Desert of Death's Domain Read online

  The sick man turned his head slightly in Ron's direction. "Help me...?" he gasped.

  "Yes, help you," confirmed Ron. "Can you walk or shall we carry you?"

  In answer to Ron's question the man let go of the table's edge and took a step forward. Although he leaned heavily on Ron's arm for support, he managed to remain on his feet. The people around them fell back as the sick man began to shuffle unsteadily, half carried, half pushed by Ron.

  With a quick glance Ron made sure Gerard was still by his side. He uttered a silent prayer that Gerard would not do anything foolish now.

  But everything seemed to go fine. Slowly but surely the three of them approached the restaurant's exit, while the crowd of curious onlookers gradually returned to their tables to finish their meal.

  Finally they were standing on the sidewalk. Ron looked for a taxi but there was none in sight. This surprised him. He became aware of the total absence of any pedestrians on this side of the street.

  At this instant Gerard gave out a halfway stilled shout of alarm. Ron intuitively felt, though he could not actually see anything, that Gerard was about to take to his heels. He quickly seized Gerard by his sleeve. "You stay here with me!" he snarled.

  He had hardly finished when a harsh voice behind him ordered: "Hand this man over to me!"

  Ron spun around. Behind him a man in uniform had emerged from a dimly-lit place near the entrance. Ron recognized the uniform of the Lepso' police force.

  "Why?" Ron objected. "This man is sick. He needs a doctor and not a policeman."

  The man in uniform grinned sarcastically. "Are you a physician?" he asked in English with a terrible accent.

  Ron thought it best not to repeat his lie. "No," he admitted. "But I want to take him to one."

  "We are far better equipped to do that," asserted the man in uniform. "Just look here!" He pointed with his finger up into the air.

  Ron didn't bother to look up; he could hear what was coming. A heavy gyrocar descended from the air and landed on the road, which had been cleared of all traffic. Several other policemen had suddenly joined the first one and they formed a circle around Ron and his two companions.

  They've closed off the street, he thought. Five more policemen jumped out of the gyrocar. Ron knew then the odds were against him. This infuriated him and, worse still, he had to hide his feelings.

  "You're right," he replied to the first policeman. "You're better equipped for that. Take him to get medical help!"

  The policeman took the sick man by the arm and led him to the gyrocar. Ron stood and watched until the doors had closed behind them. Quickly the flood of cars again filled the part of the street that had been cordoned off. The gyrocar leapt into the evening sky, past the many bright neon signs, and disappeared beyond the colorful ocean of brightness.

  Ron realized that he was still holding tightly onto Gerard's jacket sleeve. With his free arm he hailed a taxi, which came slowly rolling along the side of the street. The car stopped and the door to the passenger compartment opened. Ron pushed Gerard inside and quickly followed into the dark interior of the cab. The door closed automatically behind him.

  The driver sat motionless behind the steering wheel, a dark silhouette, hardly recognizable in the very faint light. "Did you notice the police gyro that took off just now from the road here?" Ron asked. The driver silently nodded his head.

  "Follow it, you won't regret it; I'll pay you well." The dark head turned around and leaned toward the back of the car. "Anything for you, Mr. Earthman," said the driver.

  For a fraction of a second the man's face was illuminated by the light of a neon sign nearby. It was the face of the man from Goszul's planet, the same chauffeur who had driven Ron Landry from the spaceport into town.

  5/ ROOM OF IRREALITY

  Ron tried to hide his surprise. "You are everywhere, aren't you?" he asked sarcastically.

  The driver had started his taxiplane and lifted off into the air. "Wherever I'm needed," he admitted in a modest tone. "At least most of the time."

  They stopped their conversation. The chauffeur was busily concentrating on lifting his cab above the flow of traffic flying in the air lane over the road. The traffic was very heavy up to a height of 10 meters. Higher there was no more congestion, since one needed a special license from the Lepso police to go up that far—and the Lepso police department was not keen on giving out such permits.

  Now the vehicle rose swiftly, passed through a gap between the office high rises, then turned into a northwesterly direction.

  "Do you know which way the police gyro was flying?" asked Ron. "Sure I do," answered the driver. "It's not the first time I've seen incidents like you just saw. The police always fly in the same direction."

  Ron looked through the window. It was dark up here. The glowing haze of the big city lay like a half-dome over the countryside. He could make out a few stars—but not a trace of the police gyro.

  "How do you manage to see that gyro? Are you following it by sight?" Ron inquired. The chauffeur gave a chuckle of amusement, "By the sylvan gods of my forefathers: no! Out here you can't see your hand in front of your eyes." He leaned forward and tapped his finger on an instrument at the dashboard. "I have a license for altitude flying so I have to have a radar in my car."

  Ron bent forward and saw the radar screen with a confusion of yellow, light-green and turquoise-colored dots.

  "If you'd put me on the spot to tell you which of all those dots could be the police car, you'd get a big, fat zero for an answer," Ron admitted.

  "Never mind," laughed the driver. "After all, I'm the one who has to find the right way."

  Ron sank back into the seat. That gyro driver puzzled him. He had come at exactly the right moment when Ron needed a taxi... he was willing to pursue a police aircar... hardly any other cabbie would have agreed to do that... incidentally, he had a license for altitude flying which was indispensable for this undertaking... on top of that he had of course the instruments for radar flight... the only way to track down a vehicle among thousands of others and pursue it...

  Ron could not help thinking these were too many coincidences at one time. His suspicions about the aerial taxi driver were suddenly aroused. Yet he could not convince himself that the friendly man from Goszul was seriously plotting against him.

  He looked over in Gerard's direction. He was reclining in his seat with eyes closed, his mouth gaping. He was drunk alright.

  Once more Ron directed his attention to the front of the vehicle. He saw that the swarm of dots on the radar screen had thinned out considerably. No more than a hundred of them were left and they grew less and less by the second. The flight path the police car had taken was obviously not heavily traveled.

  All of a sudden he wished he had his old pal and co-worker Larry Randall by his side. Left to his own resources he felt inadequate to deal alone with the problems he was facing on Lepso. He wondered what mission Nike Quinto might have had in mind for Larry. There was no chance back on Terra to ask this question. Whenever Nike Quinto sent you out on a mission it would be done helter-skelter and not until the agents were some thousands of light-years from Earth would they become aware that they had forgotten to ask something or take something along.

  Where in the universe might Larry be right now?

  "What's the fellow with you back there doing?" the driver inquired of Ron at this moment.

  "He's asleep," answered Ron. "Sound asleep."

  "That'll do him a lot of good. He didn't look too enterprising when he got into the car awhile back."

  "That's true; he had too much to drink, I think."

  The number of blips on the radar screen kept decreasing until only two were left. There was one near the middle of the screen while the other kept moving toward its edge and would totally disappear from the screen in a few seconds.

  "Forgive me the question but since we have had the opportunity to get to know each other a bit better by now," the man from Goszul started up the conversation aga
in, "why do you want to pursue that police car?"

  Ron was not at a loss what to say. "I want to make sure they really bring that sick man to a doctor."

  "To a doctor?"

  "Yes. Back in the restaurant he was suddenly seized by an acute attack of weakness. He could hardly stand up and his head looked like a dead man's skull."

  The man from Goszul mumbled first something incomprehensible. Then he reported. "I've seen such cases quite often. Somebody was walking on the street looking hale and hearty one second and the next he would suddenly begin to turn into a living ghost, with sunken, hollow cheeks, dried-out skin, a yellow-brownish complexion, full of deep wrinkles..."

  "Yes, that's it," Ron confirmed eagerly.

  "... and a little while later the police would turn up, load the poor guy on their gyrocar and take him away. I've often asked myself if there really is a doctor back in the Sukkussum Desert."

  "Where did you say?"

  "In the Sukkussum Desert. That's where we're heading now and that's where the police vehicles always take the sick people they've picked up. This desert is known by lots of different names; every race living here on Lepso calls it by their own special name. But I like Sukkussum best."

  Ron pondered over the new bit of information he had just learned. Why would the sick people be taken to the desert? And Zuglert, could he be found there too?

  "Tell me, what's your name?" Ron asked the cabbie.

  "Rall," came the answer. "I've been living here on Lepso for the past 5½ years, am properly registered and licensed as a taxi chauffeur and I also have a high altitude traffic license and..."

  "That will do, that's enough," interrupted Ron. "I didn't mean to give you the third degree. Tell me, how

  big is this desert?"

  "About 1800 kilometers to the northwest till the Seymour Ocean. Some 300 kilometers to both northeast and southwest from here. Our line of flight is right down the middle. Quite a chunk of land, isn't it?"

  Ron nodded in reply. He hoped the police car's destination wouldn't be at the opposite end of the

  desert. He was doubtful Rall's taxi-gyro could carry sufficient fuel for such an extended trip and back again to Zanithon. He expressed his doubts to Rall.

  "Oh, don't worry about that" the Goszul man reassured him. "We've already flown halfway across."

  "Across what?" Ron was puzzled.

  "Over the desert. We've flown more than 1000 kilometers across it."

  Ron calculated quickly. They had lifted off Five Oceans Boulevard barely half an hour ago.

  "How fast are we flying?" he wanted to know.

  "Speed about 25 kilometers per hour," Rall stated in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "Altitude roughly 15 kilometers."

  These, thought Ron, were rather unusual flight data for an ordinary taxi.

  • • •

  Now he was convinced there was some mystery surrounding this taxi driver. Nothing that would endanger him, on the contrary, something that might turn out to be to his benefit. Therefore he did not probe any further but left it up to Rall to choose the time when he would reveal his secret.

  Several minutes after Ron had learned of the amazing performance potential of his taxi-gyro, he noticed that the blip of the police vehicle began to wander away from the center of the radar screen.

  "They're landing," announced Rall calmly.

  "Are you familiar with the terrain around here?" asked Ron.

  "No. Nobody knows it. This is terra incognito, as far as we are concerned. No one has ever penetrated any deeper than 20 kilometers from the desert's edge and the airline companies avoid flying directly over it. They prefer to make a wide detour around it."

  Ron realized he had to come to a decision what to do next. He tried to estimate at what distance from the spot where the police gyro had landed he would obtain the most favorable combination of indicated caution and effective radius of action. He requested Rall to descend to a height of approximately 50 meters and then to continue flying a bit farther in a northwesterly direction.

  Rall acted according to Ron's instructions. While he was bringing down the gyro to a lower altitude he spotted the place where the police vehicle had in the meantime touched ground. He marked the position on an empty card, placed the card in the flight recorder. After it had determined the taxi's position relative to that of the police gyro, it recorded the taxi's course on the same card.

  A few minutes later the gyro landed in the desert sand. Outside the windows of the taxi, Ron could make out row upon row of yellow dunes faintly visible by the dim light from the stars in the sky. He saw the veils of sand dust playing about the crests of the dunes and when he alighted from the taxi he heard the clinking and tinkling of the tiny grains of sand in the steadily-blowing desert wind.

  Meanwhile Rall had switched on the parking light and he handed Ron the card from the flight recorder. On it he could see that the police vehicle was lying straight to the north from them and not more than 1½ kilometers away.

  Ron decided to act immediately. He asked Rall to watch the still-steeping Gerard but Rall refused to stay with the dark-haired fellow.

  "You know, I've been with you ever since the beginning of this adventure; I'd like to continue with you to the very end. Why don't we simply lock him inside the taxi and let him sober up in there?"

  "Do you know what you are suggesting, my man? The police may not like it at all that I‹ ‹m spying on them. There might be shooting, real danger and..."

  "Oh, I don't mind," Rall spoke up; "I'd find that most interesting."

  Ron was actually rather pleased that he would have a companion on his mission. He inquired: "Can you turn off the engine so that Gerard can't mess with it when he comes to?"

  Rall laughed. "Of course! I've thought of that. But we don't need to lock him inside. He'd be the biggest fool if he'd want to run away from here. There's nothing but desert all around."

  Ron suggested considering that Gerard had no idea where they had landed and that this was the middle of the Sukkussum Desert. Finally they agreed on leaving the taxi unlocked and leaving a short note for Gerard.

  After Rall had safely locked the engine and pulled out the code-key, the two men started out. They marched north in a valley between two dune hills. The air was cool. The sand had long since radiated oft the heat of the previous day. They walked at a fast clip to keep warm. Most of the time Rall stayed a few steps ahead of Ron, as if he knew the way. Only his silhouette was visible in the uncertain glimmer of the stars. It reminded him so much of Larry. A sense of security overcame Ron at this sight.

  Then, however, he told himself not to let himself be lulled into such a feeling. Rall was hiding some secret and Ron might be quite mistaken to assume it was something pleasant or to Ron's own advantage.

  Why, for instance, would he have offered so quickly to take part in such a dangerous undertaking as to creep up on the police vehicle?

  • • •

  They had advanced nearly one kilometer when they heard the dull roar of a fusion engine to their left ahead of them.

  Ron ran as fast as possible up the slight incline of the next dune. Sometimes he sank up to his knees in the sand. But he arrived in time to see something dark, not too far away from him, rise up from a depression between two dunes and climb up into the sky.

  The police vehicles had lifted off the ground. There was no way for Ron to determine its course. Ignoring all rules and regulations, the policemen failed to display any aerial directional lights. The humming of the motors grew quickly fainter and finally disappeared altogether.

  Ron returned to the waiting Rall.

  "They've flown away, haven't they?" asked Rall.

  "Yes, and I wonder what it means."

  Rall scratched his head. It was a typically Terran gesture. For a moment Ron considered this.

  "It can only mean that they deposited the sick man somewhere around here," stated Rall with certainty.

  "No, that's not the only explanation," countere
d Ron. "It may also mean that they were forced to descend because of some engine failure, repaired the damage and now are taking off again to fly to their original destination."

  Rall gazed at him. Then he declared with a firm voice, "No, it can't mean that."

  Ron was perplexed. "How can you be so sure of that?" Rall snarled and waved his hand impatiently: "To hell with that masquerade!"

  Ron was dumbfounded to see Rall stick his fingers inside his mouth, pull out something from it and throw it away. Then Rall raised his head and when he began to speak again his voice sounded totally different. "I simply know it for a fact, Ron," he declared. "There are some buildings over there. I've seen it once from a great altitude but..."

  Ron recoiled one step, taken by surprise and pleasure as he recognized the voice. The same voice he had hoped all the time to be able to hear next to him.

  Nike Quinto, he realized now, had played a prank on him. He had not sent him, after all, alone to Lepso. "Larry, you old scoundrel!" he exclaimed with happy excitement.

  • • •

  "Just wait," Larry snarled angrily, "till I get rid of all that stuff they've plastered on my face. Just a minute and I'll look my own self again, Capt. Larry Randall".

  There were all kinds of questions burning on Ron's tongue: how did you get here, why did you assume the role of a taxi driver, with what mission did Nike Quinto entrust you, why did you disguise your face?

  But Ron realized all these questions would have to wait. First things first, he decided. "What about these building?" he inquired instead.

  "Our Fleet provided me with some aerial reconnaissance pictures," Larry explained. "There are some buildings nearby. Nobody in Zanithon has any idea what they are all about, if they are inhabited, who built them. Actually, much worse, nobody in Zanithon seems to have any idea these buildings exist here."

  Ron nodded his head and grinned. "Yes, I recall my taxi flier told me this desert is unexplored territory; he called it the Sukkussum Desert."