Read Online Troublemakers by Harlan Ellison - Free Book Online

being somehow transported from the War into this new-and in many ways more terrifying-situation. He concentrated on one thing only, as a good soldier should: Out!
        He slid along the wall, the crowd flowing before him, opening at his approach, closing in behind. He whirled once, driving them back farther with the black hole of the Brandelmeier’s bell mouth. Again he hesitated (not knowing why) to fire upon them.
        He sensed they were enemies. But still they were unarmed. And yet, that had never stopped him before. The village in Tetra Omsk Territory, beyond the Volga somewhere. They had been unarmed there, too, but the square had been filled with civilians he had not hesitated to bum. Why was he hesitating now?
        The Brandelmeier continued in its silence.
        Qarlo detected a commotion behind the crowd, above the crowd’s inherent commotion. And a movement. Something was happening there. He backed tightly against the wall as a blue-suited, brass-buttoned man broke through the crowd.
        The man took one look, caught the unwinking black eye of the Brandelmeier, and threw his arms back, indicating to the crowd to clear away. He began screaming at the top of his lungs, veins standing out in his temples, “Geddoudahere! The guy’s a cuckaboo! Somebody’ll get kilt! Beat it, run!”
        The crowd needed no further impetus. It broke in the center and streamed toward the stairs.
        Qarlo swung around, looking for another way out, but both accessible stairways were clogged by fighting commuters, shoving each other mercilessly to get out. He was effectively trapped.
        The cop fumbled at his holster. Qarlo caught a glimpse of the movement from the corner of his eye. Instinctively he knew the movement for what it was; a weapon was about to be brought into use. He swung about, leveling the Brandelmeier. The cop jumped behind a stanchion just as the soldier pressed the firing stud.
        A triple-thread of bright blue energy leaped from the weapon’s bell mouth. The beam went over the heads of the crowd, neatly melting away a five foot segment of wall supporting one of the stairways. The stairs creaked, and the sound of tortured metal adjusting to poor support and aIi overcrowding of people rang through the tunnel. The cop looked fearfully above himself, saw the beams curve, then settle under the weight, and turned a wide-eyed stare back at the soldier.
        The cop fired twice, from behind the stanchion, the booming of the explosions catapulting back and forth in the enclosed space.
        The second bullet took the soldier above the wrist in his left arm. The Brandelmeier slipped uselessly from his good hand, as blood stained the garment he wore. He stared at his shattered lower arm in amazement. Doubled amazement.
        What manner of weapon was this the blue-coated man had used? No beam, that. Nothing like anything he had ever seen before. No beam to fry him in his tracks. It was some sort of power that hurled a projectile...that had ripped his body. He stared stupidly as blood continued to flow out of his arm.
        The cop, less anxious now to attack this man with the weird costume and unbelievable rifle, edged cautiously from behind his cover, skirting the edge of the platform, trying to get near enough to Qarlo to put another bullet into him, should he offer further resistance. But the soldier continued to stand, spraddle-legged, staring at his wound, confused at where he was, what had happened to him, the screams of the trains as they bulleted past, and the barbarian tactics of his blue-coated adversary.
        The cop moved slowly, steadily, expecting the soldier to break and run at any moment. The wounded man stood rooted, however. The cop bunched his muscles and leaped the few feet intervening.
        Savagely, he brought the barrel of his pistol down on the side of Qarlo’s neck, near the ear. The soldier turned slowly, anchored in his tracks, and stared