The Hunted Heroes Read online

my stomach-muscles tighten, mythroat constrict painfully.

  Then anger ripped through me, washing away the terror. "What's goingon?" I demanded, staring at the half of a man who confronted us from thewheelchair. "Who are you?"

  "You'll find out soon enough," he said. "Suppose now you come with me."He reached for the tanglegun, flipped the little switch on its side toMELT, and shot a stream of watery fluid over our legs, keeping theblaster trained on us all the while. Our legs were free.

  "You may get up now," he said. "Slowly, without trying to make trouble."Val and I helped each other to our feet as best we could, consideringour arms were still tightly bound against the sides of our oxysuits.

  "Walk," the stranger said, waving the tanglegun to indicate thedirection. "I'll be right behind you." He holstered the tanglegun.

  I glimpsed the bulk of an outboard atomic rigging behind him, strappedto the back of the wheelchair. He fingered a knob on the arm of thechair and the two exhaust ducts behind the wheel-housings flamed for amoment, and the chair began to roll.

  Obediently, we started walking. You don't argue with a blaster, even ifthe man pointing it is in a wheelchair.

  * * * * *

  "What's going on, Ron?" Val asked in a low voice as we walked. Behind usthe wheelchair hissed steadily.

  "I don't quite know, Val. I've never seen this guy before, and I thoughtI knew everyone at the Dome."

  "Quiet up there!" our captor called, and we stopped talking. We trudgedalong together, with him following behind; I could hear the_crunch-crunch_ of the wheelchair as its wheels chewed into the sand. Iwondered where we were going, and why. I wondered why we had ever leftEarth.

  The answer to that came to me quick enough: we had to. Earth neededradioactives, and the only way to get them was to get out and look. Thegreat atomic wars of the late 20th Century had used up much of thesupply, but the amount used to blow up half the great cities of theworld hardly compared with the amount we needed to put them backtogether again.

  In three centuries the shattered world had been completely rebuilt. Thewreckage of New York and Shanghai and London and all the other ruinedcities had been hidden by a shining new world of gleaming towers andflying roadways. We had profited by our grandparents' mistakes. They hadused their atomics to make bombs. We used ours for fuel.

  It was an atomic world. Everything: power drills, printing presses,typewriters, can openers, ocean liners, powered by the inexhaustibleenergy of the dividing atom.

  But though the energy is inexhaustible, the supply of nuclei isn't.After three centuries of heavy consumption, the supply failed. Themighty machine that was Earth's industry had started to slow down.

  And that started the chain of events that led Val and me to end up as amadman's prisoners, on Mars. With every source of uranium mined dry onEarth, we had tried other possibilities. All sorts of schemes cameforth. Project Sea-Dredge was trying to get uranium from the oceans. Inforty or fifty years, they'd get some results, we hoped. But therewasn't forty or fifty years' worth of raw stuff to tide us over untilthen. In a decade or so, our power would be just about gone. I couldpicture the sort of dog-eat-dog world we'd revert back to. Millions ofstarving, freezing humans tooth-and-clawing in it in the useless shellof a great atomic civilization.

  So, Mars. There's not much uranium on Mars, and it's not easy to find orany cinch to mine. But what little is there, helps. It's a stopgapeffort, just to keep things moving until Project Sea-Dredge startsfunctioning.

  Enter the Geig Corps: volunteers out on the face of Mars, combing forits uranium deposits.

  And here we are, I thought.

  * * * * *

  After we walked on a while, a Dome became visible up ahead. It slid upover the crest of a hill, set back between two hummocks on the desert.Just out of the way enough to escape observation.

  For a puzzled moment I thought it was our Dome, the settlement whereall of UranCo's Geig Corps were located, but another look told me thatthis was actually quite near us and fairly small. A one-man Dome, of allthings!

  "Welcome to my home," he said. "The name is Gregory Ledman." He herdedus off to one side of the airlock, uttered a few words keyed to hisvoice, and motioned us inside when the door slid up. When we were insidehe reached up, clumsily holding the blaster, and unscrewed the ancientspacesuit fishbowl.

  His face was a bitter, dried-up mask. He was a man who hated.

  The place was spartanly furnished. No chairs, no tape-player, nodecoration of any sort. Hard bulkhead walls, rivet-studded, glared backat us. He had an automatic chef, a bed, and a writing-desk, and no otherfurniture.

  Suddenly he drew the tanglegun and sprayed our legs again. We toppledheavily to the floor. I looked up angrily.

  * * * * *

  "I imagine you want to know the whole story," he said. "The others did,too."

  Valerie looked at me anxiously. Her pretty face was a dead white behindher oxymask. "What others?"

  "I never bothered to find out their names," Ledman said casually. "Theywere other Geigs I caught unawares, like you, out on the desert. That'sthe only sport I have left--Geig-hunting. Look out there."

  He gestured through the translucent skin of the Dome, and I felt sick.There was a little heap of bones lying there, looking oddly brightagainst the redness of the sands. They were the dried, parched skeletonsof Earthmen. Bits of cloth and plastic, once oxymasks and suits, stillclung to them.

  Suddenly I remembered. There had been a pattern there all the time. Wedidn't much talk about it; we chalked it off as occupational hazards.There had been a pattern of disappearances on the desert. I could thinkof six, eight names now. None of them had been particularly closefriends. You don't get time to make close friends out here. But we'dvowed it wouldn't happen to us.

  It had.

  "You've been hunting Geigs?" I asked. "_Why?_ What've they ever done toyou?"

  He smiled, as calmly as if I'd just praised his house-keeping. "BecauseI hate you," he said blandly. "I intend to wipe every last one of youout, one by one."

  I stared at him. I'd never seen a man like this before; I thought allhis kind had died at the time of the atomic wars.

  I heard Val sob, "He's a madman!"

  "No," Ledman said evenly. "I'm quite sane, believe me. But I'mdetermined to drive the Geigs--and UranCo--off Mars. Eventually I'llscare you all away."

  "Just pick us off in the desert?"

  "Exactly," replied Ledman. "And I have no fears of an armed attack. Thisplace is well fortified. I've devoted years to building it. And I'm backagainst those hills. They couldn't pry me out." He let his pale hand runup into his gnarled hair. "I've devoted years to this. Ever since--eversince I landed here on Mars."

  * * * * *

  "What are you going to do with us?" Val finally asked, after a longsilence.

  He didn't smile this time. "Kill you," he told her. "Not your husband. Iwant him as an envoy, to go back and tell the others to clear off." Herocked back and forth in his wheelchair, toying with the gleaming,deadly blaster in his hand.

  We stared in horror. It was a nightmare--sitting there, placidly rockingback and forth, a nightmare.

  I found myself fervently wishing I was back out there on the infinitelysafer desert.

  "Do I shock you?" he asked. "I shouldn't--not when you see my motives."

  "We don't see them," I snapped.

  "Well, let me show you. You're on Mars hunting uranium, right? To mineand ship the radioactives back to Earth to keep the atomic enginesgoing. Right?"

  I nodded over at our geiger counters.

  "We volunteered to come to Mars," Val said irrelevantly.

  "Ah--two young heroes," Ledman said acidly. "How sad. I could almostfeel sorry for you. Almost."

  "Just what is it you're after?" I said, stalling, stalling.

  "Atomics cost me my legs," he said. "You remember the SadlervilleBlast?" he asked.

/>   "Of course." And I did, too. I'd never forget it. No one would. Howcould I forget that great accident--killing hundreds, injuring thousandsmore, sterilizing forty miles of Mississippi land--when the Sadlervillepile went up?

  "I was there on business at the time," Ledman said. "I representedLedman Atomics. I was there to sign a new contract for my company. Youknow who I am, now?"

  I nodded.

  "I was fairly well shielded when it happened. I never got the contract,but I got a good dose of radiation instead. Not enough to kill me," hesaid. "Just enough to necessitate the removal of--" he