Cities in Flight

Chris was anything but a trained in-fighter, but he had instincts of his own. The man with Kelly’s teeth in him was obviously busy enough. Chris lobbed a knob-kerrie fist at the man next to him. When the target looked stunned but failed to fall, Chris threw the other fist. It didn’t land where Chris had meant it to land, exactly, but the man staggered away anyhow, which was good enough. Then Chris was in the middle of the melee and no longer had any chance even to try to call his shots.

After a while, he was on the broken granite of the old roadbed, and no longer cared about Scranton, Kelly or even himself. His head was ringing. Over him, considerable swearing was going on.

“—more trouble than he’s worth. Give him a shoe in the head and let’s get back!”

“No. No killing. We can impress ’em, but we can’t bump ’em off. One of you guys see if you can slap Huggins awake.”

“What are you—chicken all of a sudden?”

The press-gang leader was breathing hard, and as Chris’s sight cleared, he saw that the big man was sitting on the ground wrapping a bloody leg in a length of torn shirt. Nevertheless he said evenly: “You want to kill a kid because he gave you a fight? That’s the lousiest excuse for killing a man I ever heard, let alone a kid. You give me any more of that, I’ll take a poke at you myself.”

“Ah, shaddup, will you?” the other voice said surlily. “Anyhow we got the dog—”

“You loud-mouthed— look out!”

Two men grabbed Chris, one from each side, as he surged to his feet. He struggled fiercely, but all the fight left in him was in his soul, not any in his muscles.

“What a bunch of flap-jaws. No wonder you can’t hold your own with a kid. Huggins, put your hat on. Red, don’t you listen to that slob, he’s been all mouth all his life. Your dog ran away, that’s all.”

The lie was kindly meant, no matter how clumsy it was, but it was useless. Chris could see Kelly, not far away. Kelly had done the best he could; he would never have another chance.

The youngster the press-gang dragged stumbling toward Scranton had a heart made of stone.

CHAPTER TWO: A Line of Boiling Dust

THE CITY inside the perimeter of raw earth was wavery and unreal. It did not hum any more, but it gave a puzzling impression of being slightly in shadow, though the July sun was still blazing over it. Even in his grief and anger, Chris was curious enough to wonder at the effect, and finally he thought he saw what caused it: The heat waves climbing the air around the town seemed to be detouring it, as though the city itself were inside a dome. No, not a dome, but a bubble, only a part of which was underground; it met the earth precisely at the cleared perimeter.

The spindizzy field was up. It was invisible in itself, but it was no longer admitting the air of the Earth.

Scranton was ready.

Thanks to the scrapping, the patrol was far behind schedule; the leader drove them all through the scabrous, deserted suburbs without any mercy for his own torn leg. Chris grimly enjoyed watching him wince at every other step, but the man did not allow the wound to hold him up, nor did he let any of the lesser bruises and black eyes in the party serve as excuses for foot dragging.

There was no way to tell, by the normal human senses, when the party passed through the spindizzy screen. Midway across the perimeter, which was a good five hundred feet wide, the leader unshipped from his belt a device about as big as an avocado, turned it in his hands until it whined urgently, and then directed the group on ahead of him in single file, along a line which he traced in the dry red ground with the toe of his boot.

As his two guards left his side, Chris crouched instinctively. He was not afraid of them, and the leader apparently was going to stay behind. But the big man saw the slight motion.

“Red, I wouldn’t if I were you,” he said quietly. “If you try to run back this way after I turn off this gadget—or if you try to go around me—you’ll go straight up in the air. Look back and see the dust rising. You’re a lot heavier than a dust speck, and you’ll go up a lot farther. Better relax. Take it from me.”

Chris looked again at the dubious boundary line he had just crossed. Sure enough, there was a hair-thin ruling there, curving away to both sides as far as he could see, where the inert friable earth seemed to be turning over restlessly. It was as though he were standing inside a huge circle of boiling dust.

“That’s right, that’s what I meant. Now look here.” The press-gang leader bent and picked up a stone just about as big as his fist—which was extraordinarily big—and shied it back the way they had come. As the rock started to cross the line above the seething dust, it leaped skyward with an audible screech, like a bullet ricocheting. In less than a second, Chris had lost sight of it.