Life on other planets -- Fiction; Revolutionaries -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction
Across the street Comstock saw a curtain being pulled slightly to
one side. Then a frightened eye stared out. The Grandfather or his
representatives would have to answer Grundy's challenge, he realized
with a little thrill of pride.
The powers-that-be dared not allow the people to see a man defy The
Grandfather.
It was, Comstock thought, rather a wonderful thing to be a rebel.
But the feeling passed quickly when, with a speed that defied his
understanding, a kind of vehicle he had never before seen appeared
roaring out of the distance. It had four wheels, and a carriage-like
body, but no team of astrobats drew it. Instead it seemed to be
propelled by magic. It was rather a noisy magic for a series of
explosions seemed to come from the front of it constantly.
Above the low roar of the carriage's explosions rose the voice of The
Grandfather. "I have dispatched a chariot for you. Beware my wrath and
come quietly."
Helen looked jubilant. She said, "We're forcing their hand. This is the
first time in centuries they've found it necessary to use a car!"
"If we only had more strength," Grundy said, "I'd almost be optimistic.
We sure have them worried."
Then the object Helen had called a "car" drew up in front of them and a
door opened. Four of the leanest, hardest R.A.'s that Comstock had ever
seen pointed stun-guns at the three of them. The man who sat behind a
wheel said, "Get 'em in quick. No sense in having too many of these
slobs see this car."
Comstock flashed a look of inquiry at Grundy.
"Sure let's join them. It's easier to be driven there, than to have to
walk as I'd figured!"
The vehicle was obviously not designed to hold seven people and since
the four R.A.'s drew away from Helen with the same kind of sick
disquietude that Comstock had felt, the small remaining space left for
Grundy, the girl and Comstock made them all wedge in rather tightly.
Helen's flesh was soft and warm, Comstock realized with a shock, and
the clean, sweet smell of her in his flaring nostrils was a warning
that Bowdler and Grundy might well be right. There was something about
young women ... something unlike the emotion he had felt on his monthly
visits to his elderly lady friends in the b.....l.
The "car" raced through the deserted streets with a speed that would
have scared Comstock out of a year's growth if he had not had so many
other larger worries tearing at him.
* * * * *
Most baffling to him was the fact that despite the fact that they were
going before a tribunal which would sentence them to death, Grundy was
able to lean closer to Helen and whisper to her a poem that Comstock
had never heard before and the words of which failed to make any sense.
He was saying, "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?"
And then he k....d her.
In the Grandfather's "car" with four R.A.'s right there, Grundy was
k.....g Helen!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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