Two men had died before Syme Rector's guns
to give him the key to the ancient city of
Kal-Jmar—a city of untold wealth, and of
robots that made desires instant commands.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The tall man loitered a moment before a garish window display, his eyesimpassive in his space-burned face, as the Lillis patrolman passed.Then he turned, burying his long chin in the folds of his sand cape,and took up the pursuit of the dark figure ahead once more.
Above, the city's multicolored lights were reflected from thetranslucent Dome—a distant, subtly distorted Lillis, through which thestars shone dimly.
Getting through that dome had been his first urgent problem, but now hehad another, and a more pressing one. It had been simple enough to passhimself off as an itinerant prospector and gain entrance to the city,after his ship had crashed in the Mare Cimmerium. But the rest wouldnot be so simple. He had to acquire a spaceman's identity card, and hehad to do it fast. It was only a matter of time until the TriplanetPatrol gave up the misleading trail he had made into the hill country,and concluded that he must have reached Lillis. After that, his onlysafety lay in shipping out on a freighter as soon as possible. He hadto get off Mars, because his trail was warm, and the Patrol thorough.
They knew, of course, that he was an outlaw—the very fact of thecrashed, illegally-armed ship would have told them that. But theydidn't know that he was Syme Rector, the most-wanted and most-fearedraider in the System. In that was his only advantage.
He walked a little faster, as his quarry turned up a side street andthen boarded a moving ramp to an upper level. He watched until theshort, wide-shouldered figure in spaceman's harness disappeared overthe top of the ramp, and then followed.
The man was waiting for him at the mouth of the ascending tunnel.
Syme looked at him casually, without a flicker of expression, andstarted to walk on, but the other stepped into his path. He was quiteyoung, Syme saw, with a fighter's shoulders under the white leather,and a hard, determined thrust to his firm jaw.
"All right," the boy said quietly. "What is it?"
"I don't understand," Syme said.
"The game, the angle. You've been following me. Do you want trouble?"
"Why, no," Syme told him bewilderedly. "I haven't been following you.I—"
The boy knuckled his chin reflectively. "You could be lying," he saidfinally. "But maybe I've made a mistake." Then—"Okay, citizen, you canclear—but don't let me catch you on my tail again."
Syme murmured something and turned away, feeling the spaceman's eyeson the small of his back until he turned the corner. At the nextstreet he took a ramp up, crossed over and came down on the other sidea block away. He waited until he saw the boy's broad figure pass theintersection, and then followed again more cautiously.
It was risky, but there was no other way. The signatures, the data,even the photograph on the card could be forged once Syme got his handson it, but the identity card itself—that oblong of dark diamondite,glowing with the tiny fires of radioactivity—that could not beimitated, and the only way to get it was to kill.
Up ahead was the Founders' Tower, the tallest building in Lillis. Theboy strode into the entrance lobby, bought a ticket for the observationplatform, and took the elevator. As soon as his car was out of sight inthe transparent tube, Syme followed. He put a half-credit slug into themachine, took the punctured s