whole; the parts waited for him, waited with guns and flashers and stasis beams.

Sandoz said: "We musthurry, Carson. Her signals are faint, faint and thin. The ship is being space-sealed now . .

Carson heard the little alien's voice in his mind and fought to re-orient himself to this fresh problem. He spoke angrily: "Ican hurry, Sandoz, old friend. 1 canrush across there, buy a ticket, head for the ramp; but. .."

The little alien in his brain sighed that small, soft, self-deprecatory sigh. "Theword has been passed, Carson. I see. Anyone acting suspiciously will be stopped and questioned. That thief ran for it and was mercilessly hunted down. But, Carson—1 mustget aboard that ship! If she spaces out taking Lys—a thousand years, Carson, I might have to wait a thousand years!"

"That'sthe first time you've told me her name. Lys. I like U. Remindsme of a flower."

As he spoke to Sandoz, Carson had been walking slowly among the gaudy crowds, his head turned like all the rest to watch as the S.

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