People Minus X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

Ed was drifting now, alone and high, as his wife and uncle must be, too. Well, they'd meant this to happen soon anyway. So there was no real difference, was there? Get down to work quickly, down to the surface, where the high clouds seemed to lie flat on the gray Atlantic and on the nearby greenery of the continent. Ed's cylinder flamed, forcing him lower toward the City. His first chosen task was to find Carter Loman, a key enemy. Prell's objective was Tom Granger; then he would try to contact the androids, perhaps through Abel Freeman. And Barbara was to try to spike the trigger of violence by whatever means she could. That, in fact, was the greatest purpose of them all.

Downdrafts aided Ed's descent, while he listened to his quartz-chip radio. Was one who figured as prominently as Loman in the strained news of the day ever difficult to find? Ed did not anticipate too much trouble in locating him. Many people would know where Loman was and mention of the place would be frequent. Crowds would follow him everywhere.

As Ed watched a wolfish patrol of armed spacecraft, flying low on their atmospheric foils, the information came easily enough: "... Carter Loman's quarters at the Three Worlds Hotel are constantly under guard."

Ed was far more proficient now in getting around swiftly in the region of smallness. Erratically but effectively, using currents of air and the thrust of his Midas Touch blast, he descended toward a sky-piercing tower. He drifted into the doorway of the hotel's sumptuous lobby, marred now by the grim additions of radiation shields. For a few minutes Ed perched on the reception desk; he was less noticeable there than a fleck of cigarette ash.

There were constant inquiries for Loman, by telephone and in person, made mostly by newscast men. The clerks fended them off briskly. But soon there came whispered thunder, so low that it was almost audible to Ed as sound and not merely sensible as a heavy vibration: "More mail for Mr. Loman...."

The spark of Ed's propelling cylinder was almost too small to see as he jetted to the heavy bundle of letters and rode up with the attendant, past the guards, and slid with a skittering envelope through a mail slot, and into Carter Loman's presence.

He was sprawled on a bed and was clad in full vacuum armor of a type heavier than would have been necessary even on a dead world. It was pronged with special details as well: filaments, like parts of the insides of a Midas Touch weapon. Hovering over the vast shape, Ed felt the hard, stinging punch of a few scattered neutrons hitting his body before he ventured too close. Even though his own life was subatomic in principle, enough of those infinitesimal pellets could kill him. Loman had evidently grown wary and nervous, guessing with shrewd imagination what dangers he might now face. In addition to his massive costume, this android who hated his kind was wearing an aura of low-speed neutrons, constantly being projected from the filaments on his armor. Just then, the savagery inside Ed felt its bitter frustration. Loman even mistrusted the ban on space travel.

The enormous face beneath him, framed beyond the glaze of a helmet window, did not look at ease. Loman was muttering. He must have been at it, off and on, for a long time: "I wouldn't be surprised if you were around, Prell. Or even you, Dukas. I was right! I know all about your little self, Prell. It was all in your dead brain. You think you'll play a reverse David against Goliath, eh? If blasting out your lab didn't kill you...."

No, Ed Dukas was not so easily defeated. The aura of neutrons thrown out only by scattered filaments was probably not of continuous intensity. At certain points there might well be chinks in it, at which time he could slip to close quarters without having his own nuclear metabolism speeded up to the point of his destruction. But before he did anything final, he had to find out where Prell's stolen equipment was.

Ed felt the whir of the air-filtering apparatus in the room and smiled. And there was a television globe nearby. Ed could have found ways, now, to make his own tiny voice audible to his enemy and to challenge him. But Ed decided against this for the present. He mustn't waste precious time, yet he suspected that he could depend on the restlessness of a nervous foe not to wait here quietly very long.