The Man Who Staked the Stars Read online

regulatedits own internal heat. Since the suit had been designed themanufacturer had begun to receive an increasing number of orders forduplicates, and was now being put into mass production. Probably inthese five minutes he had just made many more sales for themanufacturer.

  He was setting a style, he thought in pleased surprise, stepping outof the building. The salt wind hit him with a blast of cold, and theautomatic thermostatic wiring in the suit countered with a wave ofwarmth as he leaned into the wind and started to walk. The connectionbetween the Union Hotel and the building he had just left was anarched sidewalk that curved between them, five stories above the sandand surf.

  The hotel was an impressively towering building against the raggedsky, and as he walked a gleam broke through from the hidden sunset andspotlighted it and the low scudding clouds in a sudden glowing red. Hestopped and leaned against the balustrade to watch the red gleamsreflecting from the bay. Red and purple clouds fled by low overhead,their colors changing as they moved. This was something a man couldn'tsee in space or on the moon.

  But after a moment he couldn't fully enjoy it, because he was beingwatched. The feeling was disturbing.

  Damn rubbernecks, he thought, and turned irritably, half hoping thatat least it would be an acquaintance or some pretty girls.

  But there was no one watching him.

  A few pedestrians walked by hurriedly because it was growing dark andthe view that they had come to enjoy was fading. The wind wrappedtheir enveloping capes around them and made them all look abnormallytall and columnar.

  It was darker. The sidewalk lights abruptly flicked on in a flood ofamber light that thickened the twilight beyond their circle to anopaque purple curtain of darkness.

  He noticed a pedestrian walking slowly towards him from the directionhe had come. The figure approached more slowly than seemed natural,with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets as though lost inthought.

  * * * * *

  A trailer from the detective agency? It was too soon for that. If itwere arranged that every member of the Board be trailed, still itcould not have been arranged and begun so soon.

  Besides, there was something more deadly than that in the walkingman's indifference.

  A killer arranged by Beldman? It would be natural for Beldman or Stoutto take a chance and fight back the direct way. But there was noevidence. How could either of them have decided who to blame or who tofight?

  The few huge buildings that stood dark against the night sky werebeing brightened now by lights going on in hundreds of windows. Inlong slender spans between them stretched the aerial walks and thenecklaces of amber lights that outlined them. The wind blew colderacross the walks and the view of sea and sky that had been visiblefrom them now was blotted out by night. The walkers were going in.There was small chance of sheltering himself in a crowd, or even ofkeeping only one or two walkers between himself and the one whofollowed him.

  At the first sight of the approaching figure he had instinctivelyleaned back against the concrete railing and taken his gun from itspocket holster, holding it lightly in his gloved hand.

  An aged couple and a vigorous middle-aged woman hurrying in theopposite direction glanced at him without interest or alarm. His posewas not menacing, and anyway most men with money enough to travelcarried hand arms.

  This was an indirect effect of a Federated Nations ruling that onlyhand arms of a regulated deadliness be manufactured as the armamentof nations. The ruling had been carefully considered for othersecondary effects, for any nation growing over-centralized andmilitaristic was likely to arm its citizens universally for greatermilitary power by numbers, and then suffer the natural consequences ofhaving armed their public opinion.

  An armed man need not vote to be counted, and once having learned thatlesson, the feeling that an armed man carried his bill of rights inhis pocket made this the first clause of the written and unwrittenconstitutions of many suddenly democratic nations. "The right of theyoemanry to carry arms shall not be abridged." They kept their guns.

  And with weapons instantly available to hot tempers, dueling came backinto custom in most places.

  All this had little effect on the large calm manufacturing countrieswho had run the UN and now ran the FN, but it made easy their decisionthat since, in space, policing is almost impossible, the citizens whoventure there must be armed to protect themselves. Thus, in spite ofthe continued outcry of a minority of Christian moralists, a holsterpocket was now built into all space suits.

  Bryce had grown up in a famine country, an almost unpoliced area, andweapons had been as familiar to his hands as fingers since he hadpassed twelve. And when, as a steel-worker, he had been one of thefirst settlers in the foundry towns of the Asteroid Belt, he had foundlife no gentler there. But it was all right as far as he wasconcerned. He had heard of safer and duller ways to live but had neverwanted them. Life as a moonbased transport manager had been a shortinterval of nonviolence, five years of startling calm which he had notyet grown accustomed to.

  The gun fitted into his hand as comfortably as his thumb, or as thehandshake of an old and trusted friend, but it was useless here.Reluctantly he slipped it back into his pocket and began walkingagain. A director of UT couldn't shoot people on intuition.

  He had barely stopped for a count of ten, and there was still distancebetween them when he had turned, but the follower could be walkingfaster now, narrowing the distance between them.

  If he had waited and fired, an inspection of the man's pockets couldhave confirmed his judgment by the finding of an assassin's illegalneedle gun. That alone might be enough to satisfy the police if hewere still merely a spaceworker, but a Director of UT couldn't livethat casually. It would be difficult to explain his certainty to thepolice, and still more difficult to explain to the newspapers. Hecould not afford that sort of publicity.

  Bryce let out a soft curse and lengthened his stride.

  He had to wait for proof of the follower's intentions. And the onlyproof would be to be attacked, and the first proof of that, sinceneedle guns are soundless and inconspicuous, would probably be acurare-loaded needle in his back.

  After that the follower could inconspicuously drop his weapon over thebalustrade, its self-destroying mechanism set to melt it before itreached the sands far below.

  However since the follower certainly would not openly run after him,the most logical thing to do, Bryce decided, was to run to the hotelas if he were in a hurry. The idea irritated him.

  He walked on, slowing perversely. It was irrational to walk, and heknew it, but he walked, and the knowledge that it was irrationalirritated him further. The skin between his shoulder blades itchedmeditatively in its own imaginative anticipation of an enteringneedle. What good did it do him to be proud of his brains when he puthimself in a spot where he walked around like a target?

  He controlled a rising rage but he walked.

  The sky was totally dark now and there were only two or three couplesahead on the slender concrete span and one old couple he had justpassed, so that they were between himself and the follower. But thatwas no adequate screen.

  Far above soared the sky taxis. And now he wanted a taxi. He wasapproaching a place where there was a hack stand. Just ahead, at themidway point, where the upward curve of the sidewalk leveled off andbegan to curve down, a narrow catwalk jutted into space with a smalllanding platform at its end. "TAXI" a luminescent arrow glowed at himdirectingly as he came abreast of it.

  * * * * *

  He walked rapidly out along the railed catwalk, making a perfecttarget he knew, silhouetted against the glow. He cursed under hisbreath, reaching the end of it. Here he made an even more perfecttarget, with the single bright light that poured down brilliance onthe bench and landing platform spotlighting him against the darknessof the night. The bench was thin iron grillwork. It offered no cover.

  He needed cover. He considered the white concrete pillar of the lamp,put his hand on the railing a
nd jumped up to sit on the railingcasually, a one hundred fifty foot fall behind him and the width ofthe lamp post between him and the follower, who now was an unmovingfigure leaning against the railing of the sidewalk near where thecatwalk began.

  The sight of the insolently lounging figure did nothing to sooth hisirritation. This escape was not the way he wanted to deal with athreat. There was an oddity in the man's waiting. The range was poor,and he probably was not firing, although he would look as if he werenot in any case, but if he were not going to take this chance for hismurder attempt, why did he openly exhibit himself, arousing suspicionand cutting off future chances? An innocent stroller or even a meretrailer from the detective agency would have strolled on.

  Above came the nearing drone of a taxi which had spotted him in thebright pool of light at the hack stand.

  There was something in the careless confidence of the follower's openinterest in him that raised his neck hair as no direct threat couldhave, and filled the rumble of the night-hidden surf with