Time and Again

XVII

A man was waiting in the clump of lilac bushes across the road and there was another one crouched in the shadow of the courtyard wall.

Sutton walked slowly forward, strolling, taking his time.

"Johnny," he said, soundlessly.

"Yes, Ash."

"That is all there are — just those two?"

"I think there is another one, but I can't place him. All of them are armed."

Sutton felt the stir of comfort in his brain, the sense of self-assurance, the sense of aid and comradeship.

"Keep me posted, Johnny."

He whistled a bar or two, from a tune that had been forgotten long ago but still was fresh in his mind from twenty years before.

The rent-a-car garage was two blocks up the road, the Orion Arms two blocks farther down. Between him and the Arms were two men, waiting with guns. Two and maybe more.

Between the garage and hotel was nothing…just the landscaped beauty that was a residential, administrative Earth. An Earth dedicated to beauty and to ruling…planted with a garden's care, every inch of it mapped out by landscape architects with clumps of shrubs and lanes of trees and carefully tended flower beds.

An ideal place, Sutton told himself, to execute an ambush.

Adams, he wondered. Although, it hardly could be Adams. He had something that Adams expected to find out and killing the man who holds information that you want, no matter how irate you may be at him, is downright infantile.

Or those others that Eva had told him of…the ones who had Benton conditioned and all set to kill him.

They tied in better than Adams did, for Adams wanted him to stay alive, and these others, whoever they might be, were quite content to kill him.

He dropped his hand in his coat pocket as if searching for a cigarette and his fingers touched the steel of the gun he had used on Benton. He let his fingers wrap around it and then pulled them away and took his hand out of the pocket and found the cigarettes in another pocket.

Not time yet, he told himself. Time later on to use the gun, if he had to use it, if he had a chance to use it.

He stopped to light the cigarette, dallying, taking his time, playing for time.

The gun would be a poor weapon, he knew, but better than none at all. In the dark, he probably couldn't hit the broad side of a house, but it would make a noise and the waiting men were not counting on noise. If they hadn't minded noise, they could have stepped out minutes ago and mowed him down.

"Ash," said Johnny, "there is another man. Just in that bush ahead. He expects to let you pass and then they'll have you three ways."

Sutton grunted. "Good, tell me exactly."

"The bush with the white flowers. He's on this edge of it. Quite close to the walk, so he can step around and be behind you the minute that you pass."

Sutton puffed on the cigarette, making it glow like a red eye in the dark.

"Shall we take him, Johnny?"

"Yes, we'd better take him."

Sutton resumed his stroll and now he saw the bush, four paces away, no more.

One step.

I wonder what it's all about.

Two steps.

Cut out your wondering. Act now and do your wondering later.

Three steps.

There he is. I see him.

Sutton was off the walk in a single stride. The gun whipped out of his pocket and at his second stride it talked, two quick, ugly words.

The man behind the bush bent forward on his knees, swayed there for a moment, then flattened on his face. His gun fell from his fingers, and in a single swoop Sutton scooped it up. It was, he saw, an electronic device, a vicious thing that could kill even with a near-miss, owing to the field of distortion that its beam set up. A gun like that had been new and secret twenty years ago, but now, apparently, anyone could get it.

Gun in hand, Sutton wheeled and ran, twisting through the shrubbery, ducking overhanging branches, plowing through a tulip bed. Out of the corner of one eye, he caught a twinkle…the twinkling breath of a silent flaming gun, and the dancing path of silver that it sliced into the night.

He plunged through a ripping, tearing hedge, waded a stream, found himself in a clump of evergreen and birch. He stopped to get back his breath, staring back over the way that he had come.

The countryside lay quiet and peaceful, a silvered picture painted by the moon. No one or nothing stirred. The gun long ago had ceased its flickering.

Johnny's warning came suddenly:

"Ash! Behind you. Friendly…"

Sutton wheeled, gun half lifted.

Herkimer was running in the moonlight, like a hound hunting for a trace.

Sutton stepped from the copse and called gently. Herkimer stopped his running, wheeled around, then loped toward him.

"Mr. Sutton, sir…"

"Yes, Herkimer."

"We've got to run for it."

"Yes," said Sutton, "I suppose we have. I walked into a trap. There were three of them laying for me."

"It's worse than that," said Herkimer. "It's not only the Revisionists and Morgan, but it's Adams, too."

"Adams?"

"Adams has given orders that you be killed on sight."

Sutton stiffened. "How do you know?" he snapped.

"The girl," said Herkimer. "Eva. The one you asked about. She told me."

Herkimer walked forward, stood face to face with Sutton.

"You have to trust me, sir. You said this morning I'd put the ringer on you, but I never would. I was with you from the very first."

"But the girl," said Sutton.

"Eva's with you, too, sir. We started out to find you as soon as we found out, but we were too late to catch you. Eva's waiting with the ship."

"A ship," said Sutton. "A ship and everything."

"It's your own ship, sir," said Herkimer. "The one you got from Benton. The ship that went along with me."

"And you want me to come with you and get into this ship and…"

"I'm sorry, sir," said Herkimer.

He moved so fast that Sutton couldn't do a thing.

He saw the fist coming and he tried to raise his gun. He felt the sudden fury grow cold within his brain and then there was a crushing impact and his head snapped back so that for a moment, before his eyelids closed, he saw the wheel of stars against a spinning sky.

He felt his knees buckling under him and his body falling.

But he was out, stone-cold, when his body hit the ground.