Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/83

Rh line; the trucks were the conveyor belt, and the shops and the bank the source of supply of parts. The doll-control men labored steadily with the rapt expression I had come to recognize as that of one whose mind has been taken over from the distance by the control mech.

At the curb, as we hurried forward, sat a Police Patrol car, full of uniforms—uniforms containing burly coppers. But they were all unconscious—or asleep! Here and there I saw other blue uniforms prostrate on the pavement. There was no sign of a wound on them.

"How the heck did Nueces knock out the police?"

"There are a dozen ways. A dozen different rays would accomplish that—or simple teleport of nitrous oxide into their lungs. What's the difference how it was done?"

"Just what do you expect to do and why are you hurrying into the thick of it? You haven't even got a cap pistol!"

A siren rushed up a side street toward us. As we sighted the speeding car the motor died suddenly, the car slowed and the police started to climb out. One by one they slumped in unconsciousness without visible cause. It was eerie, potent stuff Nueces was handing out.

Even as I stood there wondering just what Tanil expected to do about a thing as big as this—the looting of a city—I felt a choking sensation, the world turned from a mad bright impossible scurrying of rapt-faced figures into a soft darkness, and my head cracked hard on something.

HEN I came to, the scurry and confusion had gone and the streets were nearly empty of life. Down the street an ambulance was stopped beside a body. The white coats were bending over some one lying across the curb. Beside me Tanil and Kyra still lay unconscious. As I sat up Tanil murmured:

"Got to get to Harruh, he will have a mech up there" She stirred, opened her eyes. I said:

"Well, wherever you were going, I gather it's too late now."

A cruising cab coasted up to us, his brakes screeched gently as he paused near the curb.

"Feel like going home, folks?" called the cabbie, grinning down at us. "The party's over. I've been picking up quite a few of you innocent bystanders."

I answered:

"Wait a minute! Soon as the women come out of it—we will have plenty of use for you."

Tanil sat up, her face sharpening by the second. Together we half-carried Kyra to the cab, tumbled in. I gave my address, as Tanil said nothing. The cab swung around, started off for my former rooms. I was hoping the landlord had decided to await my return, had not thrown out my belongings. The rent had been paid for a few weeks in advance, but was now two weeks overdue.

The cabbie was talkative.

"You're the only folks I picked up who didn't bust out with questions, 'What happened?' 'What's the matter with the police? He mimicked the confused citizens' natural queries. "I suppose you folks know all about it, that's why you're not asking questions?"

"Maybe we're just smart enough to know that a cab-driver wouldn't know any more about it than we do. What did happen, just to conform to polite procedure? Do you know?" I parried, for the fact we weren't curious might start him off on the angle that would lead to our own questioning by the police—and I had no desire to be questioned by any police in the frame of mind they must be in right now.

"Just the biggest robbery in the history of any city, that's all! A whole fleet of trucks came along, knocked out the police faster than they could arrive on the scene, and walked off with every bit of valuable merchandise and every bill in every bank on Grand Ave. That's all that happened!"

"Some clever gang, that. Wonder how they did it?"

"They seemed to have a way of knocking the cops unconscious from a distance. Science run amok, that's what it was. Some criminal mind is better at building a weapon than the whole US army, I guess."

"Well, nearly every weapon they have now was invented by a private party sometime. It isn't so strange that one of them should decide to use his weapon for his own private war on society, instead of giving it to the government for some future Hitler to get big-headed about."

"Brother, this guy is going to be a Hitler, if I'm any judge! He sure picked up a few million bucks in a hurry. If they don't stop him, it'll be the U.S. Mint one