Terro-Human Future History (Complete SF Omnibus). H. Beam Piper

sounded like a pretty expensive sort of smudge, but seeing how much wax Ravick had burned uptown, it was only fair to let him in on some of the smoke. I mentioned that if we got into the building and up to Main City Level, we'd need some way of signaling to avoid being shot by our own gang, and got the wave-length combination of the Pequod scout boat, which Joe and Oscar were using for a command car. Oscar picked ten or twelve men, and they got into a lorry and went uptown and down a vehicle shaft to Second Level. I followed in my jeep, even after Oscar and his crowd let down and got out, and hovered behind them as they advanced on foot to Hunters' Hall.

      The Second Level Down was the vehicle storage, where the derricks and other equipment had been kept. It was empty now except for a workbench, a hand forge and some other things like that, a few drums of lubricant, and several piles of sheet metal. Oscar and his men got inside and I followed, going up to the ceiling. I was the one who saw the man lying back of a pile of sheet metal, and called their attention.

      He wore boat-clothes and had black whiskers, and he had a knife and a pistol on his belt. At first I thought he was dead. A couple of Oscar's followers, dragging him out, said:

      "He's been sleep-gassed."

      Somebody else recognized him. He was the lone man who had been on guard in the jeep. The jeep was nowhere in sight.

      I began to be really worried. My lighter gadget could have been what had gassed him. It probably was; there weren't many sleep-gas weapons on Fenris. I had to get fills made up specially for mine. So it looked to me as though somebody had gotten mine off Bish, and then used it to knock out our guard. Taken it off his body I guessed. That crowd wasn't any more interested in taking prisoners alive than we were.

      We laid the man on a workbench and put a rolled-up sack under his head for a pillow. Then we started up the enclosed stairway. I didn't think we were going to run into any trouble, though I kept my hand close to my gun. If they'd knocked out the guard, they had a way out, and none of them wanted to stay in that building any longer than they had to.

      The First Level Down was mostly storerooms, with nobody in any of them. As we went up the stairway to the Main City Level, we could hear firing outside. Nobody inside was shooting back. I unhooked my handphone.

      "We're in," I said when Joe Kivelson answered. "Stop the shooting; we're coming up to the vehicle port."

      "Might as well. Nobody's paying any attention to it," he said.

      The firing slacked off as the word was passed around the perimeter, and finally it stopped entirely. We went up into the open arched vehicle port. It was barricaded all around, and there were half a dozen machine guns set up, but not a living thing.

      "We're going up," I said. "They've all lammed out. The place is empty."

      "You don't know that," Oscar chided. "It might be bulging with Ravick's thugs, waiting for us to come walking up and be mowed down."

      Possible. Highly improbable, though, I thought. The escalators weren't running, and we weren't going to alert any hypothetical ambush by starting them. We tiptoed up, and I even drew my pistol to show that I wasn't being foolhardy. The big social room was empty. A couple of us went over and looked behind the bar, which was the only hiding place in it. Then we went back to the rear and tiptoed to the third floor.

      The meeting room was empty. So were the offices behind it. I looked in all of them, expecting to find Bish Ware's body. Maybe a couple of other bodies, too. I'd seen him shoot the tread-snail, and I didn't think he'd die unpaid for. In Steve Ravick's office, the safe was open and a lot of papers had been thrown out. I pointed that out to Oscar, and he nodded. After seeing that, he seemed to relax, as though he wasn't expecting to find anybody any more. We went to the third floor. Ravick's living quarters were there, and they were magnificently luxurious. The hunters, whose money had paid for all that magnificence and luxury, cursed.

      There were no bodies there, either, or on the landing stage above. I unhooked the radio again.

      "You can come in, now," I said. "The place is empty. Nobody here but us Vigilantes."

      "Huh?" Joe couldn't believe that. "How'd they get out?"

      "They got out on the Second Level Down." I told him about the sleep-gassed guard.

      "Did you bring him to? What did he say?"

      "Nothing; we didn't. We can't. You get sleep-gassed, you sleep till you wake up. That ought to be two to four hours for this fellow."

      "Well, hold everything; we're coming in."

      We were all in the social room; a couple of the men had poured drinks or drawn themselves beers at the bar and rung up no sale on the cash register. Somebody else had a box of cigars he'd picked up in Ravick's quarters on the fourth floor and was passing them around. Joe and about two or three hundred other hunters came crowding up the escalator, which they had turned on below.

      "You didn't find Bish Ware, either, I'll bet," Joe was saying.

      "I'm afraid they took him along for a hostage," Oscar said. "The guard was knocked out with Walt's gas gadget, that Bish was carrying."

      "Ha!" Joe cried. "Bet you it was the other way round; Bish took them out."

      That started an argument. While it was going on, I went to the communication screen and got the Times, and told Dad what had happened.

      "Yes," he said. "That was what I was afraid you'd find. Glenn Murell called in from the spaceport a few minutes ago. He says Mort Hallstock came in with his car, and he heard from some of the workmen that Bish Ware, Steve Ravick and Leo Belsher came in on the Main City Level in a jeep. They claimed protection from a mob, and Captain Courtland's police are protecting them."