Slan

Beneath Jommy Cross' swift fingers, the car leaped forward. He caught Kathleen's reply, cool and unhurried:

"So you've found me, Mr. Petty." Mockingly. "Am I, then, to beseech your mercy?"

The icy answer streamed through her mind to Jommy Cross. "Mercy is not my strong point. Nor do I delay when a long-awaited opportunity offers."

"Jommy, quick!"

The shot echoed from her mind to his. For a terrible moment of intolerable strain, her mind held off the death that the crashing bullet in her brain had brought. "Oh, Jommy, and we could have been so happy. Goodby, my dearest – "

In a desperate dismay, he followed the life force as it faded in a flash from her mind. The black-out wall of death suddenly barred his mind from that which had been Kathleen's.

Chapter Fifteen

There was no thought in Jommy Cross, no haste, no grief, no hope – only his mind receiving impressions and his superlatively responsive body reacting like the perfect physical machine it was. His car braked to a stop; he saw the figure of John Petty standing just beyond Kathleen's crumpled body.

"By heaven!" snapped from the surface of the man's mind, "another of them!"

His gun flashed against the impregnable armor of the car. Startled by his failure, the chief of secret police drew back. His lips parted in a cry of rage. For a moment, the dark hatred of man for the encroaching slan enemy seemed personified in his grim countenance, and in the tenseness with which his body seemed to await inevitable death.

One touch of one button, and he would have been blasted into nothingness. But Jommy Cross made no move, spoke no word. Colder, harder grew his mind as he sat there. His bleak gaze stared impersonally at the man, then at the dead body of Kathleen. And finally the measured thought came that as the sole possessor of the secret of atomic energy he could permit himself no love, no normal life. In all that world of men and slans who hated so savagely, there was for him only the relentless urgency of his high destiny.

Other men began pouring from the secret entrance, men with machine guns that chattered futilely at his car. And among them he was abruptly aware of the shields that indicated the presence of two tendrilless slans. His searching eyes spotted one of them after a moment, as the man drew into a corner, and whispered a swift message into a wrist radio. The words ran plainly along the surface of his mind:

" – a 7500 model, 200-inch base... general physique type 7, head 4, chin 4, mouth 3, eyes brown, type 13, eyebrows 13, nose 1, cheeks 6... cut!"

He could have smashed them all, the whole venal, ghoulish crew. But no thought of vengeance could penetrate the chilled, transcendental region that was his brain. In this mad universe, there was only the safety of his weapon and the certainties that went with it.

His car backed, and raced off with a speed their legs could not match. Ahead was the tu

Finally, he leveled off, and plunged on through the darkness of the underground. He couldn't head for the surface yet because the tendrilless slans would have their cruisers waiting to meet just such a possibility.

Black clouds hid a night world when at last Jommy Cross emerged from the side of a hill. He paused and, with meticulous care, undercut his tu

" – Kier Gray has now arrived and taken possession of the body. It appears that once again the snake organization has allowed one of its own kind to be destroyed without a move to save her, without even the sign of a move. It is time that we drew the proper conclusions from their failures, and ceased to regard any opposition they might offer to our plans as an important factor. However, there is still the incalculable danger presented by the existence of this man Cross. It must be made clear at once that our military operations against Earth will have to be suspended until he is destroyed.

"His unexpected appearance on the scene today was, therefore, one great advantage we gained from the affair. We have a description of his car and an expert's description of his physique. No matter how he disguises himself he ca

"Joa

"There is no way the snakes can contact him, for we control every avenue of communication. And from this day onward, our watchers will stop every person with his facial physique for examination.

"That will keep him off the road. That will prevent chance discovery of the snakes, and give us the time we need for our search. However long it may take, we must trace this dangerous slan to where he lives. We ca

The rushing air whined and whistled against the hurtling car there beneath the swarming black clouds. So the war against the human world was now bound up with his own fate, an indefinite reprieve for both. They would find him, of course, these thoroughgoing slans. They had failed once before because of an unknown factor – his weapon – but that was known now; and besides, it was not a factor that would influence their remorseless search. For several minutes, he contemplated the prospective invasion of his valley, and finally emerged with one fact that remained in his favor, one question. Yes, they would find him, but how long would it take?

Chapter Sixteen

It took four years; and Jommy Cross had been twenty-three for two months on the day when the tendrilless slan organization struck with unexpected, unimaginable violence. He came slowly down the veranda steps on that sultry, oppressively hot day, and paused on the pathway that divided the garden. He was thinking with a quiet, gentle thought of Kathleen, and of his long-dead mother and father. It was not grief or even sadness that swayed him, but a deep, philosophical sense of the profound tragedy of life.

But no introspection could dull his senses. With abnormal, unhuman clarity he was aware of his surroundings. Of all the developments in himself during those four years, it was this perception of anything that marked his growth toward maturity. Nothing escaped him. Heat waves danced against the lower reaches of the mountain twenty miles away, where his spaceship was hidden. But no heat mist could bar a vision that saw so many more pictures per split second than the human eye could see. Details penetrated, a hard bright pattern formed where a few years before there would have been, even for himself, a blur.

A squadron of midges swarmed past Gra