Read Online The Missing Man (v4.1) by Katherine Maclean - Free Book Online

drunk and the egg hit the fan. How do I get over that?” His
voice was broken by grunts of effort, and things clattered by, deflected,
missing them and hitting walls and cement flooring.
    They stood back to back and fended off bricks,
sticks and glittering objects that he hoped were not knives. “We can get
killed if we don’t watch it. That’s one way,” George said. A stick came
through the air and rapped George’s ear as he met it with his club. The
attackers advanced, silhouettes against the dimming view of stone walls.
Another attacker shadow picked up the clattering stick from the ground and
threw it back as he advanced.
    “Ouch,” said Carl Hodges.
“Duck.” They both ducked and a flung net went by. “We fight well
together. We must get together and fight another teen gang sometime.
Right?” said his brisk voice. “Ouch, damn.”
    George received a rush by the tallest of the
gang, caught at the outstretched staff and yanked the enemy past. He tried to
trip the teener as he hurtled by, but missed and turned to see him neatly
tripped by a stick between the ankles by Carl. The teener went face forward to
the ground and rolled, getting out of range.
    “Good pass!” Several new and heavy
blows on head and shoulders reminded George to watch his own side. Dizzied, he
spun, bracing the staff for a pushing blow with both hands, and felt it strike
twice against blurred forms. He reversed it and struck down at an attacker with
a contented growl.
    With a heavy thrumming and a push of air the
police helicopter came over a wall, swooping low, like an owl settling over a
nest of mice, and released a white cloud of gas.
    George took a deep breath of the clear air
before the cloud reached him. Beside him Carl Hodges took a deep startled
breath of the white cloud and went down as suddenly as if a club blow .had hit.
    Still holding his breath, George straddled him
and stood alert, peering through the fog at shapes that seemed to be upright
and moving. Most of the teeners had run away, or gone down flat on the ground.
What were these shapes? Eighteen seconds of holding his breath. Not hard. He
could make two minutes usually. He held his breath and tried to see through the
white clouds around him. The sound of the helicopter circled, in a wider and
wider spiral, laying a cloud of gas to catch all the running mice from the
center of the area to its edges.
    The shapes suddenly appeared beside him,
running, and struck with a double push, flinging him back ten feet so that he
skidded on his back on the sandy concrete. He remembered to hold his breath
after one snort of surprise and silently rolled to his feet and charged back.
    Carl Hodges’ unconscious form was missing.
George saw movement through the white fog ahead, heard feet scuffing cement and
hollow wood, and he charged in pursuit of the sounds. He half fell, half slid
down the cement steps, across the wooden door on the ground and into a
corridor, and glimpsed motion ahead, and heard a closet door shutting. Holding
his breath, groping, he opened the door, saw broken wall with an opening,
smelled the wet smell of cement and underground drafts, and leaped over a pile
of ancient trash brooms into the opening.
    Safe to breathe here. As he took a deep breath a
brilliant flashlight suddenly came on, shining blindingly in his face from only
two feet away. “I have a gun pointed at you,” said the precise voice
of the blond short teener. “Turn left and walk ahead in the directions I
tell you. I could kill you here, and no one would find your body, so try to
keep my good will.”
    “Where is Carl Hodges?” George asked,
walking with his hands up. The flashlight threw his shadow ahead of him big and
wavering across the narrow walls.
    “We’re all going to be holing down
together. Turn left here.” The voice was odd.
    George looked back and saw that the short teener
was wearing a gas mask. As he took a breath to ask why, the white fog rolled
down from a night-sky crevice