Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net FAITHFULLY YOURS BY LOU TABAKOW Illustrated by Emsh +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note | | | | This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction | | December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any | | evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was | | renewed. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ _If it's too impossibly difficult to track down and recapture an escaped criminal ... there's a worse thing one might do...._ [Illustration] JULY 18, 1949 A.D. _The fugitive lay face down in the fetid undergrowth, drawing in spasmodic lungfuls of air through cracked and swollen lips. Long before, his blue workshirt had been ripped to ribbons and his exposed chest showed a spiderwork of scratches, where branches and brambles had sought to restrain him in his frenzied flight. Across his back from shoulder to shoulder ran a deeper cut around which the caked blood attested to the needle-sharp viciousness of a thorn bush a mile to the north. With each tortured breath he winced, as drops of sweat ran down, following the spiderwork network and burning like acid. Incessantly he rubbed his bruised torso with mud-caked palms to dislodge the gnats and mosquitoes that clung to him, gorging shamelessly._ _To the east he could see the lights of Fort Mudge where the railroad cut through on its way to Jacksonville. He had planned to ride the freight into Jacksonville but by now they were stopping every train and searching along every foot of the railroad right of way. In the distance he heard the eerie keen of a train whistle, and visualized the scene as it was flagged down and searched from engine to caboose._ _Directly before him loomed the forbidding northern boundary of the Okefenokee Swamp. Unconsciously he strained his ears, then shuddered at the night noises that issued from the noisome wilderness. A frenzied threshing, then a splash, then ... silence. What drama of life and death was being played out in that strange other-world of perpetual shadows?_