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<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
<p class="center">This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction May 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p>
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<h1>PURSUIT</h1>
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<h2><i>by</i> LESTER DEL REY</h2>
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<h3>Illustrated by ORBAN</h3>
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<h2>I</h2>
<div class="figleft"><ANTIMG src="images/image_f1.jpg" alt="F" width-obs="42" height-obs="50" /></div>
<p>ear cut through the unconscious mind of Wilbur Hawkes. With almost
physical violence, it tightened his throat and knifed at his heart. It
darted into his numbed brain, screaming at him.</p>
<p>He was a soft egg in a vast globe of elastic gelatine. Two creatures
swam menacingly through the resisting globe toward him. The gelatine
fought against them, but they came on. One was near, and made a mystic
pass. He screamed at it, and the gelatine grew stronger, throwing them
back and away. Suddenly, the creatures drew back. A door opened, and
they were gone. But he couldn't let them go. If they escaped....</p>
<p>Hawkes jerked upright in his bed, gasping out a hoarse cry, and the
sound of his own voice completed the awakening. He opened his eyes to
a murky darkness that was barely relieved by the little night-light.
For a second, the nightmare was so strong on his mind that he seemed
to see two shadows beyond the door, rushing down the steps. He fought
off the illusion, and with straining senses jerked his head around the
room. There was nothing there.</p>
<p>Sweat was beading his forehead, and he could feel his pulse racing. He
had to get out—had to leave—at once!</p>
<p>He forced the idea aside. There was something cloudy in his mind, but
he made reason take over and shove away some of the heavy fear. His
fingers found a cigarette and lighted it automatically. The first
familiar breath of smoke in his lungs helped. He drew in deeply again,
while the tiny sounds in the room became meaningful. There was the
insistent ticking of a clock and the soft shushing sound of a tape
recorder. He stared at the machine, running on fast rewind, and
reversed it to play. But the tape seemed to be blank, or erased.</p>
<p>He crushed the cigarette out on a table-top where other butts lay in
disorder. It looked wrong, and his mind leaped up in sudden frantic
fear, before he could calm it again. This time, reason echoed his
emotional unease.</p>
<p>Hawkes had never smoked before!</p>
<p>But his fingers were already lighting another by old habit. His
thoughts lurched, seeking for an answer. There was only a vague sense
of something missing—a period of time seemed to have passed. It felt
like a long period, but he had no memory of it. There had been the
final fight with Irma, when he'd gone stalking out of the house,
telling her to get a divorce any way she wanted. He'd opened the
mail-box and taken out a letter—a letter from a Professor....</p>
<p>His mind refused to go further. There was only a complete blank after
that. But it had been in midwinter, and now he could make out the
faint outlines of full-leafed trees against the sky through the
window! Months had gone by—and there was no faintest trace of them in
his mind.</p>
<p><i>They'll get you! You can't escape! Hurry, go, GO!...</i></p>
<p>The cigarette fell from his shaking hands, and he was half out of the
bed before the rational part of his mind could cut off the fear
thoughts. He flipped on the lights, afraid of the dimness. It didn't
help. The room was dusty, as if unused for months, and there was a
cobweb in one corner by the mirror.</p>
<p>His own face shocked him. It was the same lean, sharp-featured face as
ever, under the shock of nondescript, sandy hair. His ears still stuck
out too much, and his lips were a trifle too thin. It looked no more
than his thirty years; but it was a strained face, now—painted with
weeks of fatigue, and grayish with fear, sweat-streaked and with
nervous tension in every corded tendon of his throat. His somewhat
bony, average-height figure shook visibly as he climbed from the bed.</p>
<p>Hawkes stood fighting himself, trying to get back in the bed, but it
was a losing battle. Something seemed to swing up in the corner of the
room, as if a shadow moved. He jerked his head toward it, but there
was nothing there.</p>
<p>He heard his breath gasping harshly, and his knuckles whitened. There
was the taste of blood in the corner of his mouth where he was biting
his lips.</p>
<p><i>Get out! They'll be here at once! Leave—GO!</i></p>
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<p>is hands were already fumbling with his under-clothing. He drew on
briefs jerkily, and grabbed for the shirt and suit he had never seen
before. He was no longer thinking, now. Blind panic was winning. He
thrust his feet into shoes, not bothering with socks.</p>
<p>A slip of paper fell from his coat, with big sprawled Greek letters.
He saw only the last line as it fell to the floor—some equation that
ended with an infinity sign. Then psi and alpha, connected by a dash.
The alpha sign had been scratched out, and something written over it.
He tried to reach it, and more papers spilled from his coat pocket.
The fear washed up more strongly. He forgot the papers. Even the
cigarettes were too far away for him to return to them. His wallet lay
on the chair, and he barely grabbed it before the urge overpowered him
completely.</p>
<p>The doorknob slipped in his sweating hands, but he managed to turn it.
The elevator wasn't at his floor, and he couldn't stop for it. His
feet pounded on the stairs, taking him down the three floors to the
street at a breakneck pace. The walls of the stairway seemed to be
rushing together, as if trying to close the way. He screamed at them,
until they were behind, and he was charging out of the front door.</p>
<p>A half-drunken couple was coming in—a fat, older man and a slim girl
he barely saw. He hit them, throwing them aside. He jerked from the
entrance. Cars were streaming down West End Avenue. He dashed across,
paying no attention to them. His rush carried him onto the opposite
sidewalk. Then, finally, the blind panic left him, and he was leaning
against a building, gasping for breath, and wondering whether his
heart could endure the next beat.</p>
<p>Across the street, the fat man he had hit was coming after him. Hawkes
gathered himself together to apologize, but the words never came. A
second blinding horror hit at him, and his eyes darted up towards the
windows of his apartment.</p>
<p>It was only a tiny glow, at first, like a drop from the heart of a
sun. Then, before he could more than blink, it spread, until the whole
apartment seemed to blaze. A gout of smoke poured from the shattering
window, and a dull concussion struck his ears.</p>
<p>The infernally bright flame flickered, leaped outward from the window,
and died down almost as quickly as it had come, leaving twisted,
half-molten metal where the window frames had been.</p>
<p>They'd almost gotten him! Hawkes felt his legs weaken and quiver,
while his eyes remained glued to the spot that had lighted the whole
street a second before. They'd tried—but he'd escaped in time.</p>
<p>It must have been a thermite bomb—nothing but thermite could be that
hot. He had never imagined that even such a bomb could give so much
heat so quickly. Where? In the tape-recorder?</p>
<p>He waited numbly, expecting more fire, but the brief flame seemed to
have died out completely. He shook his head, unbelieving, and started
to cross the street again, to survey the damage or to join the crowd
that was beginning to collect.</p>
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<div class="figleft"><ANTIMG src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width-obs="31" height-obs="40" /></div>
<p>he fear surged up in him again, halting his step as if he'd struck a
physical barrier. With it came the sound of an auto-horn, the button
held down permanently. His eyes darted down the street, to see a long,
gray sedan with old-fashioned running-boards come around the corner on
two wheels. Its brakes screeched, and it skidded to a halt beside
Hawkes' apartment building.</p>
<p>A slim young man in gray tweeds leaped out of it and came to a stop.
He threw back heavy black hair with a toss of his head and ran into
the crowd that parted to let him through. Someone began pointing
towards Hawkes.</p>
<p>Hawkes tried to slide around the corner without being seen, but a
flashlight in the young man's hands pinpointed him. A yell went up.</p>
<p>"There he goes!"</p>
<p>His feet sounded hopelessly on the sidewalk as he dashed up toward
Broadway, but behind came the sound of others in pursuit, and the
shouting was becoming a meaningless babble as others took it up. There
was no longer any doubt. Someone was certainly after him—there'd been
no time to turn in an alarm over the fire in his apartment. They'd
been coming for him before that started.</p>
<p>What hideous crime could he have committed during the period he
couldn't remember? Or what spy-ring had encircled him?</p>
<p>He had no time to think of the questions, even. He ducked into the
thin swarm of a few people leaving a theater just as the pursuing
group rounded the corner, with the slim young man in the lead.</p>
<p>Their cries were enough. Hands reached for him from the theater crowd,
and a foot stretched out to trip him up. Terror lent speed to his
legs, but he could never outdistance them, as long as others picked up
the chase.</p>
<p>A sudden blast of heat struck down, and the air was golden and hazy
above him. He staggered sideways, blinded by the glare. The crowd was
screaming in fear now, no longer holding him back. He felt the edge of
a subway entrance. There was no other choice. He ducked down the
steps, while his vision slowly returned, and risked a glance back at
the street—just as the whole entrance came down in a wreck of broken
wood and metal.</p>
<p>A clap of thundering noise sounded above him, drowning the hoarse
screams of the people. The few persons in the station rushed for the
fallen entrance, to mill about it crazily, just as a train pulled in.
Hawkes started toward it, and then realized his pursuers would suspect
that. Whatever frightful weapon had been used against him had
back-fired on them—but they'd catch him at the next stop.</p>
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<p>e found space at the end of the platform and dropped off, skirting
behind the train, and avoiding the the high-voltage rails.</p>
<p>The uptown platform held only three people, and they seemed to be too
busy at the other end, trying to see the wreckage, to notice him. He
vaulted onto it, and dashed into the men's room. The few contents of
his coat pocket came out quickly, and he began to stuff them into his
trousers. He shoved the coat into a garbage can, wet his hair and
slicked it back, and opened his shirt collar. The change didn't make
much of a disguise, but they wouldn't be expecting him to show up so
near where he entered.</p>
<p>His skin prickled as he came out, but he fought down the sickness in
his stomach. A few drops of rain were beginning to fall, and the crowd
around the accident was thinning out. That might help him—or it might
prove more dangerous. He had to chance it.</p>
<p>He stopped to buy a paper, maintaining an air of casual interest in
the crowd.</p>
<p>"What happened?" he asked.</p>
<p>The newsstand attendant jerked his eyes back from they excitement
reluctantly. "Damned if I know. Someone, says a ball lightning came
down and broke over there. Caved in the entrance. Nobody's hurt
seriously, they say. I was just stacking up to go home when I heard it
go off. Didn't see it. Just saw the entrance falling in."</p>
<p>Hawkes picked up his change and turned back across Broadway,
pretending he was studying the paper. The dateline showed it was July
10, just seven months from the beginning of his memory lapse. He
couldn't believe that there had been time enough for any group to
invent a heat-ray, if such a thing could exist. Yet nothing else would
explain the two sudden bursts of flame he had seen. Even if it could
be invented, it would hardly be used in public for anything less than
a National Emergency.</p>
<p>What had happened in the seven blanked-out months?</p>
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