Flight From Tomorrow | Page 7

devices such as he had seen at the farm, advising people that a
man of his description, pretending to be a deaf-mute, should be detained and the police
notified; it had been for that reason that the workman had persuaded his master to employ
Hradzka. No doubt he would be accused of causing the conditions at the farm by sorcery.
* * * * *
Hradzka shrugged and nodded, then went to the water-tap to turn off the hose he had
been using. He disconnected it, coiled it and hung it up, and then picked up the
water-bucket. Then, without warning, he hurled the water into the policeman's face,
sprang forward, swinging the bucket by the bale, and hit the man on the head. Releasing
his grip on the bucket, he tore the blaster or whatever it was from the holster.
One of the workers swung a hammer, as though to throw it. Hradzka aimed the weapon at
him and pulled the trigger; the thing belched fire and kicked back painfully in his hand,

and the man fell. He used it again to drop the policeman, then thrust it into the waistband
of his trousers and ran outside. The thing was not a blaster at all, he realized--only a
missile-projector like the big weapons at the farm, utilizing the force of some chemical
explosive.
The policeman's vehicle was standing outside. It was a small, single-seat, two wheeled
affair. Having become familiar with the principles of these hydro-carbon engines from
examination of the vehicle of the farm, and accustomed as he was to far more complex
mechanisms than this crude affair, Hradzka could see at a glance how to operate it.
Springing onto the saddle, he kicked away the folding support and started the engine. Just
as he did, the master of the repair-shop ran outside, one of the small hand-weapons in his
hand, and fired several shots. They all missed, but Hradzka heard the whining sound of
the missiles passing uncomfortably close to him.
It was imperative that he recover the blaster he had hidden in the hollow tree at the head
of the valley. By this time, there would be a concerted search under way for him, and he
needed a better weapon than the solid-missile projector he had taken from the policeman.
He did not know how many shots the thing contained, but if it propelled solid missiles by
chemical explosion, there could not have been more than five or six such charges in the
cylindrical part of the weapon which he had assumed to be the charge-holder. On the
other hand, his blaster, a weapon of much greater power, contained enough energy for
five hundred blasts, and with it were eight extra energy-capsules, giving him a total of
four thousand five hundred blasts.
Handling the two-wheeled vehicle was no particular problem; although he had never
ridden on anything of the sort before, it was child's play compared to controlling a
Hundredth Century strato-rocket, and Hradzka was a skilled rocket-pilot.
Several times he passed vehicles on the road--the passenger vehicles with enclosed cabins,
and cargo-vehicles piled high with farm produce. Once he encountered a large number of
children, gathered in front of a big red building with a flagstaff in front, from which a
queer flag, with horizontal red and white stripes and a white-spotted blue device in the
corner, flew. They scattered off the road in terror at his approach; fortunately, he hit none
of them, for at the speed at which he was traveling, such a collision would have wrecked
his light vehicle.
* * * * *
As he approached the farm where he had spent the past few days, he saw two
passenger-vehicles standing by the road. One was a black one, similar to the one in which
the physician had come to the farm, and the other was white with black trimmings and
bore the same device he had seen on the cap of the policeman. A policeman was sitting in
the driver's seat of this vehicle, and another policeman was standing beside it, breathing
smoke with one of the white paper cylinders these people used. In the farm-yard, two
men were going about with a square black box; to this box, a tube was connected by a
wire, and they were passing the tube about over the ground.

The policeman who was standing beside the vehicle saw him approach, and blew his
whistle, then drew the weapon from his belt. Hradzka, who had been expecting some
attempt to halt him, had let go the right-hand steering handle and drawn his own weapon;
as the policeman drew, he fired at him. Without observing the effect of the shot, he sped
on; before he had rounded the bend above the farm, several shots were fired after