The police cruiser was moving slowly, almost sleepily, when it passed Tallon. There were two uniformed officers in front and two plainclothesmen in back. They were smoking cigarettes with a peaceful concentration, getting ready to go off duty, and Tallon could tell they were sorry they had seen him by the reluctant way in which the cruiser stopped. They even hesitated before they got out and began walking back to him — four small-town cops who could see their evening meals growing cold if this dusty stranger turned out to be the man they had been told to look for.
Tallon was sorry too. He looked down the long featureless road, then ducked his head and ran for the factory entrance. It was about twenty yards in front of him, so he had to run toward the police for a few seconds. They walked a little faster, glancing at each other, then gave startled shouts as Tallon cut through the entrance and loped across the tarmac apron leading to the nearest building. Hampered by the pack and the struggling dog, Tallon could only lumber along, and was surprised when he reached the lofty doors safely. Squeezing through the narrow opening, he looked back toward the gate and saw that the factory security men had belatedly come alert and were arguing with the police.
Inside the vast hangarlike room rows of storage racks held yellow plastic drums, hermetically sealed transit packages for electronic units. Tallon ran down an aisle, turned into one of the narrower transverse passages, and climbed into a rack, nestling down among the cylinders. As far as he could tell, there had been nobody in the room when he’d entered. He took out the automatic and cuddled the butt in his hand, suddenly conscious of how useless it was to a man with his particular handicap. It was doubtful if he would be able to persuade Seymour to look down the sights long enough to let him draw a decent bead on an elephant.
As the hammering in his heart eased off he reviewed his position. Nobody had come into the building yet, but that was probably because they were spreading out around it. The longer he waited, the less chance he’d have of getting out. Tallon dropped down from the rack and ran toward the end opposite to where he had come in. It was almost dark, but he could see that the walls of the building consisted of overlapping sliding-door systems throughout. Each of the huge doors had a standard-size door in it, which meant he could get out anywhere — provided he picked an exit that did not have someone waiting outside it.
Almost three-fourths of the way along the building he crossed to one of the small doors, hesitated a second, and slowly edged it open. There was a flat, vicious crack, and something hot plowed its way across his shoulders. Tallon leaped back from the door, which now had a circular, metal-tongued hole in it. Seymour was yelping loudly with fright and scrabbling at Tallon’s ribs while outside the raucous cries of startled seabirds drowned the gun’s echoes.
Wrong door, Tallon thought belatedly. He ran to the end of the building and grabbed a door handle, but did not pull it open. The unseen person who had fired at him would probably expect him to try again at the gable doors. He could now be waiting outside this very door. Tallon continued across the end of the building to another door, but he realized that his opponents would figure out that move as well. He could go back to the first door, but valuable seconds were racing by while he played guessing games; reinforcements were coming up, and everything was on their side. He couldn’t even see to shoot at them because he had to use the eyes of —
Of course!
Tallon’s fingers flickered over the eyeset’s selector studs. At the fifth attempt he was outside, flying in the darkling air, while down below him the dimly seen figures of two men moved along the many-doored gable. His spiraling flight took him higher … a glimpse along one side … more figures running … a dizzy, sweeping descent … another side of the same building … small trucks parked close to the wall, but no men in sight …
Tallon reselected Seymour’s eyes, oriented himself, and ran for the nearer wall. He burst out of a door, ran between two empty trucks, crossed a roadway, and went into a building like the one he had left. There were more lines of storage racks here, but this hangar was brightly lighted and stacker trucks were whining their way down several of the aisles. Tallon forced himself to walk slowly across the building. None of the truck drivers seemed to notice him, and he got to the other side and out into the cool evening air without any difficulty.
The next building was as deserted as the first. When he emerged from it Tallon judged that he was far enough from the center of activity to abandon cover. He went down the separating alley, moving away from the front boundary of the industrial complex. At the corner, the failing eyeset provided him with a misty view of scattered small buildings, stockyards, cranes, pylons, lights. To the northwest, the curving snouts of two furnaces reared up into the indigo sky. Factory whistles were hooting, great doors were slamming shut, cars with bright headlights were streaming toward the entrances.
Tallon realized he had been lucky to have the sprawling industrial nightmare close by when he had to run. He was aware of a warm stream of blood trickling down his back; and he realized that his legs were folding under him, and that he was on the verge of blindness.
The obvious thing to do now, Tallon thought, is to give myself up — except that I’ve given up giving myself up.
He angled off across the factory area, staggering a little, leaning against walls when walking became too difficult. Tallon knew he would present a ludicrous picture to anyone who looked at him, but two things were in his favor: in big state-owned projects the employees tend to see only what concerns their own work, and at the end of a shift they see even less.
An hour or two went by; then he found himself in the vicinity of the giant furnace stacks. Aware that he would have to lie down very soon, he picked his way across treacherously sliding piles of fuel and reached the rear of the furnaces, seeking a place of warmth. The fence marking the rear perimeter of the area loomed up above a jungle of climbing weeds. Tallon guessed he was about as far as he could get from the searching policemen and security guards, and he looked for a place to rest.
Between the furnaces and the fence, the climbing weeds and grasses were growing over untidy scrap heaps of packing cases and rusting metal framework, which looked like discarded assembly jigs. The big fires were quiescent in their ceramic ovens, but the heat from the stacks warmed the whole area. Tallon investigated several of the vegetation-shrouded heaps before he found a hole big enough to hide in. He slid wearily into the dusty little hole and pulled a screen of grass back over the entrance.
Maneuvering around for comfort, he discovered he could stretch out full length in the confined space. He gingerly put out his hand and found there was a tunnel leading toward the center of the stack, roofed and walled with random chunks of steel and discarded packing materials. Tallon wriggled a little farther in, then the effort became too great. He struggled free of the pack, laid his head on it, switched off the eyeset, and allowed the whole stinking universe to tilt away from him.
“Brother,” a voice said in the crawling darkness, “you have not introduced yourself.”
There were four of them — Ike, Lefty, Phil, and Denver.
The big attraction, Ike explained, was the heat. In every human society there are a few who are not equipped to make the grade, who have neither the will to work nor the strength to take. And so they live on scraps that fall from rich men’s tables. You will always find some of them in those few places where one or more of life’s necessities can be obtained simply by putting out a hand and waiting. Here there were falling scraps of heat that on a long winter’s night could mean the difference between sleeping and dying.