The Chasers, Daniel F. Galouye [best manga ereader txt] 📗

the steps, Mason observed, "Nice little layout they've got here."

Riva moved closer to Cassidy. "Inside is cozy," she said behind a coy smile. "Play we can really in there."

Papa had been at the door for some time, fumbling with the lock. In a burst of impatience, he drew off and gave it a solid kick. Then he went back and tried rattling the handle. After a while there was a click and it swung open.

Cassidy followed him into a blaze of iridescent color and unfamiliar form. The huge, circular room was like a vast diorama and it was impossible to tell exactly where the solid objects blended in with the jumbled geometric pattern of the wall.

He walked across a carpet of undulant fibers that reached well above his ankles. And he tripped across a padded, Z-shaped slab that protruded from the wall but slithered into a U and retracted as soon as it received the burden of his weight.

Laughing, Riva helped him up and he paused for a closer visual inspection of his outlandish surroundings. Objects of weird shapes and unguessable purposes hung from the ceiling, some changing form and size as he watched. Scattered about were articles of furniture (he guessed) that resembled giant starfish supported at their centers and extremities by coiled springs. Only, each arm was shaped like a trough that ran into the bowl-like central depression of the piece.

A gleeful scream sounded behind them and Papa went tearing by. With a running leap, he landed on an arm of one of the starfish. Its supporting spring contracted under the weight, then catapulted him ceilingward. When he came down again, it was on an arm of another starfish, then another.

The fourth collapsed, depositing him on the floor, and its spring went twanging across the room. Struggling to his feet, he staggered into something resembling a clothes tree, knocked it over and sprawled beside it.

He roared with delight as he snapped the stem of the thing across his knee and hurled the pieces at the ceiling. They scored direct hits on one of the bulky objects suspended overhead and it came crashing down with a twinkling roar amid a shower of sparks.

"Yow-ee!" he exuberated. "So much fun I never had!"

Riva helped him up. "Papa, it's control yourself you must. The last time—remember?"

But he only shook her off and went bounding through an archway. His hectic progress through the house was punctuated by sounds of crashing destruction.

"Honestly," Riva said, spreading her hands, "what to do with him I don't know."

Cassidy continued staring in the direction the old man had gone. "He's wrecking the place!"

"That he is," she admitted sighing. "And such a nice joint it be, too."

"He's just plain nuts!" said Mason.

Riva smiled. "But it's so much fun he has."

Cassidy moved away to get a better view of a silvery gray screen set in the wall and flanked by twin rows of dials and knobs.

"You got stereovision, Riva?" he asked.

Mason went over and twisted several of the controls until a soft light began suffusing the screen.

"Ster-eo-what?" the girl asked.

"Video, television—pictures with sound."

Her face brightened. "Pictures we got—sounds too. Right in that little window."

Just then Papa, uninhibited as ever, came storming back into the room with a lusty "Ya-hoo!" He lost his footing and crashed against the screen. Sparks shot out and the picture that was beginning to take shape faded into obscurity.

"It that settles, Papa!" Riva said, exasperated. "Outside I'm going and for what happens to you I'm not responsible!"

At the door, she paused and smiled at Cassidy. "It'll have to be out there that we play, but no less fun will we have. Put on my best cavorting clothes I'm going to."

Mason turned the knobs again, but produced nothing more than the smell of burning insulation and a few snickers from Papa.

"At least," Cassidy observed, "they evidently do know something about electronics. All we have to do now is run down one of the technicians and we might get the parts we need for the stabilizer."

Outside Mason dropped down on the steps and sat with his shoulders slumping. "Damnedest thing I've ever seen," he mumbled.

Cassidy paced to the edge of the porch and stared out over the field. A monstrous skimmer craft appeared in the distance, floating over toward what seemed to be a pile of trash in front of one of the estates. Twin beams of crimson light darted from the nose of the vehicle and played over the mound. In seconds, the heap had melted away and the skimmer floated on.

Wolruf was still walking his octopus-spider pet. There were now two packs of youths out chasing girls. And another skimmer car was having no difficulty surviving the stone-throwing assault of not one, but two dedicated pursuers. Outside of that, Cassidy noted, things appeared quite normal.

Mason slapped his thighs and rose. "You go see if Riva knows how we can contact the authorities. I'm going back and stay with the ship."

Cassidy watched him crawl under the fence, then went around the side of the house. When he caught sight of the girl, she was just disappearing into a smaller structure that might have been a guest house or garage.

Following, he knocked on the door and called out her name anxiously.

"To play are you ready?" There was an eager note in her voice as it came through the panel. "In come on. It's all set I'll be in a jiffy."

He turned the knob, stepped half into the room, lurched back outside and slammed the door behind him. "Riva!"

The door started to open, then closed again as the girl laughed. "Oh, all right. Funny you be. It's to play you want, don't you?"

He assured her that he did and added, "But there's something we have to talk about now, Riva."

"Talk, talk, talk. And it gets you where? Only wastes time, it does."

A moment later the door opened and she stood there smiling, with legs apart and hands on her hips. But he hardly had time to react to the skimpiness of her halter and skirt.

"Now," she urged as she sprang up on her toes and kissed him full on the lips, "like a chaser make! To the races we're off!"

With that, she whirled and went streaking through the next room.

He surveyed his surroundings. It was an ordinary bedroom with conventional furnishings—perhaps a bit crude even for a culture without any space technology. But, then, it didn't seem uncharacteristic, considering the circumstances.

Recognizing the contrast between this guest house and the manor, he frowned as he started off in search of the girl. A worrisome suspicion dogged his thoughts—there had to be sense to Riva and her father and this sumptuous estate, natives who made sport of chasing skimmer craft and voluptuous women when they weren't otherwise indiscreetly occupied. But what?

In the kitchen, he discovered Riva's shapely leg protruding from behind a cabinet. He suspected the exposure was not as accidental as she wanted him to believe. He was certain of that when, as he seized her ankle, she crawled out laughing.

Now she stood before him, unsmiling and impatient, and her slender arms reached out for his shoulders.

"Riva, this is serious!" He forced her hands down again. "I'm in trouble. I need help."

"It's to help you I've been trying all along."

"I've got to get in touch with the authorities—your government."

She looked blank.

He simplified it, "Your leaders."

"Oh, it's easy that is. There be Aline and Clio and Leah and—but that Leah! It's the cake she takes! Thirty chasers she led on the best drag-out of all. Two whole days it lasted!"

"No, Riva! Not that kind of leader. I mean—well, someone who gets things done. The kind who gets behind things and—"

"That be Leanc. Behind those floating cars he's getting all the time. And how he can throw so many rocks I'll never know!"

He mussed his hair in frustration, then composed himself. "How do I get to the city?"

"That crowded place with all the big houses?" When he nodded, she went on, "It's never been there I have. Now we play?"

He drew in a hopeless breath. "All right. Now we play. You go hide."

She radiated a warm eagerness as she initiated the game all over again with a kiss and then went sprinting toward the front of the house. He watched her disappear through the next room, then went out the nearest door, heading for the fence and his ship beyond. It had required no small degree of restraint not to go racing off after her.

At the corner of the manor he was bowled over by a shouting Papa who was in full flight as he shot out around a hedge, heading for the guest house.

"All your fault it is!" he cried, recovering his balance and plunging on. "You it be who caused this! that I'll remember!"

Cassidy sat up, arms resting on his updrawn knees, and stared after the old man.

"Ow! Riva! Ouch!" Papa clutched his rear as he neared the cottage. "Help! Oh, my aching back!"

Cassidy found Mason frozen in the shadow of the ship, fascinated by another girl chase that was in progress nearby.

The swirl of action swerved toward him and Mason tensed, shifting from one foot to the other. With the wind pressing her clothes in revealing tightness about her, the flaxen-haired sprite swept past and he lunged for her.

"Mason!" Cassidy shouted.

"Seemed like a good idea," Mason explained, checking himself. "Wonder what it takes to get in on that chase."

Cassidy forced a fetching thought of Riva out of his mind. "What we ought to be wondering is how soon we can blast off."

"But if we get spaceborne before the stabilizer's working, we'll only be floundering around again."

Cassidy started for the ladder. "There's one thing we can do—patch up the hatches and jump over to another spot on this planet. Maybe we'll find somebody who's normal, at least."

But Mason caught his arm and pointed toward Riva's estate where a skimmer car was now parked on the side of the manor opposite the guest house.

"Anybody who can drive one of those things," he suggested, "must know something about the city and how to get there. Maybe he'll even give us a lift."

Mason circled the skimmer craft. "It's a fine piece of workmanship," he said in admiration.

"I'll say," Cassidy agreed. "If we can find out where that was made, I'm sure we'll—"

His vision was suddenly cut off by a pair of hands that came around his head from behind and clamped themselves over his eyes. If he had any doubt as to the identity of their owner, it was soon cleared up by a soft voice next to his ear:

"Not right this is. It's chasing me you're supposed to be."

"Riva," he said, facing her, "we'd like to meet the person who came here in that skimmer."

"Excuses, excuses," she complained. "Always something more important than a chase it is."

"Take us to the driver of that thing," Mason prompted. "We—"

But he tensed and stared up in alarm toward the field. Cassidy followed his gaze to the skimmer vehicle that had earlier reduced a pile of trash to nothing. The craft was just now floating up to their ship.

Its two beams of sizzling red light swept over the hull from stem to stern, again and again—until there was nothing left of their ship but incandescent molten metal.

Mason displayed a sickened, then resigned expression, thrust his hands in his pockets and shuffled off toward the field.

"Getting in on one of those chases I think I'll be," he said.

But he paused outside the fence, turned to say something, then lurched back. "Cassidy! Watch out! There's one of those things!"

The spider-octopus came into view from around the rear of the manor and crawled leisurely toward the guest house. Its body, covered with a multitude of eyes and an unkempt mat of fuzz, was like a coal-black knob perched atop hairy stilts.

Evidently, Cassidy guessed as he dived behind a hedge and pulled the girl with him, the thing had gotten away from its master, for it was trailing its leash in the dust.

"It's hurt you he won't," Riva assured, quite puzzled over his apprehension. "He belongs to—"

But Cassidy clamped a hand over her mouth.

The thing reached the guest house and made a queer noise in front of the door.

Papa came outside on the double.

The spider-octopus picked up the other end of the thong and clamped its braceletlike device around the old man's wrist.

Grinning, Papa pulled toward the gate, straining at the leash.

Eventually, Cassidy was aware of Riva's smiling, inquisitive face in front of his.

"Play?" she invited.

And, glancing back at the charred remains of his ship, he didn't see why not.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Chasers, by Daniel F. Galouye