Astounding British Edition, Vol. 6, No. 8 — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

, THE GREAT AIR MONOPOLY The shot was too close for Tolliver’s nerves. He leaped away from it, he stumbled and fell into a vat. He screamed and quickly tried to grab the edge and come out. Ole Doc stopped, put down the bomb and dropped a stirring stick to the man’s rescue. Tolliver grabbed it and came out dripping, clothes with green scum running off them, hanging ridiculously upon him. The man was trying to speak and then could not, He clawed at his eyes, he tried to yell. But with each breath he sucked in quantities of poison and his tortured skin began to flame red under the scum. Ole Doc threw the bomb at his feet where it burst in bright green rays. He ex- pected Tolliver to breathe then, wreathed in the climbing smoke. But Tolliver didn’t. He fell down, inarticulate with agony and lack of breath and within the minute, be- fore Ole Doc could find means of tearing the clothes from him and administering aid now that the “A.L.” air bomb had not worked at all, Big Lem Tolliver was dead. In the elevator Tinoi still lay, struggling now to come up from his nightmare. When he saw Ole Doc standing over him, Tinoi’s own gun in hand, the lieutenant of the late Air, Limited, could not be convinced that any time had passed. But he was not trucu- lent, not when he saw Tolliver’s body. He could not understand, never. would under- stand the sequence of these rapid events. But Tolliver was dead and that broke Tinoi. : “What do you want wif me?” he sniveled. “I want you to set this place to rights eventually. Meantime, shut off that con- founded machine and come with me.” Tinoi shut it off and the ripples in the vats grew still. Ole Doc hiked down the steps behind the cringing Tinoi and so into the main offices on the ground floor. The clerks stared at the cringing Tinoi. “You there,” said Ole Doc. “In the name of the Universal Medical Society, all opera- tions of Air, Limited, are ordered to cease. And find me this instant the whereabouts of Bestin Karjoy, extraracial being.” The clerks stared harder. One of them fell down in a faint. : “The Univ ... The Universal Medical Society . . .” gaped another. “The real one I told him I thought he was a Soldier,” whimpered the clerk who had first an- nounced it. “When I read that article— Now I'll never get my weekly check—” — Ole Doc wasn’t listening. He had Tino! and another clerk by the collars and they were going down the steps, over the dead Connoly, through the moaning slaves and up the avenue at a rate which had Tinoi’s feet half off the ground most of the way. At ten thousand miles an hour, even freighted with her passengers and the thousand kilos of Bestin and his antennae- 47 waving father, the gig did not take long to reached the injured Morgue. Bestin’s father was making heavy weather of trying to unload the bundles he had brought when the gig landed and Ole Doc hurriedly helped him. The old extraracial being hobbled on ahead into the operating room of the Morgue and then, when Ole Doc would have come up he found him- self heavily barred outside by eight hands. The door clanged shut, didn’t quite meet at the bottom, bent and was shut anyway. Ole Doc stood outside in the trampled grass and stared at the Morgue. The girl on her siretcher was forgotten. Tinoi and the clerk might as well have been grass blades. Tinoi grumbled. He knew that he could run away, but where could he run to escape the long arm of a Soldier of Light? “Why didn’t you tell me?” he growled at the clerk. “You punks are supposed to know everything—” “Be quiet,” said the clerk. There was a sound inside as of plumber’s tools being dropped. And then the clatter of pipes. A long time passed and the sun sank . lower. Ole Doc came out of his trance and remembered the girl. She- was moaning faintly from the pain of her burns. Ole Doc timidly knocked on the door of his operating room. “Please. Could I have the red case of ointments on the starboard wall?” 3 He had to ask three times before Bestin’s two right arms shot impatiently out with the red case. Ole Doc took it and the door clanged shut again. The girl shuddered at the first touch and then a hypo pellet quieted her. Ole Doc ‘worked quickly but absently, one eye on the ship. Tinoi gaped at what Ole Doc was doing and the clerk was ill. The girl did not move, so strong was the pellet, even when half the skin was off her face and arm. Tinoi had to turn away, rough character though he called himself, but when the click and scrape of instru- ments didn’t sound again, he faced back. Ole Doc was just giving the girl another shot. She was beginning to stir and turned over so that Tinoi could see her face. He gaped. There wasn’t a trace of a scar, not even a red place where the sear had been And the girl was very, very beautiful. “Feel better?” asked Ole Doc. She looked around and saw the clearing. She recalled nothing of the in-between. She did not know she had been to Minga and back and thoughf she was that minute finished dragging Doc from the burning ship. She sat up and stared around her. It took a little soothing talk to convince her of what had happened. She saw Ole Doc’s mind was not on Gomicbooks (E©) > im 5 oe