THE FUGITIVES

Jeff Engel studied the feverish crowd hurrying through the subway turnstiles. As he checked each passing face against a card-index mind, he smiled to himself. Even when off duty, the habit persisted. There was always the chance he'd spot a face that would fit, one that would close another active file in Missing Persons Bureau.

A mousey little guy slipped through a turnstile and bumped into a fat woman shopper. Engel glanced at the thin apologetic face and then at a briefcase bearing the faded initials, "C. G." As a train rumbled in and the noise of the commuters rose, something glinted at Engel's feet. He bent down, curious.

It was a cheap fountain pen inscribed with the same initials. He caught a glimpse of the stranger on the crowded subway stairs.

"Wait a minute, mister!" he yelled.

When C. G. didn't turn, Engel hesitated, then pounded up the stairs into dazzling sunlight. He squinted around at people and then over low bushes into the city park where he saw the little fellow walking briskly. Annoyed, Engel trotted down a shady walk, then down a quiet lane and finally reached out to tap his shoulder.

C. G. vanished in thin air.

Engel slid to a halt and rubbed his eyes. Fearfully he explored this queer illusion, his hands pawing nothingness. There was a roar like a thousand subway trains, and something invisible and powerful hurled him sprawling. He lay stunned as the noise died away and then sat up to nurse a bruised head.

Someone grabbed his arms, jerked him rudely to his feet, and spun him around. A tall gangling cop glared down at him.

"You been drinking?"

"W-what?" Engel stammered. Confused, he looked more closely at this man who wore a gray metallic uniform, a glittering badge, and an oddly shaped holster. "I wasn't drinking. Something pushed me."

The cop smirked as he picked up the fountain pen and dusted it off with his gloves. "This yours?" he asked.

"Yes—uh, why, no," Engel sputtered. "It belongs to a guy I was chasing."

The cop's thick eyebrows lifted.

"He lost it, and I was trying to return it," Engel explained. "But he disappeared right in front of me!"

"Well, that's a new one," the cop said with a cynical smile. He seized Engel's arm and dragged him down the walk. "I'm running you in as a drunk and robbery suspect, bud."

"But I didn't do anything!" protested Engel.

The cop scowled. "We'll see. If you're innocent, you'll get out of C. D. in a few minutes."

"C. D.?" Engel echoed. C. D.? C. G.? C. D.? The initials hopped wildly about in his mind. At a soft whistling sound he glanced up above a high hedge and his eyes widened. Gleaming white towers rose up to fade into misty blue, and around them silently darted silvery bubbles. Faintly traced with jointed, concentric lines, the sky seemed to curve over him like a lofty and enormous spider web.

As he was pulled across a wide street, tall, hollow-cheeked people stopped to stare at him, and he stared back in wonder.

"Who are they?" Engel faltered.

The cop said nothing and led him through the low entrance of a tower. As they went down a glowing hall, Engel touched the back of his still aching head. Was his fall in the park causing these hallucinations? Possibly. But before the fall, hadn't some mysterious, unseen force thrown him into this crazy world? Then he had to find it again and somehow escape back to reality!

They entered a large room where lines of gaunt, solemn people stood gravely before grill windows. The Enemy is Listening! a sign on a wall warned him as a loudspeaker blared out a garbled message. The cop shoved him into a line. Finally the man ahead of them fidgeted up to an ugly, hatchet-faced woman who frowned impatiently.

"Yes?" she snapped.

"My wife deserted me," the scarecrow of a man complained. "I want to—"

"Fill out this form, drop it in slot 9," she rapped out. "Next?"

"A drunk and robbery suspect," the cop said. "Here's the evidence."

Brightening, Hatchet-Face snatched up the fountain pen and whisked out a blue card. "Misdemeanor and felony," she breathed sharply. "I'll take the details."

Engel clung to the edge of the window counter as the interrogation began.

Yes, he told them, he actually believed something invisible had knocked him down after swallowing up the stranger. No, he hadn't robbed the stranger, he wasn't confessing anything. Yes, he was an honest citizen with no previous criminal offenses. After more probing questions and vicious jabs at the form, she handed it to the cop who dropped it in a nearby wall slot. They waited for a verdict.

In a moment the cop turned to Hatchet-Face who whispered with him excitedly. Flushed and triumphant, he steered Engel out into the hall. "Alien Detection wants you," he growled with uneasy respect.

They got into an elevator and shot swiftly upward. As they stepped into a lavish reception room filled with sickeningly sweet perfume, a scrawny, over-rouged girl shut a magazine and jumped to a switchboard. Then a door opened, and a short, puffy man with cold fish-eyes bounced up to them. Waving the cop away, he gripped Engel's hand.

"Ah, Mr. Engel!" he said smiling. "I'm Commissioner Marston. Sorry about the mix-up, but we didn't realize you were after C. G. Come in, please."

Bewildered, Engel followed him into an office and looked through spacious windows down at the spires of a city he had never known. Beside a desk sat a wizened old man whose yellowed skin drawn taut over his broad skull gave him a shriveled, cadaverous aspect. He tapped a blue card on a thumbnail as his luminous eyes followed Engel suspiciously.

"Doctor Weeve, my chief alienologist," Marston said. "Sit down, Engel."

Engel grasped the arms of his chair as Dr. Weeve scrutinized the card in silence.

"Jeffrey Engel," he read aloud in a high petulant voice. "Missing Persons Bureau, eh? Hmm, reminiscent of the twentieth century. Is that what you call your detective agency?"

Reminiscent of.... Engel pressed shaky fingers to his throbbing head. If he told them he was from out of the past, how would they react? "Yes," he lied, "I found a fountain pen—"

"You lone wolves have extraordinary hunches to compensate for a lack of police techniques," Dr. Weeve said with a dry chuckle. "But one needs protection when tracking aliens."

"Tracking aliens?" Engel said, mystified.

Marston laughed, leaned over his desk, and twirled a fountain pen in pudgy fingers. "Take it easy, you're not suspect in this case. But the report says you found this pen and in attempting to return it to its owner, you were struck by some invisible force." Marston glanced at Dr. Weeve who nodded, then his voice grew hard. "Did this C. G. aim anything at you before you were hit?"

"No, he didn't," Engel said and touched his head nervously.

"Headache?" Dr. Weeve asked.

"No, it's nothing," Engel countered. "When I got up, the man was gone."

"You mean the alien was gone," Dr. Weeve contradicted him.

Engel's throat went dry and he stared at them.

"An alien!" shouted Marston. "Don't you understand?"

Dr. Weeve smiled thinly. "Mr. Engel's curious to learn the latest about them and would draw us out in this childish way. I assure you we despise them far more than millions who only read about them in their daily telescripts. Since the flying saucer crash in '68, we've been very much aware of their close surveillance of this world."

The doctor's face clouded as he gazed at the city. "The filthy blue spawn of Centauri send us exceedingly clever spies. Before invading our cities, they must seek out our military installations and plant explosives at key points. Their assassins must be ready to strike...."

Dr. Weeve gently wrung bony hands, and Marston leaned forward, his pale jowls quivering angrily. "To safeguard public welfare, this city branch of Alien Detection must find and exterminate aliens. So far we can boast of a perfect record, thanks to the new detection screen."

Aliens? Engel winced, recalling the mournful little stranger. "I can't believe that he—"

"That he's a humanoid?" Marston spat out the word as if it were a lump of vileness in his throat. "C. G.'s a sneaking saboteur who conceals his ugly blue hide under a layer of false skin! But he's been detected."

"He's detected?" Engel gasped.

Dr. Weeve inclined his vulture-like head quizzically. "For an intelligent man, Mr. Engel, you seem rather poorly informed." He reached to a cabinet, and across a cathode ray screen trembled a narrow ribbon of light.

"As you know," he said, "every act of an organism is preceded by an attitude, and that attitude takes the form of electromagnetic brain waves. The detection screen is quite simple. Sensitive electronic devices under the city dome pick up, amplify, and transmit brain waves to the central control here. Deviations from the social norm-wave are promptly investigated."

He ran a gnarled finger along the ribbon of light. "Note the low, rhythmic pulsations of the norm-wave—a happy citizen at a social task somewhere in the city." He adjusted a dial, and on the screen flashed a spasmodically twitching band. "A variation of anti-social type three—a citizen planning murder. Criminal Detection has a police detail observing him, and before he can strike, they'll take him in custody. Now C. G., the pseudo-man we're having shadowed."

A jagged white band leaped in a wild dance.

"Even cerebral abnormalities don't register this violently," the doctor said. "The electrical impulses of his artificial brain are powerful. The detectors easily penetrate his feeble brain shield. He thinks he moves unnoticed on his evil mission—but look at his tremendous pent-up hatred and fear!"

Engel stiffened, his palms moist with sweat. C. G. was somewhere in this city of the future. Of course he was feeling terrified—but these witch-hunters were mistaking that terror for something else! He choked at a sudden thought. Why hadn't they discovered his own fear yet? Was his head injury somehow protecting him from their sensitive machines?

Dr. Weeve was regarding him stonily.

"Ingenious!" Engel blurted out.

Marston placed an automatic on his desk and beside it a box of shells. "Yes, ingenious," he said, grinning, "but luckily for me these gadgets can't do everything. Trapping the alien is next, and that's my department. Show him the Tracer Room, doctor."

Nervously trailing Dr. Weeve, Engel went to a steel door and peered through a window. For a moment it seemed as if he were high above the twinkling lights of a city at night until he made out a dark, sunken room and skeletal figures with earphones clamped to their long heads. They bent over a flat surface illuminated with bright grid lines and sprinkled over with a myriad glowing dots. Gaunt shadowy faces were fixed on a pip of light.

"They place him on the east side of Baxter Avenue between 43rd and 44th streets," Dr. Weeve explained. He rubbed a lean jaw, frowning. "But how the detectors failed to pick up his presence before he reached the civic center baffles us. Seems as if he just popped up there."

"I'm ready for the kill, gentlemen!" crowed Marston, slapping the holster strapped to his side. "You look pretty impressed, Engel."

"Yes, yes, I am," Engel managed to say.

With the doctor close behind, he followed Marston apprehensively down a corridor to a thick convex window. Marston slid it back and stepped into what resembled a bowl-shaped cockpit, a confusing maze of dials and instruments under a hemisphere of glass. Motioning Engel to a seat, he turned to the dashboard, and the same spot of light which Engel had seen in the Tracer Room flashed on a screen. He jabbed a button twice and picked up a microphone.

"Marston to Captain Schaeffer. We're coming down."

"Yes, sir. The alien's turned back," a strained voice replied. "He's now walking south on Baxter. Might be on to us, he's acting jumpy."

"You sound jumpy yourself, Schaeffer," Marston snapped. "Tell your men to hold their fire this time! All right, I have him on optibeam."

Marston spun a wheel sharply, and they were falling. Engel braced himself as a white glistening tower swung away to their left, and the geometric depths of the city loomed up. He saw the doctor take a gun from a compartment, check it, and stand up wavering. His face was a mask of suppressed hate.

"We'll dispatch him quickly," he hissed.

Engel squirmed. To prevent a ruthless murder he'd have to not only outwit these men but countless police besides. What was worse, with his headache almost gone, his own uncontrollable waves of fear might expose him.

"He's running," Marston said with a nod at the screen. As the globe shot down past white towers, a spotlight on the glass roof flashed red, and a shrill siren stung Engel's ears. Ahead of them a big globe fled out of their way, its passengers looking back at them, frightened. Black dots on the street scurried to the towers.

"I see him!" Dr. Weeve screeched.

Below them a man was running past a gray wall of huddled people. He looked at them, dropped a briefcase, and sprinted into the deserted street. Marston chuckled into the mike. "We have him, Schaeffer. Not putting up much of a fight, is he?"

"No, sir."

Marston glided the globe a few yards above and slightly behind his quarry. As Engel stared down at the man's flapping coat and thin, blond hair, he clenched his fists. It was C. G. The siren moaned to a stop, and in the sudden silence that filled the globe he could hear weary footsteps and anguished breathing. Heavy-lidded eyes narrowed at Engel.

"Recognize him?"

Engel's mouth opened, and his throat tightened. He closed his eyes and nodded.

"Halt, alien!" Marston's voice boomed over a loudspeaker.

C. G. whirled, and they saw a soiled, rumpled suit and a trembling small face. A tear spilled down one cheek.

"W-who are you?" he cried out. "What do you want?"

Marston put the muzzle of his automatic through a gun port and fired. C. G. screamed and fell. Then in bright dusty sunlight he rolled on one side, groaning, and clutched his arm where a dark stain spread slowly down his sleeve.

"You disappoint us, alien," Marston rasped. "Where's your espionage training? Where's the cunning to test our wits?"

Soft, pitiful sobs answered Marston who barked, "Get up and run for your life!"

C. G. got up and limped away, and Dr. Weeve turned in surprise. "What are you waiting for? Why don't you finish him?"

Marston grinned. "He's headed for the park so I'll finish him there. I'd like some old style hunting."

"Are you taking leave of your senses?" exclaimed Dr. Weeve. "What about the weapon he used on Engel? Without this armorglass, you're risking your life!"

"If he has a weapon, why didn't he use it?" Marston fumed. "It's probably in that briefcase he dropped." He bellowed into the mike, "Clear the park!"

Numbly Engel watched C. G. stumble past police riflemen at the end of the street and crawl into dense shrubbery. The globe zoomed ahead, then poised motionless over treetops as Marston searched for his prey.

"Watch for him!" Marston whispered huskily.

But Engel watched the screen in horror. A telltale circle of light, its rim overlapping that of C. G.'s, burned steadily brighter. An alarm bell rang on the instrument panel. Dr. Weeve raised a claw-like hand to a switch, then eyed Engel queerly. "Something wrong?" he said. "Stomach queasy?"

His eyes fell on the screen. "Another alien!" he shrieked.

Dr. Weeve's thin lips parted and his fingers fumbled at the safety catch of his gun. Engel hurled him aside and grabbed at the wheel. The globe keeled crazily, the trees rushed up at them. With a dull crash the glass shattered, and struggling out of Marston's flabby arms, Engel kicked open the door and dropped to earth. He scrambled to his feet and crashed through high bushes, ducking as a lance of flame charred branches overhead.

"There's two of them!" Marston's choked voice thundered and reverberated against distant towers.

Engel paused in a dark glade to hear a police whistle shrill and a dry crackling grow louder behind him. Stealthily he crept toward sunlight. With a shock he saw C. G. sitting in the open, exposed and dejected, his head bowed in pain. Engel dashed over to him, hoisted him on his shoulders, and staggered over thick grass to a gravel walk. Then the ground beneath him quaked. The hoarse cries of the hunters faded.

Gently he lowered C. G. to a park bench, and an old man nodding in the warm sunshine raised bleary, astonished eyes. Engel turned to see a nurse pushing a baby carriage and the old, familiar skyline of the city smiling down on them. He shook with relief. Like an enraptured music lover he listened to the faint roar of traffic.

"Don't let them kill me!" C. G. cried.

"Winos with the d.t.s," the old man muttered and stomped off.

"They're gone—all gone!" Engel shouted.

The little fellow groaned, pressing his wound. "You helped me—your world need not fear us...."

Engel spoke to him comfortingly. "Hold on, buddy, I'll get a doctor." He pushed his way through a gathering crowd to a telephone booth. As he stepped inside, he saw C. G. limp quickly to the subway stairs. By the time he had hurried back, the little fellow was gone.

Puzzled, Engel reached for a hand railing to steady himself. He had lived a nightmare filled with obsessed men who dreaded blue-skinned aliens from a distant world! He touched something sticky and realized the bleeding C. G. must have clung to the railing as he descended. Then he suddenly hoped he was mistaken. The dark blotch on his fingers could be wet paint. It had to be.

It was blue....